Fabeku Fatunmise . First of all: can you even stand how great his name is?
Me neither. Moving on.
If Fabeku had a business card (which he doesn’t), it would read: Business awesomizer. Suck exorcist. Sonic alchemist. World’s Most Skeptical Shaman.
More mm-mm-good copy from his site: Translating music magics + shamanic secrets into nuggets of biz-building BOOM!
Seriously. How could I possibly be holding conversations about Finding your Thing and NOT invite the man who rocks HIS Thing as gleefully as he rocks his red doc martens?
Precisely.
Meet Fabeku.
How extraordinary is Fabeku’s question: “Ask yourself what would your bigness do?” That version of yourself that holds itself bigger, smarter, more resourceful, more capable, more…YOU. Yes, that. What would THAT have you do?
I invite you to sit with that gift. What a wildly valuable filter for all that you face.
And I’m wondering…
In YOUR experience, what has been the single most powerful question you’ve asked YOURSELF as you’ve sought your thing? Please do share over on my Facebook page. We’d love to know.
Tweetworthy Fabeku-isms (now, with 75% more ease!)
Know what doesn’t work? Using other people’s maps to find your home. (TWEET IT)
In finding your thing, look for what’s always been a part of your landscape. (TWEET IT)
Finding your thing may also be about finding the right language to talk about it.(TWEET IT)
Vanquishing your fear is part of process of doing your thing + putting it out there. (TWEET IT)
I trust the mojo of what I do implicitly. (TWEET IT)
Trust the bigness inside of you that is pulling you toward your thing. (TWEET IT)
In finding your thing: Ask yourself what your bigness would do? (TWEET IT)
Stop interpreting fear as a sign that you should stop what you’re doing.(TWEET IT)
In finding your thing, look for the edges that stretch you into your bigness. (TWEET IT)
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Wise + wonderful stuff.
Please go find Fabeku and follow what he’s up to at his site and on Twitter. Treats and offers and deliciousness galore.
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What's YOUR Thing? If you’re trying to find your thing, then signing up for updates is the thing for you. Get Thing Finding Thursday updates, plus:
Top secret and supershiny notices, events and discounts.
Today’s Thing Finding Thursday features a guest post by Brandy. She is a word-play arteest who writes and plays at brandyglows.com, a blog that chronicles her adventures in Shalom restoration.
Know what else? She’s a brave and beautiful soul. Read on.
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Embracing The Thing That Makes Me Gasp
This morning I watched a clip from The Today Show with Tara Mohr. She shared five of her 10 Rules For Brilliant Women and one of them was to do something that makes you gasp. I remembering thinking my “gasp list” was short. I like limbs and I walk them well. I get high from the adrenaline of turning a big dream into a reality. It’s one of the things I love about myself. But it’s not my thing.
Kelly Diels encouraged us, a group she coached and coaxed into Artful, Heart-full blogging last summer, to share our stories with Tanya. I am excited to write this guest post because I love Tanya and this series she’s created. It’s been a great source of inspiration as I trek along the bloggard path. Also, I rock confessional narratives. I like being honest about what I’ve done and where I come from. I hold my stories tenderly and share them openly because they’ve made me the person I am today. And that’s a big part of what I do, but it’s not my thing either.
I’ve never actually said my thing out loud. I could say I didn’t know it, but I think it would be more accurate to say that I didn’t know I knew it.
I call myself a digital pastor. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I started a house church, so I guess I’m not strictly digital anymore. I follow Jesus, but believe God is bigger than Christianity. I believe in the restoration in all things. And I believe it’s our job. I believe in humanity’s capacity to partner with the Divine Source to restore Shalom, or wholeness and peace, in ourselves and our worlds.
I am irresponsibly hopeful.
I studied sociology in college but grew weary of just observing and discussing problems. I longed to create real social change. Let’s end racism! Let’s feed and cloth the poor and hungry. Let’s free all the slaves! Let’s reduce, reuse and recycle our asses off.
Let’s change the world and leave it a better place than it was when we got here.
I am fierce advocate for social justice. I am a voice for the voiceless. I am a dreamer and a make-it-happener of dreams just crazy enough to work.
What’s my thing?
I’m a prophet. (This is where I gasp.)
It scares me to admit it. Even though I’d wager God wants us all to be prophets and stand up against stupid crap. People often think of prophets as crazy people, alone and lonely, screaming their messages to a loud, chaotic world. But in his book, The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann suggests instead that they are leaders of social movements.
It makes sense. If Isaiah (a prophet from the Hebrew Bible) was a nobody, then nobody would have listened to him when he preached naked. Or they would have called the cops.
Although I do breastfeed in public, but I probably won’t preach naked. Still, like Isaiah, I want to foretell hope, peace, justice. Maybe that makes me crazy. I’ve got to be crazy to believe in the restoration of all things. But it’s a gorgeous crazy. And we could all use a little more of that kind of crazy in our lives.
It’s us. The bloggers. The stubborn ones who insist we can write and make and work from our living rooms. We are the leaders of the next giant social movement. And unlike our predecessors, we’re not limited by space and time. The people in our tribes can follow us from anywhere in the world. I get to share the stories – mine and yours – of radical Shalom. I get to proclaim that we can change the world – and then watch people actually do it!
Being a prophet is a process. I don’t own it every moment of every day. Sometimes I feel too weak to shout. Other times my words are too critical or too soft and they lose their prophetic edge.
I know the more I embrace My Thing, the more exciting and dangerous the adventure of life will become. It’s already led me on journeys I could never have imagined: Homebirth, helping survivors of human trafficking in India, the World Domination Summit! It’s all amazing fodder for the juicy message I’ve been given.
Then, please answer the question I am dying to know: What are YOU crazy enough to believe in?Is that the thing that makes you gasp? How is that belief informing (or not informing) YOUR thing?
Pop on over to my Facebook page to share. It’s a safe, safe place to share crazy, audacious and gorgeous beliefs.
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What's YOUR Thing? If you’re trying to find your thing, then signing up for updates is the thing for you. Get Thing Finding Thursday updates, plus:
Top secret and supershiny notices, events and discounts.
“Where creativity and wisdom make out on top of your problem.”
Okay. That is some good, good copy. It’s not mine, it’s Matthew Stillman’s. You’ve heard of him…he’s the guy that hangs out in NYC’s Union Square and offers creative approaches to what people have been thinking about. You know…their PROBLEMS (so what if the word “problem” is taboo in the magical world of self-discovery).
“Stirring what is stagnant within you”
“The art of the reframe with the science of the wise”
Seriously. I can’t stop. It’s all just too good.
You should also know this from his site:
Matt conceived of, wrote the treatment for and co-produced a feature length documentary film about the origins of poverty and why it persists in a world with so much wealth. His film, called “The End of Poverty?” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was featured in over 40 festivals around the world. Matt has spoken at the United Nations about the film and poverty four times as well as many other educational and socio-political forums.
Currently Matt is developing a study to radically transform the property tax system in New York City.
Not just another guy “de-problemizing through high weirdness” in Union Square and a really green wall in his apartment. Nope, he’s an original, to be sure. And a truly generous person.
So there was NO WAY I could continue talking to people about their things without talking to Matthew about his. And, of course, yours.
Interview with Matthew Stillman for Thing Finding Thursday
Look for the gaps, note the aversions, stay in some uncomfortable places, and play with the purpose of play.
Oh yes.
