subject: Your Dream Job - Are You Looking In The Right Place? [print this page] What is your dream job?You may have a general idea or perhaps a particular ideal in mind. It could be that you've experienced it at some point in your career and now it has slipped away. Like most of us, you are striving to turn the dream into reality.We grow up with the impression that somewhere there is the ideal job. The ideal exists in our minds-eye as our vocation - a square hole for our square peg. Find that ideal and we're home and dry!So we search for our vocation, believing it to be out there somewhere. The possibilities that are available are a matter of chance - fluctuations in the economy open and deny options by the law of supply and demand. The period in history also dictates what is available - if you feel your vocation is a stage-coach driver or a court jester then you are a couple of centuries too late!The search can be frustrating - all holes seem to be round ones - and many folk never find the supposed ideal. They either dream on or they give up. But all is not lost - we can take a different view.What if our vocation is not 'out there' but already within us? What if the code is already available and just needs deciphering? This is the viewpoint of Parker J Palmer in his excellent book 'Let Your Life Speak':"Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice 'out there' calling me to be something I'm not. It comes from a voice 'in here' calling me to be the person I was born to be"To hear that inner voice we need to listen. It was louder when we were children - this is because our natural giftedness, as Palmer calls it, was suppressed as we got older. Now is the opportunity to tune in again and increase the volume.Here are some clues to help you tune in:1. What were you naturally drawn to as a child?2. Now as an adult what do you find easy to do that others don't?3. What is so easy that you don't even think of it as a strength?4. What nourishes and energises you?5. What brings you genuine joy?6. What are you faking that is not really you?7. What is it that you give to others that enriches you at the same time?You were not born to fit some ideal that you think you ought to be. You are here to be your true self so you can express your uniqueness and be of real service in the world.
Your Dream Job - Are You Looking In The Right Place?
