We´ve heard the expression that if you doing what you love, you´ll never work a day in your life. But what does that mean? If there is one book every bliss seeker should choose when contemplating a career, it’s a book by John Clark, called The Money Is the Gravy. In it he distinguishes career [money, status, duty] from calling. We share some of his insights here.
ATTITUDE, SELF-KNOWLEDGE, WORK BLISS
By Sue Van Der Hout
From: John Clark, The Money Is the Gravy
It is better by far to die living than to live dying
If you are pursuing your calling you are following your bliss.
Work in a freely chosen life enhancing activity that integrates with all the other threads of your life.
Work to fulfill a biological purpose, personal growth and self expression.
Your work is a form of leisure and inherently enjoyable.
Exploration involves experiencing, reflecting, changing, experiencing, reflecting, changing over and over and you can´t do that in a week.
Discipline is necessary to overcome habit.
Impatience, and indiscipline, indolence, will be insurmountable barriers, unless you want to leave your angst behind and find your bliss. If you want to find your calling that much, then you are truly ripe for change.
You may not know that you are a talented. But you may be blind to your talents. You may make the common mistake of confusing talent and genius. You may not be a genius but you still have a talent. The chief cause of talent blindness is lack of self-knowledge. If you don´t know yourself well, you probably lack self-esteem. You made the excellent acknowledging your own weaknesses, but oblivious to your in a strengths. And so you move through life tragically unaware of your own talents.
A talent as a point of intersection. It is a coming together of many different attributes. It is an integration of disparate elements.
There is a joy money trade-off. If you were primarily an economic terms than you automatically rule out many options because they fail to meet the financial test. You will be left with options to see the body but starve the sole. To make matters worse, the less joy he gleaned from your work, the more in security become, and to the more unique money as a kind of security blanket. It becomes addictive force that takes the course of your entire career…. you always need more, which is why some people who burn many times more than the average will complain that they don´t have enough, and yet others with a low income but an inner security consider that they do have enough.
Work is a life nourishing activity. When it comes to money, settle for enough. In that way you for yourself to find your bliss
If you are contemplating following your bliss, others will disapprove. Prepare for: ostracism, criticism, withholding of support, in comprehension, hostility, or ridicule.
Print Version»
Tell a Friend» Subscribe»
 John Clark
John Clark is a strategy consultant to firms, and mentor to executives and professionals. He lives in New Zealand with his family. He can be reached at:
John Clark. 61 Grange Road, Auckland 1024, NEW ZEALAND. john@johnclarkonline.com
|
One cannot consider attitudes in women without considering mother/daughter relationships and nowadays one cannot consider the mother/daughter dialogue without referring to Deborah Tannen’s You’re Wearing That? Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Tannen has a keen ear for the hidden messages of conversation. It is a wonderful exploration of the lifetime job that one assumes with eyes wide shut. The Dove Self Esteem Fund has found that the biggest influencer on a girl’s self esteem is her mother. And it reports that 63% of women strongly agree that women today are expected to be more attractive than their mother’s generation. What is the impact then, on attitude?
YOU’RE WEARING THAT?
By Sue Van Der Hout
Deborah Tannen, author of You’re Wearing That? Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, called her own mother, "The first audience for all my accomplishments, the ultimate judge of all my deeds." It is a relationship she says that is one of bond and bondage, intimacy and intrusion. A psychologist once told her that: "Every relationship is an ambivalent one".
| "Every relationship is an ambivalent one". |
The mother daughter relationship is a connection that can be "deep" and "passionate", often painful. It is one in which the touchiest subjects for many mother/daughter pairs are hair, clothing, weight and how we raise our children.
| It [the mother/daughter relationship] is one in which the touchiest subjects for many mother/daughter pairs are hair, clothing, weight and how we raise our children. |
When done right, it is the template for how women define their closest relationships. Says Tannen: "Only someone with whom you have a special bond can sense the emotions you don’t put into words. This is the "precious metamessage [meaning gleaned from something said] of indirectness that many women prize in close relationships." (p. 81)
| "Only someone with whom you have a special bond can sense the emotions you don’t put into words. |
Read it, weep, laugh in recognition, shake your head, deny, accept, challenge. It is a must read for every mother and every daughter even if the only outcome is the understanding that these are conversational opportunities and hurdles that we all have – if not with our mothers, then with our daughters and with those we hold close to us. It is a study of what is often the most searing and intimate of conversations.
Print Version»
Tell a Friend» Subscribe»
 Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen is best known as the author of You Just Don´t Understand, which was on The New York Times Best Seller list for nearly four years years, including eight months as No. 1, and has been translated into 29 languages. It was also on best seller lists in Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, and Hong Kong. This is the book that brought gender differences in communication style to the forefront of public awareness. Her book Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work , a New York Times Business Best Seller, does for the workplace what the earlier book did for women and men talking at home. She has also made a training video, Talking 9 to 5. Her book, The Argument Culture, received the Common Ground Book Award. Her book, I Only Say This Because I Love You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You´re All Adults, received a Books for a Better Life Award. Her latest book, You´re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, was recently published in paperback by Ballantine; it spent ten weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List after its initial publication in 2006.
|
...
Print Version»
Tell a Friend» Subscribe»
