How my email inbox is helping me find my calling
My mom recently told me that I could consider getting my MBA as a viable path on my career search. Separately, I’ve been doing a lot of work on checking in with what feels good somatically and I felt my whole body tighten to her idea. It did not sound interesting and definitely did not spark joy. So per Marie Kondo, I tossed it.
But what was left was questioning and noticing that maybe it wasn’t going back to school - the time, the cost (though very real factors) - that felt like a full-body “no”. Maybe it was the subject matter. Over the past few months, in various stages of my career search, I’ve subscribed to newsletters that would theoretically provide me with the news and knowledge I’d need to pursue various career flirtations. I can tell you right now that those newsletters have not provided me with the news and knowledge I need to be successful in those fields because I simply have not opened them. I even feel a sweet relief when I admit that I likely will not ever read them and allow myself to delete them for the sake of clearing my inbox and my conscience.
What remains in my inbox are the newsletters I look forward to each week: beautiful writing or think pieces, health and wellness news, personal finance guides, spirituality or self-development thoughts. None of these were ever in the box of possible career paths. In this moment of what felt like enlightenment, I made an observation that when I asked myself what I want to do with my life, my answers were limited to things that felt external and outward - things that I might be able to convince myself I could possibly be interested in. All the answers fit neatly into a box that I had deemed possible career paths. As it turns out, I have inadvertently stored my ideas of the future in two separate boxes, categorizing them as either a career or a curiosity. I’ve since opened the curiosity box after getting honest with myself on what I actually am interested in. I’m still unpacking it, but so far, it feels personal - inward.
I’m in the process of figuring out what it would mean to relabel my curiosity box, the ultimate question, I know. I’ve heard it a billion times - that career contentedness often lies at the intersection of passion & purpose - what you’re good at, what you love, and what the world needs (Ikigai). Still, when I had practiced this exercise with the end goal of finding a career path, the center of my Venn diagram felt far removed from my purpose, which felt even more distant from my innate curiosities. I’ll illustrate this further with a meditation I’ve been doing from To Be Magnetic on meeting your magnetic self. You’re called first to envision yourself in a space that feels safe. I’m on my dream property with a green pasture and luscious garden. Slowly, you bring more parts of yourself there. I’m wearing overalls, tending to my animals and my harvest. I dance, I read, I write, I learn about the things I love, I create. I’ve done this meditation about 5 times and every time, the life I envision is so beautiful and yet, there is no part of me I bring that is working a traditional job, trying to squeeze gardening in between meetings. Every time, I struggle to fit the day-to-day of various careers I’ve imagined into this setting. Every time, that tension has made me question how I could fit my vision of being a career woman into that beautiful life, but never how I could design a career that is built around and to sustain that beautiful life.
The latter is what I’m focusing on now. More to come in thoughts and application, I so hope.