Tweetworthy StillmanSays-isms (for your sharing pleasure
You need to be willing to stay in some sort of uncomfortable spots and see what opens up there. @StillmanSays http://ow.ly/8PjhN #TFThurs
(When we’re young) our radiance goes out in 360 degrees. @StillmanSays to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8PjhN #TFThurs
(As we age, we feel loss b/c) we’ve lost access to three quarters of our being. @StillmanSays to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8PjhN #TFThurs
The game being infinite is more important than winning a particular game. @StillmanSays to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8PjhN #TFThurs
Be kind to yourself. You’ve done so much work already. @StillmanSays to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8PjhN #TFThurs
Transcript of edited interview (for your reading pleasure)
Matthew: Well, one of my things–the thing that people who are online probably know about me most–is my website, stillmansays.com. And that is an experiment that I’ve started which I’ve turned into a business, which is a report of my time spent sitting out in Union Square in New York City, where I live.
At Union Square, I sit with two folding chairs and a table, with a sign that says “Creative approaches to what you’ve been thinking about” and a smaller sign that says, “Pay what you like or take what you need.” I sit out there for 10 hours a day or so, a couple of days a week, when the weather is appropriate, and just talk with strangers about anything at all that they need a creative approach to.
And it’s been everything from as simple as “I need a name for my novel,” or “I have a relationship problem,” or “something going on with my business,” to “I need help finding my spirit animal,” or “I have a dispute with a neighbour,” or “I need to find a new religion,” or “I need help avoiding getting murdered.” It could be anything at all, and I hopefully help people look at the situation they’re in in a very creative way.
Matthew: And then, seeing it differently, it may be figured out. It might not be figured out. Or it might just be seen in its proper or different perspective, which allows you to have a different relationship with it. You know, so often we think that the only way to get into a house is through the front door; but sometimes it’s the back door. Sometimes it’s through a window. Sometimes you need to dig a hole underneath the house and crawl up through the floorboards.
Tanya: “De-problemizing through high weirdness,” this is from your site, this is what you do–I was totally gob-smacked by the genius of that.
How do you go from the time, the opportunity, people say you’re really good at de-problemizing through high weirdness, and then you just sort of say, “Yeah, you know what? Union Square: What it’s really missing is a desk, and two chairs, and these two signs. And me!
Matthew: Well, I guess that’s part of my charm, that I was willing to say, “This is the thing that’s missing.” I didn’t know that it was going to turn into a blog or a years-long experiment. I thought I was going to just do it! But on the first day I went out there, it just worked. And it was very clear I could keep doing this.
Tanya: Right, right, okay. Your last post, or the most recent one that I read, is–I’ve forgotten the title now.
Tanya: I’m really in love with this idea of lost or forgotten voices, and in the realm of thing-finding, I really think that there’s something magical and beautiful about listening for those lost or forgotten voices.
Matthew: When we are children, and when we’re born, we are treasured by and large for all our qualities. People love us for our selfishness, they love us for our screaming. So all our voices, for a time, are available to us. And for lack of a better analogy, they go out in 360 degrees. Our radiance goes out in 360 degrees.
And after a certain amount of time, we’re told by our parents, and our caretakers, and society, “You know, we love you, but it really would be helpful if you were a little less selfish, you shared more, you were quieter, you were–” and it’s not done out of malice, it’s done out of sort of getting you into a system which can really be useful. But we start to close down and put into a bag the other voices that we have, because they’re not appreciated or heard. They’re too different.
And so, I’m making up a number, but let’s say you’re 10, 12, 14, 16, 20–you have practice putting three quarters of yourself into a bag behind you, and we don’t listen to those voices any more, because it makes our life too complex to listen to these other voices. And similarly, because we have to make so many choices every day, we streamline ourselves to say, “You know what? It’s easiest if I just listen to these particular voices. I’ve got to get to particular outcomes faster.” And because the world that we live in requires speed and efficiency, we move along with that, and say, “You know what? I’m just going to listen to the voices that are easiest, and get me to the place that I want to be and feel comfortable and safe in.”
And then, we have cut ourselves off from three quarters of our being, because there is 90 degrees which is presentable and useful, and the rest of it is not appreciated. So that leaves us feeling, later in our lives, “Why do I feel vacant? Why do I feel closed off? Why do I feel like the same things are happening?” Because we’ve lost access to three quarters of our being.
Tanya: I’ve got a seven year old daughter, and she was super proud of an award she came home with, she was awarded in front of the whole school; it was an empathy award. And about a week later, I was talking with her teacher and he said, “It was great to see her so proud of that award. You know, she’s a bit too sensitive, though.”
Matthew: Ugh!
Matthew: Yeah. I mean, for me, the fact that he said that to a girl in particular. You know, more broadly speaking, so many women are essentially forced to harden themselves and to cast aside some of the core elements of their femininity early. And I’ve seen too many girls sacrificed on the altar of progress and forward movement and they lose all their softness, or enough of it that they just become something different.
Matthew: You just want to be able to open the door, to say, “Here’s A voice.” And see if—if you’ve been carrying around a bag with three quarters of your identity for thirty-plus years, it might be terrifying to look it there, because if you were dragged in a bag for thirty years, you’d be furious! So it is, often, scary to look at those voices. I might say, it’s worth looking at the things that you have a very strong aversion to, and just see what your philosophies are about that, and see if that’s a part that you have a need to tap into.
Tanya: Love love love that you’ve said that. I’m big on aversions in the work that I do, too, so thank you for highlighting that
Tanya: Do people ever show up and say, “Dude, what’s my thing? Like, what’s my thing?”
Matthew: Yeah. I think the most direct question I ever got for that, that I can recall at this moment, is someone who came to me and said, “I’ve just quit my religion and I need to find a new religion.” So that’s sort of, “What’s my thing?”
But I think the thing of “finding your thing” is to not be afraid to lift every stone and to stay there. Because finding your thing is good, and important, but you’re not just one thing. You are—it’s more important for you to be whole than to find your thing. Because your thing might be really big.
As an infant, you take absolute delight in playing with your toes, and absolute delight with throwing food, and absolute delight with falling asleep, and hugging your parent’s leg and hugging a fire hydrant are the same thing. So I wouldn’t close the door to finding your thing, you just need to be willing to stay in some sort of uncomfortable spots and see what opens up there.
Tanya: There’s a way in which we have this be very serious, where does curiosity and play factor in?
Matthew: In terms of play, there are two types of games that one can play. There’s a finite game, and there’s an infinite game.
Finite games are played to be won. They’re played within fixed boundaries, and they’re played for a title, they’re bounded by time and location.
But if you’ve ever seen people who just love to play basketball, or if you see kids play basketball—they’ll run off the court, the score ends up being 117 to 4, no one cares. They’re playing for the sake of playing. It’s more important to keep the game moving than anyone winning.
So in terms of play, I think it’s very important to not be playing for title, or for winning, or for status, but to be playing for the sake of play. And there is where there is freedom. And in order to do that, you need curiosity. And it’s important to people to know what the rules are, too. That’s perfectly reasonable! But, ultimately, the game being infinite is more important than winning a particular game.
Tanya: And, through that, that’s where we find our toes.
Tanya: For the people who are trying to find their things: What do you want for them?
Matthew: To forgive themselves for not having found it. To criticize themselves less for struggling. And to be kind, because they’ve done so much work already. I think those are probably the most important things to start with.
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Compassion, wisdom, quirkiness, and a truly delightful human being.
