“The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future it to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities.” -Emma Goldman
“If you have resonance with a certain medium and you feel you can express yourself through it, then you must move with it.” -Tess Guinery
“Three-quarters of all college grads don’t end up working in a career related to their majors…In truth, most people are passionate about many different things, and the only way to know what they want to do is to prototype some potential lives, try them out, and see what really resonates with them.” -Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
Find something you’re passionate about and then give yourself to it.
Find people you’re passionate about and then give yourself to them.
Don’t give in to demands to live in a way that’s out of sync with yourself.
Study with passion and learn like crazy.
Travel widely and mindfully to where you want, and need, to go.
Embrace your feelings and share them freely and joyfully with the world.
Laugh a lot, especially with those you love.
Believe in anything big you do, or don’t bother doing it.
Always hope for the best and have fun in the process.
Be generous of spirit and everything else.
Bring love, passion, poetry, and the flavor of great cheese (figuratively if not literally) to everything you do.
Own your life! -recipe for “Owning One’s Life” by Ari Zingerman
For the young person just starting out or the mid career person looking to make a switch…
One of the most valuable exercises you can do is to find someone who is doing what you might want to do with your life and then gather as much info as you can about their day to day. Not the movie version. Not the glory version. Not the puff- piece magazine version. The actual, granular, day to day version. (If you have the opportunity to speak to that person, ask a lot of questions, including what a typical day is like for them.
Billy Oppenheimer in his excellent weekly newsletter recently shared this insightful story…
The psychologist and writer Adam Mastroianni meets a lot of people who are unhappy with their jobs. When he asks them what they think they’d be happier doing, many of them say something like, I’d really love to run a little coffee shop. “If I’m feeling mischievous that day,” Mastroianni writes, “I ask them…Where would you get the coffee beans? Which kind of coffee mug is best? How much does a La Marzocco espresso machine cost? Would you bake your blueberry muffins in-house or would you buy them from a third party? What software do you want to use for your point-of-sale system? What about for scheduling shifts? What do you do when your assistant manager calls you at 6am and says they can’t come into work because they have diarrhea?” The point of the Coffee Beans Procedure is to unpack the vague, idyllic fantasy of running a little coffee shop into its actual day-to-day details and challenges. If you can’t answer those questions and/or find them interesting, “you should not open a coffee shop, because this is how you will spend your days as a cafe owner. You will not be sitting droopy-lidded in an easy chair, sipping a latte and greeting your regulars as you page through Anna Karenina.”
If, after learning everything you can about your potential career and work–the good and the bad, the exciting and the mundane, the joyous and the suck–and you’re still curious and excited, then you know you’re on the right track. Go forward and good luck!
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