Do What You Love Journey

 Choose a life wisdom:

Choose a life you love

Make of your life a dream, and of a dream, a reality. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -Theodore Roosevelt

How I choose a life and become a writer, a stay-at-home mom, and whatever I love

I was a tender sprout when I find out something was wrong with the world and choose a life where I could do something for it.

As an incentive to get us to eat all our plates, my parents used to say:

-“Eat all your food. You’re lucky, but there are children in Africa who starve”, would say one of my parents.

- “What?” I would think, puzzled. Then, out of compassion, I would eat all my plate. I didn’t know where Africa was, but their situation was wreaking me.

I get to know the world is painful through small benign encounters like that. Sure, there is a lot of positive on the planet, but still, people end up getting hurt, starving, sick, alone or searching for a better life.

So I begin my search to choose a life and do something for the broken world.

I enter a program in high school where volunteering is mandatory. But punk music really opens my eyes further to what was incorrect with the view of artists who also see the world is unfair, and tell we ought to do something about it. My first love was a song of NOFX, about poor people issues:

Linoleum
Supports my head, gives me something to believe

That’s me on the beachside combing the sand
Metal meter in my hand
Sporting a pocket full of change
That’s me on the street with a violin under my chin
Playing with a grin, singing gibberish
That’s me on the back of the bus
That’s me in the cell
That’s me inside your head

From now on, this was certain: I had to choose a life to help with what the world needs!

The author Jeff Goins, in his book Wrecked, talks about how being wrecked is compassion. The word compassion really means: to suffer with. For example, missionaries choose a life of service. They find they become wreck and their work is really hard, but they’re compelled to do it and commit because it’s where their hearts are.

At this time, I have a vague sense that we must choose a life where we do what we love, to help the world. Because we love, we have to go where our hearts lead us. It’s a challenge. But if it’s not, are we truly feeling passion and love?

I don’t know which career to pick. But I have found my mission: to help a great amount of people lead a better life.

Fast forward 15 years, I’m connecting the dots backwards, as Steve Jobs told in his do-what-you-love commencement adress at Stanford University. I have studied sociology, social work, and a lot of science and spirituality subjects, to understand better our situations. I wrote and read all my life. I volunteered for Amnesty International, I am vegetarian, and love voluntary simplicity. I found we live a dream, or nightmare, an illusion; the secrets of existence would be that the world is not as it seems and we have power over it.

I set out to go in Thailand to volunteer after I finish my studies. But at this time, I meet my husband. I choose a life where I follow my heart and commit to be with him, and live near our family; since brokenness is everywhere, I could do something in North America. He helps me heal myself, and I get to find my talents and give life to our kids, and art, with the writing craft. I set out to make my life comfortable and do what I love with writing and raising my kids. To live a good life, to in turn help others live one. I look at my skills, and then I figure out what to do. And then I engage to my mission, promoting healing and awareness, through writing.

How I became a writer

Specifically, it seems my path lead me to choose a life where I am a writer, and looking backwards, it really makes sense. But in the waters of growing up, I am not seeing clearly and I am often than not going against the current, like wanting to be a pro martial athlete – now I’m glad it didn’t worked out.

When I look at what is relatively easy in my life, a writing career always comes out. As early as I can remember, I want to have to do with books. At 5 years old I learn a Sesame Street book by heart; I wish my kindergarten teacher would make me skip a year so I can know how to read. I devour big books at 7 years old and was reading Stephen King’s It at 10, and then the whole horror section at the library.

My father is a mentor for a youth entrepreneurship program, so I join the group and learned how to start a company. In Cegep (after high school in Quebec), I am a writer for the town’s newspaper college edition, where I talk about injustices I found. And I was run after so I publish articles in the college paper. At this time in my life, with my studies, writing and reading is always at the core of my life.

