Create Your Ideal Career manual Talentelle

Suppose you want a job based on your passion which, for example, might be Interior Design.

That is your DESIRE.

However, you hold onto BELIEFS that run counter to your desire, such as:

• There are not many interior design jobs out there.
• I don’t have enough experience.
• I don’t have the right connections.
• etc.

The DISCREPANCY between your DESIRE and BELIEFS, will tear you apart. It will stress you. You won’t feel good.

Why? Because your heart is going in one direction while your intellect is going in the other direction!

What’s the solution?

Modify your beliefs so they align more with your desire. So we have:

• There are not many interior design jobs out there –>The more I network, the more job opportunities I will uncover.
• I don’t have enough experience –> I bring so much passion to this line of work that I won’t need much experience to persuade employers to hire me
• I don’t have the right connections –> I look forward to meeting people in the industry and show them what I have to offer

Thus, you can see clearly that by better “managing” your thoughts, you can feel better.

You can align your BELIEFS with your DESIRE.

You will be much more effective because you will be balanced, and will allow your desire to work in synergy with your belief.

Think of your desire as your left arm, and your belief as your right arm. Isn’t it much better when they pull in the SAME direction?

So there you have it. This practice of aligning — through the discriminate choice of positive thoughts — your beliefs with your desire, will remove inner obstacles to ANYTHING you want to achieve in life.

You will be much happier and joyful in life because you have learned how to mentally get your energies to work together, in synergy and unison, and not in opposition to one another.

Society has conditioned us to ignore our emotions or, worse, to view them with much suspicion.

Yet, emotion is the essence of life. The proof is that when you look at the life you’ve lived, the most memorable experiences are those that were filled with emotion.

Same thing with a career. Or at least, the “new” career — which I call the “ideal career.”

This ideal career of yours will either be filled with emotion, or it will not. You either feel alive in your job, or you don’t.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of people do NOT have an ideal career. This is why the expression “Thank God it’s Friday” is so prevalent. Nobody says “Thank God it’s Monday.”

So it’s fair to say that most workplaces today are not conducive to personal growth and happiness.

It would be easy to blame employers, the economy, India and China, or even one’s parents (everybody blame their parents for something!).

However, the fact is that if we do not feel alive at work, it’s simply because we chose incorrectly.

We defined and then chose a career based on “intellectual capabilities”, not “emotional affinity.”

This choice of putting intellect above emotions, is captured in the phrase “It’s called work for a reason.”

In other words, if you don’t like your job, then please grow up and realize that work is NOT meant to be fun. Once again, “It’s called work for a reason.”

On the contrary, what I teach university students is that work IS fun if you choose a line of work that is fun to you.

The work you choose, ultimately reflects how much you love yourself.

Or, it could reflect how much you deny yourself.

It’s really up to you. Do you want to spend your life “loving yourself” or “denying yourself”?

At age 31, I decided to love myself and give myself the amazing adventure that I deserved. I’ve had so much fun since then that I’m currently writing a book to capture those adventures. I’ll share a few stories shortly.

Now, given the fact that we spend 5 days a week working, and about 40 years of our lives working, doesn’t it make sense to choose work that we love to do?

This makes to me and, I suspect, to most people younger than 30.

But it might not make sense to “older” people such as members of Gen X or Baby Boomers. Often, they have resistance against beliefs like “Work can be fun AND profitable.”

And therefore, not surprisingly, their very lives reflect what they believe: Work is hard and stressful for them, and they are not paid much.

It’s not that they don’t desire or want a better career. It’s just that their beliefs PREVENT them from going in the direction of their desire.

They have a conflict between DESIRE and BELIEF, and that is what is causing them stress, frustration, illness, and in many cases, diseases.

Sometimes, it takes a threatening medical condition for someone to “wake up” and stop denying himself or herself. That is, to stop having their desire going one way and their belief system going the other way.