Jen Louden. To know her is to love her. Without question.
{Sigh}.
To me, this woman is the sheer embodiment of Creative Joy (and River Deep? Oh YES). Truly.
{Deep sigh}.
Okay, so she’s that, she’s funny as funny can be (cf: The Giggle Reel), she’s hung out on Oprah’s couch, and oh, I don’t know, like, HELPED LAUNCH THE WHOLE SELF CARE MOVEMENT with her first book The Woman’s Comfort Book. Since then, she’s written five more books on well-being and personal wisdom that have inspired more than a million women in nine languages, like the classic The Woman’s Retreat Book and her latest, The Life Organizer. She has been a national magazine columnist, radio show host on Sirius, the whole while with those brilliant baby blues shining bright and a grin that could stop a Mack truck going full speed. In fact, I’m sure it has.
She knows self-love + world-love = wholeness for all.
{Yet another deep sigh}.
So, she’s a woman WHO KNOWS THINGS….you know?
Intimately.
And she revealed a LOT in this interview in service of you finding YOUR thing. She talks about teaching your way to your thing, her incredible TeachNow program (of which I am enthusiastically participating in this time around), seducing your thing, loving and abandoning your thing (and how that’s juuuust fine) and all kinds of other richness. TRUST me.
And I confess, I had a helluva time editing this video down to under 10 minutes (the limit available for a YouTube video) so once you’ve enjoyed the interview, devoured the transcript, shared the tweets (as feels appropriate to you), please treat yourself to The Jen Louden + Tanya Geisler Giggle Reel (wherein I THINK she does Shiva Nata, shares a highly memorable moment on National TV and we yuck it up but good).
{Final sigh}
Interview with Jen Louden for Thing Finding Thursday
Good, right??
Tweetworthy Jen-isms (for your sharing pleasure)
You don’t think you’re ready to teach, but you discover what you know thru teaching. @JenLouden to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
Don’t let the heartbreak stop you from trying. @JenLouden to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
It’s never about being done, or perfect. @JenLouden to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
And if I try to stare too hard…or make it a brand or a tagline, it bites me in the ass + it dies. @JenLouden http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
Finding your thing is an onion, a spiral, a dance, it’s not a destination. @JenLouden to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
Your thing may be what’s flirting with you out of the corner of your eye. @JenLouden to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
It’s okay to find [your thing] + abandon it + find it + abandon it. @JenLouden to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8GHZc #TFThurs
Transcript of edited interview (for your reading pleasure)
Tanya: So, Jen Louden, what’s your thing?.
Jennifer: Can I read you something?
Tanya: Always.
Jennifer: I’m called to lead you into sun drenched wholeness. I am called to paint a picture for you of you free from shackles and shame and blame and ill health. I’m called to mold a whole body YES to whatever life brings. And I’m called to help you find and live your creative heart’s desire in service to the world – in service to you and in service to the world. And I’m called to ask you to consider the whole of the world and all the beings as you live your heart’s desire.
I’m called to write stories that bring you home. Yeah, so anyway I wrote that and I want everybody listening to know that I have lived in the question of what’s my thing and everybody close to me will tell you with a lot of teeth grinding and a lot of angst, since my first book was published, probably before that was that book arose out of wondering what’s my thing and feeling like I was failing at the thing I wanted to do, which was write screenplays. So I think the most important thing I want to tell people listening is you decide what your thing is and it’s like something for me that flirts out of the corner of my eye. Right, it’s like, “Ooh, I see you, but do I really see you?” And if I try to stare too hard or bear down on it or make it a brand or a tagline, it bites me in the ass and it dies. And it’s something about this living relationship.
In yoga today my teacher said, “Be peace. You know, it’s a word; it’s a lovely word that we hear but be it now.”
And it was like, “Oh holy, yeah. That’s it. That’s what we need to do with this thing.” Finding it, living it.
What gets in my way is that I intellectualize it and I want to brand it and I want to be strategic about it. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it’s like the cart can get in front of the horse. We have to keep coming back to being this thing that really is beyond words and taglines and brands and everything and trusting that.
Tanya: And I think that there’s something – I’ve talked to other people about gaps to be filled, I’ve talked to other people about itches that need to be scratched, but there’s something about this dancey, fluttery, whoop, what was that, it’s gone.
Jennifer: And seducing it, right? Seducing that desire.
Jennifer: So I was on retreat with my brain trust … and one of my dear friends, Eric Klein who’s a 30 year ordained spiritual teacher, incredibly successful consultant in business and best selling author, I was watching him this whole retreat having a hard time really claiming his chops as a teacher.
Tanya: Yep.
Jennifer: In a very deep way. And I thought, “I want to help people who want to teach.” That’s how our ideas start, right? They start as this little thing that we see a need in the world or a need in ourselves. All of my books have come from a need in myself, most of my blog posts do. And then I started talking to my friend Michelle Lisenbury Christianson because I love to collaborate with people, I like to do serial collaborations. And we started talking about our own journeys as teachers and how much shame and suffering we had because we were both called to teach in our 20s. My first became a word of mouth bestseller and people saw me on TV and they were like calling me up, “You want to come talk at our hospital?” Or, “Hey, do you do workshops?”
But here’s the important thing everybody, here’s the important thing about finding your thing through teaching. You don’t think you’re ready to teach, but you discover what you know through teaching. And if you set it up in a way that it’s safe for you and that you can collect what you’re learning, you can record it, you can grow so much faster into seeing, “What is it about my thing that I love? What is it about it that I don’t love? What is it that I want to learn more about?” But it’s never about being done or perfect.
You will never know everything you need to know to teach what you want to teach and hence that is what is so maddening for people and so tenderizing about teaching. Things will always arise that you can’t answer and the stronger that you take your seat as a teacher the more able you are to meet people there and be curious with them and be a student teacher. And there are a number of the master teacher interviews, there’s like 34 and we’re always adding more master teacher interviews. And Sherry Huber, the zen meditation teacher is one of them and she talks about being a student teacher and being asked to teach and having her knees literally shaking and she’s still terrified, like 35 years later.
Tanya: Right.
Jennifer: So to me the greatest gift of TeachNow and probably the greatest gift of a lot of my work is kind of being willing to pull the curtain back and say, “This is what’s really going on in this moment right now.”
Tanya: Love it. Okay, so you said that your family, your friends witnessed this whole process. It’s been quite amazing to watch it. Even at the top of the call you were saying you don’t really coach anymore. So as your own identity has been morphing and your things have been sort of shifting like a beautiful home that’s sort of settling into itself in a way, you know? What have been some questions that you’ve been asking yourself?
Jennifer: Well, first I have to tell you that my word for the year is home so it’s really lovely that you said that. And I don’t mean home like staying home, I mean like building a new way of being, inhabiting the space of that deep rootedness and self trust, so nice little synchronicity there. The benchmarks are, for me, first to notice where I’m feeling out of alignment or like I’m faking it. That faking is a huge benchmark for me, and then I’ve had to learn, God, over and over and over again, “Oh, that doesn’t mean I’m doing the wrong work. It means I have a story about how I should be doing the work.”
Tanya: Yes.
Jennifer: Huge, huge, oops, still learning it, still learning it. And then looking back at whatever I’ve done and there’s a lot of it and going, “Oh, holy shit, that was really of use to people but I wasn’t getting fed because my story was ‘that’s not what I’m supposed to be doing.’”
Tanya: Right, right.
