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Seeking a job? Just graduated? Want to move up in your career? Hoping to make a change in your life? Pay attention to words.
Here's an experiment: Look around your office, your cubicle, your home, your room, or even your car... what words are in front of you?
Bumper stickers. Inspirational quotes. Marketing slogans. Song lyrics. Poems. Greeting cards. Words surround us and most of the time we're oblivious to them. But they can be the key to achieving your goals.
So what words surround you? Are they words that inspire or words that inflame? ...Bring peace or instill fear?...Announce victory or proclaim victimization?... Invoke anger or compassion?
And perhaps most important, are they words that move you forward or words that keep you stuck?
I run creative career coaching programs that involve making miniature shrines to favorite quotes. I've used this activity to improve staff morale and communication, to inspire job-seekers to move forward in their search, to help blocked creative types get in touch with their inner selves, or simply as a fun way to spend an hour at an office retreat.
But regardless of the purpose of the activity, what's interesting is the process that unfolds as the participants work on their shrines and keep re-reading their quotes.
People smile a lot. They talk more openly about their dreams, their ideas, their futures. They seem to touch an important core in their lives: a simple, mindful moment of being aware of what's important. And they change. They commit to new beginnings, to new behaviors, even to new lives.
That does bring up one unfortunate consequence (for me) of this activity: I've had two excellent staff members quit their jobs after completing this exercise. Coincidentally, both had used Helen Keller quotes on their shrines. Each said that spending so much time studying their quote made them realize they weren't "living" it so they chose to seek opportunities that would better fit their dreams.
See.. it's hard to keep doing what you're doing if it's incongruent with your beliefs or your aspirations. You can't read an inspiring quote each day and not, at least in some small way, attempt to live it.
As I think about the quotes that have inspired me, the chicken-egg question pops up: did the quote reflect my life or did my life reflect the quote?
When I was going to bluegrass festivals back East I had a bumper sticker that read "Martin Guitars. My Grass is Blue" as testimony to both the make of my guitars and bluegrass music. I don't have the bumper sticker anymore and I also haven't been to a bluegrass festival in years. Cause/effect? Who knows.
I have a plaque on my wall with a quote from the door of the great psychologist Carl Jung's Swiss home. It reads, "Bidden or not bidden God is present." I love the thinking behind that quote: some things just are, whether we choose to believe or not.
One of my favorite quote shrines features a simple yet rather odd quote: "Take Out the Trash." It's from a wonderful movie "The Peaceful Warrior"
starring Nick Nolte. To fully appreciate the quote, you need to watch Chapter 8 on the DVD, where Nick Nolte tells his protégé, "Take out the trash. The ‘trash' is anything that is keeping you from the only thing that matters. This moment. Here. Now. And when you truly are in the here and now you'll be amazed at what you can do and how well you can do it." That's kind of long. "Take out the trash" does the trick for me.
One quote has literally followed me for thirty years. I read an interview with musician John Hartford and how in the midst of his successful music career he decided to go for a license to pilot steamboats on the Mississippi River. The quote? "So it's a lot to learn, and I love it, and I just somehow have this feeling that I have to learn all I can." I put it in a little plastic frame thirty years ago. It's on my desk as I write this post. And I'm still learning all I can.
Lest you think that all quotes must be serious to inspire-- there's something to be said for humor and lightheartedness. I was stuck in traffic the other day behind a pick-up truck and stared for several minutes at a bumper sticker which read, "Real Texas Women Shoot Their Own Snakes." Whoa. Not messin' with her, although I'm choosing to believe she understands a good metaphor when she sees one. Imagine the power you'd feel after making a shrine to that.
I use humorous quotes at work: in my office I have several "demotivator" posters from an Austin, TX company, Despair Inc, which brilliantly turns the whole inspirational quote industry on its head.
So take a moment and think about words that have motivated or inspired you throughout your life. You might find some interesting insights about where and who you were-- or are-- at any given time. Start a journal of your favorite quotes. Write them on Post-it notes and place them around your desk. Select one quote and ponder it over a lunch hour. What would happen if you truly lived it? What new career or activity would you pursue? How would you spend your time and your money?
But one caveat...as a manager who wants to keep her talented people around, I have a new rule for my staff. No more Helen Keller quotes. She's just way too inspiring.
Learn how words create worlds and find more of my favorite and inspirational quotes in my book, You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career. Available now at your local bookstore.
