Posts Tagged ‘career coach’

Your Divine Assignment: Doing the Work You Love

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Dearest Pinkies, Harvard lawyer -turned writer/career coach/ workshop leader Tama J. Kieves is back with probably some of the most inspiring words we’ve ever read on Owning Pink. We are, as ever, profoundly grateful for Tama’s generosity in sharing her wisdom and insights with the Pink Posse. Enjoy, Pinkies, and may you say YES to your own Divine Assignment, whatever it may be.

When I had my career melt-down and fled the life of being an elite-law-firm-corporate-lawyer, (an honors graduate of Harvard Law School), I thought I was changing careers. I had no idea I was changing my definition of the divine. I was leaving behind the Big Removed Guy in the sky, more concerned with the next life than the wonder of this one. In doing the work I love, I discovered a fresh astonishing companion, one who hid a thousand diamonds in my veins, and urged me to break free of every limitation, trust the path of love, and realize my own power to create.

I had always wanted to be a writer. But I chose a legal career because I was being “practical.” No career counselor had ever realized I wasn’t being practical: I was being blasphemous, presumptuous, and small-minded. I was deciding that the Universe could not support my innate longing, and that joy, the trademark of spirit, was flimsy and perilous. No one ever suggested that my thoughts created my experience of reality: and that because I believed in a harsh and denying world, I would encounter it. People who held fast to limitations congratulated me on my decision to deny my sacred longings.

That’s why none of the typical career advice ever worked in my unfolding journey. Many career experts assume a certain world into which you plug your identifiable talents. But in my career transformation, I discovered that if I followed my “unrealistic” desires, they created a new world. I didn’t need a sharp direction. I needed connection, connection to the absolute knowing that I was beloved and would be inspired. My focus wasn’t sorting through aptitudes. My real work was letting go of false assumptions and hobbling beliefs.

Today, as a leading career coach, I see so many who ache to jump into a radical new expression of themselves, yet they approach it in a conventional way. But Spirit is not an old-school career counselor with a desk job. This infinite presence beckons you to step into an experience that is beyond career assessments, industry standards, and blunt approaches, especially now in cutting-edge times. So I’d like to offer you five areas of focus based on my book, This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love, that have helped thousands of individuals to brave this spiritual path of reclaiming their true identity and creating the life of their dreams.

1. It Takes an Intermission to Find a Mission

You may want to flip from one crazy all-consuming life into your next roiling self-expression. But first you need space: to inhabit your spiritual wholeness once again. I don’t care how much you can multi-task. You’re not going to hear an inspired voice within you with a cell phone in one hand, a palm pilot in the other, while driving your kids to soccer and making grocery lists in your head. Most of us have to find time before we can find ourselves.

When I left my legal practice, I consciously eviscerated my expenses, spent some of my meager retirement money, and got a “drop-out job” waiting tables to help pay bills. My ego wrestled with this transition. But my Spirit assured me that “it’s never a step down to step ahead.”  I needed this deliberate time to stop the speeding, reckless train from roaring in the wrong direction and to listen to what was underneath the wheels. I’ve had clients create this sacred space while still in their jobs. They commit to less hours or diminished responsibilities. They focus on making “spirit time” a priority: time to walk, journal, meditate, or pray. Quiet time is nectar for translucent inner guidance.

 

2. Honoring Your Crazy Love

Many of my clients squirm when I suggest they “usher in the exiled love,” do the things that feel ridiculously fun and delicious. They want to “get serious” about finding their contribution or starting their business. But a loving Universe does not ask us to deny our exultation and call that responsibility. We have the responsibility to tap our excitement and utilize this renewable resource.

Remember, you’re not looking for a career answer. You’re looking for aliveness. You’re seeking to fall in love. It doesn’t matter if you can’t see how you’ll make money by collecting abalone shells or learning ancient Taoist wisdom. What you love has energy, and that energy will propel you into new experiences, insights, abilities, and expressions.

I began my inspired career journey by writing poetry, begrudgingly and hopelessly, I admit. My practical mind whined and began indexing tropical climates for homelessness. But writing poetry led me to write an intimate book about career transition, and that led to teaching workshops throughout the country, coaching people individually, and starting a worldwide organization. This is a dynamic path. Where you start off, is not where you end up. Begin by activating the secret power of your crazy love.

3. Trade in Your Label for a Ticket

It’s hard to be in transition. It feels like standing naked at a cocktail party. “So what do you do?” strangers ask. You may want to say, “Journal, freak out, and read self-help books. You?” The culture may demand definition, but your soul craves expansion. Do not rush your courageous adventure. You are as undefined as you are unlimited.

When I first left my career, I so much wanted to force clarity. I wanted a business card, a website, an identity, and just to be done with the muddy mystery of tracking my true self. But the spiritual life is one of answering everything on every level, not the grab-and-go quick-fixes of the ego.

I finally had to see my vulnerability as a commitment to a bigger life. In This Time I Dance! I write, “I came to the realization that, while I no longer had a label, I did have a ticket, a ticket to anywhere I wanted to go with my life. I didn’t just have a blank hole on my resume. I had a blank canvas. I could say yes to any desire, dance partner, sunbeam, hope, heartthrob, divine invitation, or adventure that crossed my path. Something would come. And meanwhile, I stood in an open field with all the stars above my head and my brazen arms wide open, unconditional. I knew I stood in exactly the right place where magic could find me.”

