The Job of Your “Job” is Not to Excite You!

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People who come to coaching often fall into two categories: 

• Those who don’t know what their next (or first) career move should be and
• Those with a job and career who want to switch to something else.

Coaching the first group involves diving into their core life values, uncovering one or multiple life purposes, and drawing out their courage to take the first small steps towards becoming the “The Man in the Arena” Theodore Roosevelt spoke about in his famous speech at the Sorbonne in 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

The quote is long but worth reading and digesting every word because it sums up the goal of transformational coaching.

The second group, the folks who already have jobs but want to switch, ironically requires the opposite coaching system. They often need to be slowed down to shift their perspective around their existing work while systematically building their future careers.

So often, this group must be reminded that the job they feel they can’t get away from fast enough was once their dream job. They likely labored long and diligently to get this work, which once offered them a unique and meaningful sense of accomplishment. The job that now feels like a hot potato in their hands has opened doors, created relationships and facilitated a lifestyle they now take for granted.

And yet, as we grow, our desires, wishes, and sense of purpose change.  We want things that, in the past, we didn’t even realize had meaning for us. We feel we are called in a new direction.  And, to steal a line from Martha Stewart, “This is a good thing!”

The problem arises from the belief—so vehemently pushed upon us by social media gurus —that to create our next chapter, we must leap and trust that the net will appear. We are told that our lack of courage and faith is the only thing that gets in the way of our next spectacular career success.

As someone whose two highest life values are literally courage and faith, I’m here to tell you, “It’s NOT true!”

Courage and faith are necessary but not sufficient to build our next deliberate and thoughtful chapter. To get the job done, we also need time, strategy, and space to create. Quitting your existing work may seem like a forcing function to fast-track your next move, but cornering yourself is not an ideal strategy unless you’ve been fired (at which point, you have no choice).

The truth is that anything worth doing takes time to build, and building under duress is seldom a good idea. Quitting our existing work and consequently ending our flow of income puts us in a position that compromises our creativity and, often, our integrity. It makes us rush and make mistakes, ultimately costing us more time, money, and relationships.

So many of us get attached to the idea of quitting our “day job” to create our next career because we believe we can’t do both simultaneously. We believe that if we don’t put “everything we have” into something, we’ll get nothing.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Ordinary women and men are doing two things—or ten—that matter to them. And they are doing them simultaneously. Look around you, and you’ll find those people. They’re usually going about their business quietly—doing the work while others keep talking about the work.

So you say, “But my existing work doesn’t satisfy me. It doesn’t give me a sense of purpose!” I would argue that your existing job is not here to give you purpose or excitement; it’s here as a funding mechanism for the things that do fill your purpose bucket. That could be the freedom to run in the mountains or spend time with your family, the ability to afford the luxuries that bring you joy, or a community that, over time, has come to feel like family for you.

By finding the goodness in our existing work—and that shift of perspective is one of the highest goals of good coaching—we’re giving ourselves a chance to create from a place of abundance and what Cal Newport calls “Slow Productivity”—that place where sustainable, worthy, purposeful creations occur.

As you read this, you may feel that you are at an intersection with your career and must choose one direction while letting go of another entirely. In some cases, this may be true—for example, if you’re offered two proposals and must choose only one. But more often, we create that sense of urgency through our limited thinking and lack of patience.

So tell me, what’s going on for you?