Jennifer: So there’s so much discernment here and I think it’s so important if there’s one message that I have for people is that you don’t think that there is an arrival place or a done or that if you get there, you will know it because it will be delightful, light, and easy all the time, right? Because you’re still you, even when you’re doing your thing you’re still you. And so as you can tell, a little goofy, a little intense, and a little bit of an over provider so those things are always going to be, but as I spiral around I tend to loosen them up a little better; I can get some distance.
Tanya: And again, that’s where the home piece comes in it seems like for you. So within the context of all of these disparate things that just make you so alive and so Jen Louden, yea! Finding the piece and the homeness in there.
Jennifer: Yes, perfect, thank you. That’s why you’re such a great coach.
Tanya: Oh, thank you, thank you. Is there anything else that people who are watching?
Jennifer: There are a couple of things. One is that it’s okay if you found it in and abandoned it and found it and abandoned it and found it and abandoned it.
And we can be ashamed that we’ve given up and we’re here again, or we can celebrate and get support.
Tanya: No honestly and truly, you’re so like, “That’s it.” And the idea of this being a dance, I’m sort of like, “Is it fitting now? Not so much, I’m going to try this. Is it fitting now? Oh, a little more, if I just had a little more of this, add a little more shimmy shimmy shake.” I absolutely love that and it’s okay to abandon and revisit and abandon and revisit. Do you know how expansive that is?
Jennifer: Sometimes the things that you most care about are the things that you’re most afraid of, so you may know very well what your thing is and you may know that you may not be able to bring it to life the way that you want and that may break your heart, but don’t let that heartbreak stop you from trying. I’m not going to be able to write the great American novel. You may never read what I write, or maybe I will. But if I put my hat on that as living my thing, then I’m screwed right out of the gate. And instead I say my job is to show up and how can I show up all of myself and how can I keep learning and how can I be curious and how can I really try to tell a story that does what I want it to do, which is bring wholeness and make you think and make you, well lots of other things. That’s all I can do.
Annnnnnnd…The Giggle Reel
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Go find Jen at her site, TeachNow and on Twitter. Learn from her. Celebrate your path as she celebrates hers. Joyfully.
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What's YOUR Thing? If you’re trying to find your thing, then signing up for updates is the thing for you. Get Thing Finding Thursday updates, plus:
Top secret and supershiny notices, events and discounts.
When Sabrina Ali first reached out to me via Kelly Diels, she said: “My ‘thing’ is resumes”. I’ll ‘fess up: since I left my corporate gig in 2006, I haven’t thought much about resumes (with the exception of including one in my own business plan). Those dreary under two-paged, Times New Roman, 1.5 line spaced, centred contact info (“make sure you don’t have a partygrrrl69@ email address”) documents that seem to breathe “meh, this is good enough”. SO. BEIGE. So, given that this delightful young woman came to me through Kelly (and I’ve only met incredible, anything-but-beige stars through her), I imagined that Sabrina would offer my readers some fabulous tips about sassing up their resumes. And that that would be good.
Between the months that have elapsed since that request and this posting, it’s truly blissful to see Sabrina claim her REAL thing: uncovering vocation.
Boo Yah.
So please, dig into this wise young woman’s delicious words. And see what covers start to peel back for you.
What’s your thing?
Sabrina Ali: Here’s “the” thing first:
The simplest thing that you do is your gift to the world. You need no thanks because it’s a pleasure just to be able to do it. And you can absolutely create a life out of doing this seemingly simple thing because you do it uncommonly well.
The dilemma?
Not everyone knows how to express, name or talk about the meaningful thing they do with specificity. It’s under a lot of clutter.
So my thing? Where do I come in?
I uncover vocation. I help articulate enthusiasm (with my compassionate investigative querying nature) and facilitate the design of strategies to create vocation-centred living. It’s all concrete; it’s all marketable and totally professional.
I’ve personally been working with people on creating vocation-centred lives my entire life. I was designed this way. Over the last eight years alone I’ve worked in career transition coaching, self-development facilitation, career and education advisement, and employee engagement roles.
It’s (like seriously long over-due) time to re-imagine our concept of work. Work is not just about a means to an end, it’s about creating a life that integrates all parts of you.
Was finding your thing the result of a divine revelation, an insane invention, a culmination of insights…or something else?
Sabrina Ali: Finding my thing was all of the above and something else (as you say). It was a matter of putting all the clues together:
A culmination of insights: I used to be a career workshop junkie. If someone was holding one, having one, giving one then I was there. They were fun to me. Some were better than others and whether I was looking for a job or not, I went. At some point, I started to offer my insights to the other participants. At some point, I started to become the teacher. Who me?!?
A divine revelation: I used to drop everything, clear everything in my schedule, move my schedule around, and even create a schedule around helping people with their career and education strategies. I just couldn’t help myself. And I especially loved the results – phone calls, emails, or coffee and dinner dates with people to celebrate job and school program offers. People were feeling “on their path,” they were making more money, feeling happier. Hearing this news was the equivalent of … well, I’m almost embarrassed to say, but it was like having really great sex. Every. Single. Time.
The revelation: My enthusiasm is a force to be reckoned with. And so is everyone else’s. And I define this particular enthusiasm as: Clarity of purpose in total alignment with intention – where being and the task are one.
My insane invention: I have an insane invention being invented right now! I’m in the midst of creating the ultimate self-guided digital vocation exploration kit. It’s called the Bliss Kit and it’s for fellow heroes and heroines who yearn for self-discovery; who want to create careers and lives with a sense of energy-giving purpose. This is the quintessential collection of career and self exploration tools to assist people on their journey. It’s due out in March.
Something else: I’ll call it listening to the signals of life. Reflection, curiousity and intention are the ingredients. I would have been blind to the clues lying around me if not for the act of reflection and the power of being in a state of curiosity. The wisdom is not hard to find, but you don’t know what you’re looking for or looking at without intention. With intention it’s like looking for Easter eggs that were hidden by someone that wanted you to find them.
Obstacles/fears/doubts – what were they, how’d you vanquish them??
Sabrina Ali: These words have come to mean: The gifts that I couldn’t have in the moment that I’d never want to be without.
It’s human to experience obstacles, fears and doubts.
It is divine to transform them into something that serves your life. And we always at any moment have access to that possibility.
Obstacles: Not enough money. Not enough love. Not enough acceptance. Not enough credentials. Not enough time. It all boiled down to externally referencing myself towards other people’s ideas of success rather than defining my own based on how I wanted to feel in my own life.
Fears: That I’m generally an inadequate human being. That I have helped all the people that I can and now there’s no one else to help. That I can’t write. All stories that I inherited and contrary to the actual evidence showing up in my life.
Doubts: That what I’m doing (whatever plan, strategy, idea) won’t work. The antidote? Listen to life instead – what people are asking me for, thanking me for, admiring about me without any prompting whatsoever from me. Where is the love coming from and what is it saying?
My vanquishing (love that word btw) strategy: Tiny. Baby steps. And often (momentum is a friendly force).
A nurturing strategy that encounters the doubts, obstacles and fears was key. For example, I have worked with gifted coaches, a Jungian counsellor that I really connected with, energy healers and did yoga over the last 4-5 years. These partnerships helped move me through my stages faster and I’m thankful that I made those investments in myself. I am in a supportive relationship where I grow into more of who I am and I also adopted a dog. I speak kindly to myself. I even did a couple of online writing courses for the sheer pleasure of learning (nothing with grades). I write every day.
