Step

3

Don’t stop working for a living

Quote to avoid

“Work is more fun than fun.”

Noël Coward

Do you work for a living? Do you unenthusiastically drag yourself out of bed every morning for another boring day, doing a job that at the best you don’t really care about and at the worst you loathe? You do? Excellent, you’re well on the way to a totally unfulfilled life. At least you can console yourself with this common excuse: “One day when I’ve got enough money, when the kids have grown up, when . . . . . . . . . . . . (fill in your own example here), then I’ll do what I’ve always dreamed of doing; one day I’ll do what I love and I’ll love what I’m doing.”

This way you can hopefully avoid ever having to sum up the courage it will take to make the break. In reality, of course, this excuse is a little like not having sex, but saving it all up for when you retire.

“In reality, of course, this excuse is a little like not having sex, but saving it all up for when you retire.”

Be careful, however, if you have a real sense of purpose to what you do. If you are one of those people who have found out what you love to do and found someone to pay you to do it. If that’s the case, you can’t help but be successful, or as Robert Benchley, the best-selling author, said: “It took me 15 years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

Exercise caution if you are someone who doesn’t feel like they work for a living but instead play for a living. If you are so passionate and absorbed by what you do that, if you had to, you’d happily pay someone else to let you do it. Be especially careful if you are your own boss.

D H Lawrence put it this way: “There is no point in work unless it absorbs you, like an absorbing game. If it doesn’t absorb you, if it’s never any fun, don’t do it.” That’s fine coming from someone who just spent their time writing and loafing around. But it doesn’t pay the mortgage, does it? If the above applies to your job or career, stop whatever you are doing at once and go back to being a wage slave doing something you hate for the rest of the days of your life. Anyway, what would you have to moan about if you didn’t have a lousy job and a no-good boss?

Action not to take

Don’t think about what job would make you leap out of bed each morning.

Don’t think about how you can turn your hobby into your job.

Don’t think about what you would work at if you didn’t have to work.

Don’t think about what really absorbs you. Don’t ask yourself, “What am I doing when I feel most alive?”

Don’t answer the question, “What do you feel is your greatest natural ability?” If you can’t help answering it, don’t stop to look at who you have been rather than sticking just to what you have done.

Don’t think back to what you loved doing at seven years of age. Recent research indicates that successful adults often do something as a living that they enjoyed doing, and were good at, as a kid. So perhaps the Jesuits were right after all – give me the boy until he is seven and I’ll give you the man. At seven I was always told off for talking too much in class! Look what I now do for a job. Ha!

Don’t think what you would dare do if you knew you couldn’t fail.

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