“I feel sorry for the person who can’t get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile” – Walter Chrysler
At first glance, the title of this week’s challenge doesn't quite directly insinuate our subject matter does it? We have choices as to how to read that line… Is it, TAKE this job, it’s awesome! Or maybe it’s Take THIS JOB and shove it! Perhaps it’s Take this JOB it’s killing me! Or Take THIS job? – no way! Our options are just as varied as far as our current jobs are concerned aren’t they…depending on the day, the task, the weather, how much sleep we had the night before, or if we are falling asleep on our desks!
Sometime in everyone’s life, they have had a job they've hated. Whether it was our first job – and we weren't used to working, a job we had to take because it was the only one available, our hours were terrible, our pay stank, our co-workers were wretched, our boss was a bully, it was not just a dirty job, it was disgusting, it was too far away, it was not work we were trained for, or in our field of study, it was a job we simply didn’t enjoy or perhaps even something we absolutely hated!
We’ve all had them, and we’ve all taken them (and held them) for different reasons, different lengths of time, different levels of satisfaction – which may be related to the length of time – but we have all worked them at one point or another. Some of us, especially as Artists and Creative are in the middle of a job (or even a career) that we hate, and have no passion for. We go to work and the day is a drag, it makes us feel like we are just drones, a cog in the wheel, not really making a difference… because we are not following our creative passion!
“Whatever your title, to me, you’re an artist. You are expressing yourself through your Great Work. You are creating & initiating, reflecting & engaging. You use your creativity, talents, and skills to make a difference in the world.” ~ Tara Gentile
I read somewhere that current job DIS-satisfaction is around 85% so I’m guessing that some of us reading this right now would rather be doing something else as far as your work is concerned….here are some of the reasons we stay when we in our hearts of hearts are desperately wishing we were doing something else:
Fear of Change….so obvious right? But as Artists and Creatives, we all know that change although exhilarating is also a little scary, don’t even try to deny it! I actually LOVE change, but every time something big is going to change, anticipated and planned, or unexpected and unwanted…I am always scared. Feel the fear and do it anyway we have learned to say in Week 12 Embrace the Tickle – right?! There is always the fear that if we actually quit our job, then we might even be more unhappy than we were WITH our previous job…how scary is THAT??!! Believe it or not, that’s not even the main reason we stay in an unfortunate situation.- We need the regular income…well, who doesn’t? Am I right?! But often the financial needs of our situation or family may require that we begin a job, or stay in a job that we are not particularly fit for…but we do it for the money. Perhaps the money is so good we could not bear to take the financial hit; or it may be that it’s the little extra trickle coming in that makes ends meet. Either side of the coin brings us back to doing it for the money!
- Safety. We believed that we spend four years in college (or in the World of Hard Knocks) land our “Important” or corporate job, we work hard, we rise up, get promoted, maybe move horizontally in another department, but always going forward. Eventually we are meant to retire with enough saving in our 401K our IRA and in our saving account, that we live a nice retirement in our ideal home, without too much concern about our finances – we’ve paid our dues, and then we will be rewarded…. We all know now that that perceived saftey was never an actual reality, as the corporate world changed in the last several years. But for many many years we all felt this was just “the way of the world” and expected life to progress in our safe work world that we created. Some of us are still holding fast to that belief and expect it to happen.
“Our ability to create sustainable businesses as passion driven entrepreneurs is directly related to our ability to rebuild an economy based on honesty and merit instead of greed and corruption.” -Tara Gentile
- Perceived lack of Skills…If we have been in a situation where we are not happy with our job, not working in the career we hoped for or within our scope of study, for longer than we had hoped; we often believe that we do not now possess the “new” skills required to work in the new technologies or the new way of doing business.. but this isn’t always true. We need to consider that this should be an opportunity to learn what we can about what we want to learn.
- We love our Boss or our Co-workers….yes, it sounds silly to some of us, but others of us continue to work in our jobs because we love the people we work with. Maybe we are working for a friend, or in an social environment that is pleasing even though the work is not or perhaps have invested so much time in working to get the business going and building we couldn’t even begin to think of NOT working there? Yes, it happens! Especially when we’ve (possibly inadvertently) invested more time than we thought we ever would.
- The most prominent reason though, if we are honest with ourselves, is that we have beenconditioned…Pishaw you say! I can quit if I want to! (Where have we heard that before?) Maybe this quick reference will help explain: there was a study done in 1948 called the Skinner Experiment, in which there were two groups of rats, one group that earned a food pellet after pressing a lever a random number of times, the second group earned a food pellet after a pressing the lever a fixed number of times. When the rewards (the pellets) ceased to be given, the group of rats in the fixed scheduled stopped working/trying almost immediately. The group under thevariable schedules continued to work for a much longer period of time…in essence hoping that eventually they would be rewarded. We as employees do the same thing. There is nothing more wrong with this than the Pavlov theory; it is simply the way the working world has done it’s work on us workers….