If you love yourself and allow yourself to be loved, fear, doubts and obstacles start to look like opportunities for evolution. If they can get you just sick and tired enough of maintaining life ‘as is’, they are your friends. Trust me.
What questions did you ask yourself to trigger your a-ha moments…and what signs and milestones should others be looking for in their journeys?
Sabrina Ali: When I feel the “crunch” of existing – exasperated, frustrated, pointlessness, listlessness, rather than asking: “Why is this happening to me?” I ask: “What is this experience here to teach me?” Not in a punitive way, but rather in a compassionate way to help me evolve my capacity to be in the world and to live with more joy than fear.
Pain is sometimes very subtle and sometimes it’s loud and clear. Either way, it is a sign that something is unresolved. We were taught to avoid pain, but the bridge to joy lies in turning towards it.
It’s the foundation of why an entire work history can be transformed from a burden to an expression of enthusiasm. It processes and grieves things that we blame ourselves or others for. It allows for alchemy of experiences from pain to purpose, useless into ‘full of use.’
With this question alone I started to witness patterns that limited me that I had been unaware of. This is freedom. Freedom to choose rather than letting an unconscious pattern keep you feeling estranged from your one wild and precious life.
***
Sabrina Ali is totally honoured to have her “thing” exposed by Tanya Geisler. She’s a Vocation Strategist and the Creator of www.makebelieveforreal.com. Sabrina says: Work is a pilgrimage of identity, a partnership of your heart and head, and what you are called to do for work is sacred.
I’ve been interviewing people for Thing Finding Thursday who have, by and large, FOUND IT. Their THING! (Or, arguably, they are happily ensconced in their Thing For Now as we all know that Things evolve.) Yes, it’s clear what Susannah, Danielle, Chris, Kelly, Pam, Dyana, Jenny, MMM, Tara, Jasmine, Megan, Amy are bringing forward to the world.
Joyfully.
And from the emails I’ve been receiving since this series’ inception, I hear that you’re appreciating the informed wisdom they’re sharing here.
So, “been there” stories are an incredible source of inspiration (and for a fabulous round-up of “been there…gone HERE” stories to rev up your possible-o-meter, go check out Alexandra’s piece.)
But what about the people that are RIGHT HERE, right now? Who know how they want to BE, and maybe not necessarily what to DO?
Sound like anyone you know?
I present one such person, a reader of mine who sweetly raised her hand and said:
I would love to write a guest post. I speak from my own experience of feeling a little inertia, waiting until I had THE answer…until I learned to taste all the flavours, take the cues from my friends and family (and myself) and ultimately making some big changes in my working life.
Friends, please enjoy this guest post by Emma Gwillim.
***
Journaling would be, for me, a great excuse to indulge in my love of stationery (oh the sweet joy of a crisp, new notebook!) but I just don’t seem to have the discipline to get my thoughts down on paper daily. Not in this structured way at least. I am a scribbler though – my creative mind is constantly stirring up new ideas which I write down, along with inspiring quotes and stories I’ve read in books, blogs and, my other obsession, magazines. In looking back over years of dog-eared notebooks, it’s obvious that my thing has come to light by a slow, dawning realisation.
I’m pretty impatient by nature and, if I set my mind to something, I’ll be a woman on a mission – I love a good challenge. And so, finding myself thing-less and a little lost in my early twenties, without knowing what the thing was that I wanted to go after was foreign territory. Uncomfortable at best, sheer panic a worst.
Here I was, working my way up the corporate ladder and earning a good living by giving out 100% of my hard work, energy and professionalism at work, all the while feeling pretty lost and empty on the inside. And without an answer. Terrified at the uncharacteristic prospect of doing nothing, I set to reading all manner of personal development books and inspiring biographies, while the answer still eluded me. What was my thing? The thing would set my heart on fire?
I spent way too long waiting for the answer, waiting for the proverbial light-bulb to go off.
It didn’t.
And I’m embarrassed to say, unsurprisingly, I continued trading my time and energy for a monthly pay-slip in a job that left me cold.
Nothing changed until my mind-set changed.
The wonderful Steve Jobs said “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” I’d been waiting to work out, and logically decide, what my next dot would be and all the while I was in limbo.
It was a distraction in another area of my life, the natural end of a relationship, that was the shake-up for me. That ending became a new beginning of the real Emma: I took a flying lesson, I travelled, I began to learn the Italian language, I cooked foods I loved, I read books that interested me, I socialised with people that made me feel happy …. and almost I forgot about my pursuit of that ‘light-bulb’ moment. I stopped waiting and started moving, it didn’t matter in what direction.
And then it came….not in a blinding flash. Instead I instinctively knew the things that brought a smile to my face and my heart and, the more I indulged in things I was passionate about, the more it seemed to open up the conversation with others. In being willing to give things a go and learn if it was “me” or not, my wonderful family and friends seemed to be given the green light to impart their view, their perception of the real me, and added more colour to the picture that was always before my eyes. Clues to which I’d been scribbling down over the years.
I still don’t believe I’ve got the definitive answer of what I want to do, but I’ve got gutsier about what I want to be. As one of these things is brave, I’m going to bravely share, for the first time, my thing: to love and nurture people to live their best life. It’s a simple as that.
And how exciting! The giddiness of this was that I realised I could be this way in every area of my life – rather than the ‘what to do’ I was searching for in my working life. I can be loving and nurturing with my husband, family and friends. I can be loving and nurturing in my work and hobbies. I can even be loving and nurturing with myself – something that was definitely on the back-burner years ago.
If I could speak to my younger self, here’s what I’d advise:
Your purpose isn’t your work. Your life is. What do you want to stand for? To be remembered for?
Don’t hang onto a ‘someday, one day’ dream. Stop waiting. Get moving. There’s something gutsy about taking the next, courageous step without knowing where it will lead.
Feel it. Let yourself be drawn to all the things that interest, inspire and make you wonder. It’s only by tasting a little of everything that you’ll get to know your favourite flavours.
***
Do you hear the grace in Emma’s words that she knows how she wants to BE even if what to DO is still amorphous (and possibly even temporarily irrelevant)?
I, for one, am excited to witness this bright light along her path. You can too, by following her writing about her journey (and sharing inspiration) at her blog or connecting with her shining self on Twitter.
Tweetworthy Emma-isms (for your sharing pleasure)
Your purpose isn’t your work. Your life is. @akaBasilBe to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8qbny #TFThurs
What do you want to stand for? @akaBasilBe to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8qbny #TFThurs
Stop waiting. Get moving. @akaBasilBe to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8qbny#TFThurs
Let yourself be drawn to all the things that interest, inspire and make you wonder. @akaBasilBe to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8qbny #TFThurs
It’s only by tasting a little of e’thing that u’ll get to know yur fave flavours. @akaBasilBe to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8qbny #TFThurs
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Remember that beach vacation when you were a kid and your older sibling was off chasing boys (or girls) and you were on your own? And your parents, who were more interested in their sangria than managing your social life, distractedly waved you off to “go make a friend” and it seemed impossible in that moment until you saw HER and went over and said: “let’s be friends” and she said yes?
For me, that was Tara Sophia Mohr. We’ve been hanging out on the same beach for a while now and I’ve always been curious about her and her sandcastles (they always seem SO WELL put together). And do you recall the 2012 planning post wherein I declared my search for a publicist and I committed to “Ask my coaching colleagues/peers who they work with (by Dec 31, 2011)”?
