Work as Child’s Play

This work is child’s play! People who excel in their jobs often make it look easy and effortless. Like Robert Redford in the movie The Natural, they seem to have a knack, a flair, a talent for the core job duty; the same way Redfordís character had a natural talent for throwing and hitting a baseball.

In fact, the clues to our right work are often found in our childhood preoccupations. For example, in one study conducted by British behavioral scientists, on the relationship between our desires in youth and adult success, 50 individuals were tracked over a period of 28 years, from the ages of 7 to 35.

The result? Nearly all of the subjects wound up engaged in a professional pursuits related to their interests during the ages 7 through 14. While most strayed from these interests after childhood, the successful adults were those who found their way back to their childhood dreams by the age of 35, even if only as a hobby or avocation. Don’t you find that amazing? I do!

If you’ve read my book, JobJoy (http://www.jobjoy.com/E-book/jobjoy/sales_page.html), then you know that I put a lot of emphasis on understanding what we did and how we did it during ages 7-14. What I have found over the years is that individuals who find jobjoy success early in life are often people who were lucky enough to have parents and other significant adults who recognized their natural talents and inclinations early in life, then helped nurture those talents into a specific vocation. (http://tinyurl.com/2evrz2s)

For most of us, this does not happen. We tend to drift away from our natural inclinations and focus on learned or acquired values and behaviours that have more to do with the agendas of others, or the requirements of our external environment. We fall victim to what the poet E.E. Cummings eloquently described: "To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night into making you like everybody else is to fight the hardest battle there is and never stop fighting."

I have found that many people lost this battle early in life and, by doing so, lost their memory of what they enjoyed most and did best as a child. The clues to our right work are always there in the details of our personal stories, our life history.

Sit somewhere quiet, where you will not be interrupted for a while, and let your mind drift back to your childhood. What did you enjoy doing at age 7 or 14? What were the activities that gave you pleasure? How did the world open up to you? What kinds of subjects did you gravitate towards in school and outside of school? How did you get the attention you wanted? What teachers influenced you the most? Whom were your heroes? I had a lot of fun answering these questions for myself while writing my book, and I know that many of you enjoyed going back through family photos, watching home movies, talking to parents and relatives.

One way to find jobjoy in life is to move back with conscious intention to what we drifted away from early in life. It’s not as difficult as you might think! The world rewards excellence. And your best chance for excellence is to develop your natural talents and motivations into a specific job or career—that ís the route to personal and professional success!

http://www.jobjoy.com/Individuals.php