Work & Self-Worth part 2

What inspired me to write part 1 in the first place, was a colleague I used to work with when I first started in the company (12 years ago). I never actually talked to her since, until my very last day at work (before Christmas last year). I would always see her in the hallways and be drawn to her vibe, but we never exchanged more than the usual ‘hello’, ‘have a good weekend’, ‘bon appétit’ and ‘good evening’.

So when we finally talked, I said that it was my last day and before she could pity me cause I didn’t have a job anymore ‘in those though times’ I said that it was actually a good thing because I didn’t quite love it and now I could finally pursue something that mattered to me. So she too started to open up and confessed it wasn’t her dream job either but she didn’t really know what else to do + it paid rent & food so that’s kind of why she was still there and was not really thinking of going anywhere else.

I didn’t really want to dig deeper while standing in the hallway holding my box full of office supplies – ready to be taken home forever – and I could understand her so much but it touched me cause I could see so much potential, so much creativity in her that she probably didn’t see herself. She probably didn’t know nor believed she could actually do something else, that she didn’t have to stay at the same job forever, that she could start allowing herself to think about doing something else (>back to self-worth).

If I’d have dug deeper, I’d have asked her:

What do you want? What do you like? What are you good at? What could you do for hours everyday? What gives you energy? What course would you be interested in taking the most? Where do you see your life in 5 years from now? When you die, will you be content with what you see when you look back at your life? What will you regret not doing? 

And maybe I’d have shared my own examples with her:

I want: to have time to take time, a house surrounded by Nature overlooking the Ocean, to be healthy, to be abundant, to eat high quality food… I would regret: not writing, not reading more books, not playing more often, not doing the inner work, not having tried X Y Z…

An interview that inspired me further in the writing of this Post was between Lilou Mace and John Demartini where Dr. Demartini says: finding out what you really want to do and giving yourself permission to go after it and make sure that it’s done in a way that really serves people and then work doesn’t feel like work but like grace to do what you love doing.

Another tool that might help you finding out what you want is the now very trendy Japanese concept Ikigai (1. what you love 2. what you are good at 3. what the world needs 4. what you can be paid for). Julia and Ramona also explain the concept on Podcast #12.

And maybe it takes a while to find the answers to those questions, maybe it takes some or a lot of exploring. But there has never been a better time than NOW to do so!

ALLOW YOURSELF: WHAT DO YOU WANT?