That’s what I did. I asked the girl with the well constructed (and beautiful) sandcastle for a Skype chat and she said yes.
I knew she was wise. I knew she was wonderful. What I wasn’t prepared for was how WARM she is. (Frequent and regular Skype tea dates are in the works.)
If you don’t know her, here’s what she’s up to in this world. She’s an expert on women’s leadership and women’s wellbeing. She has created the wildly popular “10 Rules for Brilliant Women” and the 6-month Playing Big women’s leadership program(full disclosure: that there is an affiliate link), Tara’s work has been featured on The Today Show, ForbesWoman, USA Today, More Magazine and is regularly published in Huffington Post. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and her MBA from Stanford University. Tara is also the author of Your Other Names: Poems for Wise Living.
Cerebral and soulful stuff. Interested in hearing about her path? Me too.
What’s your thing?
Tara Sophia Mohr: My thing is being Tara. These days (these years, really,) that generally looks like this:
bringing women’s voices into the world
helping women play bigger
speaking-writing-communicating to bring about the world I want to see. every day there is something new to say. I love saying it.
letting poems come through.
creating beauty. basking in beauty.
laughing in community, being with friends, being over the moon happy that you (and you, and you and you) exist and are right here, with me!
being silly and dancing around the apartment cracking up my husband.
compassion, compassion, compassion, because compassion is the natural expression of wisdom, the fruit of seeing things as they really are.
Note on the above: nothing in my life is linear. So please picture these words in a big swirling circle, not in a list.
Was finding your thing the result of a divine revelation, an insane invention, a culmination of insights…or something else?
Tara Sophia Mohr: It was a return. It was a return to my childhood dreams. I’m not someone who was fundamentally confused about what my thing was, though I spent many years saying “I don’t know what my thing is.” Translation: “My thing might be that thing I’ve been dreaming of since I was five, but frankly that thing seems too impractical and scary to go for, so I’ll ignore that and take some career assessment tests instead.”
I don’t think we all “find” our things. I did some combination of remember, recover, listen and experiment my way into my thing.
There was a time in my life about four years ago when I made a pretty radical shift toward living a more authentic life and career. I don’t know what caused that to happen on one day and not another, but the change felt precipitated by intensifying pain: the pain of the inauthentic way of living grew great enough that I was willing to face the discomfort involved in change.
When the old shoe really, really, really gets uncomfortable? That’s when I often start to make change. But what causes the shoe to get uncomfortable at a certain point? Something mysterious, something that has to do, I believe, with the timeline of our soul’s unfoldment.
Obstacles/fears/doubts – what were they, how’d you vanquish them?
Tara Sophia Mohr: For me, life has often felt like trying to sew together two pieces of fabric: one piece is my authentic self. The things she loves. Her natural, confident, uninhibited, blissed-out self. Picture a happy five year old, totally unself-conscious, in her element, doing her thing. That’s piece of fabric #1.
The other piece of fabric is the world: the more competitive, judgmental landscape where that natural self was not always welcomed or safe or validated.
How to sew the two together? How to make them connected, so I can move across them easily? How to walk in the world as my authentic self comfortably and confidently – to say what I had to say – no matter how radical or how ridiculed?
That has been my primary challenge. What has helped me has been in part outer: having powerful support people in my life –community, teachers, friends – who gave me tools and championed my dreams when I was just getting started in listening to them and acknowledging them. But inner work has been equally important, particularly work around 1) clarifying my vision 2) understanding what the inner critic is and how it operates and 3) getting wise about how to deal with fear.
The programs I lead are very informed by what has most helped me – and what most helps the other women I work with.
What questions did you ask yourself to trigger your a-ha moments…and what signs and milestones should others be looking for in their journeys?
Tara Sophia Mohr: Some of my favorite questions:
What is my message to share in this situation, my unique truth? (Note: if no one else sees what you are saying or is talking about what you are thinking, that makes your perspective more needed, not less; more valuable not less).
What does my heart need in order to follow itself? (In any situation to ask your heart, “Dear heart: what do you need right now, to follow yourself?”)
How can I be a representative of love in this situation? (This question has saved me a hundred times. Saved me from pettiness, fear-based responses, aggression and brought me right back into love. You be surprised how well it works in business environments too.)
***
I’m appreciating the notion of the two fabrics. I’m appreciating her powerful questions. I’m appreciating the power of support systems. And I’m appreciating the worn shoe metaphor. I’m appreciating it all.
You know I love me some Danielle LaPorte. Told you so here, here, here and here. In my mind, she is THE High Priestess of Passion Persuasion and a sublimely generous friend. So when I decided to dive into the realm of Thing Finding, there was zero doubt who I’d be contacting for an interview. This was actually recorded a good while ago, but like all things golden, it has stood the test of time.
When I was asked to review this latest tome of gorgeousness, I said this:
“It’s a rich buffet of ideas, tools and resources, delivered with soulful practicality and sizzling pragmatism.”
I still say that.
In this video, we talk about wooing your thing, how gratitude can be used as key evidence in the process, the killer of thing-finding {spoiler alert: comparison}, and you’ll bear witness to her best impression of a saboteur (not to be missed). She’ll also share with you (drum roll, please) THE FORMULA.
Enjoy.
Interview with Danielle LaPorte for Thing Finding Thursday
How delightful is this woman, I ask you? Time spent in her presence, time spent in her words, is like time spent at an old-school Nordic spa for the mind. Hot submersion then cold plunge, then back to off-the charts heat again. Invigorating and ultimately oh-so restorative. And do you see what I mean about her flagrant generosity? Now please go ahead and spread the love inherent in her wisdom with your peeps, will you?
Tweetworthy Danielle-isms (for your sharing pleasure)
Practicality and passion are a wicked combo. – @DanielleLaPorte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH #TFThurs
Go on a comparison diet. – @DanielleLaPorte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH #TFThurs
Take the charge out of finding your genius. Like, what makes you happy? – @DanielleLaPorte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH#TFThurs
There is nothing original out there. – @DanielleLaPorte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH#TFThurs
We are not doers, we are deciders (from the Book of Runes) via @DanielleLaporte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH#TFThurs
I don’t get off on failure. – @DanielleLaPorte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH#TFThurs
Appreciate what you have. That’s the formula. – @DanielleLaPorte to @TanyaGeisler http://ow.ly/8cIhH #TFThurs
Transcript of edited interview (for your reading pleasure)
Tanya: So something that you have written always, always, always piqued my curiosity and got my juices going. The enthusiasm is the genuine yes that will uncork your genius. That’s sublime. I absolutely love that.
Danielle: It’s so juicy. You’re so uncorked anyhow.
Danielle: Well, I think first you need to believe that you have genius. That’s sort of half the journey. I know it’s in there somewhere. I haven’t uncorked it. I haven’t stumbled across it. I’m certainly not making any money off of it yet, but it’s in there somewhere. So just believe that it’s in there somewhere. I’m often telling people that whatever is showing up in your life in the form of gratitude, people being grateful for you and appreciating and thanking you, whatever you’re getting thanks for is an indication of whatever your gift is or your genius.
What are people showing their gratitude for? When do you feel no sense of time? When do you look up from whatever you’re doing, whether it’s baking cookies or writing a blog post or tinkering with something, and five hours have gone by and you don’t remember how you got there? That’s the sign of being in the flow as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says. Aren’t you impressed that I can say his name?
Tanya: So impressed.
