What Getting My Dream Job Taught Me
I’ve spent fourteen years of my life working in an industry I fell into when I was a student. I spent a good amount of that time daydreaming about another career. Despite all my frustration, it was hard for me to take action and figure out a real plan to get where I wanted to be.
But I eventually did, and here’s what happened:
I went from the coffee and service industry to the film industry. I had a few years of experience in video making and production at that point, and I found an internship as a production assistant in a production company.
I had big hopes that it was going to be everything I ever wanted it to be. Finally I was going to learn how to make movies! This was a dream coming true!
For years I told myself “My life would be so much better if I could just get into the film industry. That’s all I want!”. I honestly thought I would automatically be happy if I could switch career and change my title. Now I laugh writing this… it’s not what happened at all! After spending my life resenting my career, getting my dream job didn’t fix everything that was “wrong” in my life as I hoped it would.
Instead, it highlighted all of the issues I needed to fix within myself to find inner peace and showed me that I needed to stop relying on my external circumstances to fulfill me.
Inner peace... inner, peace...oh I get it now! It has to come from within! From me! Not from an external source, eureka!
After coming to this realisation, things got hard, but I decided to show up and take responsibility for myself, my life, my happiness, and my career. Yes, that’s a lot to handle at once, but it was necessary.
So I did all the things I needed to do to figure out how to find inner peace: I sat down, hit pause, and took a long look at my dreams and ambitions. What happened is that I started to do a lot more inner work, such as healing my childhood wounds, setting boundaries and learning to respect them, learning to become financially responsible... but most of all, what came out of it was the realisation that I need to find alignment and fulfilment in my every day life and in everything I do. I have to respect myself and my truth.
For the past ten years I’ve been coming up with business ideas and trying to go freelance with different projects. All the while always working for someone else’s project, someone else’s dream. I realised that all this time, I was trying to build my own project, my own dream, but every time I started something, I gave up before I could succeed.
I eventually realized that what I want is to be of service. I want to help people, guide them, and teach. It’s a part of me that was buried under a pile of low self-esteem and shame, but after all this digging and healing, I found that missing part. And because what’s helped me the most over the years was hearing other people’s stories of overcoming challenges and finding their path, I chose to help by telling stories and sharing my experience, hoping I can inspire someone else. And if not, I’m actually having the time of my life learning how to write and express myself, so it’s all good!
Becoming a coach, a speaker, a writer, a healer was always the end game. I just didn’t see it for a long time because I was in too much pain. I truly believe that every hardship I had in my life lead me to this moment, this path. We are shaped by our experiences, but most of all, we are shaped by the way we choose to interepret and react to those experiences. I took the pain and turned it into something good and fulfilling for myself. Looking back, I connected the dots, just like Steve Jobs told me I would. (I mean… told us)
What are the dots you can connect in your life to figure out your next chapter? What area of your life are you hiding under a rock because it’s too painful? Growth pain hurts, but what comes out on the other side, can be the next chapter of your life, and maybe the best one yet.
