Life List Challenge

What do you want to do with this glorious life of yours?

Last year after I quit my job, moved to a new city and began the plans for launching my business, I found a coffee shop by the ocean and considered what it is that I wanted to do with my amazing life that was spread out before my eyes.  There were so many possibilities.

Sitting and looking at the vastness before me, I remembered a task that I gave to clients when they were puzzled about what work they wanted to do.  I called it a "Life List."  Things to achieve in my lifetime. 

Work is one part of our lives and who we are is so much bigger, much bigger than we actually even know.  What I figured out is that getting excited about our work means getting excited about our lives.  "What excites you?" I asked. 

As it turns out, probably a lot of things. 

The task I assigned was this.  Write down a list of what you want to accomplish in your life.  Big or small.  Give it a good hearty effort.  Write down 100 items.  "Really?" I heard many times.  The longer the list, the more you find out about yourself and what you love. 

My challenge to you is to do your own Life List.  100 or more items.  Investing time in exploring your dreams is one way to take them seriously. 

Here are some questions to get you rolling:

• What have you always wanted to do but haven't yet?
• Where in the world would you like to go?
• What experiences do you want to have?
• What would you do if you didn't have to worry about money?
• What adventures would you like to experience?
• Who would you like to meet?
• What would you like to learn?
• Is there anything in particular that you would like to have?

Here is the list that I created almost a year ago.  If you are sparked by any of the ideas, you are welcome to add them to your list.

1. Fly in a hot-air balloon.
2. Do a 10 km walk/run.
3. Fall in love - many times - people, places, things.
4. Watch the sun set in the Grand Canyon.
5. Watch all of The Good Wife.
6. See orcas up close.
7. Go to New York City.
8. Learn Spanish.
9. Write a book.
10. Become a Returning to Spirit facilitator.
11. Visit Julia (my cat that didn't move with me).
12. Become a travel writer.
13. Success as a career facilitator.
14. Visit the Maritimes.
15. Take a 365-day challenge.
16. Be silent for a day.
17. Make over $120K in a year.
18. Ride a gondola in Venus.
19. Go to Burning Man.
20. Do my dad's family tree.
21. Have $250,000 in savings.
22. Stay in a 5-star hotel.
23. Travel for 3 consecutive months.
24. Think to myself - I'm living my dream.
25. Winter storm watching in Tofino.
26. Alaska cruise with my mother.
27. Make a difference in someone else's life.
28. Create my own manifesto.
29. Travel around Europe.
30. Be invited to speak at a conference.
31. Achieve 5,000 subscribers.
32. Have my dream home.
33. Speak to over 1,000 people.
34. Explore a castle.
35. Throw a big party.
36. Sleep in a hammock.
37. Interview people about their work.
38. Host a talk show.
39. Find a job where I travel.
40. Visit Australia.
41. Go star gazing in the southern hemisphere.
42. See northern lights with many colours.
43. Create cards with inspirational sayings - leave for strangers to find.
44. Write a list of 101 life lessons.  Share it.
45. Learn a musical instrument.
46. Find a mentor.
47. Be a mentor.
48. Create.  Frequently.
49. Find work I love.
50. Help someone cross an item off their Life List.
51. Hold a monkey.
52. Surprise someone.
53. Create a website.
54. Learning how to make digital posters, writing on photos.
55. Write a love letter.
56. Serve food at a soup kitchen.
57. Get a degree.
58. Learn a new software program.
59. Create latte art.
60. Leave a 100% tip for a server.
61. Be a member of a TV show audience.
62. See a Broadway play.
63. Win something.
64. Ride on a train in Europe.
65. Attend a luau.
66. Go on a spontaneous road trip.
67. Pan for gold.
68. Go to Idaho Peak.
69. Visit Tikal.
70. Do a solo journey.
71. Walk on a glacier.
72. Learn how to create a perfect smoky eye.
73. Go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
74. Travel to Bhutan.
75. Take a photo a day for a year.
76. Do 50 random acts of kindness.
77. Spend a day in a spa.
78. Go geo-caching.
79. Eat chocolate in Switzerland.
80. Stand on the equator.
81. Take a cooking class.
82. Get a cartoon sketch of me.
83. Milk a cow.
84. Teach someone how to read.
85. Lay down in 4 states at once - Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah - 4 Corners.
86. Walk on the Great Wall of China.
87. Hang out in Times Square.
88. Touch an iceberg.
89. Create an inspirational poster.
90. Create my own personal recipe book.
91. Operate heavy equipment in Las Vegas.
92. Identify 10 constellations.
93. Get a hug from a chimpanzee.
94. Make a list of 100 foods to eat before I die - and eat them.
95. Experience 50 modes of transportation.
96. Travel Icefield Parkway.
97. Study archaeology.
98. See Judy Chicago's Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum.
99. Contact someone with my name.
100. Fly first class.
101. Walk the Golden Gate Bridge.
102. Dance under the stars.