Danielle: So those are some indicators. I think we also need to take the charge out of finding our genius and just start in a gentle way like what makes you happy. Soft and happy. Just start there.
Tanya: I think that that sometimes scares that away, you know, this whole energy of like bigness, bigness, bigness. So I think that that’s possible that there is a bit of a story. What if it’s more just kind of a whisper? Do you know?
Danielle: Yes. And it can be more than a whisper. It can still feel hot, electric and juicy, but it doesn’t mean you need to go make money on it necessarily. It would be great. I mean, I’m aiming for the ideal that that’s what you can do. It doesn’t mean you need to launch it or go back to school. So I think if we just take the expectations off of finding out what it is it will help us get there sooner. It’s like falling in love, right? Are you the guy? Or it’s like the old Dr. Seuss story, “Dr. Seuss, are you my mother?” He doesn’t find his mother until he’s just hanging out. Do you know?
Tanya: Yeah.
Danielle: Yeah. You let it go and then, poop, it will pop up.
Tanya: What are things that people are coming up against as they try to woo their thing?
Danielle: As they try to woo their thing? That’s such a great – Oh, comparison. It’s toxic. It’s a killer. Don’t do it. It goes like this. What I want to say has already been said. Her brand is like my brand. She got there, he got there to market before I did. Who am I to do this? I’m not qualified. They have more qualifications. They, they, they, they, they. Guess what? You’re an original just because it’s all coming through your lens, your perspective, your voice, your experience, your drive, your level of interest. So nobody has said what you’re going to say. By the way, there is nothing original out there. It’s been said. What I’m saying, what I say on WhiteHotTruth.com it’s perennial stuff. You can find lots of teachers that talk about it. But nobody talks about it in the way I do. So comparison sucks. Just stop and knock it off. Just go on a comparison diet.
Fears in wooing stuff. Well, there is the what if I fail? Just make a decision and do it. Just decide. Just do. There is a great saying from the book of the Runes, “We are not doers, we are deciders, and once we decide the doing becomes easy.” So doing something and making a mistake is superior, underlined, italicized, to not doing anything. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t have to wait some things out and everything, especially business, so much to do with timing. But you do something and you fail, you will still be further ahead. Even if you’re in the hole financially, you will still be further ahead.
You will have more courage. You will have more faith. You will have more acumen. You will have more contacts at the bank. You will have more resources for your next thing. Just do something. Find out. And in that regard, quit soon and fail fast. If it sucks, leave it. Of course, there is time. I mean, everything I talk about is contradiction. So let’s get that on the table.
Tanya: Love it.
Danielle: Of course there are times where you persist and you endure and all that stuff. But if it’s not working, can it and leave it. Seth Godin in his book, The Dip, about this, “Winners quit sooner.”
Danielle: I also have a contradiction to that.
Tanya: Bring it.
Danielle: Fail fucking sucks. I want to be clear that my focus here is about executing. It’s about creating. It’s about doing so you can go on. Failure is often part of it, but it’s not – Some entrepreneurs get off on their failures. I don’t get off on failure. I have learned a lot more from my successes than I have from my failures for sure.
Danielle: Do I have a saboteur? Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve never articulated so we’re having a live moment here. I can tell you my saboteur are all those little – I really dislike them. I need to be careful here. My saboteur is a 30 something, Adidas wearing, running show wearing, geek, social media addicted guy from Silicon Valley. He is a bit spiritually vacant and highly fucking cynical. That personality, that kind of avatar is my saboteur. So sometimes I think I’m being too spiritual or I’m not being grounded or, yeah, too out there, too Abraham Hicks. Is that guy behind me going, “this doesn’t work in the real world?” Do you know what I say to him? I say, “You haven’t been properly hugged in months, mister. You probably have sex like a robot.” And you know know what I got is hot. And that’s how I deal with my saboteur. I tell him to go fuck himself.
Tanya: Oh my goodness.
Danielle: Yeah, that crowd scares me definitely. But I’m almost over it.
Tanya: Sorry, I’m not finding – That’s really, really good. I just got to tell you, I wanted to hug him too. I just wanted to hug him too like he needs to be properly hugged like heart to heart, man.
Danielle: Saboteurs they really need love. They’re just coming to the table. Love me.
Tanya: Do you have any final desire for our viewers, people who are picking up what’s my thing? What do you want for them, Danielle?
Danielle: Don’t quit your day job. It is your birthright to have your thing. Be practical about your passion. Practicality and passion are a wicked combo. It’s perfectly alright to want to be happy the majority of the time and it can be done.
Tanya: Yeah.
Danielle: Appreciate what you have. That’s the formula. You want to find your thing. You want to move ahead. You want velocity. You need to appreciate everything that’s going on in your life right now. You need to appreciate that you have a bitchy boss. You need to appreciate the money that you are making. You need to appreciate that you’re stuck. You need to see the beauty in the people that you’re working with.
You need to realize, and if you’re watching this, you probably live in the western world. The fact that you’re watching this on the computer means you have the democratic choice to do that and the financial means to do that. So I’ll leave it on this note. Whatever you got going you got it good. Be grateful for it. When you appreciate that, you will attract more into your life to be appreciative for. It just gets better.
Megan is an an Archetypal Counselor & Chinese Face Reader. Yup, thought you might be curious about that. Read on to find out how she woke up (consistently at 1:00 am) to THAT.
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Fireworks, Epiphanies, and Gestating Things that all Come Into Being in their Own Time but are Really In There All Along.
I have the freaking coolest job in the world, seriously. I double dog dare you to find a job as cool as mine.
When I show off for fun (cause if you had my job you’d totally show off for fun too) I literally get to watch people’s jaws drop; they tell me I’m crazy – unbelievable, or they sit speechless with eyes wide. In fact, their reactions are so much fun that my husband likes to use me as entertainment at boring parties and in large groups.
My totally, way cool, job is to read people’s faces. Not their expressions, not their feelings, but their noses and eyebrows and foreheads and cheeks. (For example, I can tell you that with cheeks like that Tanya is a Woman of Authority who can handle being the boss, but also demands a certain pride in everything she does.) [ed. note: oooooh, she's gooood]
My work is centered around Chinese Face Reading, but that’s not my Thing. It’s just one vehicle that lets me express my thing.
Rewind to two, three, years ago.
It’s approximately 1:00 am, and I’m curled up on the couch with a book and pen. Everyone has gone to their respective beds and I’m soaking up the dark stillness, allowing myself to be swept up in this treasure I recently found, my first book on Chinese Face Reading. I’m not even at the face reading part, I’m still only in the front matter: the stuff on why the author (who would later become my teacher) thinks This Work matters.
Every now and then I need to set this book down. I need to tug it away from my body so that the electric shock it is radiating though me can release enough to let me catch my breath.
She is talking about the importance of knowing ourselves, about her work of being a mirror for others so they can rediscover – have affirmed – that Self for themselves.
And fireworks are going off inside of me. I can’t sit still. I have to stand up, then sit down again, to keep reading.
How could I have missed that? Of course that’s my thing. I’ve known it all along, I just never knew it before.
My work is Chinese Face Reading, but my Thing is seeing people’s souls and empowering them to live from their selves. It always has been, even when I had no bloody idea what I was going to do with myself.
Rewind to Six years before that.
It’s approximately 1:00 am; everyone’s in bed and I’m sitting in front of my computer chatting it up on my favorite forum. The flicker of the computer screen is the only light in the house, the clack of my keyboard seems to echo deathly loud.
