Loving the Job You Hate

Insights from I could do anything if I only knew what it was – Barbara Sher

Chapter Four: The Sure Thing

I wonder how many creative people feel stuck in jobs that feel dull to them, but the job pays the bills and so they won’t quit even though they dream about it?

This chapter of Barbara Sher’s book deals with responsibility versus recklessness, a conflict that I know I experience, and I’m sure other people do too. For most people, I’m sure the idea of just ‘going off’ and doing whatever you want to do and ignoring the possible consequences is terrifying. But what if I can’t pay the rent? What if I go broke? How will I look after my children? I did this ‘going off’ thing a few times in my early twenties, but I didn’t have a family then so now I can say I was young and naive.

So, it’s a toss up between the job you do now and the dream job you would love to do. Given that your current job gives benefits such as security and remuneration, its not surprising that taking the alternative route would feel like stepping into an abyss. But, Barbara says, “You will find that the difference between your life when you’re just marking time and your life when you’re involved with a personal, beloved dream is astonishing.”

So, what to do? We know that following a dream would be amazing, but we have to be practical, responsible and buckle down and keep doing whatever is best for the family right?

Issues of excessive responsibility being a manifestation of a childhood fear or trauma aside, (Barbara discusses this problem in the same chapter) one of the main problems according to Barbara is how we perceive our jobs. Specifically, its an either/or approach – I can do this job OR I can ‘go off’ and do my dream work. She writes, “we try to pretend the practical obstacles are so great that its much to risky to move”. It’s this term ‘go off’ that hooks people. It’s as though there is some common understanding that to do what you love means to abandon everything you do now and relentlessly pursue a new lifestyle, go on an adventure. The adventure sounds great, but it turns into a daydream instead of real life because its just too scary to get started.

Lets say you did quit your job and decide to do your dream for the rest of your life. Are you ready for it? If you want to be a writer, and you quit your job today and then sat down in front of a blank computer screen, or a blank piece of paper how would you feel? What if you quit your job today and sat down in front of a blank canvas, determined that from now on you will be an artist? Would you immediately leap into productivity, create a masterpiece and sell it for a good sum of money? Probably not, you would be unprepared.

So what Barbara explains is that we do have to get started on our dream jobs now but quit fooling ourselves into thinking that our current job is in the way. The either/or relationship is in our own minds, its not really true. In actual fact the current job will help us, by providing the cash flow and security that is needed to keep our current lifestyle on the rails while we transition to the new one. She says “‘Now’ is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream. You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.” “When you quit blaming your job you can get started right away taking real steps that will clear things up for you.”

With this realisation, we can actually start to love the jobs we hate because they give us the means to support the transition to the work we would most like to do. We don’t have to do the job forever, but we don’t have to blame the job either.

Imagine you worked on your dream for just two hours a day, from 6am until 8am or during a lunch break, or you might work in a job where you just have to turn up in case something happens, like a night-shift job in a call centre perhaps. What kinds of things could you do during those couple of hours that would transition your life towards your dream?

You could…

1. write a few pages of a book
2. paint
3. read or study
4. make new contacts and networks
5. make sales calls
6. invent something
7. tend to a vegetable garden
8. experiment with new recipes

I sure you can think of whatever it is that you could do that would get you ready for your next adventure.

But what if you really don’t have a spare two hours a day, one hour a day, even thirty minutes a day? Some people are so busy doing things for everyone else that they don’t have time for themselves. If your family life is like one long job, think about it – would your family and friends be reasonable if you asked them to give you some time, or are you using them as an excuse? Can you find the time by not doing one of the things you do now? What if you could stop doing the cooking or cleaning or groceries or ironing or gardening, or church committee and let someone else handle that task? And then spend the time that you were spending on the task to do the things that you need to do in order to transition to your dream?

This chapter, along with the chapter on The Scanner Personality influenced me to start this blog. So I can attest to the fact that the book has been thought provoking. I haven’t ‘gone off’ to write the blog, I am working on it a little each day. By no means is this a new idea, but it is one we tend to forget! So reader, if you have a dream of how you would like to spend your 9-5, give it a go from 6-8 and see your life transform before your eyes.

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