Write them down and they will happen.  Two of my accomplishments from last year - doing a solo journey and riding a train in Europe.  Here is my view of the Mediterranean Sea from a train going 200 km an hour:

What is on your list?

Three Things I Know Are True - Following Your Dreams

Here are my three things I know are true about dreams.

1.  Dreams are imperative. 

Dreams fuel you.  Dreams make a difference between a life that feels engaged and one that feels stuck and motionless.  Dreams connect with what is alive in all of us.  Remember how just hearing about a friend’s dream made you feel so enlivened and energized?

My son and I share a love of fountain pens.  One of our quests in San Francisco was to find ink.  At an art supply store, on a busy street, next to a glass counter, in a small section of the store, we met a woman who knew a lot about fountain pens. We talked about nibs, which ink to use on planes and the features of different pen makers.  She carries 3 pens.  She loves fountain pens; her collection is about 300.  She knows how to choose them, clean them and fix them.  We asked her a lot of questions.  And she answered them all.  Her enthusiasm was catchy.  Because when you are around someone who loves what they do, you can’t help but take on some of that excitement.

What else you will notice when people are doing what they love is that they look alive.  You can see it on their face, in their expressions and through their words. 

Dreams also connect you with others.  And when you do what you love, you become more interesting, inspiring to others.  You also attract like-minded people and inspire each other.

You are motivated, engaged and purposeful when you follow your dreams.

What to do when you aren’t feeling connected to your dream:

When you aren’t feeling connected to your dreams or wonder if you have any, there are lots of clues in your daily life to what ignites you.  The challenge is to pay attention. What excites you?  One way of doing this is to write the question with your dominant hand and make a list with your non-dominant one.   I would recommend making a list of about 30 to 50 items that excite you.  The more time you spend on it, the more you will get to some of your core desires.

 2.  Dreams don’t just happen.

Often dreams begin small and grow bigger than you would have imagined.  I am thinking of Johanna Basford, the young Scottish woman who became famous for her illustrations that she has turned into colouring books.  What Johanna Basford has demonstrated is how hard work and following your passion takes you down roads you never could have imagined.

Dreams take effort.  Determination.  Focus.  They don’t just happen.

The good news is that you don’t have to figure it out all at once.  Find out what you love, learn about it, develop it, and see what happens.  Sometimes you will find that what intrigues you now may not be your dream.  Or you may have more than one.

A long time ago, I became quite fascinated with jewellery making.  I signed up for a continuing education class with a fine jewellery maker.  Though I was quite curious about all of what is involved, I found that I didn’t really like making jewellery. 

Trials like these are your stepping stones. 

How to make your dreams a reality

Take yourself and your dreams seriously.  Be curious.   Talk to others, especially people who share your dream.  And follow what excites you.

 3.  The closer you get to your big dream, that’s when the action happens.

The action is usually in the form of self sabotage, with a heaping of fear. 

One day on the street, I met a man who I had worked with previously.  He said to me, “Do you know why I didn’t succeed?”   I shook my head.  He added, “Because you believed in me more than I believed in myself.”

 Fundamentally, I believe what is at the bottom of all of those abandoned dreams is the answer to this question:  What do we believe about ourselves? 

Interpretations made a long time ago, usually during childhood, raise their heads when we come closer to your dream.  And they are powerful.  In dream-killing ways. 

What to do when you are sabotaging yourself:

 Read The Big Leap:  Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks.  Understand that this is an old part of you that you developed to make life safe.  Dig deeper inside to find what you believe about yourself.  With awareness, you are much more able to develop the strategies you need to make your dreams come true.  Brené Brown also offers great ideas for working with the “experience of believing that we are flawed.”  

Writing about three things that I know are true is an idea from Chris Guillebeau.    Chris talks about finding his “true north,” what he has found to be true for him.  He encourages his readers to use this model for their writing.  Chris is a man who follows dreams, dares to dream big and makes it happen.  Besides visiting every country in the world, writing 3 books and a lot of other stuff, he is the founder of WDS, an annual event that asks the question, “How do you lead a remarkable life in a conventional world?”  Find out more about him here.   

What I know is true about following your dreams is also true about finding your dream job.  

Often I am asked how do you find the work that you love.  Sometimes people are annoyed that they haven’t figured it out already.  What I have found is that there are two elements that make the process easier.  Time and space.  And allowing.

 Allow the time to consider work you love. 