“It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.”
~Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1630-1680)
We need to be wise for ourselves…starting now! If you really hate, I mean HATE your job, HATE getting up in the morning, HATE driving to your job, HATE being in your work space…then here are a few words of wisdom about not feeling bad about quitting any longer:
Failure is the foundation of success; success is the lurking place of failure.
Winners quit all the time, they just quit at the right stuff at the right time.
Most people quit something, they just need to do it successfully.
Quitting is not the same as failing – it never was.
If those aren’t giving you any motivation to leave an environment you are suffocating in how about using these…- I am bored with my job.
- I am overemployed in my position.
- I don’t like my desk chair.
- My job isn’t as glamorous as I thought it would be.
- I hate getting up early in the morning.
- I’m really not happy about working so hard.
- My job isn’t very exciting.
- I don’t like the smell in my office.
- I’d prefer to sunbathe on a beach in the tropics.
- I don’t need the money; I’m going to live on my trust fund.
- I decided to move to Hollywood and become a STAH!
By the way, believe it or not those are ACTUAL reasons people have given as reasons for quitting their jobs. Yes they are, I swear!
“Head the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly.” ~Marquise du Deffand (1697-1780)
Note to self: the French really knew what they were talking about even back in the 1700’s, am I right??! WOW, great words of wisdom! Anyhow, I digress….
Do you wish to quit your job and follow your dreams? Do you yearn to work creatively and pursue your passion? Do you feel so unfulfilled and uncreative in your work that you are so drained you can’t even be creative – or good company – when you get home?
How scared are you right now that your Challenge for this week is going to be to Quit Your Job? Is your heart sinking right now, or are you turning your attention elsewhere, because there’s no way you are going to quit your work. No chance you’re going to walk up to your boss and say proudly “Take This Job And Shove It”! No way you are going to be able to toss that safety and run wild with your creativity?! Let me see if I can figure what might be ravaging your mind right now …
I can’t quit, I (we) need the money, I have bills to pay, if I had no job what would I do, what if I make the wrong choice, what if I quit and can’t do what I want to do, what if what I want to do is never going to make me any money, what if my dreams are stupid, what if it’s harder than I’m working right now, what if I fail and look like an idiot, what happens when I quit my ‘real’ job to follow my passion and everyone thinks I’ve gone mad….does that sound familiar? That’s your ego. We talked about the ego and its power over us in Week 2 – Curious George, and how to change those fearful thoughts into questions, so we might trick the ego at its own game! It’s okay to hear that ego punk, but you don’t have to listen!
How about we change our way of thinking? Change our mindset as in WEEK 5 – Pink CadillacChallenge….you remember that one don’t you? Did you those caution to the wind and drive your dream car, or did you let your ego and it’s fear mongering keep you from that awesome experience? If you did NOT do it…go back, read it again, and go drive! It’s okay, we’ll wait here for you to come back….vrooom vroom!!
“Success comes to those who dare to act. It seldom goes to the timid who are afraid of the consequences.” ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
We only have one dream, one passion, a desire that begs to be fulfilled, we have been thinking about what we really want to do for so long, that eventually we will need to take steps to make it work, we WILL find the courage to take the first step, we will know that the fear comes with the risk…wouldn’t be any reward if it was easy!
Think about the contentment that would envelope and warm us when we feel that we are truly doing what we were meant to do at that moment in life. Can you imagine that sort of contentment? I can! One of the greatest rewards of following our dreams is surprise, the unexpected, if we follow our dreams we have no idea where that will lead us! The mere act of truly reaching for more than we have will set us on a path that leads to people and places that we never thought or could have imagined…think Oprah here, or Michael Jordon, those that followed their passion and it took them to places they never thought they would be! Ponder on the empowerment that will surge through our souls when the world as we know it is being created just for us. When we follow our dreams and start to live the life we were meant to live we realize we have underestimated ourselves for soooo long and we feel overcome with joy for finding the right path!
“If we all did the things we are capable of,
we would astound ourselves.”
~Thomas Edison
I would never ask you to quit your job, your work, your career….as Artists and Creatives, we are already on some level attempting to do just that (we simply cannot help ourselves) …we often feel as if we haven’t worked hard enough, haven’t paid our dues, as if we haven’t accomplished what we wanted to, which is why we are stuck in our “regular’ jobs while trying to work out how to be our Creative Evil Genius selves….
