… into the future. And one of the most counter-productive things we can do is waste the precious time we have. How many hours a day do you spend watching TV? How about surfing the internet? Are you wasting your time reading celebrity gossip, or are you reading quality content that could change your life? Wandering through a shopping mall? What could you be doing with that time to move you closer to achieving your goals?

Let’s take me for example. I already know what I want to do with my life. I want to write novels. My hope is to get to the point where I can make a living solely by writing. I’ve mostly written (about 2/3 finished) THREE novels now so I know I’m capable of doing it, it’s just a matter of, well–doing it.

Knowing what my goal is, if you were able to look at a journal of how I spent a day, you’d expect to see a lot of time dedicated to writing, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. What I’m about to share with you is really embarassing (and I hope, eye-opening). Here’s a journal of how I spent yesterday:

6:20am: Woke up. I had planned to get up and run, but decided to go after work. (I didn’t.)
6:20-6:35am: Did hair and makeup.
6:35-6:45am: Made breakfast and packed lunch.
6:45-7:10am: Ate breakfast and read the news online.
7:10-7:15am: Dressed for work.
7:15-7:35am: Drove to work
7:35am-3:00pm: Work. (I had to leave early to take our cat to the vet.)
3:00-3:20pm: Drove home.
3:20-3:50pm: Tried to get cat into cat carrier. Failed miserably. Cancelled vet appointment.
3:50-6:30pm: Caught up on blog reading, answered email, etc.
6:30-7:00pm: Cooked and ate dinner.
7:00-10:00pm: Watched TV while playing Spider Solitaire (I know, how depressing is that?).
10:00pm: Went to bed.

Wow. There’s approximately SIX HOURS I could have used for writing (or exercising or anything else that was remotely productive). I’m allowing surfing the web and watching TV to literally STEAL MY DREAMS. That’s not what I want, so why am I living my life this way?

A big part of the answer is fear. If I don’t ever finish a novel, I can’t fail, can I? If I never put myself out there and try to get a book published, then I can always hold on to my dream of being a novelist. By filling up my days with mindless entertainment and claiming that I “don’t have time” to write, I get to stay in a safe, failure-proof zone.

“I don’t have time” is a dreadful, poisonous phrase. Yes, we do. We DO have time for our dreams. Of course, many of you have responsibilities I don’t have to deal with–children or multiple jobs or caring for a parent. And honestly, I don’t know how you keep it together from day to day, let alone find time to pursue your goals. But I guarantee that if you sat down and wrote a detailed log of how you spend your day, you’d find some small amount of time–maybe 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there–that you could reclaim.

What are your major time-wasters? Let’s make a promise to each other that we’ll spend ONE HOUR a day working on something related to one of our life goals. Just one hour. If you honestly can’t find one hour, try 30 minutes. I promise that it will be time well spent.

This article was featured in the Personal Stories of Change Carnival and the Balance Your Life Carnival–stop by and check out the other great articles!

(Cross-posted at BlogHer)

(Cross-posted at BlogHer) 

You’ve been working awfully hard lately, so why not do something nice for yourself? Why not volunteer? Save a whale! Fight global warming! Mentor a child! We all know that volunteering is a wonderful and generous thing to do, but did you know that it can be an invaluable tool as you search for a way to find and live your life’s purpose?

First, the obvious. Volunteering is (contrary to the title of this post) a lovely and selfless thing to do. No matter what cause you choose, the people you work for and with will sincerely appreciate your efforts. Plus, it feels great to dedicate your time and energy to something greater than yourself. It can be a very spiritually uplifting experience. Years ago when I was struggling through the worst of my post-divorce depression, my mother advised me to volunteer. “It will take your mind off your troubles,” she told me. And she was exactly right. There’s nothing like working with hungry kids to put your problems in perspective.

