Thursday, April 9, 2009

Asking the wrong question

This morning I read a section in a book that made me stop and ponder. Not just think, but really stop and consider the deeper implications of an idea.

Author Robert Benson (not the actor) wrote a book titled "Between the dream and the coming true" that contains a bit of wisdom I've tried, less aptly, to weave into my work with people struggling with job fit. He notes that too often we ask the wrong question in life. Rather than the common "what should I do?", he says we should be asking "what should I be?".

Benson goes on to make the point that what we do should really be a an extension or illustration of who we are. Of course, therein lies the rub. Too many of us still haven't attained a comfortable notion of who we are. We fashion our lives around some image of what we think we "Should" be, rather than a certainty about who we are.

I often tell my younger clients (I'm in my late 40s, so anyone under 35 is "young"), that there's a widespread myth that when we get to a certain age all of the pieces slip into place and we just know what we are to do and be. The majority of my clients are middle aged and older, so based on my experience there's no substance to that myth. Besides, I haven't found it to be true in my own life.

What is true is that some people settle into an unpleasant acceptance of being ill-fit into their life roles. They join the millions Thoreau spoke of as being a state of "quiet desperation". But there is another way.

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