The ultimate healthcare system, truly, is a personal practice where you align your beliefs with your desire. To read all about how to do this, read the book The Power of Deliberate Intent, by Esther Hicks.

Practically speaking, the solution is to learn to modify your beliefs until they ALIGN with your desire.

I’ll show you how to do that in the next post.

A career can happen at three levels: body, mind or spirit.

In other words, you can:

• Work hard (body level)
• Think smart (mind level) or
• Feel joy (spiritual level)

When your career happens primarily at the spiritual level, you feel inspired and ideas come to you naturally, and you act on them to produce results almost effortlessly.

It feels natural.

This dosen’t mean you’re not using your MIND or your BODY, just that they are under the guidance of your spirit. So body, mind and spirit are aligned.

Think of the body as a soldier, the mind as a captain, and the spirit as a general.

Your spirit or your soul, is the Highest You. It has the big picture, it knows — deeply and thoroughly — what you intend to do in this life.

At the same time, it is a soft voice, almost a whisper, so it’s likely to be drown by the noise and cacophony generated by culture and society.

This is why a peson is wise to set aside time for meditation or silence, in order to discern and listen to this inner voice. The voice of one’s spirit.

When you let this spirit in, you are inspired. That is, “in-spired.”

This “in-spiration” can eliminate a LOT of unnecessary struggle, frustration, stress and hard work in your career.

Indeed, if you’re working hard, it’s NOT working!

Working hard, means you put a lot of burden on the body and THAT is precisely why stress occurs. The body was not meant to do so many things.

Such a body is like a soldier being put on the battlefield, and not receiving proper orders so that soldier is running around and tries to do many things, but is not getting results.

If that soldier is working under the guidance of a captain (or the mind), then it can accomplish many things more effectively. Yet, even the captain cannot ensure ultimate victory — only small victories.

Ultimate victory — or the ideal career — comes when you align body, mind and spirit. That is, you listen to your inner guidance, your spirit, your soul’s intent.

The spirit has wisdom and can see what the mind or intellect CANNOT see.

How do you know when you are aligned with your spirit?

When you do what brings you the highest joy!

This joy or excitement, is a clear signal from your spirit, telling you: “Yes! Now, we’re aligned!”

So as long as you stay on the path of joy, you CANNOT fail. You are being your true self. That is what life is all about.

If there is one productive activity that you are naturally inclined or even driven to do when you have nothing to do, then THAT might be your ideal career!

The question is, “What do you do when you have nothing to do?”

Here’s an extreme example, from Mr Warren Buffett himself. He says, “Some men read Playboy, I read annual reports.”

First of all, I resent his accusatory tone, I need to relax once in a while. Just kidding.

What about you? What do you like to do?

Parents often advise their kids to “do what they love.” Perhaps a better question is, “What do you love to practice?”

To practice is the same as “doing”, except that you tend to get better and better at it.

So for example, you CANNOT practice “eating ice cream”! But you CAN practice public speaking or designing clothes or coaching someone or writing or singing or acti ng, etc.

The bottom line is that if you choose a line of work where you can’t help but do it, that is, it feels natural for you to do it, then you’ve hit the jackpot and will never have to work a single day in your life!

Not only will work feel like play, but also no one can stop you as you pursue your dream career. That’s because you can’t even stop yourself. Such is the power of an ideal career!

There’s one fact that most people keep forgetting, yet this one fact could clarify their thinking and help them to choose correctly the actions that will improve their lives.

Here’s the fact: Your life ends.

Yes, you will die one day. For most people, this fateful day comes much sooner than expected.

Now, don’t panic. Everybody dies, so you’re not the only person who’s afflicted with this thing called mortality.

Let’s recall the famous line that Mel Gibson’s heroic character utters in the movie Braveheart: “Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”

Are you really living at work? Are you jumping out of bed every day, looking forward to do your work?

If not, you might not be living the life that is worthy of you.

