Month: May 2007

Some interesting quotes from Steve Jobs about how to live your life.  Here are the ones I liked:

“The
only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found
it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,
you’ll know when you find it.”  This one seemed appropriate given my earlier post about trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

“There’s a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner’s mind.’ It’s wonderful to have a beginner’s mind.”  Learn!

“We
think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you
work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.”

“I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”  Don’t be afraid to make mistakes!

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”  Make a difference!

“Your
time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be
trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s
thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own
inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart
and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.”

Do you know what you want to do with the rest of your life?  No? Well I bet everybody else could tell you what you should do!  I’ve got a great career in the computer software field and I’m about to graduate from massage school.  I’m getting really tired of people assuming that I should do one thing or the other.   Their assumptions are particularly frustrating because I could use some good conversation and feedback.

There’s the majority of people that assume that I should keep my high paying, visible, successful career.  They seem to be focused on the salary and the fact that it’s a "successful" career.  Then there’s the group of people that assume because I went to school and I’m graduating, I should do that for a career.

My problem is that I don’t know what I want to do and I want to talk to people about it but it’s really hard to have a productive conversation when they’ve already decided what I should do without even knowing how I feel!

For example here’s a conversation I had on Sunday:

Friend: I think it’s so great that you’ve put all this time into school and you’re about to graduate, start a business, have flexible hours and be able to spend more time with your kids.  What a great thing you are doing.
Me: I’m not planning on quitting my job and going into massage.
Friend: Stormy! You’ve got to. You can do. You’ll be able to spend more time with your kids!
Me: Quitting work and starting a massage business wasn’t really ever the plan. 
Friend: It’s tough to start a massage business but you can do it!

And the conversation I want to be having is about what do I want to do.  Not how I can do it.  I’m completely confident I can work out the details of whatever I want to do, if I could only figure out what that was!

Luckily, I live in a time when we are all going to live long enough to have three or four careers so I don’t just have to pick just one!  I can be a software geek and then a massage therapist and then a doctor and then a librarian.  Or maybe a book scout.   Or I could just try to do them all at once!