 

4. Only the Tender can Breed the Fierce

The best thing about this journey is that you will have to stop abusing yourself and start nurturing yourself instead. It’s not possible to see yourself as a worthless speck of lint on the good wool suit of humanity. You are someone with the most amazing contribution to make. You will have to dare to see yourself as sublimely blessed and sufficient.

All my life, I’d thrown spitballs at my weakness. I’d always thought that inflicting massive amounts of pain upon myself was a good thing, a motivating force instead of a paralyzing one. But the esteemed psychologist Abraham Maslow taught something I always remember: “All creativity comes from safety.” It’s true. You cannot hear an inspired voice while underestimating yourself. True genius lives inside you. But it only grows in the soil of self-allegiance.

Self-love is our responsibility, if we want to offer our gifts in the world. A most loving Universe can only express itself through you when you treat yourself, the vessel, with exquisite care. Everything you give this world will come from everything you give yourself.

5. Just Start Dancing and the Band Will Find You

There is no right way or wrong way to bring your love into the world.  The creative mind has infinite ways to accomplish the good. God is not limited to the expert advice of the day or how things have worked in the past. The Universe doesn’t conform to the statistics of a reportable, static reality. You are in a moving, divine, loving place where atoms take their lead from you. The great philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The power that resides in him is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

I often remind my students, “You can’t plan an inspired life.” You will never know the way, but the way knows the way. Thankfully, an infinite loving intelligence is not confined to the cramped realities of our logic. Love has a way of blowing your mind. Your heart knows a small step to take in this very moment. That’s all you need. Practice your craft or volunteer your services now.  Experience gives you power and power attracts opportunities. The world has a great need for your gifts, greater than ever before. Put your love in action and it will go where it needs to go.

Remember, you are not alone. You have been given these desires for a reason. Your love and work is needed here. That’s why you’ve received this assignment. Your dance partner has asked you to dance. I hope you say yes, and realize just how loved you are in your lifetime by that outrageously affirming, infinitely creative astonishing companion.

***

Tama J. Kieves is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School who left her practice with a large corporate law firm to write and to embolden others to live their most fulfilling lives. She is the bestselling author of THIS TIME I DANCE! Creating the Work You Love and is a sought-after speaker and career coach who has helped thousands world-wide to discover and live their true work in the world. Visit her at www.ThisTimeIDance.com and sign up for free inspiration and support through her monthly e-newsletter. Want to find your calling? Get Tama’s Free Report right now on “Finding Your Calling” at www.ThisTimeIDance.com.

Tama J. Kieves
©2009. All rights reserved

 

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Posted in Finding Mojo, Guest Pinkies, Owning Creativity, Owning Joy, Owning Love, Owning Spirituality, Owning Success, Owning Surrender, Owning You, Owning Your Intuition, Personal Empowerment | 8 Comments »

Owning Your Dreams: Thoughts On Believing In Yourself From Tama Kieves

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

11259-Pink-Pig-Flying

Hello Pinkies,
We are thrilled and honored to welcome Tama J. Kieves, who is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School who left her practice with a large corporate law firm to write and to embolden others to live their most fulfilling lives. She is the bestselling author of THIS TIME I DANCE! Creating the Work You Love and is a sought-after speaker and career coach who has helped thousands world-wide to discover and live their creative dreams. Wohoo, yes please. Big love and thanks to Tama. Enjoy, Pinkies!

I am committed to allowing myself to receive more freaking goodness than I can imagine. To start with, I am going to know that, independent of anyone else’s predictions or convictions, my life can be fantastic. I am going to stop calling negativity and limitation “realism.” I’m going to just start calling them negativity and limitation.

We have all bought into the superstition that goodness is a soap bubble about to burst. But I challenge you to think of sadness and strain as a bubble, too, a bubble that can burst as easily. It all depends on where you put your focus, what you call real, which altar you light your candles on.

Let me tell you a personal story. Years ago, to support the release of my first book This Time I Dance! Creating the Work you Love, I put myself on the road.  It was a brave move, investing money in myself, and speaking to practically any group that had cheese and crackers.  At the first event of my “tour,” I spoke to a high-powered women’s business group. They loved me and I did cartwheels inside.

That afternoon, still cartwheeling, I walked into a Cost Plus World Market, one of those stores that sell ethnic home accessories, fun art, and  things you really don’t need, but suddenly have to have.  I sashayed down the aisles, boogie author, she who had just nailed her first real talk on this adventure. I picked up a piggy bank, a leather olive green pig with red and purple wings. “When pigs fly,” I think to myself and grin. My journey of writing and launching the book has seemed like realizing the impossible. I hold the little crafted object. I should get this, I think, to symbolize shattering the customary, rising above the gravitational pull of doubt and fear.

