What You Were Born to Do

human

Much of my blog is centered around my push to do the things that fulfill me and to live the kind of life that the fire inside desires. Passion drives me to chase after that which brings me joy. I don’t expect or need to be happy all day long but I want to live the sort of life that makes me excited to wake up in the morning. I want to go to bed exhausted because I am so happy to be awake I can’t stand to be asleep.

It is a quest and a journey. This article addresses some of these things. It talks about career changes and identifying what it is we do

I learned the wisdom of this alternative from Gretchen Rubin, who lives and works in New York City. After graduating from law school in the early 1990s, Rubin served as a law clerk for the US Supreme Court. This job is perhaps the sweetest plum in the American legal orchard. It practically guarantees a career of high-level positions in law firms and government.

But during her stint, Rubin’s eyes wandered away from the law.

“When I had free time, I never wanted to talk about cases or read law journals, the way my fellow clerks did. Instead, I spent hours reading, taking notes and writing my observations about the worldly passions – power, money, fame and sex,” Rubin says.

“Finally, I realised, ‘Hey, I’m writing a book.’ And it dawned on me that some people write books for a living. This project didn’t have to be my hobby; it could be my job.”

She wrote her first book – Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide – and soon she realised that she wasn’t a lawyer. She was a writer. Now she has four books to her name, including her latest, The Happiness Project.

Rubin might have felt an occasional bolt of passion while writing. But that didn’t offer much guidance. Instead, she took a step back and watched what she did.
Emma Jones is the founder of Enterprise Nation, a London company that supports small businesses. She has discovered that people who notice what they do when nobody is watching them, or even paying them, often end up as entrepreneurs.

“I’m seeing quite an increase in the number of people turning a hobby into a business,” she says. “You start innocently by making cakes or taking photos in your spare time. Friends and family admire the results and recommend you to others. Before you know it, you are your own boss and making a living from doing what you do.”

This is how people find their way. Instead of endless self-examination and the search for some inscrutable holy emotional grail, they act.

“They act.” That is what I am trying to do every day, act. Not in a play but in an active manner that has purpose, meaning and the ability to put me closer to realizing my goals.

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2 Comments

  1. Galit Breen March 3, 2011 at 12:58 pm

    Jack, YES! This is 100% spot on. We have to know where we’re going, why and why we WANT it if it’s ever going to matter at all. Excellent post!

    • Jack March 3, 2011 at 5:16 pm

      I can’t help but think of Thoreau

      “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

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