Back to the Future

In her 20’s all one of my dearest friends wanted in life was to drink beer and work in a record store. Forty years later, she’s a serious coffee aficionado who produces high-end sound equipment for the music industry. Her path was circuitous. It may have felt random and aimless at times from outside observers and even to her. Yet swap out beer for coffee and records for mixing boards and her vision has been achieved.

Barbie was new on the market when I was young and infiltrated the playtime of many girls my age. I was never into the dolls but my sister (who always got the better presents) had Barbie’s dream house, which completely captured my imagination. I spent hours arranging the furniture, creating artwork for the walls, making carpets for the floor, and creating a cool space for the dolls I never played with to live their imaginary lives in. Today, I create hospitable environments for people to be comfortable to do good work.

Buried back in our childhoods are the bones of our true nature. We start school where, in most institutions, imagination is valued within parameters that can be tested and measured. In these environments, we become dissociated from the activities that brought us joy, where we naturally experienced a flow state that we now have to work at to get to. The further we advance on academic and career tracks, the further removed we become from those early experiences.

We must let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. – Joseph Campbell

Midlife is a time to invite our inner archeologist on a dig – an adventure back in time to retrieve those parts of our true nature that we left behind. These were early indicators of our natural gifts and talents. What if we nurtured those things in our children rather than spending significant time and resources for special help in the things they don’t and may never do well? It’s not too late to go back and nurture them in yourself now.

In his TedTalk, Raising Kids to be Entrepreneurs, Cameron Herrold tells of being tutored in French, a subject he knew we would never be good at. Why, he wondered, didn’t anyone coach him in public speaking? He enjoyed it, was pretty good at it, and, by the way, it’s how he makes a significant part of his living today.

Reclaiming our early creativity, joy, and passions and integrating them back into our lives is some of the work of the second half of life. A key to career change can often be found in retrieving these early experiences. Taking time to explore them can be infinitely more useful than spending all of your time on LinkedIn and job sites.

• What did you love to do as a child?
• What activities did you lose yourself in, where it didn’t matter if you were alone or with others, where you lost all track of time?
• What did it feel like? Describe the environment. What were the physical sensations? Be as specific as you can.
• What are the qualities from that experience that you bring into what you most love about your work/service today? What is missing that you want more of?
• What is the future you can imagine that incorporates more of those images, sensations, and feelings?

A participant from the last Women at the Well retreat is taking some time off “between engagements” and exploring some of these questions. When asked if she’s found a job yet, she replies: “No, I’m not finished coloring yet.”

One Response to “Back to the Future”

1. Andra Mitchell says:

   May 29, 2015 at 8:28 am

   Thank you my friend. It is all to easy to miss a dream come true since it doesn’t look exactly the same. Actually the manifestation is usually better. Go figure. Thanks for the reminder

   Reply