Those (Not-So) Sweet Lies We Tell Ourselves
04.18.2005 | Chris Bailey | Focused on CareerThe blogging crew at Worthwhile Mag have some excellent posts on careers that popped up on Sunday. Curt Rosengren’s post on Passion Myths is just the type of writing that reinvigorates my faith in going after my own soul work and encouraging others to do the same. He talks about certain myths being put out there by other folks, but sadly, I’ve heard these same lies inside my own head.
Here are some of my thoughts on these myths…
PURSUING YOUR PASSION IS SELFISH AND SELF-INDULGENT: I would say that it’s selfish in as far as practicing self-love is selfish. As a parent, what greater gift can we give to our children than modeling love for work and life? As a spouse or partner, what greater joy can we give our significant other than coming home from work energized and ready to play? As Curt points out, there’s even positive spillover into the lives of the strangers we meet.
DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND THE MONEY WILL FOLLOW: I absolutely, positively love Curt’s unabridged version of this myth: "Do what you love, work really, really hard, be patient, be persistent,
be open, work really, really hard some more, and the money will follow." It’s easy to get caught up in the fast-food mentality of life. I will admit that not too long ago, I thought that passion was the big key to success. I thought to myself and figured that if I just go at it with heart that will be enough. Nope. Passion and committed vision are parts of it, but so is working hard. The true key is to work hard with soul and a love for what you are doing.
YOU HAVE TO BE "REALISTIC": Oh yes, we need to be careful of those well-meaning people who don’t want us to lose our head and get our heart broken or head toward the poorhouse by following a "crazy" dream. The internalization of this myth starts out, "Well, maybe they’re right…" I struggle with possible and realistic all the time and this may be the hardest myth to personally dispel. But I think Curt offers a fantastic way of thinking that cuts to the heart of the issue. It’s tough-minded optimism that says, "Okay, there are some challenges to doing what I love. What are some possible ways around them?"
THAT’S NOT THE WAY IT’S DONE: Doesn’t it suck when someone tells us this? And yet, it’s so easy to get caught up in this one, too. My internal dialogue usually hits me with the idea that it’s someone else’s game and I should play by their rules. They want a resume that looks like this and an interview candidate who acts like that. Who made them gamemaster? Right. Taking a page from my friend Donna’s playbook, we can change how we approach another person and dramatically shift the shared interconnection. Maybe they don’t like the game either and don’t realize there’s another way to play. It’s an act of loving leadership to show them another way.
Time for us to dispel some myths. What do you think?
One Response to “Those (Not-So) Sweet Lies We Tell Ourselves”
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Yes, yes, yes and yes.
One of the greatest things my mother instilled in me was to learn how to take care of myself before I learned how to take care of anyone else. I never saw this as a selfish pursuit, on the contrary, it was a matter of starting with a sense of self, and the confidence that comes from that. As it stands that advice has been the best I’ve ever received.
Anytime I hear the words love and money in the sentence, I cringe. And this leads into the ‘being realistic’ part. We all know we need money to live, but you’d think that after so long of experiencing the falsities of money buying happiness we’d learn that waiting for the money is a empty pursuit.
Being a woman might have given me the advantage on learning how to do things ‘my way’. Out of necessity perhaps, rebellion possibly, but most definitely out of survival. I had a coach in high school who hated hearing the words “I can’t”, there’s so much behind that statement. By facing the challenge and believing that ‘you can’ has been an inspiration to me for a long time.
It seems we are constantly being bombarded with little pellets of disjointed advice. “Do it this way, it worked for me” kind of stuff. Sometimes someone else’s story will ring true to what we are seeking, but in the end it seems we have to throw it all away and figure it out for ourselves.
I am reminded of Rilke’s “Letter’s to a Young Poet” when he encourages his admirer to sit in the darkness and stay there until he sees himself, truly sees himself, and only then we he know what he ‘should’ be doing with his life.