That feeling in your gut? It matters...
I had the great pleasure of speaking at SOBCon in Chicago last weekend. Amazing event. 150 people in a room, working hard to help each other. The sense of trust, integrity and willingness to give was unlike any other conference setting I've experienced.
Toward the end of my presentation, someone asked me how I deal with fear.
A question that led me to then spontaneously co-opt the panel I moderated immediately after my talk to dig into the issue of fear and how it relates to aligning what you do with who you are. On that panel, among others, was my friend Wendy Piersall. In the three years I've known her, she's gone from solo-blogger to blog network CEO to online marketer, now working an hour a day and earning what her past-life full-time j.o.b. gave her.
At one point, Wendy said something that resonated deeply...
She was talking about how she swings from being massively public and conversational to relative introversion. "Over the years," she said, "I realized I don't have to be one or the other. I've learned to trust the pendulum."
Pendulum. Whaaa?
What she was talking about was that internal compass that says go big, go small, chatter or shut up, push hard or chill.
Most of us turn away from the our internal pendulums, giving in, instead, to the pull to follow whatever action, response or expected behavioral convention is laid out by the communities we seek to thrive within.
Kinda sad. Because we'd all be a lot better off if we spent more time opening to the swing of, then trusting our own pendulums...rather than waiting for the supposed wisdom of the collective pendulum to keep us trudging down a middle path...
Then wondering how the hell we got HERE when we wanted to end up THERE?!
So, what's YOUR pendulum telling YOU?
And, do you trust it?
________Awakened Shout Outs___________
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Jonathan Fields is the author of Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love. He writes and speaks on meaningful work, being a lifestyle entrepreneur and creativity at JonathanFields.com and is a twitter heavy-user at @jonathanfields