What I am going to ask of us this week…is simply to I M A G I N E T H E P O S S I B I L I T Y! Imagine you had everything you needed to do whatever your passion is drawing you towards, and you could simply follow your dreams. Imagine you won the lottery and didn't need to work for the money. Imagine that what we do
each day is determined by our own thoughts and beliefs as to what needs to be done to full fill ourselves. Imagine that we are NOT part of the cog in the machine, imagine that we have no boss looking over our shoulder, imagine we have the freedom to make our own schedule, imagine being able to be available for our partners, our families, our friends more thoroughly without the daily grind of working someone else’s schedule. JUST SIMPLY IMAGINE.
How many of us can do that? We are all creative, we all have vivid imaginations, we are all people of great thinking, and wild thoughts….so for just a moment, for the rest of the day, simply IMAGINE what it would be like if we could quit our jobs? Sometimes we’ve been at the grind for so long,, we don’t even know what we want anymore, we just know that what we are doing isn’t quite enough. IMAGINE the age old question…. If you could not fail, what would you be doing?
“We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Truly…close your eyes…well, okay not just yet….take a few deep breaths while you continue reading, you can close your eyes later! :)
If you learned that in the next 24 hours, your finances would have no impact what-so-ever on your job; that you wouldn’t NEED to work to support yourself, your family, your pets, your chocolate habit…you’ve got all the money necessary for all your basic needs. Ahhh….can’t you feel the relief washing over you at just the imagining of it? It does feel good doesn’t it?
Now let’s amp that up, shall we?! What if you could wake up the next day with besides the financial obligation relieved but that you would possess all of the knowledge, capability and qualities required to do any type of job, work, creative passion or business that you can imagine….are you imagining? What would you do? Yes, being a movie star counts!! As does an Astronaut, a Baker, a Landscaper, a Writer, a Queen, a Horse Trainer, an Ice Cream Tester, a Movie Special Effects expert, an Illustrator, a Florist, a Gift Shop Owner, a Tea toddler – YES that is a “THING”! You can be anything you can imagine! ANYTHING. Imagine it.
Remember that is not just an Artistic venture, most of us still don’t believe that the creativity that we possess constitutes “something real” anyway, so momentarily let your imagination run wild! We are awakening our PASSION, not our skills, not our capabilities, our PASSION…what would you do if you woke up knowing how? Not the end of your passion… what does the middle look like? How about the beginning? As we know, just stepping on the path leads us places we could never have imagined…so do not try to figure it all out, and determine the final result of your passion….just imagine what stepping on the road toward your passion looks like, what’s it feel like? What does Middle Earth in your Matrix look like?
Would you own your own business? Would you be living in another location? Would you be in a service position or a provider position? Would you be driving a different vehicle? Would your hair be a different color? Would you be working with tools? Paints? Plants? Textiles? Wood? Metal? Paper and Pen? Hockey Stick? Pastry knife? Snowboard? Dirt? Props? Pots and Pan? Children? Adults? Animals? Alone? With others? Would you have scissors in your hand or a motor under your seat? Would you be a one man band working for yourself or would you have employees? Would you be in the mountains, on the water, someplace warm or cold? Would you be traveling the world for your passion, or staying in one place? Just please take some time and think about it…..ahhhh…..I know we would all take a long needed vacation of doing NOTHING first…but THEN what would we do??!
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you are building your Creative Courage with the challenges we’ve had…we are on week 17 you know…you should have the courage by now…not to just imagine it, but to make a plan. Write it down, what would you do? Consider the possibility, and put it on paper, tuck it into your dream place (keep it with you at all times) and pull it out on those especially hard days at your ‘job’….perhaps one day you will take that first step? If you do, then holy crap you’ve already got a plan!! Perhaps actually having a plan – written down – will help bring the courage to you. Hmmmm??
So you don’t need to actually quit your job this week….please I beg of you NOT to walk up to your boss and say “Take This Job And Shove It”…well, unless you REALLY want to!! But the Challenge this week is to simply imagine it. What if you could quit your job tomorrow, or enhance what you are doing right now….our first step is to imagine what that is.
What does the road look like that you are imagining? Will it have a shop, a studio, a store, or a car for you to drive away in? Do your surroundings feel warm and cozy or large and urban? Imagine that regardless of what you choose all of those you love will support you, and that there are no boundaries to your capabilities….. now, now close your eyes and imagine….just for a moment….
There you go…… *sigh*….. now write it down….
See you next week!
JeaneMargherite Meria McMahon Murray Schintgen
(that’s my name, don’t wear it out!)
Check me out in my other realms…..