Now, the not so obvious. Volunteering allows you to “try on” a career or passion and see if it fits for you. Thinking of becoming a teacher? Volunteer to tutor or mentor kids. You’ll have an opportunity to work with children in a classroom and see if it really lights your fire. Dying to become a vet? Volunteer at your local animal shelter. You might find out that removing a cancerous eyeball from a cow (true story from a friend who volunteered with a large animal vet) is simply not your cup of tea, thus allowing you to channel your love of animals in a different direction.

Volunteering can also give you an edge in a tight job market. Looking for a job at a cool nonprofit, on Capitol Hill, or in a completely different field than your current job? One of the best ways to get your foot in the proverbial door is to volunteer. Volunteering can fill in the gaps on a skimpy resume, make up for a weak GPA, and put you in daily contact with someone who could give you a paying job. Don’t think of it as working for free–think of it as a delayed paycheck. In my town (Washington DC), volunteering is pretty much a must for breaking into most nonprofit or political careers. There are simply too many people and too few jobs. Volunteering can set you apart from the crowd.

Don’t know where to start? Check out these great resources:
Craig’s List
Idealist
Volunteer Match
Network for Good
Servenet
Volunteer Solutions
USA Freedom Corps

(Cross-posted at BlogHer)

From a genius at Forbes: “Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don’t marry a woman with a career.” (My DH just wrestled a barbecue fork out of my hand as I attempted to attack the author through the Interweb.)

This is old (August 2006) and many of you may have already seen it, but I just ran across the original article the other day and I was INCENSED. (The full article by Michael Noer and a stellar response are posted in point-counterpoint format here.) Like it’s not difficult enough to figure out what we want to do with our lives and how, now we’ve got this jackass telling us that we’ll be bad wives if we have a career? He’s dead wrong.

In fact, the most important, most selfless, most beneficial thing we could ever do for our partners and families is to find our purpose in life and start living it. (That may not include a “career” in the traditional sense, but for many women, it will.) What kind of wives or partners will we be if we are unfulfilled, yearning for something we can’t even recognize? What kind of examples will we be to our children if we don’t have the courage to identify our purpose and use our unique strengths and talents to express it?

I simply refuse to accept that we have to martyr ourselves and set aside our dreams for the good of our families–we might have to modify them to fit our circumstances, but we never have to give them up. Just as “staying together for the kids” puts undue stress and guilt on your children, so does sacrificing your happiness. Do you want your children to grow up in the shadow of all you could have been instead of basking in the sunlight of all that you ARE?

I want to make it clear that I am not in any way denigrating the choice to be a stay-at-home mom. I believe that raising children can be an integral part of our purpose as women (and/or men), and I certainly hope to be able to stay at home when I have kids. But I don’t think that women whose passion and purpose leads them to a career outside the home are bound to be cheating wives and distant mothers, as the author suggests.

Mr. Noer’s message is one of fear and powerlessness. (”The other reason a career can hurt a marriage will be obvious to anyone who has seen his or her mate run off with a co-worker: When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase that he or she will meet someone more likable than you.”) Don’t let it and poisonous ideas like it keep you from pursuing the life you know is yours to claim.

(Cross-posted at BlogHer)

What do you want to be when you grow up? That’s a powerful question, isn’t it? What do you want to “BE”, not what do you want to DO. Describe the nature/purpose of your existence—God, that’s huge. And we ask this to 2^nd graders? It’s an important question—possibly THE question of your life. So, how would you answer it? (No, not “rich”. That doesn’t count. YOU wouldn’t be rich, you’d just have money. Those are very different things.)

Answering that question is the work of a lifetime. I’m sure it’s a topic I’ll return to over and over and over again. There are many ways to get to the answer, but the same method doesn’t work for everyone. Some people need to approach it through their emotions. They need to search for a purpose/vocation that resonates with them, that makes them feel. Others can approach using logic and reason. They are able to objectively analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and use analytical techniques to reduce the endless world of possibilities to that single, perfect one. There are those who wait for a spiritual awakening—these are the people who talk about feeling called to a certain path. Some lucky few just seem to know from birth what they want to do (like some people can eat whatever they want and not gain weight—annoying).

