The Authentic Life and Career Choice (1)

The speaker discusses the concept of living an authentic life and how it applies to our careers. Many people struggle with finding meaning and authenticity in their work. Often, there is a conflict between what we truly desire and what our ego tells us. Instead of focusing on our authentic selves, we tend to listen to our ego's negative thoughts and fears. The speaker suggests that we need to identify our authentic needs and emotions and creatively apply them to our work and life. This may involve considering alternative career paths, starting a business, or making adjustments to our lifestyle. The key is to avoid letting our ego limit us and to authentically pursue what we truly want. I want to talk about how living an authentic life, how that purpose can be applied and thought about in the context of our working life and our careers. I think in previous talks I've compared the authentic life to our ego and talked about the duality of life and how that the purpose of life is for us to be ourselves, to be authentic and in that authenticity, in that love and greatness which we are, we work towards a higher consciousness and love. So the question is, well once we get that insight, how do we apply this idea of the authentic life or if you're a religious person there's no indifference between living a life aligned with God, they're one and the same thing, but how do we apply that to work? I think there's so many people particularly in the Western world where we have so much choice of careers and so many different paths we can go down and it's such a difficult area of life for people to be authentic. Many many people, particularly men but certainly not exclusively men, really struggle with their work and how it brings meaning and authenticity and the love into their life. So I wanted to just talk as usual off the cuff and explore a couple of different scenarios and I think well if we agree we want to live a love-filled authentic life, how do we apply that to our careers and our decisions? So firstly I wanted to use an example which is an extraordinarily common one in the circle of friends I have. You have a man who's got a good job, they have a skill or and I'll use a specific example, I've got a friend who's been to university, they studied in business and now they've got a very good job for a big company and then they make a good salary but they're not happy. They don't have a lot of feel very satisfied in their work environment. It's not necessarily that they don't like anyone there or have any big personality problems, there's a usual mix of people you like and people who you don't necessarily click that well with but it's just a feeling that there's something better than this, that I'm not living my life to the full. I'm not happy with this, I know that I'm more creative and I'm capable of so much more than what my job is giving me. I don't like the fact that there aren't the freedoms and there might be present to use and where people just stay and work late. So you've got a typical office job and it's okay but you think there's more so how do we think about that and I think what tends to happen is, and this is my observation, is that there's a conflict in this, isn't there? There's a conflict in all these people and jobs that I don't like because they like some parts of their jobs. They certainly like the financial security it provides but they like other parts too. There's probably some people they enjoy working with and some things about the job they don't like but at a deeper level they're unsatisfied. So there's a conflict. The problem is I think to deal with that conflict which is quite a natural thing, it's not necessarily unhealthy to have a conflict in us but to resolve that conflict we go to the wrong place. Instead of going to the authentic self, we've talked about in previous talks the difference between the authentic self and the ego. Instead of going to the authentic self and saying, well who am I? How does this job right now align with who I am and what I want to do? We don't take the conflict there. We take it to the ego and the ego says, oh John next door is making more money than me. The ego says, oh you don't have any options because you need this money. If we lose the job and we're going to be without money, all these terrible things are going to happen. The ego says, oh you're not good enough. You may want to go up to the next level but you're not good enough and that's why you're in this position. So don't take any risk. You stay in this circle of security and you just stay there and you put up with it. So we have this kind of healthy conflict. If we didn't have some drive and some conflict deep down we would never achieve anything. We wouldn't grow as people. You've got a healthy conflict about your work. It doesn't quite feel right. I think that's the healthy part and then where we take it, we take it to the ego and that's where it becomes unhealthy. So if we go to this typical guy who's got the office job. That's a world I understand. There's women who work in caring professions and there's women who are very successful in all different fields, professional. There's men and women who work in trades and on mine sites or wherever else. I think it's all the same in that there's a conflict. You like things about your job but you don't feel like it. You're being your fully authentic whole self. But the problem is you take that conflict, that source of tension to your ego and your ego asks all the wrong questions. So in a sense what tends to happen is we in a sense complain about how well we're doing in the game. Oh we don't make enough money. We're not getting the promotion. The hours are too long. That's what we do. We complain about that we're not doing well enough in the game. Whereas what we really should be asking ourselves is what game do I actually want to be playing? So I think to the people, the typical thought process to a guy who's got an office job and works week is I like some parts of the job. I hate some parts of the job. But you know we need the money. I'm not good enough to to ask to change divisions or to get promoted. You know all these negative things. Whereas I think firstly the question is what are the authentics of craving? What do I really really want? Let's brainstorm this. Let's forget about money. That's the step one. What are the specific needs and emotions and authentic drives you have that aren't being met in this job? So you work that out and again this will bring up conflict. This is hard to do. It's painful. But we do that and then we think well balancing out all the authenticity in my life because we're all about work. You know I want to I do want to you know some income because I desperately love my children. I want to be able to provide for them and give them the education they deserve or whatever whatever it is. I want to be healthy. If I move into a job that's long hours that might impact my health. So you go into this real authentic place and say what are the emotional needs I'm not getting from my job? What is it I truly want? Not what society's telling me. Not what my wife's telling me or my husband's telling me. What is it