This means knowing that it takes a focused effort to do the exploration, to make the time and to know that, frequently, percolating is a part of the process.  The answers that come often happen in quiet moments and certainly at times you may not be expecting.  I think of spending the time to figure out what you love to do as one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself.   Once you take the time, you will wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

 Allow yourself the space to do the exploration. 

Throughout my years as an employment counsellor, I have observed people not taking their careers seriously.  “It’s called work for a reason,” I hear, as if work was all about knuckling down, doing what must be done, or that the idea of doing work you love is for a privileged few.  Many people do not even allow themselves to consider what it would be like to do their dream job.  But what about that idea?

I like to think about a world where everyone loved what they did – now that’s a revolution!

How to find work that matters

Welcome to the inaugural blog posting for Finding Work That Matters!  I am excited about this new undertaking.  Because work is an expression of who we are, I believe it is important to find the work that invigorates us!   When we find the work that matters to us, we will do our best work, contribute the most and make a difference in others’ lives.

The way to find work that fits is not a straight path for many of us.  Some people, like my son, found his passion when he was a teenager, so curious about the first computer that came into our house that he had to look inside.  And like me, some of us stumble upon it.  I was working as a payroll clerk across the hall from the education department.  I was intrigued by the conversations coming out of that room; I was like a dog who perks up her ears when something captures their attention. 

What I know about the process now from both my son and I is that curiosity was the connecting thread.   The clues for your career will be rooted, too, in paying attention to what intrigues you, what continues to intrigue you and what has always intrigued you. 

One of my key questions that followed my life as a career counsellor was, “What really works in finding our brilliant career?”  I watched as people struggled with trying to figure this out on their own, as they questioned why they couldn’t be happy in the work they were doing since everybody else seemed happy, and their work felt – well, lifeless.  “What was the point in it all?” they were asking.

As they told their stories, I heard deep questioning – Who am I? What am I meant to do?  I heard them questioning themselves, feeling adrift,  and on top of it all, an immense pressure to figure it out.   Does this sound familiar to you?

When I started reading about career exploration, I saw that the experts were saying that the starting point was:  Know yourself.  It made sense.  I could see the frustrations that people experienced by looking at the labour market demand or job positions and using that as a guide – inevitably a good deal of them became bored and disillusioned.  To me, finding work that fits is an inside job.  If we want to find work that is in alignment with who we are, we need to have a good idea of who we are. 

In my work, I spent a lot of time considering how to find the right work fit.  I studied models, completed assessments, read books and thought a lot.  Then I created workshops and tried out my ideas on the participants.  People were ready!  Many never knew that there was a way to solve the problem.  They were inspired, relieved, intrigued and grateful! 

Over time and the experience of working with career explorers, I worked at the framework until it became the model that is the basis for Finding Work That Matters.

There are 8 segments that comprise the model.  Each of those has an overriding question and intersect with each other to give a total picture. 

The 8 segments are comprised of 3 main categories:  The Leading Edge,  Distinguishing Trademarks, and Discretionary Features. 

The Leading Edge

The Leading Edge includes Personality Type and Strengths.  These two components are what make us distinct and gives us an edge in the workplace.  Both of these aspects of ourselves are what we are born with, how we are hardwired.  They may appear to change but as we age and develop more self awareness, we become clearer about who we really are and we see that we have always had these particular strengths or personality type.

The Questions:

Personality Type:  What energizes you?

Strengths:  What makes you feel strong?

 Distinguishing Trademarks

This category is comprised of Values, Vision, Meaningfulness, and Motivation.  Through these components, we get a picture of what is most important to us, our beliefs, and our desires.  All of these elements are a key part of the finding work that is a good fit for us.  Depending our experience and situation, the elements in this section may change or be refined as we grow and change.   As our circumstances change, we may find ourselves drifting to asking questions about values, vision, meaningfulness and motivation. 

The Questions:

Values:  What is most important to you?

Vision:  What vision do you have of your life?

Meaningfulness:  What is your greatest contribution to others?

Motivation:  What drives you?

 Discretionary Features

Skills and Passions are the two components that are in this category.  I like to think of them like electives that we take in school – they enhance the process of work search but they are not the integral part.   Skills are only important if they are what we want to do.  We can be highly skilled but if we don’t like it, we will have a life of misery.  We can always build on our skills and certainly many of our skills are transferrable.  I believe that there is a best time in the process to look at skills and that is when we have chosen our careers and are developing the plan to make it happen. 

Passions are important because they fuel us, but we may not get paid for doing them; some people don’t want to turn their passions into their profession because that may diminish their enjoyment.  As a part of the career exploration process, passions are not a key element.  They can provide an entry way into understanding what about that passion excites us. 

The Questions:

Skills:  What do you want to develop?

Passions:  What enriches your life?

            Now, I will turn this over to you.  I am curious if you have found the work that you love.  I would love to hear from you!