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to assume that you know the answer. But the thing is, you don’t know how to get from where you are to where you want to be. That’s what we need to figure out. Let’s say you want to be an astronaut—I had to reach for the stars, right? Couldn’t make it too easy!—but you’re currently working as a McDonald’s cashier. Looking at the distance from where you are to where you want to be, it seems absolutely impossible… or is it? How would you even know where to begin?

I’ll tell you. You’d start by doing research. You’d read the biographies of all 300+ astronauts selected by NASA so far. You’d probably learn that most of them hold PhDs in fields like physics or engineering, most were in the military, and most were experienced pilots. (You’d also learn that a few were just regular, average school teachers who entered through the Teacher in Space program, but will stick with the norm for now.) OK. Now you know what you need to do—it’s just a matter of doing it. You could begin by enrolling in college to get your bachelor’s (maybe in an ROTC program so that you could get that coveted military training) and taking classes toward your pilot’s license. You could apply for internships at NASA while you worked toward your PhD.

I know, I know—there are only a handful of American astronauts so why should you, a lowly McDonald’s cashier, be one of them? I say, why shouldn’t you? How do you think those astronauts got where they are? By doing exactly what we discussed.

OK, you say, but did I mention that I’m 57 and have a physical disability? There’s no way that NASA would ever choose me. That’s probably true. So let’s look at this from a different angle: why do you want to be an astronaut? Do you have a special passion for the moon, the sun, the planets, and the stars? You could live that love by being an astronomer (amateur or professional) or a tour guide at your local observatory or museum. Do you adore all things physics—dark matter, wormholes, and strange quarks? You could become a theoretical physicist. Are you fascinated with rockets and spaceships? Why not build them as an aerospace engineer? Maybe you just love the idea of being a pioneer, one of the few humans to ever escape this blue dot and blast off into the great unknown. You might find yourself fulfilled by deep-sea diving, cutting-edge research, or cultural anthropology.

What I’m trying to say is that, no matter what your dream is, there is a way for YOU to live it.

If you’d like help with your own personal McDonald’s-to-astronaut game plan, please visit my Services page or send in a question. Now get out there and LIVE!

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An email from a good friend just opened my eyes to what I really want to do with this website. My friend, like me and many women I know, is in her late 20s and is going through a mild “quarter-life crisis.” She feels unfulfilled in her current job, but the money is good and it’s hard to walk away. Deep down, she knows what she wants to do, but she’s afraid to do it, afraid to commit to it, afraid to say it out loud, afraid to even think about it (again, like me).

There are few things more terrifying than admitting to ourselves what we truly desire. If we don’t name it, we can flounder in the no-man’s land of “I don’t know what I want to do” for as long as we want. We can waste our days working just to pay the bills and never have to face the truth and make hard choices. Isn’t it much easier to plead ignorance? Then, no one—including ourselves—can expect much from us. We can’t fail at our dream job because we’re never going to try. (That’s not to say that I think we should up and quit our current jobs without a plan. I stand by my earlier advice—we’re adults, and we need to be self-sufficient even during periods of intense self-discovery.)

I think this is the real problem that faces most recent college grads—it isn’t that we don’t know what we want to do, it‘s that we won’t admit it to ourselves. You know that nagging, unsatisfied feeling you get when you think about joining the work force? That’s your secret passion whispering in your ear, begging you to speak its name. You know that desperate, trapped feeling you have as you’re getting ready for yet another day in the same, stupid, boring job? That’s your true calling urging you to stop being afraid, quit wasting your time, and take the plunge.

What is that little voice saying to you? What are you being called to do? What would you do with your life if you weren’t afraid?

I’ll go first. I want to write novels full-time. There, I said it. That’s what I want to do. How can I get there from where I am? More on that tomorrow.

I’d love your input on features that would be useful to you in your own personal development journey. Oh, and please send me a message and tell me what your secret dream is—let’s do this!