All of my life I have done what was expected of me. I went to college and studied something that seemed fun and paid well,then I graduated last year and was unemployed for an extremely long time. About 6 months ago, I finally found a job (and it actually pays well). However, I feel so unfulfilled at my job. Everyone around is me telling me to be happy that I at least have a job (especially with the college graduate unemployment rate now) but I just feel like there has to be more to life then this. I feel like I’m wasting my life away on the safe road working a unfulfilled job. I don’t want to live my life miserable or conforming to mediocrity because it “safe”. However, I also feel like I’m not being realistic and I’m not being grateful of the job I finally did get (and a job that others would die to have)

I want to listen to my heart Emma but i feel like my brain is interfering.

I think the resistance is just fear in a different cloak.
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I should stop here or I’ll be bending your ear for hours. In short, though, if you’ve got any advice for me, I am wide open. Meanwhile, I am adding your blog to my Google Reader. Thanks for listening.

I’ve been in a relatively high paying job in Washington DC for almost 3 years now. The last year has become increasingly challenging and unbearable. My relationship with my boss (and CEO) has deteriorated to the point where we don’t even want to be in the same room with one another let alone work closely together. My situation is that I love my career and what I do, career but I do not like the environment or people that I’m working with at this firm. I even have started my own techno-political firm on the side (which I had been working on developing for over 2 years) and have a paying client but I still can’t get to the point of leaving the steady paycheck and security to trying to build my business independently. A lot of my caution comes from my wife who fears me starting my own business will fail and we will be financially ruined.

How do I overcome both my internal and external obstacles?

Thank you.

The problem is most jobs that I could get pay slightly less and I desperately need more money.

I dont even have the energy to look for another job. I sometimes pray for something to happen (like a layoff or a car accident) so I could take a couple weeks off.

Trapped

Thank you so much for your blog. I have found it so incredibly inspiring. I was reading John’s comments which completely ring home with me. I am also a banker and have been for three years now. I earn a great salary and have complete financial security. However I work at times 80+ hrs a week and I’m not even sure if I like banking! It all doesn’t feel right. However I’ve been locked in by own success at what I do and the silly bonuses they pay us. I feel there must be more to my life than this, but I feel scared to make the jump. I also come from a poor background and I feel the need to provide financial support for my parents and give back to them what they sacrificed for my education. However, I keep on thinking about starting my own business, I have a passion for food and I dearly want to get into this industry. It’s a risk and I’m not naturally a risk taker and yet I feel dead inside at the moment and stuck in a rut. Do I just go for it?! Has anyone else been in this situation?

I have spoken to the voice for years. I understand that it equates money with safety. It wants to be safe at all costs; which, of course, means that it would prefer that I make choices that it can understand. Work, home, sleep, repeat.

However, this pattern has been going on for years. Inevitably, the pattern comes to its conclusion when the Universe gives me swift kick to the bum, and I’m forcibly ousted from whatever situation/relationship I couldn’t extract myself from.

How I deal with this voice is to not coddle it. I coddled it and it waffled back and forth with this idea or that. Once I made a decision and said, ‘We are doing this. Let’s do it.’ Things get done; actions taken.

It’s okay to feel fear and move forward. Fear doesn’t always have to mean that you shouldn’t go forward. Sometimes fear means you need more information, or that you are about to make a huge breakthrough personally.

I have made many breakthroughs this way. But going through the process does not feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t always have to.

So right now, the discomfort is rising inside me, allowing me to move towards what I want and away from what I no longer need/want.

As of this time, I have two voices in conflict. The voice of my mini-me (ego) and the voice of my spirit (which says it is now time to move on). I know my spirit is the voice to follow because every time I have listened and done what it suggests I have always landed on my feet. My mini-me doesn’t trust this, and probably never will; it’s job is keep me safe and protected from danger (whether real or imagined). My spirit’s job is help me grow, explore, and expand into greater and greater aspects of myself that have been left in the shadows for so long due to childhood and adolescent emotional wounds.

This isn’t easy at all for me. I only wish it were. But I know what to expect.