Your inspired work journey begins with your beliefs

When people first reach out to me, they often report feeling “lost” or “stuck at a crossroads” in their journey. They know they can no longer continue with the work they’ve been doing, but they’re not quite sure where to go next. They will ask me, “Where do I even begin?”

My answer is always the same, “You begin with your beliefs.”

No matter who I work with and in what capacity, my first question is always, “What do you believe about work?” It’s how I assess where they are on their inspired work journey. Their response also gives me insight into what are the core blocks in terms of them gaining clarity about the work they are here to create.

A more expansive view of work

Back in 2007 when I was making my transition from “work” to “inspired work”, I recognized that I had given very little attention to my beliefs about work. I just figured it was something I “did” because it’s what I had to do to make money. I had a narrow view of what work actually was.

At the time, I received a serendipitous email from Notes from the Universe and it read:

What if the word “work” was changed to “dance-with-life”? And instead of it being viewed as an alternative to fishing or a way of paying your dues, it was seen as a chance to meet a parade of new friends, discover your own untested potentials and unpolished gifts, and open avenues for abundance to come pouring into your life?

The potentials contained within these questions confronted my limited thinking and opened my mind into a more expanded perspective of work. It dawned on me there was more to it than what I had been living – much more. With that message, I made a conscious decision to adopt this new story of work. I embraced it as a personal challenge and committed to the path of discovering, creating, and living what I now call, my inspired work. I did not know then the life-altering cascade of events that would occur as a result of making this choice.

Your beliefs determine your experience

Our beliefs are the particular lens through which we look at life, and are a function of the thoughts we think. From the moment we are born into this lifetime, we are exposed to thoughts from various sources. Of course, our parents offer our first exposure to thought. Because there are few other influences in our early childhood, typically, we inherit our beliefs from them. As we grow, this extends to include the views we take on from our immediate family, social circles, teachers, the media, and society-at-large. From that wide array of thought, the ones we choose to accept as true serve to form our personal set of beliefs, which is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints.

Furthermore, our beliefs then determine the actions we choose to take, and our behaviour, in turn, creates our experience of life. Our experiences then impact our thoughts and so the cycle continues.

Early in life, we may assume our role in life is passive and that our thoughts have no bearing on the circumstances we encounter. Eventually, however, we become cognizant enough to realize that our beliefs are an active player in our experience and that we can challenge our thinking and make conscious choices about the thoughts we choose to think, and therefore affect our life. More often than not, this happens when we are facing some crisis that compels us to reexamine our beliefs.

Assess if your beliefs are serving you

Obviously, the crisis that most people are faced with when I meet them is a career crisis. They are feeling disheartened and unfulfilled in their work and if this has been going on long enough, the situation may have devolved into despair and other crises such as the loss of their job or physical decline to the extent they’ve had to leave their employment. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t catch the early warning signs of limiting thoughts, however, this is completely fine. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter when the course correction is made, just that it is.

The benefit of enduring these types of struggles is that they can alert us to the extraordinary internal feedback mechanism that exists within each of us. Each and every person knows intuitively if their thoughts are serving them. We know by how we feel. It is as straight forward as:

If when we think the thought, it feels good, then the belief is serving us well.

If when we think the thought, it does not feel good, then the belief is not serving us well.

It is a very simple mechanism, but it speaks the truth every time. The onus on us is that we must become practiced at tuning into our bodies at the time we are thinking the thoughts so that we can make the correlation. Oftentimes the thought passes us so quickly, it can be difficult to identify those that are the troubling thoughts.

Transform limiting beliefs into expansive thoughts

The reason we want to be able to isolate our thoughts is because we want to be able to identify those thoughts that are potentially limiting us and leading us to have experiences we don’t want to have, such as being unfulfilled in our work.

If we are able to identify the limiting thought, then we have two choices:

• Keep thinking that thought, and continue to have the same unsatisfying experience.
• Do the inner work of shifting that thought to a more expansive thought and allowing that new thought to inform a new, more expanded experience.

There actually is a third option – one simple action to permanently shift your beliefs: stop thinking the limiting thought. But this one takes master-level mindfulness. This is why so many people take up practices such as meditation, to help them detach from their thoughts enough that they actually have the option to release them.

Until that happens, you may want to simply practice enhancing your awareness of your own thoughts and using your feelings to assess if your beliefs are serving you. One of the easiest ways to tell if you are thinking thoughts that are serving you is that you are enjoying the experience you are having.

…

Since that initial awakening I had in regard to my beliefs about work, I’ve continued to expand my concept of work. As it has evolved, so has my experience of work. In the last 17 years, I have been blessed with a parade of new heart-centred, soul-guided friends. I have created innumerable opportunities to share my gifts and help others do the same. I now support others in tapping into their own untested potentials and in doing so, they create new realities for themselves and for humanity. As well, we open channels for abundance to coming pouring into our lives in the forms of creativity, joy, and endless adventure.

If you have been having an experience of work – and life – that is less than inspired, then you may want to start with examining your beliefs. Ask yourself if what you believe is leading you away from or toward that which your heart actually desires. With your own feedback, you will have all the information you need to know to start moving in the direction of that which you are truly here to live.