I started seeing a Career Counselor about a year ago, and it went nothing like I thought it would. I should say up front that my career goals were primarily creative (I want to finish a game, and a novel or two, or 100). I’ve felt somewhat stalled from really achieving the outcomes I wanted creatively, so I decided to get some advice.
One of the first things we talked about was making room for a creative endeavor. I felt like I should have had the time and energy to devote, at a minimum, 10 or so hours a week to work on creative projects. And it just wasn’t happening consistently. Once or twice a month, sure, but not consistently.
How does one make room, then? For me, it was all about learning how to listen to the internal voices urging you to take care of business, and then take care of that business so I could move on to doing what I wanted to do. What I had been doing was ignoring those voices. I tried to shove them to the side so I could get work done. My coach guided me to listen to the voices instead and try to figure out what they are trying to say–even if we sometimes have to coach them not to scream at us. But you know what? Turns out my voices don’t scream at me when they think I’m paying attention to taking care of what’s important in my life. They start screaming at me when I am walking around with my fingers in my ears.
For me, there were really four anxieties I needed to resolve:
- Physical space–I was actually angry with my apartment because it felt overwhelming for me to be there, instead of feeling restful and energizing.
- Financial stability–I was overspending on my budget and couldn’t seem to reign in the spending.
- Healthy eating/exercise–I wasn’t being consistent with devoting time and energy to making improvements and it worried me.
- Social/interpersonal–I needed to make more connections, but I wasn’t really open to it. I also needed to make changes in some of my current relationships, but I was having a hard time doing that.
I would love to say that it was super easy-peasy to sort all of these things out, and one year after the fact, I’m super content and satisfied with where my life is. Not so! But I can say that I’ve spent the last year putting my effort exactly where it needed to go. I haven’t wasted time or effort, and I’m proud of the progress I’ve made.
I’m going to spend the next few blog posts describing what I did in these four categories, and about how long it took me to move from a place of ill-content to a place of satisfaction and encouragement. I do this partly because it’s fun for me to share, but also because I hope it encourages folks who might want to make a change in an area, but might not even know it! Or might not know where to start. Being ready is key, though, and you can’t force readiness. If you really want to make a change, but you know you aren’t ready for it, you might try taking a step back and looking at what you need to feel ready.
