My resume was blank; I’d wiped the whole thing clean; all the blood, sweat and tears – whoosh. Time for something radically different – no more same ‘ole corporate blah blah blah. Did not expect how much it would freak me out … all that white space. Been living that traditional a good long while.
Crazy; the LinkedIN jobs notices I get that “might interest me” really – REALLY don’t. They make me grimace. My own darn fault – my profile being chock full of a technical, practical and pragmatic career; stuff I’m good at, years spent perfecting, but hope to never, ever have to do again. It’s time to shake it up. Enter my new Mentor. I asked for her help to refresh and revamp how I present myself professionally.
Not an easy request for me to make; perhaps not for most folks. Who relishes that kind of exposure? My lizard brain, as Seth Godin calls it, was twitching.
Yet, I’d finally found a Mentor I liked and respected; one who genuinely wants to know me, who will advise me to reach MY goals and objectives, not her version of success. She read my resume – “This isn’t you!” SO RIGHT. It’s NOT me. It’s the packaged me, made to be acceptable at our company, in my industry; to fit into a neat little bundle with all the right buzz words – SO dang boring that I want to bang my head on the wall.
So my resume was blank. Time to take a risk. Tell the world what I really want to do, offer up my real self. Oh yeah; the lizard brain isn’t just twitching, it’s throbbing.
“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.” – Joseph Campbell; The Power of Myth
Follow my bliss. Can I make any money to blissfully support myself? Hard to ditch the practical when it’s served me so well. I’ve got a great new book to help me build my meditation muscles: Comfortable With Uncertainty, by Pema Chodron. She’s teaching me the importance of the middle: ”Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.” Pema encourages us to “acknowledge our aversions and our cravings” to “become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to fortify our cocoon.” If we don’t judge what comes up, she says “Out of nowhere, we stop struggling and relax.” Tradition and fitting-in definitely fortify my cocoon! Time to take off the mask.
Stepping out of my comfort zone is scary and exciting all at once. Reinvention ideas are coming – they’re not conventional. I’m thrilled and delighted, inspired – AND terrified, anxious and shy. I’ll sit with these feelings; both spectrums – no judgement. I’m right where I need to be.
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“The soul has no room in which to present itself if we continually fill all the gaps with bogus activities.” – Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
