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In the kitchen it's fun to experiment with homemade recipes.
Have you ever pretended to be a master chef and created a meal
that's never been done before? With a hodge-podge of leftovers
and other ingredients you may have designed your own "one-of-a-kind"
meal. The cookbook aside, you delved beyond the suggested options,
and made up a whole new "possibility." A possibility
is defined as: "Capable of existing or being true; capable
of happening or being accomplished. Potential." In other
words, a possibility is not found on a list of available "options."
Unlike options, possibilities do not exist until we bring them
into being. This same creative potential can be applied to the
realm of "career." When planning your future, developing
or changing your career path, it helps to know whether you are
choosing between options available or creating whole new possibilities.
In choosing your career, you may have started with suggested
options described by the recipe book of careers (i.e., advice
from friends, family, and the high school counselor). If so,
now you have the chance to add some spices. Think of it as customizing
your career to taste. Yes, you get to make up your own recipe.
If you think of life as an extended gourmet meal, your career
is one of the main courses. You have the choice to eat at the
cafeteria or be your own chef. More poetically put, are you up
to living your life as a "possibility," or are you searching
for the best existing "option?" Imagine yourself at 95 years
old and looking back on your life. Will you want to say; "My
life was a personal creation, a self-expression of me."
Or, will you say, "I lived my life according to recipe,
I did what I was supposed to." George Bernard Shaw summed
up people who live as a possibility, "The people who get
on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances
they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." Choosing
to live in the realm of possibility is like entering a new mental
territory--you get to make up your life.
Living your life as a possibility is daring, it questions
the premise that if you look long and hard enough you'll find
your answers out there. Margaret Wheatley, a biologist who studies
how life organizes itself, adapts, and evolves finds that in
nature everything is in a constant process of discovery and creation.
No matter how much we analyze and plan, we are always surprised
by new possibilities. Life plays with us! Each new possibility
spawns more possibilities, where life infinitely seeks new relationships
to support its diversity. The evolution of World Wide Web is
a perfect example of this process, a brand new possibility that
was not predicted or planned. Over the last century who would
have guessed that technology would leaped from the invention
of the telegraph to telephone, transistor to computer, networks
of computers to the Web, to yet more possibilities that will
take us by surprise.
The same magic happens in the realm of people relationships.
Diverse people come together at work to collaborate on a project
and new ideas are born that would have not happened otherwise.
New friends are made; a support network of people is brought
into being. Wheatley states, "Life is creative. It makes
it up as it goes along, changing the rules even. Life explores
all sorts of combinations, content to find anything that works
. . . this world of wild exploration is one which tinkers itself
into existence." She also finds that our human species is
often at odds with this natural tendency to tinker. Many people
find they are stuck in a rut, in a career that is appears to
be safe and secure, leaving no chance for surprises. We fear
getting things wrong and conform to what we already know. Says
Wheatley, "Many of us have created lives that give very
little support for experimentation. We believe that answers already
exist out there, independent of us. What if we invested more
time and attention to our own experimentation? We could focus
our efforts on discovering solutions that worked uniquely for
us."
Your career path is the best place to become a "possibility"
for something. If you see yourself as a part of nature's design,
constantly experimenting and seeking new possibilities, can there
really be a perfect career waiting for you? For instance, was
the Internet already there, waiting to happen, or was it invented?
Were your best friends there waiting to be found or did you build
those relationships over time? Look into your own life. What
accomplishments are you most proud of, were they ready-made or
something you dreamed up? The search for a heavenly job somewhere
over the rainbow may make you feel good about yourself, but rarely
produces results. Rumi, a 12th Century poet versed: "I've
lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons. Knocking
on the door, it opens. I've been knocking from the inside."
Possibilities are not found--they are made.
Choosing your life direction doesn't have to be a big mystery.
Instead of asking, "What am I supposed to do with my life?
Will I ever "find" what I'm looking for?" Ask, "What
do I want to make out of my life that expresses me uniquely?"
When a career is seen as an "option" waiting out there, all our
energies become focused on fitting ourselves into somebody else's
shoes. There may be existing paths that look good, but will they
fit your vision of what could be? How many times have you scoured
the Sunday employment classifieds, only to be discouraged or
disenchanted? Why is that little ever seems to fit who you are
or what's important to you in those ads? Newspaper classifieds,
job databases, and headhunters all have thousands of options
for you. Choosing your career path solely from this list is like
settling for cafeteria food for the rest of your life.
There are many ways to steer your life and choose your path.
You can follow a recipe, throw yourself to fate, ask God to give
you the answers, be a leaf in the wind, try everything once,
fall into the first thing that comes along, make up something,
pick the sure thing, follow the money, and on and on. The truth
is, nobody really knows the best way to do it. "There is
only the dance," wrote T. S. Eliot, what works for someone
else may not work for you. Unfortunately, we aren't born with
an instruction manual to follow. We learn our way by experimenting,
testing our talents and investigating our passions. This "dance"
with life is more fun than searching for the "right" answer anyway.
Creating something is what makes us feel alive.
Human beings mirror Mother Nature perfectly; we love to find
new and better ways to do things. We are brilliant learners with
a fantastic imagination. The rapid emergence of our modern world
is our proof. Looking back over the millenium, to the beginning
of human history, did we know we'd end up here? Was there a master
plan we've been secretly following all along? I don't think so.
We made it all up. Our modern world was not created from a list
of available options. Imagination, human diversity, and happenstance
all came together, creating possibilities undreamed of. Today,
new possibilities are being born at a rate faster than ever before.
The key question for you is; "What do I want to add to this
mix?" You have the choice to create something that expresses
you, or wait for answers. What possibility are you willing to
become? Put on your chef's hat and cook up a gourmet career.
Whatever it is, I hope it tastes good.
Resource: For help with designing a gourmet career, check
out "
THE PATHFINDER, How to
Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and
Success," by Nicholas Lore.
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