Sail the 7 C’s of your inspired work

I get bored easily. The thought of reading a book I’ve already read or watching a movie I’ve already seen is off-putting to me. It means I’ve missed out on the opportunity to have a new experience. I don’t even like cooking the same meal twice.

This is because one of my core values is adventure. I am internally driven to have new experiences. It doesn’t even matter if the experience is so-called “good” or “bad”, it just needs to be new. Sailing into the unknown is what enlivens me and what allows me to be in a state of awe and wonder. My work is a pathway to having these inspired experiences, however, this was not always the case.

My work used to be ruled by routine. I had the same projects year-to-year. The same schedule month-to-month. The same tasks day-to-day. Everything predictable, nothing left to mystery. The result was I was bored to death. Almost literally.

Then, I had an epic meltdown. The uncontrollable sobbing lasted for days. I could no longer endure the doldrums of living from the confines of my mind. My heart and soul were banging at my door and pointing me to my boat.

That was when I entered into the first stage of inspired work: consciousness. I became aware there was a desire within myself to live differently. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I didn’t have language for it. I just knew how I wanted to feel – I wanted to feel inspired.

That desire was only the beginning. It sent me on an epic journey to create the life I actually wanted to live, an inspired life, and my work became the vehicle for that transformation.

The 7 stages of inspired work

There are many different points of entry to the transformation of one’s life. It could be a health crisis, a relationship crisis, or a financial crisis that catalyzes the metamorphosis. For myself, it was an energy crisis. I was functioning just barely above the baseline of “aliveness”. I was going through the motions, but not actually experiencing the joy of being alive. I credit work for being the means to bringing myself back to life.

That’s not to say I’ve reached some final destination and my journey has ended. Heck, no. My inspired work continues to be an unfolding. However, over the last 15 years, I have identified these 7 stages to the realization and fulfillment of one’s inspired work:

1. Consciousness

The first stage is when we become aware that what we’ve been doing is no longer working for us and we cannot tolerate staying where we are. A longing for something new has arisen. If we try to suppress this desire, it will escalate into a crisis to gain our attention. In regard to work, the turning point could be a complete loss of interest in your work and getting reprimanded for poor performance at your job. Or you could be unexpectedly let go or fired. Or it could be burnout or poor health forcing you to take a leave of absence. The benefit of any one of these crises is it awakens us to the realization of a new possibility.

2. Curiosity

The second stage is to become curious about what a new possibility might look like for you. You start to dream about the life you actually want to live. You wonder about how to change your work so that it supports you in this new imagining of your life. Perhaps, you start to research different jobs in your field, or you investigate a new field altogether. You may consider gaining some schooling, such as taking a new training or developing a new skill. However, you also might be wondering why none of those options feels like quite the right path for you.

3. Clarity

As you explore new possibilities, your mind might feel foggy and your path unclear. That’s because you are looking outside of yourself for the answers instead of going within. To have clarity is not about knowing the destination of where you want to go, clarity is about knowing the truth of who you are. When you know who you are and what you have to offer the world, you can then set about creating the work that allows you to be all of who you are. You don’t have to have a crystallized picture of your work, you simply start with the seed of an idea.

4. Creativity

It requires patience to plant the seeds of your ideas and to allow them time and space to gestate. To birth your inspired work, you must claim your capacity as a creator and be a willing vessel for creative life-force energy to flow through you from the non-physical into the physical world. Once your ideas begin to sprout into an early form of your work, then you must nurture it into being with your focused attention. It requires consistent, dedicated action for those ideas to become fully realized versions of themselves.

5. Courage

Sadly, this is where I see most people falter in their journey. It is difficult to be in this stage when your work is still undetermined and not yet fully grown. It requires enduring many false starts and painful failures to come to know what your work truly wants to be. Meanwhile, you must be bold enough to continue taking inspired action, step-by-step, day-by-day, to facilitate the growth of your work. You must also build your capacity to open yourself vulnerably and welcome success, in whatever form success means to you. The fact is that the iteration phase of the process is never-ending.

6. Commitment

To realize your inspired work is a long-term undertaking. Most people don’t want to hear this when they are first starting out, but it takes years for your work to come to its fullest fruition. If you look to any person who has achieved any level of success in their field, they will tell you about the years of trial and error it took for them to become a master at their craft. This is why it’s so important to create your work from a place of truth within yourself, because you will be immersed in your work for years to come, decades even. The benefit of starting now is that you can be making a valuable contribution without even having to have achieved some desired outcome.

7. Contribution

Many people yearn to make a meaningful contribution through their work. The magic is that by doing all of the above, you are making your contribution. Your real work is to just be you. The fun part of work is to create the work that allows you to be you. The joyous part of work is to be who you are in service to others. To be living your inspired life is your contribution.

Other than when I have been sick and confined to bed for recovery, I don’t remember the last time I was bored. On any given day, I may be experiencing a range of emotions, but boredom is not one of them. I don’t have time to be bored. I barely have time to read or watch movies. I’m too engaged in creating my inspired life.

Every day in my work brings new challenges, new insights, and new experiences. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, but it most certainly is an adventure of the enlivening kind. In actuality, there are even more “C’s” to experience than just the above seven, such as “celebration” and “contentment”, but as I said, the exciting journey of inspired work is one that never ends.