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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
This is one of the hardest, best questions ever asked by Mary Oliver in her poem, The Summer Day.
It’s a hard question to answer. And yet, how I’m living, right now, is my answer. Today, is in fact, what I’m doing with my one wild and precious life.
But now that you’ve asked the question Mary, I’m unsure—is the life I’m living, the one I’ve been planning/dreaming/hoping to live?
It’s a confronting question, isn’t it? It’s a reminder that we have just the one life, and, to live it well requires intention.
Because it’s easy to grow estranged from your own life.
It’s easy to drift; to find yourself far from an animating vision for the thing that you’re doing.
Part of my work as a coach involves coming alongside people in these moments. Coaching is a forward facing conversation space that allows people to discover their own answer to Mary Oliver’s question. It’s one of my favourite ways to get curious, to collaborate, and to co-create on making the kind of change that matters most to you.
A few years ago, I was working with a very bright, very tired client. He was coming into a sabbatical, and as it often goes, when the work stopped, all kinds of things started: weariness, disorientation, fear.
He reached out for coaching because he was trying to decide whether to return to his job as a teacher or to make a career change. He was caught between feeling unable to sustain the life he created, while feeling equally unable to imagine an alternative.
We got to work by exploring his work history (and his play history). He recalled moments of aliveness as a kid. He remembered some of the reasons he got into teaching to begin with. He began retracing the vocational threads weaving throughout his own story.
Over time we were able to find different questions, larger ones, other than should I stay or should I go?:
What is the life that is trying to be lived through me?
Is my vision and purpose clear and compelling, first of all to me?
What might it look like to live from my essence? What is my essence?
What is the shape of the work I most want to offer back to the world?
Who do I need to become in order to create the life that I want?
After a number of months of following these curiosity trails, something happened.
He bumped into his essence. He recovered a sense of his purpose, his core values, his unique strengths. It was almost like a reunion. Or as Irish poet John O’Donohue would phrase it, ‘he came home to himself’.
This changed everything for him. Our coaching work pivoted to co-creating a plan that was based on all of this new found clarity. He re-envisioned a working life that aligned with his refreshed articulation of purpose and identity. He crafted a new role description and we collaborated on a gameplan for his re-entry into teaching. Upon return, he pitched this new role to his employers. They loved it and asked him to start a new department based on his vision.
I share this story because it’s a reminder that the plan was hidden in the purpose.
So often we want the plan. Just tell me what to do! But we need what’s before, or perhaps beneath, the plan: we need vision, purpose, and reasons to do the plan.
Before questions of activity (what should I do?), we need questions of identity (who am I and who am I becoming?). Being informs doing.
Which is what this client discovered: before knowing what to do with his life, he needed to know the purpose of his life.
All of this is best articulated by the inimitable Dolly Parton, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” That’s it, and that’s the proper order.
First, find out. This kind of finding out, is directed at perhaps one of the most compelling mysteries out there—what makes you, you.
It’s a dare toward self-discovery.
It’s an invitation to find the symmetrical venn between what lights you up and what lights up other people—and then doing it on purpose and with voracious intention.
The power of Dolly’s provocation is contained in the nudge to find out and then do it.
There are so many other options of course.
You could do safe.
You could do status quo.
You could do someone else.
Which will work, until it doesn’t. These are the moments to return to the core vision of your life; to begin retracing the vocational threads running through your story; to reimagine a way to live and lead from your essence.
Later this week I’ll be sharing a project that’s all about this. It’s something that’s been in the works for close to a year. It’s a framework and a process for living and leading from essence and it’s for creatives, leaders, and anyone who is looking to find out who you are and do it on purpose. Can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Quote
“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.”
—Carl Jung
Question
When you are being the best version of you, who are you being? What’s happening?
And, how can you do more of this, more often?
Poem
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
—William Stafford
Thanks for reading,
Lance Odegard
unstucking.co
Hi there! 👋 My name’s Lance - I’m a writer, coach, and learning designer from Vancouver BC, Canada. In my work as a professional certified coach, I help people create the future. I truly believe that the future is made by the conversations we can and cannot have. If you want to know more about my practice or how we could work together, drop me a line. It’d be great to meet you. Thanks for stopping by!
1+1+1 is a free weekly nudge, a creative spark, a shot in the arm to keep you moving. One quote, one question, one poem to get unstuck.
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this is really good stuff LCO