LIGHT SWITCH #1

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU’VE DONE, IT’S WHO YOU’VE BEEN

When charting a course for our futures, we often resort to figuring out what we can do next by following the example of what we have done in the past.

We’ll look at our resumes, training, degrees, qualifications or experience and determine what work would match our profile. The past is a good place for career inspiration, but I believe you’re looking at the wrong part of the past.

Don’t look at what you’ve done; look at what you’ve been.

• What have employers and co-workers come to rely on you for?
• What have the people in your life naturally come to you for?
• How have the people in your life utilised you? Who have you been for them?
• Have people come to you because they needed a listener, or needed to solve a problem?
• Have people come to you to inspire creative ideas or model successful risk-taking?

Back when I worked in hospitality, my co-workers included aspiring talent of all kinds: actors, singers, clothing designers, would-be restaurateurs, electricians, students, musicians and so on.

What we had in common was that we were all stopping here only temporarily, as we aimed for other things.

Invariable, at some time or another, every one of my colleagues sat me down and asked me to help as each orchestrated plans to achieved desired goals. Even back then, I was always helping others see the forest instead of the trees.

I always wondered, “Why me?” Why do people ask me to help when they are trying to reach a goal?

It’s only in hindsight that I understand that I was the guide for these people, someone who ushered them toward their desires.

Even further back in my life, I had been in a support group for students at University and would find myself doing the same thing for them.

This also carried over to the oncology ward when I was living my life with cancer.

To all these people, I was not so much a ‘fellow bar manager’, ‘aspiring coach’, or even ‘enforcer of fun, support and guidance in the oncology department’, they saw me as a guide to their goals and dreams,

My natural path – my lucrative purpose – was being laid even then.

Marlo Morgan’s ‘Mutant Message Down Under” describes an Aboriginal tribe in the outback of Australia whose members are named not by a given name and surname as Westerners traditionally use.

Instead, people are designated by the function they serve in the tribe: memory keeper, peacemaker, cook, medicine man, kin to birds, female healer, and the elder.

Each person’s role was who he or she was.

A name changed only when the people developed a new role, and when that new purpose for that person emerged, the individual celebrated a birthday.

If we all honoured and valued ourselves in this way, ours would be a very different world.

Now it’s your turn to approach your first light switch moment to your lucrative purpose.

‘LYBL Story’ – Greg

Who are you really?

Greg, who works in the biotech field, recently shared his story at a seminar of mine.

Upon recognising how people used him and how he got the most satisfaction out of his life and work, Greg started telling people he was a master motivator.

He stopped using his job title or any other label that described what he ‘did’.

Just before making this discovery of his innate purpose, Greg had become dissatisfied at his job and started looking for a new position.

However, once he put his finger on his purpose, he pulled back the effort on his job search because he had a feeling that if he focused on the discovery, the perfect job would find him. (Smart Guy!).

Greg altered the emphasis of his efforts at his current job so that what he did centred primarily around being a motivator of others.

One day, he went to an industry golf event.

Asked by one of the players in his tournament what he did, he told the man he was a master motivator.

As it turned out, his golf partner was the director of another company.

This man was so impressed with the positive energy coming from Greg that he offered him a chance at the perfect job before the round was over.

Greg did indeed get the job doing more of what he loved for a lot more money than he was making before – all because he identified his lucrative purpose.