The Career Life Coaching Newsletter

Are you employed but want to leave your job? Are you feeling restless, stressed, and desperate to exit your current work situation? YOU ARE NOT ALONE! There is a shift going on in our culture around the concept and practice of “working”. Being a full time employee giving 40 and often 50 or more hours to your employer every week is exhausting us. In mainstream America we live for the weekends to relax, replenish our energies and spend time doing the things we love. Oh yes, and trying to manage all those chores, errands and obligations. No wonder most heart attacks occur on Monday mornings! Isn’t there a more fulfilling and balanced way to earn a living? Yes, I believe there is.

Do you dream of leaving your full time job and think longingly about what you could do with those additional hours you’d have each week? In a perfect world what career would you be engaged in? I often ask new clients the question: “what kind of work would you be doing if you knew you couldn’t fail and money was not an issue?” Go ahead—ask yourself that question. If you don’t have an answer, these questions may be helpful: Clues for Career Fitting

Inside all of us are dreams unrealized and wishes looking for ways to become reality. How do we move our brilliant inspirations into action? The first step is to realize what our ideal work life could be; the second step is to begin to move toward it. You can daydream forever but to reach your goal of a fulfilling work life action must be taken. Sometimes we know what we need to do to hike the path to our ideal work situation but we just can’t seem to take that first step. Why? Because we get overwhelmed by the possibilities and challenges of making changes. Then there is that pesky gremlin/inner critic in our mind that pipes in with the “you can’t do that because…” the “that’s a stupid idea” or even worse “you don’t have what it takes”. Inertia kicks in and we damp down our yearnings to a manageable level and convince ourselves that we are okay staying with the familiar, safe, and standard pattern of working. What if instead, we listened to voice of our heart, our brilliant ideas, our callings, and put real action into creating the career of our dreams doing work we could be passionate about? The saying goes, “How do you climb a mountain? One step at a time.”

Here is a lovely story that illustrates this:

by Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say. "Mother, you must come and see the daffodils before they are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. Going and coming took most of a day--and I honestly did not have a free day until the following week.

So we buckled up the children and went out to my car. "I'll drive," Carolyn offered. "I'm used to this." We got into the car, and she began driving.

We parked in a small parking lot adjoining a little stone church. From our vantage point at the top of the mountain we could see beyond us, in the mist, the crests of the San Bernardino range like the dark, humped backs of a herd of elephants. Far below us the fog-shrouded valleys, hills, and flatlands stretched away to the desert.

On the far side of the church I saw a pine-needle-covered path, with towering evergreens and manzanita bushes and an inconspicuous, hand-lettered sign "Daffodil Garden."

We each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path as it wound through the trees. The mountain sloped away from the side of the path in irregular dips, folds, and valleys, like a deeply creased skirt. Live oaks, mountain laurel, shrubs, and bushes clustered in the folds, and in the gray, drizzling air, the green foliage looked dark and monochromatic. I shivered. Then we turned a corner of the path, and I looked up and gasped.

Before me lay the most glorious sight, unexpectedly and completely splendid. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes where it had run into every crevice and over every rise. Even in the mist-filled air, the mountainside was radiant, clothed in massive drifts and waterfalls of daffodils. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow.

In the center of this incredible and dazzling display of gold, a great cascade of purple grape hyacinth flowed down like a waterfall of blossoms framed in its own rock-lined basin, weaving through the brilliant daffodils.
A charming path wound throughout the garden. There were several resting stations, paved with stone and furnished with Victorian wooden benches and great tubs of coral and carmine tulips.

As though this were not magnificence enough, Mother Nature had to add her own grace note -- above the daffodils, a bevy of western bluebirds flitted and darted, flashing their brilliance. These charming little birds are the color of sapphires with breasts of magenta red. As they dance in the air, their colors are truly like jewels above the blowing, glowing daffodils. The effect was spectacular.

It did not matter that the sun was not shining. The brilliance of the daffodils was like the glow of the brightest sunlit day. Words, wonderful as they are, simply cannot describe the incredible beauty of that flower-bedecked mountaintop.

Five acres of flowers! "But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. I was overflowing with gratitude that she brought me -- even against my will. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"Who?" I asked again, almost speechless with wonder, "and how, and why, and when?"

"It's just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory.

We walked up to the house, my mind buzzing with questions. On the patio we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read.

The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman, two hands, two feet, and very little brain."

The third answer was, "Began in 1958." There it was. The Daffodil Principle.

For me that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than thirty-five years before, had begun -- one bulb at a time -- to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. One bulb at a time.

There was no other way to do it. One bulb at a time. No shortcuts -- simply loving the slow process of planting. Loving the work as it unfolded.

Loving an achievement that grew so slowly and that bloomed for only three weeks of each year. Still, just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world.

This unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. She had created something of ineffable magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.

The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration: learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time -- often just one baby-step at a time -- learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

"Carolyn," I said that morning on the top of the mountain as we left the haven of daffodils, our minds and hearts still bathed and bemused by the splendors we had seen, "it's as though that remarkable woman has needle-pointed the earth! Decorated it. Just think of it, she planted every single bulb for more than thirty years. One bulb at a time! And that's the only way this garden could be created. Every individual bulb had to be planted. There was no way of short-circuiting that process. Five acres of blooms. That magnificent cascade of hyacinth!

All, all, just one bulb at a time."

The thought of it filled my mind. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the implications of what I had seen. "It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years. Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My wise daughter put the car into gear and summed up the message of the day in her direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said with the same knowing smile she had worn for most of the morning. Oh, profound wisdom!

(You can read more gems like this at the Awakening Path Newsletter.)

"At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."