Love as career strategy is not something taught in our schools and colleges. The burden of logical decisions, duly accorded by market forces and trends shapes our education, jobs, career and life decisions. Fairly so! There is a place for that. What if we inverted this on its head and make love the centrifugal force driving work and career.
Let us assume, love stands for state of deep inclination, affection, warmth, generousity and kindness almost bordering on irrational stance. A naturally fuzzy-ish state of being that implies a constant state of deep connection with oneself and therefore others.
That is precisely the feeling with which masters of their arts, passionate achievers, creators, scientists, filmakers, mountaineers, entrepreneurs, statesmen and women, social catalysts created their best works. A feeling of connection, consistent passion and wholesome integration with the mission at hand.
Instead of waiting for a mutual transaction each time, if we started investing our thoughts and ideas into something that makes us move. Something that harbours itself relentlessly in our soul.
As young mums, our world tends to spilt and get fragmented - the care giving duties and wants, the pressure to balance and the need to stay incharge at all times. Sometimes, we end taking decisions, which seem correct but have low resonance value for us. Sometimes we struggle to find the space, the fit we crave. While a logical mind can work towards taking the rational decision, keeping up with the outcomes of our decisions makes it tedicious to wade through. This has happened to all of us – taking a course because not what we loved, because that was the best choice according to others, applying for jobs one feels are ‘decorated’ even though one has no real incline for them.
Transactions have limited residual value, limited to the size and time of the transaction. Whereas something done with a feeling of connection, oneness, positive contribution is bound to have enduring enriching value. It is like a hormonal investment into our life ?
This reminds me about Devapriya, one of our mentors to the community at SHEROES, who had a hi-flying career in marketing and earned big bucks. A mum to a daughter and a wife to a very supportive husband, Devapriya had it set, until the drill of clocking 9-9 became slightly meaningless and out of sync to her expectations. Devapriya decided to step back and rethink ‘how she was feeling in life.’ Where was the connection, the love she craved. She had achieved a lot in her career and now wanted a space of deep resonance and connect. She not only reworked her whole life to become and entrepreneur, set up not one but two businesses in areas she cared about but also had a second child, she had wanted for long.
A case of love as a career strategy. Without making a judgement call, Devapriya’s career switch brought her to a place, where it was a restart, a challenging place to be in but the feeling of doing it with love and for love became her guiding force.
As women, somewhere we own the responsibility of shutting off the judgement factory, for ourselves and for others. Fear of being judged and guilt drives us out of our own zone, our very true nature, our place of love. Judgement and love never meet and therein lies the magic.
Can you imagine, there could be a place where a woman, who is a SAHM (Stay at home mom) is equally in the same space as the one in the board room?
Can you imagine that a struggling on its way startup has same space as a corporate leader?
A back packing traveler covets the same amount of respect as a working mum with two kids?
Our job is to make way and we do that by being open and generous – much like love itself. Some questions to ask oneself, as one navigates phases, stages, reworks options and finds one’s fit.
What is the absolute non negotiable in your journey?
What ideas / thoughts float in your cranium when left to itself?
Who are you willing to make unhappy?
What is the one thing that moves you unconditionally?
Where would you be if not here?
Integration with one’s context and one’s feelings is state of love. Love as bestowed upon us as center of our existence. Decisions made with love as its focus are the one that stand to change the nature of our own being.
If one wants to do ordinary, do it with logic, one aspires for extraordinary, do it with love!
This piece was published in the February 2016 issue of Mother and Baby magazine.