I take a job with which we buy a house where we could raise kids on one income – I learn how to be even more professional and autonomous. A year after my twins were born, I choose a life where I’m a stay-at-home mom, taking care of my loves, and still reading whenever I had the time. In my bath one day, wondering about the course of my life, I have an epiphany. One word has had a stunning impact on me while listening to the news years ago, about a new trend that had emerged: blogging. By now, I already have a blog on kickboxing I started along with getting back in shape after the pregnancy, but it was more of a diary. I envision I could start one to share my knowledge on happiness I have gathered through decades, reach a lot of people, and help with what I am talented for and love, researching and writing.

I am forced to recognize I am more of an artist than an athlete, because I have demolished my shoulders and back with my life’s training – I have talent for sports, but my body doesn’t follow. It seems obvious looking backward, taking a “hard” look at myself, and with my Myers-Briggs’s personality profile of Introversion-Sensing-Feeling-Perception; feelings come first in this category, and it’s called “The Artist”.  So writing to help people responds to most of my needs. Doing this test was a wake-up call. We’re more than categories, we’re really all-encompassing beings, but for the sake of preserving our sanity by understanding ourselves better, I can strongly suggest to take good tests and a clear view at ourselves, so we see where we fit, and go with it as soon as possible.

Now I believe we come with a mission that we set out to accomplish early in life if encouraged to. I see this with my sons, about to be 4 years old. It’s interesting how they choose a life. They have a genuine want for specific work, even though they are not pushed to do anything and initiated to a lot of things. One is always wanting to repair cars, and broken appliances – since he showed interest, he has his own repair tools, little “garage”, and helps out in fixing things. My other one has a passion for numbers and letters; he’s already reading and writing. He is thrilled with mini-computers to help him on his path of learning, and he comes to get me to help him read and write. Even if we’re at the park, he wants to draw letters in the sand. All this supports evidence that our mission could be engrained in us from the start and we should choose a life based on it early on.

I see that what is encouraged and easy for us is a strong clue to what we’re supposed to be doing. And often, what we are good at fits with our mission, personality, tastes, and needs.

More than making a living: finding your calling

Once upon a time, on a windy day before a storm, a lively little girl and her loving grandfather were taking a walk on the beach. She notices on the shore, rolled over by strong waves, more fishes than she has ever seen in her lifetime.

- “Pappy, oh no, look! There are fish on the shore. Why can’t they go back into the water?” says the girl.

- “I don’t know, sweetie. Sometimes life can be cruel, and our journey has to end.”

- “But they don’t have to die right now, right? If they had help, they could live happy with their family too for a while…”

The little girl and her grandfather were now approaching the shore. The grandfather steps over a dying fish, feeling sorrow. But when he looks back, to press his grandchild to hurry back home, he finds her taking one fish, and throwing it back into the sea.

- “Why are you doing this?” he says, puzzled. “You can’t save them all.”

- “ Maybe I can’t save them all”, says the little girl, “ but I can save him, and this one here, and this one over there, and make a difference for them and their families.”

Being called by the wisdom of his little one, the grandfather stops being so hurried, and begins to lend a helping hand too.

It’s easy to be crushed by reality, must do’s, goals, norms or expectations. Sometimes, it seems almost too hard to be ourselves and choose a life where we do what’s right.

This is where doing what we love serves as a life compass. If we commit to following our heart to choose a life, we will not be wrong and always do things out of compassion.

Doing what’s right doesn’t always find the form of a job. Maybe that’s why we can be so lost finding the right career; there might not be only one for you, it can be that you have to do multiples jobs over your lifetime, or get supported by one career while you volunteer for what you take at heart.

But when you find your calling and you choose a life based on it, you know to navigate better at sea; you’re not lost anymore. You can begin to tackle right now some tasks at hand to make the world a better place. And you’re less attached to a job if you’re stuck; you know you can find elsewhere another one that would fit you more.

The Do What You Love Lifestyle

Although we are all the same in not wanting problems and wanting a peaceful life, we tend to create a lot of problems for ourselves. Encountering those problems, anger develops and overwhelms our mind, which leads to violence. A good way to counter this and to work for a more peaceful world is to develop concern for others. Then our anger, jealousy and other destructive emotions will naturally weaken and diminish. 

