The Work Grows Out of You
Six Lessons from 10 Years of A Wild New Work
Part Six
This is part of a series to mark the 10-year anniversary of my self-employment journey. Part one: Here is the Only Place to Start. Part two: Not Easy, but Easeful. Part three: It Takes the Time it Takes. Part four: We Are Incredibly Important Specks of Dust. Part five: You Might Not Get an Award.
Image by Sergiu Baica, via Unsplash
The Work Grows Out of You
When I started out as a career coach, I did what many traditional career coaches do: help people find out where they fit into the job market. I would get to know a client well enough that I understood their background, talents, and priorities, and we would work together to find a place where they could trade their skills for a wage.
Ten years later, I offer almost zero job search support. Not because I'm against jobs or job searches, but because most of my clients don't need it; that's not the work they're tasked with inside our container, and it's not what I'm called to offer.
A lot of us grew up with the idea that being a responsible adult means fitting oneself into a prescribed, externally created job or business and staying there for as long as possible. We were taught to look out there for our purpose, for the role we were meant to play in society. Some people still come to me looking for that–they want help finding where they will fit, and it's not a bad thing to be looking for. We all want to belong, and for better or worse, how we make a living is one of the few remaining sources of belonging in this tattered culture.
When I started working for myself ten years ago, I wanted to find where I belonged, too. I looked at the skills I had and what I thought people needed, and I tried to give them just that. I learned about resume writing even though I found it boring. I went to job search networking events even though I hated them, and I did my best to be of help to those asking for it. I wasn't trying to be someone I wasn't, I just didn't know who I was, and I wanted to find meaning and make a living in a decent way.
As the years went on, I began to find that the services or programs I offered solely because someone else needed them did worse than the things I offered because I wanted to do them. The things I did out of trying to be helpful felt like a heavier lift, and they often felt flat to the recipients. But what I did because I felt called had real life behind it, and the only reason I've been able to do this for ten years is because I started making that work–the work that came from me–a priority.
Doing the work that felt like it had its roots within me (and was partially for me), whether it was "rewilding work" walks, opening a community called Cedar Lodge, or starting my podcast, became a significant source of learning about myself and what actually worked on my soulful path. In my client work, I began to see that some people really did just need help finding their way into employment, but others were hungry for something else–for the chance to birth something that came from within them.
There is no one right way to answer a soulful calling or create work that's meaningful to you, but an approach that has worked for me and many others I've supported is to nurture your core, rooted self and allow what wants to unfurl to do so naturally.
One of the sturdiest ways into meaningful work is to get to know yourself and nurture the core of who you are and who you are becoming. Not because you should be a narcissist, but because Life wants to grow through you and that you have something to offer this world. What you have to offer may fit neatly into an existing job, and it might not. Your gifts may please your parents, and they might not. It does not matter how your gifts are received by others or how well they fit into the job market. What matters most is that you are in relationship with your deep Self and the gifts you bear so that they can be offered to others in a way that aligns with your naturalness.
Without knowing who you are, you cannot know where your gifts fit or where you belong. And if you only ever stay in self-discovery, your gifts will wither on the vine, because they won't have been harvested and shared with others.
Not enough people are given the support to get to know themselves and their gifts so deeply that their path of service emerges organically.
It's much more consistent with patriarchal, capitalist culture to tell people that there's no depth or purpose to their lives and that the best they can hope for is to find a job that they're good enough at.
I think of some of my clients and what would have happened if I had convinced them that they really just needed to fit themselves into the next good enough job or self-employment option. I think of the woman who has needed a year to wander and be in conversation with Mystery so that she can come back to the Village with gifts to share. I think of the person whose resume told the story that she needed to stay in Human Resources, but whose soul called her into working with Death and grief. I think of clients who whisper their callings to me shyly at first, still unsure of whether or not they could be someone with a purpose to fulfill.
Even in the midst of all my blunders over the last ten years, I'm proud to say that I have created spaces in which people who felt called to learn about their gifts could bring them to life via the work they do. This didn't happen through a skills inventory or research into the existing job market, but by learning about who they are and the unique way(s) that they're being called at this time. It's the same approach I take in my own life; when things get confusing or overwhelming with work, I come back to myself, what I know about who I am, and I listen for the next right step.
I just did this today before sitting down to write this post. I'm chewing on the idea of offering a Winter group to folks who experience seasonal depression or just feel that "ugh" that can come in the grey days of January and February. It's an idea I like, and I can think of people it would be helpful to, but I'm trying to discern whether or not it has enough of its roots within me, or if it's just something I think could fulfill a need. I don't have an answer yet, but I know that unless the idea has that inward to outward movement, it won't have the energy it needs to prosper.
When I look back at the last ten years of A Wild New Work, I see how feral and unruly my gifts have become. Sometimes I feel a little twinge of panic about how un-employable I am these days, how cumbersome it would be to fit myself into a job if I needed one. I try to quell those fears and just continue learning about who I am and why I came to this Earth, because I know that that's where the gifts come from, and my only job is to nurture and share those gifts. I believe that could be your only job, too.