A job you’re “good at” does not equate to a job you love.

If I followed all of the tests and assessments of my personality and my skill set, I’d still be sitting in a fabric-covered cubicle doing things I don’t enjoy, talking with people (I do enjoy) about things I don’t give a rat’s ass about.

A job you love is not about what you’re good at. Yes, you’ll likely be good at a job you love, but don’t start your search there.

Start by checking in with your heart. What does it long to do?

Check in with your gut. What lights you on fire?

Ask the child you used to be. What did you want to be before anyone told you it wasn’t possible or that being an engineer was a practical career choice?

Start asking these questions in the quiet, soft places of your heart. You don’t have to share the answers with anyone. But if you don’t ask them, you’ll never know the answers. And that would be a very, very sad thing.
 

Are you focused on the end result, or do you enjoy the process of getting where you want to go?

Whether it’s figuring out what to do with your life or career, taking your business to its next level, or training a puppy, enjoy getting there. Once you are “there,” nothing really changes... except you’ll find a new “there” to go and the process repeats.

I learned this last week in rewriting several pages on my website, and I was reminded by it last night when I saw these irises opening. I love how they look before they have fully blossomed--more than I like them opened all the way. They reminded me to appreciate my own process of unfolding--in life, in my business, and with training our new puppy.

How do you remind yourself to enjoy the process of getting where you want to go?
 

Listen to your heart.

I know how easy it can be to get wrapped up in doing the “right next thing” in searching for a new career or building my business or working toward any goal. We look toward the logical next step. We believe that if we follow the steps 1-2-3 we’ll get exactly where we want to go.

Rarely does anything work like that, except maybe baking cookies.

Think about a goal or something you’ve accomplished in your life. When you set out to achieve it, was it a simple 1-2-3 process, or did you take some detours and unexpected turns along the way?

Sometimes, the next step on the way to finding a job you love is to go for a walk in the middle of the day. It may not be logical, but your true, creative, essential self knows that it serves you better to go for a walk then to sit and work on your resume.

The next step for building your business may be to take a long bath, have a good cry, play with watercolors, or make faces with your food. Your logical mind can’t explain it--and it never will be able to, but your true, creative essential self knows exactly what you need to do to get to your goal.

Next time you’re not sure if you should take this step, that step, or turn left, check in with your heart.

Get quiet.

Take a few deep breaths.

Ask your heart what is next for you. It knows.

Listen and follow. What you hear may not be logical. It doesn’t have to be. If your logical mind were all you needed to get what you want, you’d already have exactly what you wanted.

Check in with your heart today. What does it say is next for you?
 
photo courtesy of ilmungo via flickr

Change happens. We lose part of ourselves. Then we find a new way.

Heading in a new direction is like following a trail of breadcrumbs. We do not know the end destination, yet we can just barely see the next step. Each crumb we find offers us new information about our destination.

For some, this slow revealing is a fun adventure. For others, the mystery is agonizing. Whichever your disposition, know that the process of noticing your new information and narrowing in on your target is essential for arriving at your destination. Otherwise, you’d stop short of where you’re supposed to end up.

As you set out on your new way, write out what you know about where you’re headed--this can also include where you know you’re not headed. At the beginning, you won’t have much--that’s okay. Slowly you’ll find clarity.

Each time you find a bread crumb, add to, delete from, refine, and rewrite what you know. Notice what you can from each crumb. When you’ve gathered all you can from it, search for the next crumb.

Enjoy the journey. It’s an adventure to a yet-to-be-revealed destination. Trust that your true self knows how to find the way and the process of its unveiling is divinely timed.

Photo courtesy of Storm Crypt via Flickr

Until recently, I haven’t been what I would consider to be an affirmations person. They always felt forced. I felt like I was lying.

Something changed recently, and I’m not sure what it was. What I do know is that now and then I can throw around a few positively optimistic phrases (which do not represent my reality as I see it) and feel good about it.

I’ve picked up a few lately about money, health, and life in general. I repeat them in the shower, while driving, and in my notebook, whenever the time feels right.

I’m curious, are you an affirmations person? How do you go about it?
 

On Monday, I wrote about a slip-up on my resolution to LISTEN. Today, I’m writing about my second resolution: ALLOW.

One word resolutions.
Let me first detour to these one-word resolutions and where they came from. Maybe resolution isn’t the best word for it, but it feels right to me. Christine Kane, a singer, songwriter, and coach, suggests using a “Word of the Year” to guide the upcoming year. She asks her blog readers to share their experiences using a guiding word, and I finally caught on. In mid-December, LISTEN came to me. Shortly after that, I heard, ALLOW.

ALLOW.
I chose ALLOW for 2010 because it is a perfect complement to LISTEN. LISTEN is about me hearing the whispers of my wise, inner self and of my body. ALLOW is acceptance of reality, acceptance of what-is. Both of these words are physical and mental; though for me, the focus is actually more physical than mental.

I was left-brain trained (logical, mathematical, scientific, process-oriented), and I have lived my life “in my head,” so to speak. In the last year, I’ve learned to climb back into my body and learn that I can LISTEN to the physical feelings that are stored there. Behind the physical sensations are words. They say things like, “Slow down. There’s no need to rush.” Or, “Yes, do that. It will be fun!” Those are the voices I want to hear more clearly this year.

