“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than exposure.” - Helen Keller.
I have always loved this quote, well to be honest I have always loved the first bit. I have never seen the whole of it and when you do it makes it even more powerful. It came to me at the end of my meditation and somehow resonated deeply. What also resonated was that it is my choice. Am I going to continue to choose the daring adventure? Are you?
Recent years have been a roller coaster ride for many people and many have found it full of challenges. Maybe it is the same for you. At those moments it is tempting to climb under the covers and feel a little ‘poor me’. However not only is it the time to keep on going, but it also a time to step back into the middle of the river rather than hang onto the sides. To choose the daring adventure.
I was speaking with someone recently who me told me that she was moving from where she had lived for a long while now. I asked “where are you going?” and she replied “no idea – but something will turn up and I am staying open to what comes”. Now that’s life as a daring adventure. Are you living your life like a daring adventure? It can be so easy to fall into the trap of “I’ve tried everything and nothing can change”, especially when you are trying to shift careers. When you begin to believe that nothing can change you stop being open to the adventure.
Be Focused AND Open
As you move towards identifying a new career and it is good to have plans, goals and milestones along the way. We need them to achieve the career goals we set for ourselves. However, if we get too set on a plan we stop being aware of what else is happening around us. And we begin to believe that there in only one way to climb a mountain (get a job).
The problem is that when we can only see one way to reach the top of the mountain we become tunnel focused, believing there is only one way to make it happen. Instead of the daring adventure the world gets smaller and smaller. Nice and safe, no surprises, but no change in sight. And, as you will know if you know anything about NLP and how the mind works, once we get focused on only one thing, then our unconscious mind can act like a search engine to find us the exact match. Great if you are focused on the right thing – fatal if you have forgotten to be open to “this or something better”.
On the bottom of our passions cards in the Passion Test Workshop we ask our participants to write ‘this or something better”. That’s the daring adventure. That’s being open to what comes. Yes focus what you want, yes focus your passions, yes set goals and markers and things to achieve and yes take steps to make it happen. They are all important. AND leave the door open to having what you want come in a different way.
Time and again I have seen this happen with clients when they are identifying what new career would fulfil them. Once they have seen the all elements of the career that would make them happy and begin to focus on that, the perfect career has shown up. But not in the way they would have thought when we started working together.
So my challenge to you is to look and see where are you limiting your life? Where are you limiting yourself in relationship to finding your new and exciting career? Where are you not living life like a daring adventure? Where are you not seeing the opportunity because it doesn’t look exactly as you think it should? What can you let go of to create the space for what you really want to flow into? If you really want a career that is going to feel like that daring adventure, throw off the limitations, look at the bigger picture. Your heart will lead you to this adventure; it will ‘feel right’. Once you get that feeling, even if you have no idea how you will make it happen, commit to doing all that you can. In that way you too can live the daring adventure, your daring adventure.
Leave a comment below: How can you stay both focused and open when it comes to your ideal career?
Jessica works internationally as an Empowerment Coach, Passion Test Facilitator and Business Consultant and is also the author of Remembering Perfection.
She helps people discover their true passions, and live them, whether it be in their work or personal life. She works individually with people and runs workshops in the UK and Spain.
She offers a free ebook: Feel Better Right Now! accompanied by a free 30-day Video course. You can sign up for it at http://tinyurl.com/25mecjv
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