Alignment Makes Entrepreneurs
I recently chatted with a highly successful career coach. At one point, I said that when people are on their purpose and find the kind of work that truly fulfills them, they always have ideas for their next step (and often a plethora of next steps). I’ve seen it in myself and countless others: When we discover our calling, or at least our calling for now, we have more ideas than time or resources to implement them.
The coach vehemently disagreed. She often sees people who are very talented, but have no idea where to go next in their careers. People who, like me, always know the next step are those who are more entrepreneurial than most.
A few years ago, I would have bought into that belief and may have even been flattered to be so “special”. But now I know better.
When looking for purpose, people typically allow themselves to pick the “what” as long as they see a path to the “how”. Want a new career? Great, as long as it makes money within X months, or your title looks good within Y months, or it’s on the list of otherwise acceptable paths in your milieu, or it fits within the number of months you’ve retained your career coach for. I was there, and I got stuck constantly.
That is very different from aiming to align with your true soul purpose, where you start from what makes you feel excited, curious, and alive, even if it won’t make money in the foreseeable future or doesn’t translate into a career yet. The timeline is “however long it takes”—sometimes years, depending on how connected you are to yourself and how many fears and limiting beliefs you have (in my case, not at all and a sh*t ton, respectively). It’s only when you remove the constraints of how to make something work that you can clearly see what you want to make work. And when the “what” is true to who you are, the next step of the “how” shows up.
Is it easier for more “naturally entrepreneurial” people? Maybe. But is having tons of ideas when you’re excited about what you do reserved for entrepreneurs? Is having a deep knowing about the next right step when you’re on your path a unique skill? Absolutely not. We’ve normalized being in a state of misalignment so much that even career coaches can’t see how naturally creative, entrepreneurial, and powerful we are when we’re aligned with our true purpose.
We may only know the next very small step.
We may need support or mentorship to take that step.
In extreme cases, we may have so many fears associated with that step that we mistake paralysis for not knowing.
But we know. And no highly successful career coach can convince me otherwise.
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