Lots of people are looking for that one job, that one career, that one practice or technique or skill that is their path and will make their life make sense. It will give them purpose, bring them happiness, fill all the gaps in themselves and how they are living, bring them financial ease and basically be a fairy godmother riding a unicorn which farts rainbows and solves all life’s issues with a twirl of a wand. I want one of those too. Where do I sign up? I’m pretty sure it’s not at Dismaland, but I’d be willing to go there and find out if that fairy godmother could front me the funds…
Sooooo…instead of waiting in the moonlight for that unicorn, which it might be best that it not show up anyway…just sayin…maybe there’s another way to go about this. Looking for what we should do in order to fulfill our life is looking for deus ex machina: an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel. As 
we’re the writers of our own story, we probably shouldn’t be hacks about it so lets look in the other direction, moving from the inside out. Instead of focusing on the doing, let’s focus on the being. The question to start with is “What life do I want to live?” The job is how you get there, but this question is about where there is and what there looks like. What’s funny is people get hung up on this question and tell me that they can’t answer or have no idea, and then quickly list 6 – 10 critical components of what it should be and how it should look. They don’t even blink at the complete contradiction they just embodied. How to not know what you know in one conundrum or less. LOL
So what does the life you want look like? What are you doing in it? Here’s the one thing to keep in mind, no rolling your eyes, comments of “but that can never happen,” judgements about how selfish that is, or making things extreme to the point of cartoonish in order to diminish them. If even you won’t validate the life you want, then no job, path, guru, or universal anything will either. No one can make you be what you want to be, it all has to start from within you. So validate what it is you want. All of what you want. This isn’t about bargaining, it isn’t a negotiation. No business man building his business bargained half a desk for part of a chair and felt it was a win or even progress. Just starting out the office space might be shitty, the furniture might be worn out or smell like something you don’t want to inspect too closely, but it’s all real, it works, and you’re up and running with version 1.0. Success level awesome! Now onto the next iteration.
The same goes for us. Part of a dream can be even more soul killing than no dream because at least while it’s still potential its whole. So start claiming who you are by claiming, for yourself the life you want. Don’t want to live out family expectations, then decide not to and make that a part of who you truly are. Don’t want to do things the way you’ve been told you have to? Then don’t. Want to get that degree, dig further into a skill, travel somewhere your heart yearns for, live tiny or get that loft apartment in the part of town that is just right? Then validate that as the way you want to live. Make it so real you can hug it to your heart and feel it hug you back. Let it become you. Once you do that, then the path to walk becomes a whole lot clearer, the steps to walk it seem way easier and the goal leaps forward within arms reach. And you didn’t need that magical unicorn after all. Thank goodness.