A friend posts: “I’m having a coaching session tomorrow, wish me luck.”
What’s a coaching session?
I click the link she, so kindly, provides.
A new world opens in front of me as I read a blurb: What is Coaching?
I could feel it, energy moving up my body, my stomach flips, my heart pounds to the rhythm, “This is me. This is me. This is me.” I could feel it throbbing through me.
It’s me, it’s who I’ve always been, what I’d always been doing – even when I had no freaking clue what I could do with my life.
Fireworks I can’t contain push me to my groggy (formerly asleep) husband’s bedside, “Oh my God Jeff, you have to listen to this!”
Fast Forward 3 or 6 years from now
It’s approximately 1:00 am and I’m up reading, or surfing, or chatting – when I should clearly be in bed. But the dark, quiet, aloneness brings me to a place of internal stillness nothing else does.
I’ve found a new idea, a fascinating article, amazing person and one more thing is expanding within me. I can feel it, the energy rush that confirms this is exactly the thing I needed to find at this exact moment. There are fireworks and excitement, and something clicks into place for me.
As a result my work – my job – will grow, expand, or maybe shrink – or even leap, take an entirely new shift. But when it happens, I’ll stand there open mouthed (like so many of my Face Reading clients), and say: This is me. As soon as I see it I’ll know it’s true, has always been true, even when there was no way I could possibly define it before.
I’m not the least bit worried about it though, because I know whatever happens at that 1:00 am epiphany I’ll still be looking into soul’s, I’ll still be empowering and affirming and reflecting back every gorgeous Self that plants itself in front of me.
Because that’s my Thing, and my Thing is ME.
Which is why I’m constantly walking through life with eyes raised, arms open, and heart singing just waiting for Fireworks and Epiphanies knowing they’ll only take me closer to who I already am.
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You can find Megan Potter at her blog, on facebook or on Twitter. She does one-on-one Face Reading sessions, teaches the Five Elements, and offers Elemental self-care retreats.
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What's YOUR Thing? If you’re trying to find your thing, then signing up for updates is the thing for you. Get Thing Finding Thursday updates, plus:
Top secret and supershiny notices, events and discounts.
I missed you last week, Dear Reader. iMovie and I were having a lovers’ quarrel and it was trying to keep us apart. We’re on speaking terms again and I am thrilled to share with you the interview I did with Jasmine Lamb.
As a coach, one of my skills is the capacity to listen to my clients at different levels. I listen for what they say, and to what they DON’T say. I listen to the pauses in speech, to the speed of the words and from whence said words come (diaphragm, throat, nose…it all indicates something different). So, yeah. I’m pretty skillish. And yet, YET, this woman has brought me to my knees. She is a LISTENER. A masterful listener who energetically reminded me to sloooowwww waayyyy, WAAAAYYY down.
Jasmine works one-on-one with people through her Healing Heart Sessions. She writes the blogAll is Listening: Tools and Tales for Breaking Up, Waking Up, and Falling in Love. She is author of the forthcoming digital book, A Call to Listen: How to Start an Inner Revolution.
She has plenty of thoughts for you Thing-seekers and non-seekers. {Hint: it has everything to do with listening.}
So please, get your cup of tea, settle into your comfiest chair, and give this a good listen. Then turn everything off and take the time and make the space to listen to your own self.
Interview with Jasmine Lamb for Thing Finding Thursday
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Ooooh yes. Stop and listen. What is your life, right now, trying to tell you?
Jasmine: My thing is listening. And when I say listening what I am talking about is listening first to my experience in this moment and to what is arising for me right here. And extending out from there is listening to the environment, to the actual sounds, and then also having from this place of presence, listening to others.
Tanya: I suspect it’s always been with you but it hasn’t been articulated as such.
Jasmine: That’s right. It always has been with me and I’ve always almost known it, but haven’t quite and I’ve been confused about it. Because what was reflected back to me when I was younger, both as a child and a teenager and then in my career in my twenties, was my skill in relating to people and in listening to people and my skill in taking care of people. And I have really powerful skills in this area and I got enormous amounts of positive feedback from it. And at that stage in my life I was confused into thinking that the thing that I got lots of positive feedback about and the place where I got all the compliments and the place where people gave me attention, that that was my thing;
Jasmine: I was a fixer and a problem solver and a hand holder and a “let’s navigate this divorce successfully” person.
And that’s all a part of me. It still is; I have those skills. I want to use those skills. But, it wasn’t entirely feeding my soul.
Tanya: So there was a point at which you went from this listener in this capacity to another kind of listener. The listener that is very informed by your center – so what was that shift?
Jasmine: It was a culmination of catastrophes. I woke up one day five years ago, ready to go to work. I felt a pain in my side and it brought me to the ground. And as I descended, my back seized up. And I just couldn’t move.
And what first was my back being seized up transitioned to something where the bottom fell out of all my senses. I couldn’t tolerate sound; I couldn’t tolerate fast movement or even slow movement.
Jasmine: What I could be with was the very quietest, most still part of the center of me. That was where I could be. And I had touched that place in my life, but I had never really rested there. It gave me this incredible opportunity to rest within myself and to listen there. And really to listen in the moment there . When we are really listening, we are open to what we don’t know.
Tanya: I’m sensitive to that person who’s listening and saying, “Okay, but I haven’t known what my thing is for my whole life and now I’m open to being open to it and I want to find my damned thing.” I feel that there’s that sense of urgency, so I think that you have a lot to offer in this realm of confusion and bless you and I hope that comes across with the respect that I mean for it to. But I know that you have a belief that confusion, that feeling lost is actually a really powerful place so will you say more about that?
Jasmine: When we are lost it doesn’t feel powerful; it feels often miserable. Particularly when we are trying to get out of feeling lost. When I have been able to accept my lost-ness, and often it comes because I just am so fed up and so exhausted and so at my wit’s end that I just say, “Okay, I am lost. I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what is next and I don’t know what my thing is.” And then, I can feel it right now, I just took this big breath. My body, my being, sighs a sigh of relief that is like, “Great. You are accepting where you actually are.”
And from that place, knowing really does come.
So if I was working with a client around this, you would actually slow way down and I would give them this opportunity to feel the sensations of felt sense. Their physical sensations that are coming up in this wanting and desire and lost-ness. And let those unfold and let those unwind.
Tanya: I love this – on your site. Breaking up, waking up, falling in love and I was wondering if you could play with me and knit that into the context of finding your thing or stitch it in for me.
Jasmine: But for those people who are seeking their thing, they’re on a journey and what I think is exciting is that your life is going to take you there if you will listen to it. And if you’re willing to go for the ride, which might mean some breaking up happening and it doesn’t happen consecutively; it all gets mixed up. You’re going to wake up to what is true for you and it might not be what you expected and it might be scary.
Tanya: What is it that you want for people who are watching this right now who may be looking for their thing or trying to claim their thing or in process or maybe they think they found it but they’re feeling, “Is this it?” What do you want for them?
Jasmine: I want them to open to the possibility that their thing is inside of them. And that they can move towards it by trusting themselves and slowing down to include more parts of themselves in the conversation.
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What's YOUR Thing? If you’re trying to find your thing, then signing up for updates is the thing for you. Get Thing Finding Thursday updates, plus:
Top secret and supershiny notices, events and discounts.
Fabeku Fatunmise
. First of all: can you even stand how great his name is?
She’s a Vocation Strategist and the Creator of 
there are 2 comments. step in and shine.