that I'm not being satisfied at the deepest level? And then it's about creatively applying that in a holistic way to our life. So let me give you an example. The guy who wants to be is in a boring job. Well not boring but you know in a job that isn't satisfying him on a number of levels and kind of thinks well it's part of me that loves having my own business. I think there's more than the option of simply either you stay locked in where you are drilled down by your ego held down by your ego and your negative thoughts or you take this reckless risk and go buy a business and run it and jump all in. I think there's so many other creative solutions. You know you could look at being creative about things and maybe just starting to do something on the side. Maybe you shift divisions. You know so you get some different experiences within your company that will potentially address some of your needs. Maybe you do go and start a business but you do it with a partner. You team up with somebody else. Maybe you you know adjust how things are working with your, if you have a wife or a husband and how you manage the various workloads to work out a solution. Perhaps you realize that on the other side of the ledger, on the household and living expenses, you can live a lot more humbly because you don't really value a lot of the things you're spending money on. You don't need to spend the money and by living humbly, having lower expenses, you liberate some of your time to go out and do more creative interesting things. So I think, I guess what I'm trying to say and probably incorporating lots of different ideas but the typical thought process I think for people who are frustrated with their career is to be uncomfortable with that conflict in them which I don't think we should be. I think we should embrace that. It's just a feeling and it reflects our authentic self. That conflict in you is your authentic self screaming and saying, look I want to be heard. I'm not totally satisfied here. And that's ok to feel that. And secondly we don't jump straight to the ego to solve it because the ego will just keep us in our place. It will just tell us, no you're being selfish. You need the money. You're not good enough. Don't take any risks. That's what our ego will tell us. Yet at the same time, there is a real authentic truth out there that the reckless option isn't always the best. Sometimes it just is. I'm sure sometimes you just need to quit your job and follow your dream 100% and go all in. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I think that if we can avoid going to the ego to the solution, and we stick with our authentic self, and we really look authentically at our whole life, every aspect of it, our health, our desires, there are lots and lots of creative options out there other than the just lemming like 5 days a week, 10 hours a day solution. But probably the hardest thing is really digging deep and finding what do I truly want? Not being conditioned to want, not what my ego says I want. If you really authentically think, then you should be able to work out creative ways to get it. If I look at my own situation, I suppose I've been frustrated in various jobs over the years and always suspected that I wanted to go out and do something entrepreneurial and business oriented. I've been sort of training myself and developing a skill set in order to do that, but it's not like one great opportunity is going to come along and just I find my niche and I'm off. It doesn't work like that. We have to authentically identify what we want, and then we test, we test the waters, we test and we fail. And then we learn, and then we grow, and then we try something else. Not everybody's goal is to be their own boss, or be the CEO, or be the best carer, or the best artist. But I think once, I guess it's for getting rid of the ego, getting rid of society's conditioning about what you can and can't do, authentically asking yourself what do I want, and then looking at creative solutions to get it. I think that with the internet now, and we truly live in a global world, once you've kind of worked out the areas you want to get into, you can teach yourself any skills you don't have. You can jump on the internet and do an online course. It costs very little to start a business these days. I think we're in such a busy, fast, intense world that it's probably much harder to work out what you truly want. We're so busy. Maybe it's not, maybe it's always been difficult. But I think once you've worked it out now, the tools are really there to enable people to pursue their passions. And then you really look at creative ways of getting there by having two or three different jobs, because perhaps you're the kind of person who, you just can't be defined by one thing. So you do, you work one job three hours a week, and another job's your own business, you work 20 hours a week and you, you know, or you get a new skill, you go back to university, but, you know, just letting your ego, just letting your ego guide you. You can't define your career and your working life. That's not the way to go. And the things you complain about, oh, so-and-so's making more money than me, or I didn't get the promotion I wanted, or, they're actually not the things that are causing you the pain. They're just your way of understanding them and verbalising them. The pain is that you're not being your authentic self. Your working life is not integrated with your heart and who you truly are. So that should be our goal, and everybody's so different, you know, and that's the key. And for those people like me who perhaps want to like the idea of having their own business and not necessarily being in the employee structure, the answer, I think, is in firstly being truly authentic and identifying what needs you want and what emotions aren't being satisfied in an authentic way, not measuring against anyone else or what society's told you. But what you truly, truly want. And once you've identified that, put the ego aside. Hear its voice, but don't respond to it and don't acknowledge it and don't let it make the decision for you. And then, you know, there's so many creative ways to then achieve what you want to do. It's so easy now to start a business and set up an internet website and to write an e-book and to distribute things and to learn. It's very, very easy with all the new courses coming online and to do business. So be authentic. Find out in your heart what you truly want. Forget about conditioned ideas of what success is. And then be creative. You don't necessarily need to just quit the job. The job might be a stepping stone. You might need to go back to part-time. You might need to change divisions to get some new skill. You just might need to build a better relationship with your boss or your co-workers, at least initially. Or it might be that you need two or three jobs. Or you might need to go start up your own business. But once you're authentic about what you truly want and you have a holistic approach taking into account other needs you have in other areas of your life, I think you'll have more than one solution or more than one pathway to having a really successful, authentic business. Go forth.