Let me share with you my own experience. I was very satisfied professionally after I graduated in 1999 and started to work for a publicly traded firm specialized in corporate training. Yet, after 7 months, I realized I was NOT where I was supposed to be.

Even though I had the best boss, the best coworkers, the best clients, and was working for a firm ranked as one of the top 50 best managed firms, I still felt I was just “fooling around” and not doing the work I was born to do.

So in June 2000 (I had just turned 31), I decided to leave Corporate America (or Corporate Canada, to be precise).

I’ve never been happier, nor more peaceful, ever since.

So what I’m sharing in this blog and in the workshop called My Ideal Career, comes from personal experience and much reflection. I’m not a career “counselor” and the knowledge I share with you is not abstract and theoretical.

What I share with you is the truth, as I have been able to perceive it. We all want to be happy at work, and there are definitely many ways to get there. The way I share here is only one way, and you will know if it’s for you once you try it and see if it works.

It’s my job to offer what I know to be the truth, and it is up to each person to evaluate this truth and apply it in her own life in order to know this truth personally herself.

The truth is we deny ourselves the amazing and fulfilling career we all deserve.

The cure is simple: Just do it! (As the Nike slogan says).

This sounds simple enough, yet most people can’t just do it. They have too much resistance internally, and their mind has been conditioned by society, the educational system and their parents to do the “responsible thing.”

The trick is to change our mindset from “I should do this” to “I want to do that.”

The vitality and dynamism of Life comes from WANTING, not from SHOULDING (if that word even exists!).

“I want” comes from joy, freedom, faith, self-confidence, self-worth, while “I should” comes from places of doubt, fear, lack of self-confidence, conformity, peer pressure, lack of purpose, etc.

So by adopting the wrong mindset (“I should” rather than “I want”) and turning it into an automatic, unexamined belief system, we deny ourselves the pleasure and joy of doing work that could fulfill us and enable our personal growth.

This is quite insane, yet this is what our so-called “modern” society has led us to.

Every person owns his own life, yet has been conditioned by society to sacrifice himself at the altar of political correctness.

The good news is, there IS a way out of the insane modern workplace.

I will write more to expose how this perverted way of thinking leads to self-sacrificial lives.

A natural career, or what I call an “ideal career”, feels good and peaceful because it flows NATURALLY from who you are. There is no conflict and no stress. It’s all about YOU growing through your work.

The normal career is different, and comes from what you THINK you should do in society, in order to fit the “norms.”

Here is a brief, but not exhaustive, list of differences between the normal vs the natural career:

NORMAL CAREER is based on education and skill

NATURAL CAREER is based on education, skill and TALENT, PASSION AND VALUES

NORMAL CAREER gets you dollars

NATURAL CAREER gets you dollars and peace of mind, passion, fulfillment

NORMAL CAREER is controlled by external factors (your boss, your employer organization, office politics, industry, marketplace, the economy)

NATURAL CAREER is controlled by you. You can stop anytime, start anytime, change anytime.

NORMAL CAREER focuses on you as a “human resource”

NATURAL CAREER focuses on you as a “resourceful human and spirit”

NORMAL CAREER is unremarkable. You can be replaced relatively easily if something happens to you.

NATURAL CAREER is remarkable. You cannot be replaced, as a creator of unique solutions.

NORMAL CAREER is based on actions, and the execution of routine cognitive functions.

NATURAL CAREER is based on ideas, inspiration, and actions flowing from ideas and inspiration.

NORMAL CAREER focuses on you as a worker.

NATURAL CAREER focuses on you as a creator, an artist, a being capable of infinite creativity.

NORMAL CAREER allows your bank account to grow.

NATURAL CAREER allows YOU to grow, and as a natural result, your income grows (without any limit imposed by the employer).

NORMAL CAREER is something you do out of necessity, to pay the bills or save money for retirement.

NATURAL CAREER is something you do because you can’t help it. It’s who you are. You’d do it for free because you enjoy it so much, and because you grow through your work.