- Dalai Lama

Therefore I suggest you choose a life based on finding your calling, put it in the form of how you love it, and make it present everyday in your lifestyle. No matter what you do, if you follow your heart, you would now do the right thing.

I find it helps to resolve challenges in how to lead our lives. In parenting life, for example, I see a duality,  mostly in women, who can be torn apart by it, with the desire to raise children by ourselves and going back to a career. Choose a life that you feel is right for you, your child and family, over those 20 years or so of this season of your lives, it has all the chances to be the right one. Just make sure you check all the alternatives, and take into consideration that sometimes we value money over what’s right. The place a job takes can be lessen if your mission is really to raise your children for a while. You can live more simply while you raise them as long as you all need, and then resume a career; making it part of your life’s mission.

Here are some tips to find the mission you love, choose a life, and then commit to it:

• Find where your heart belongs

1. Where is the world broken, in your eyes? Mother Teresa said “Calcutta is everywhere” and also, to help with the parenting challenge mentioned “If you want to work for world peace, go home and love your family”. At 22 years old, I badly want to go help in refugee camps in Thailand, and train in their kickboxing Muay Thai on the side, but I choose a life in Quebec, Canada, with my loved ones. I understand that there is misery too in our “advanced” civilization. What bugs me is all of us who need basic stuff and being eaten alive by the system – those who are desperate for a change and being in control of their lives. In our days and age, living in plenty, there’s a way to a great life, doing what we love and helping other people – being part of the solution, not the problems.
2. Do what you love means being empathetic. I haven’t said it explicitly elsewhere so far. But to me, the expression says it in itself: doing what we love isn’t doing what we want – it isn’t selfish. It’s taking into consideration where our heart belongs, what we feel for, and being passionate and of help about it. It’s feeling compassion, being touched and taken by the state of the world.
3. How to? Go out in the world, allow yourself to be wrecked, and find a passion in being called to do something.

• Commit

1. Doing what we love is being engaged to it. Another stereotype of doing what we love has to do with selfishness too – most people assume doing what we love means we don’t have to commit and we can choose a life where we do whatever we want at any moment. Sure, we have freedom. But to feel compassion is to be burning with a fire for a subject. I don’t believe we can be really passionate if we don’t engage and, as said by Jeff Goins, marry to it. Committing fully and consciously, but not falling in the pitfall of forgetting ourselves in the process. Doing what we love can be hard, but it helps to see it more as a challenge – a challenge to respond to what is needed, with what we do what we do best, with the most positive effects, for good. I know being a stay-at-home mother seems to consist of a lot of “unsexy” work; most of it is invisible and repetitive – like potty training twins who don’t seem to matter. But to me it has profound value, it’s a small price to pay to give children a chance to a great life and I get to really profit of lend time with mine. I learned to love some tasks, like cooking, and enjoy little moments. Almost everything can be turned into fun, like putting music while working.
2. It is “settling up”. In some weird twist, committing is viewed as settling down. But as said, we always have the choice; we retain our freedom. We’re not stuck there, we choose a life it willingly. Some problems arise by the fact that we committed to stuff we don’t really love; a materialistic life, a job someone told us we should do, a lifestyle that doesn’t fit with what we are. Settling down means currently in our language to let a life of discovery and freedom behind, so many are afraid to commit. Instead I propose settling up, as a next step on a journey where we see what’s going on in the world and aim to do something about it, letting selfishness behind, retaining fun and free will in our loving lifestyle.
3. How to?
   • Tweak your current lifestyle. Makeover your job so you really love it, improve your love life, and make sure your values are a fit to what you love and your mission.
   •  If you’re not happy after, change. If your lifestyle is making you sick however you try to tweak it, it’s time for a change. The world is better of with people being talented and having a passion for what we do (again, to not create problems but be part of the solutions). It keeps the rebuilding energy, the warm fire strong and lets the world be a better place. So choose a life; do what you are and start where you are, with what you have, to improve the world.

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics. - Albert Einstein

 Recommended readings on choose a life 

- Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life, by Jeff Goins

-          Free How to do what you love excerpts of my upcoming book

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