How to Find the Work You Love
“The quest for work you love – it all begins with the two simple questions: Who am I? and What in the world am I doing here?”
- Laurence G. Boldt in How to Find the Work You Love
Ah, yes – the “simple” questions. Right up there with “Want fries with that?” – “What is my purpose on this earth?”
Who are you? Want fries with that?
I don’t know my purpose just yet, but I figure the best way to find it is by living mindfully. For me, that means striving to align my external existence with my inner one. Whenever I feel like something in my external life is hollow – that I’m just going through the motions with it – I know it’s time to make a change, large or small. (more…)
The Practice of Meaningful Work
Cartoon by Steve Heath
As I’ve said before, I consider my yoga practice a template for how I live my life (credit for the “template” metaphor goes to Cyndi Lee, though Kimberly Wilson was the first to introduce me to the larger concept). Once you immerse yourself in yogic philosophy, it’s hard not find connections between yoga and, well, everything (I feel the same way about improv). And yet, despite the fact that finding meaningful work is one of the major themes of my adult life, I’d never connected the lessons of yoga practice to the process of finding my “right livelihood”…that is, until I came across this article by Tama J. Keives on the Kripalu website. (more…)
Permission to Complain About Your Job
Sometimes, you just need someone to give you permission to bitch, even if you know there are other people out there who have it worse (or much worse). That’s the idea behind the Please Fire Me website, which Marketplace’s Scott Jagow profiles today on his Scratch Pad blog. As he says,
It’s become almost taboo to complain about your job, since you know, you’re lucky to have one. That doesn’t mean people who were unhappy at work have suddenly become happy.
I have a number of friends who are very unhappy at work, but who feel like it’s spoiled or ungrateful of them to complain in this economy. While I deeply respect their sensitivity, I also know that ignoring a feeling doesn’t make it go away, so I’m glad someone came up with a creative solution. Please Fire Me is just the latest example of how the recession has inspired people to use the web creatively; for more, I recommend following the Economy Beat blog (full disclosure, I manage a project that Economy Beat is a part of, but I’m not involved with the site directly).
More on Improv Lessons for Freelancers
The awesome Zach Ward of Dirty South Improv blogged about Improv Lessons for Freelancers (a session I led with Jordan yesterday at SXSW); he offers a nice distillation of some key points, plus a video of Jordan leading the “Yes” game. It’s fascinating to see the moment when people “get it”…which is why so many of my friends adore teaching Level 1 improv.
I’ll be posting my own overview of the session once I get more than 10 minutes of down time! (SXSW is a rather manic experience…)
Related Links
- Zach’s TED talk on the improv principle of “Yes, and” (video)
- Article from Fast Company: “Do Improv Comedians Make the Best Design Thinkers?” (thanks to Shawn Westfall for sharing this on Facebook)
Hello from SXSW
In the green room at SXSW
Jordan and I just finished leading a session at SXSW called Improv Lessons for Freelancers. I’m still processing the experience, but wanted to say a huge thank you to anyone who helped us promote it, and to everyone who came — I almost felt like Jordan and I were incidental, because without such a smart, positive group of people in the room, it could have gone very differently.
The feedback so far has been very heartening – most rewarding was hearing that people thought we did a good job of facilitating group discussion, because that was very important to us – not steamrolling. Jordan was especially excited when the head of UrbanDictionary.com said he loved the session :).
We’re revved up and thinking about other ways/places we can replicate the workshop. But for now: there are films to watch, people to meet and sunshine to soak up like the thirsty, thirsty sponge that I am. To be continued…