NORMAL CAREER forces you to “fit” into the current employment system created by society and corporations. You have to abandon certain aspects of who you are, and sacrifice your uniqueness to fit corporate standards and culture.

NATURAL CAREER allows you to create your own solutions, and offer it to anyone in society who could benefit from them. You don’t have to “fit” anybody else’s standards or culture. You simply offer your talent to the client’s reason, and there are tons of clients so you never have to compromise on critical matters (although you can adapt your solutions to specifically fit each client situation or challenge).

NORMAL CAREER won’t likely give you financial freedom. The best you can hope for is to be able to retire at age 65.

NATURAL CAREER can give you financial freedom in your 40s or even 30s, since income is not based on number of hours worked, but on the value of your solutions and the quantity of those solutions offered to the world.

NORMAL CAREER is one where you have only ONE client: your employer.

NATURAL CAREER is one where you can have an unlimited number of clients, resulting in unlimited income (multiple streams of income, both passive and active; multiple formats of compensation; etc.).

NORMAL CAREER is what the educational system, the government, the news media, and corporations encourage you to have, because it fits THEIR norms and thus allows them to easily “manage” masses of people.

NATURAL CAREER is what successful and inspiring ideal careerists encourage you to pursue. It is an individual journey that requires courage, guts, enthusiasm, knowledge and inspiration from authentic leaders and teachers.

NORMAL CAREER is centered around the corporation, or what Shoshana Zuboff, in her book The Support Economy, calls the “enterprise logic.”

NATURAL CAREER is centered around YOU, as a creative, sovereign being endowed with an infinite capacity to imagine and create solutions. It is based on your heart’s longing, supported by your mind’s logic.

When I teach the Ideal Career workshop, I mention clearly that “ideal” in this case refers to “identity + deal.”

That is, an ideal career is based on who you TRULY are (your identity) and how you negotiate a deal with employers or clients about what you create for them, and how you are compensated in return.

I also mention that an ideal career is something you want, while a job is merely something you need.

It is precisely the WANTING in a career that sustains your passion and excitement.

If you want to get up every day, and get to work as soon as possible, then you probably have an ideal career. If not, then maybe not.

That is, you have a job.

There’s nothing wrong with having a job. It’s something you need. And often, it gives you time to develop many skills as well as get to know more about yourself and other people.

Then, after you have enough stability, you can begin to set your sights higher and aim for an ideal career.

Another important distinction is that a job prevents you from losing, while an ideal career allows you to win. In other words, having a job does NOT mean that you are winning. It simply means you are NOT losing.

To use the hockey metaphor, a job is like defense while an ideal career is like offense. You need both.

Sometimes, an artist who is talented (or so he thinks) might try to go for an ideal career without taking care of his finances (that is, without having a job, whether it’s part-time or full-time). This often invites catastrophe.

This is why it’s important to develop financial discipline and get a part-time or full-time job before trying to embark on one’s ideal career.

If your job is related to your ideal career, then it’s really great. For example, an aspiring actor who works as an administrative assistant or coordinator for a movie production company.

My point is simply that everybody needs a job. But not everybody wants a career, let alone an ideal career. And that’s okay.

The Ideal Career course is not for everyone, it’s for those who want something meaningful and psychically rewarding from their working lives. After all, we work about one third of our lives, so wanting to feel happy and fulfilled during that time is not an unreasonable demand.

Your amazing, creative, fun-filled, passionate and rewarding career is waiting for you.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes you to realize this, your amazing career will always wait for you. That’s because it is INSIDE of you, as David was in the block of marble before Michelangelo set him free.

Your amazing career is based on your passion, your talent, your values and your desire to be of service to other people. I’ve been teaching this through a workshop called My Ideal Career since August 2005, and it has opened the eyes of hundreds of people.

Check this blog often, I will share all the knowledge with you. Free of charge, of course.