Allowing ALLOW.
ALLOW, for me, is two-thirds physical, one-third mental. Having lived “in my head” for so long, I almost forgot I had a body. (No, of course not literally, but it seems that way, now that I look back.) Every time I think a thought that doesn’t serve me, my body tenses up. Since I’ve spent my life pleasing others, I think a lot of things that don’t serve me... and my body tenses up a lot, too. ALLOW is helping me refocus on what-is in life, and letting it be.

I am tired of controlling, trying, forcing, and efforting. I want to take a break and just ALLOW.

A new way.
I have this thought, in the back of my mind, that if I can let go of trying so hard, more things will come to me. More fun, more business, more love, more whatever-is-good. ALLOW isn’t about making or desiring those things to come to me, but it is about permitting them to enter my world. Who knows if it will work. What I do know for sure is that I’m tired of trying and I’m tired of hurting and I’m ready for a new way. And that’s what ALLOW is all about for me. I look forward to learning what it has to teach me in 2010.

Do you have a word for 2010?

I love how this video shows two sides to the same story.

Dreams were not something I planned to mention in my blog. It just came up, so I went with it. Today I will share my dream history.

The first dream I remember having is a Tom and Jerry dream. I'm sure you remember that cartoon. I loved it when I was young. In the dream I was Jerry, and I was being chased into the hole in the baseboard by Tom. I was scared. That’s all I remember.

Fast forward about twenty-some years to September 11th. Vivid images on the television, in the newspapers, all over the internet. Stories about the invasion of Afghanistan. Then Iraq. Bombs. Death. Fighting.

Shortly after our country was in full-blown war in the Middle East, my dreams became a dangerous place for me to be. I was in the middle of war zones, I was being attacked, I was having to fight back. I do not believe I was ever killed, but man, I was scared.

Night after night, endless nocturnal terror. When I would awake, I would be mentally exhausted. I stopped watching, listening to, or reading any news.

My violent dreams continued. Three or four years later, someone suggested to me that violent dreams can mean that part of the dreamer is dying, metaphorically speaking. The killing in the dream was representing the death of a part of myself.

Despite this information, the violence did not stop. It took another four years for my violent dreams to shift. Two things made it happen.

1. I learned how to interpret them.
2. I listened to their messages and started making changes in my life.

The suggestion was correct that the violence in my dreams indicated that a part of me dying. The true me, the person I am deep down inside, was dying. The true me was getting lost while I was trying to please others. She was dying because I was giving myself to a job and a company that did not serve my highest interests. She had no sense of who she was because I learned to conform to a mold of social and societal pressures. Now that I think about it, those things could kill anyone.

As I took the time to interpret my dreams, the violence in the night began to lessen. Some nights were still terrifying, but not every night. I was listening to and understanding their messages.

Fast forward to the spring of 2009. Within my final weeks at the office, the violence disappeared completely from my dreams. I heard the message that was being shouted at me for eight years. I left my job. I stopped killing my soul.

Now my dreams have taken a new turn. My mind is busy every night, creating new adventures rich with meaning. I take the time to learn their lessons.

Are you ready to find the wisdom in your dreams?

We can all remember a memorable dream or two in our lives. Do you have recurring dreams, do you take a new adventure every night, or do you rarely remember what happened during your sleeping hours?

I dream a lot. Many dreams every night. Vivid, rich, and potent.

Did you know that dreams can offer fresh insight about our inner world and what next steps to take on our journey? To unearth those insights, I use a dream interpretation process originally defined by Carl Jung and later modified by Martha Beck.

When I quit my job four months ago, my dream time became hyperactive, as it usually does for me during times of change. I hadn’t been taking the time to interpret them regularly. Since they weren’t stopping, I knew I needed to listen to what they were trying to tell me. This past Saturday I finally dove into the depths of my dreams to uncover their messages. I had been reluctant because the process is time-consuming and occasionally challenging, especially because I have so many detailed dreams each night.

When I awoke on Saturday, I lay very still in bed, pulling the dream memories from my slumbering mind into my conscious mind. I pictured all of the scenes and heard all of the conversations from the night. Once I gathered as much as I could remember, I rolled toward my notebook on the bedside table and started writing. My dreams were captured and ready to be tamed.

I got out of bed, shuffled to the kitchen, brewed a fresh cup of coffee, grabbed my notebook and pen, and settled in my favorite chair.

Slowly and methodically, I deciphered the meaning of the green car, the yoga pose, the baby boy who ate beans and rice, the huge shower stall, Paul’s swim trunks, and many other symbols that appeared during my midnight adventures. I uncovered some relevant messages from my sleeping self:
- Stable and balanced energy is what will grow my business.
- I am supported.
- Working too hard will hinder my progress.

To you, those may sound like nonsense. To me, they are clear messages from my wise inner self who knows exactly what I need to do.

Where clear messages failed to come through, I was left with questions to ponder:
- Where in my life am I being shy and hidden, afraid to be exposed?
- Where am I not accepting what is given to me, exactly what I need, for fear of being embarrassed?

I will take those questions to my journal when the time feels right, and I will allow free writing to guide me to the answers.

I find dream interpretation rich and rewarding. It provides me with wisdom from my nocturnal chaos.

I use dream interpretation with clients, when they are interested and willing. They, too, if their minds are open to it, find the process rewarding and exciting. We have so much inner wisdom available to us if we take the time to listen.

Are you ready to find the wisdom in your dreams?

P.S. Only you can interpret your dreams. To me, a snake could represent my neighbor, but to you, a snake could mean ... well, something a little more Freudian.