“Yeah, but you know how things go,” another inner voice pipes up. It’s just the beginning of your trip. You don’t know how the rest of the events will turn out. You could be disappointed and then you’ll feel silly with your triumphant, hopeful totem here.” The voice throws me a bone.  “Let’s wait and see how things turn out,” it says. It’s my rational voice, the one that controls the checkbook, buys the sale flowers at the florist, and never orders a brownie with her tea. I put the pig back down.

That night I did a book signing that broke my heart. So few people came.  Then a man with long stringy gray hair interrupted my reading with wandering political rampages and very private jokes, every author’s nightmare rite of passage. The crowd, or more accurately, the handful, stared at me helplessly. I looked at the empty chairs, and thought about how much plane fare, hotel, and other “manifestations of faith,” this trip would cost me. I felt like a piñata, clubbed until the sweetness fell out of me.  “Good thing you didn’t get that silly triumphant pig,” said the voice inside. Now I felt ashamed. I cringed at the thought of having believed in myself, believing everything would turn out just right, believing I was now finally on that roll I’d always dreamed about.

Today, years later, I think I should have bought the pig. I should have bought my celebration totem, because in that moment I felt alive and I believed–I knew something true deep in my bones. The following disappointment didn’t change the truth of the original dazzling moment, until I let it. When I said, let’s wait and see, I turned my power over to outside circumstances. That “wait and see” was an admission that I could change my mind about myself, about what had already transpired inside me, about my ultimate path and the navigational skills of my Infinitely Loving God. That “wait and see” was a nod to the bitter pills, darkness and difficulties I had trained myself to expect. But more than that, it was also a vote to make moments of pain carry more weight than moments of joy and realization.

“I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had in my life,” a client said to me recently, giddiness in her voice. Her business is beginning to take off and she feels she is starring in a new movie, one in which she’s the lucky, leading lady. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she says. And I’m struck by how we do this to ourselves. We tell ourselves that life can’t be that good. It has to stop. It has to end. What goes up, must come down. “We are meant to grow and expand,” I tell her. It is our evolutionary instinct to strengthen, blossom, and develop heightened capacities. I share a quote with her from Esther and Jerry Hicks: “The better it gets, the better it gets.” She agrees to practice opening to her full expression, startlingly fabulous though it may be.

It’s considered prudence to prepare for rainy days and challenges. But we don’t do much to prepare for joy. Instead when love or abundance comes to our house, we think it’s a fleeting visitor, a lost butterfly, a hoax, or at best, a reprieve from the gray bulldozer of reality. But I invite you to consider that when you’re in your joy, you’re in your sane mind, your big mind, the part of you that is connected to a wholly alive stream. Everything else is the miscalculation. Just because negativity is familiar, doesn’t mean it’s significant. When you’re in your joy, you are more intelligent, resourceful, and present to possibilities.  It’s who you really are. Circumstances that follow may tempt you to forget your passion and your knowing. But it’s the disillusionment—that’s really the illusion.

For me, the path of being self-employed, having a dream and moving it into the world in a big way, has been one of constantly remembering a sweeter reality, no matter what conditions look like. The circumstances fluctuate, but my good does not.  I’m always on the road to even more grace. There are so many fantastic opportunities that are waiting to come into my life right now the moment I allow myself to fully accept my value and welcome them.  I’m not denying reality. I’m claiming it.

Yes, it’s easier to assume doom. We fit in. We’d probably even be seen as thoughtful, prophetic, and on the money. But fitting in is the booby prize. It’s not the point of this life. We’re here to claim our divine potential, raise the bar, break through old beliefs and prejudices, and allow the Creative Force of Love and Intelligence to have its reckless, abundant, glorious way with us. Our happiness can save the planet. Our laughter can coax the trees to grow, the rains to fall, and the stars to shine. We can do more good with joy than we could ever do with pain.  We are here to tap our own magnificent innate powers, shine, boogie, rock on and show each other what’s possible in this lifetime.

Of course there is suffering and pain in the world. But these are the places where we, the members of humanity, haven’t gotten it right yet. Why would we make these the standard of reality, if it’s not a reality we wish to create? By the way, I am not saying it’s wrong to feel pain. It’s a place we all explore, on our way to healing and joy.

Good things are knocking at your door right now. Open the door.  Allow yourself to believe that you can have the dream you desire. Take in the abundance wherever you are and allow more to shower upon you, with your arms wide open for as long as you can. It’s never too much for you to handle. You were designed to blossom.  Practice allowing yourself to be loved just as the Sufi poet Hafiz describes: “And the sun and the moon sometimes argue over who gets to tuck me in at night. If you think I’m having more fun than anyone else on the planet, you are absolutely correct.”

I urge you to try on a new sense of realism. When good things happen to you, don’t wait for the other shoe to drop. Expect something even better now.  You’re  just revving up. Remember, you’re in your power when you’re in your joy. I’d say the shoe on the ground—is about to fly.

With my love and blessings,

Tama J. Kieves

Visit Tama at www.ThisTimeIDance and sign up for free inspiration and support through her monthly e-newsletter. Want to find your calling? Get Tama’s Free Report right now on “Finding Your Calling” at www. ThisTimeIDance.com.

©2008-2009. Tama J. Kieves. All rights reserved.

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