Feeling Our Life, Finding Our Life's Work

My amazing coach Hillary Harris forwarded me this short article from DailyOM the other day, and I'm reprinting it here with DailyOM's expressed permission.

Rather than highlighting what I found important in it, just read on - every sentence is a pearl of wisdom.

Feeling Our Life, Finding Our Life’s Work
(© 2004-08 DailyOM - All Rights Reserved
Sometimes it takes us the better part of a lifetime to discover our life’s work, even though we may have been doing it our whole lives without necessarily realizing it. Our life’s work is not always what we do to make money, although we often think it should be, and sometimes this way of thinking prevents us from seeing clearly what it is. It may be the work of having children, caring for them, and running a household. The way we know our life’s work is by how we feel when we are doing it.

When we are doing our life’s work, we feel an uncanny sense of ease and alignment. This doesn’t mean that the work is always easy, and it doesn’t mean that it’s the only work we have to do; it just means that there is a conviction deep inside us that tells us we are in tune with our innermost self. When we are engaged in our life’s work, our bodies feel more alive, because our energy is devoted to a cause that, in turn, feeds us. We may be tired after engaging in our life’s work, but we are almost never depleted. We feel grounded in the world, knowing that we belong here and have something important to offer.

When we are deeply unhappy, depressed, or subject to one illness after another, this may be due to a sense of disconnection from our life’s work. At times like these, finding the work we are meant to do is an essential act of healing. Most of us remember a time when we felt fully engaged in some act of work, service or creativity, and it is here that we may rediscover the work we are meant to do now. On the other hand, it may be time to explore what inspires us through volunteering, taking a class, going back to school, or just doing whatever it is we long to try. We all have callings, and when we find them, we owe it to ourselves to nurture and protect them, because while they may or may not be our livelihood, they are the keys to our well-being.

(Reprinted from DailyOM - Inspirational thoughts for a happy, healthy and fulfilling day. Register for free at www.dailyom.com.)

Comments

[Cori]

"Our life’s work is not always what we do to make money, although we often think it should be . . ."

Thank you so much for this post - this describes exactly what has been causing me much frustration over the past year or two. I've felt pressure to change the job I am doing because it just doesn't seem possible that it could be my life's work. This post helps me to see that maybe that's true, and that the life's work may have nothing to do with my "day job." Thinking about it this way is a huge (admittedly self-inflicted) weight off my shoulders.

[Izabella Tabarovsky]

Hey there Cori, I'm glad this post helped remove what clearly sounds like a huge weight off your shoulders! The beauty of this way of thinking is that, once you refocus your attention toward something other than your job, something that feels more meaningful and fulfilling, you may begin enjoying your job more as well. Of course, if the job makes you so miserable that it takes all joy out of you and doesn't leave you energy to enjoy and contribute fully to the rest of your life, then you may still need to consider whether it's worth staying there. Either way though, lifting unnecessary pressures off ourselves helps us think more clearly and expansively, so here's to your success in figuring out where your life's work might actually lie!