I am back with another little excerpt from one of my favorite books, "Visualizing is Realizing" by Mark Victor Hanson. There is a section of the book that talks about "Visualizing the Right Livelihood". In modern language this would be translated as "Visualizing the Right Career For You".
Mark shares that most of us live in this limited reality and whether we realize it or not, we have been programmed to think a certain way, and to accept certain limitations on our life. We see this over and over again in the way people live.
For example, when you reach a certain age you might start hearing friends and family say things like "Oh, once you hit 40, you can expect things to start breaking down!" and because we've heard these types of statements all our life, we simply accept it.
Of course, there is a truth in acknowledging that whatever we allow into our lives will impact it one way or another but from the perspective of your career, Mark talks about how many of us simply accept that certain things are so because someone told us they were.
He goes on to share that you can't have faith for something that you can't see. So, if you are in the prison called "Limited Reality", and you don't know you're in prison, then you don't even try to break out. It's only when you get a vision for something that is outside of the prison that you have the faith to believe for it and finally make a break for it.
There are careers that are here today that didn't even exist 20 or 30 years ago. Now that you see them, you're like, "Hey, that's what I want to do". You now have a vision for it because you've seen it.
It's the same thing with creating the successful life or the successful career that you want.
You have to have some sense that it is available to you, that it can be done, and then you will move towards it.
One of the quotes that he shared that really resonated with me was a quote by Emerson. It says "Do the thing and then you have the power". If we've been told, "Hey, after age 40, you can't do a certain thing, or if you don't have this degree or this credential, you can't do a certain thing", most of the time we hold ourselves back and don't even try.
For those of you who are contemplating stepping out to start a business, even a small side business, you may be holding yourself back because you've been told, "Oh, that's not secure. That's a risky move. You can't put your family on the line by going out and trying to start a business."
In today's environment, there is no such thing as job security. In fact, risk can arguably be defined as having ONLY one job with one income, and then one day going into that job and having someone tell you, "Hey, we no longer need you".
Statistics have shown that there are a large number of people in jobs that they dislike, or or even hate. Our life is made up of seconds, and those seconds are ticking by every single day.
In essence, what you are doing when you stay at a job that you hate is creating a life that you hate. And make no mistake, when you hate the eight hours you spend on a job, that's going to trickle over into the other 16 that you're not at the job.
You really shouldn't spend any energy in any job that you absolutely hate. If nothing else, try to move out into a job that you hate a little bit less because that's a step in the right direction.
You're never going to experience the type of life that you want if you're always holding yourself back, so visualize that right livelihood, visualize that right career, visualize the type of work that you think might bring you some level of joy or at least get you out of hate-mode and start moving in that direction!
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