Working Your Dream Job And Keeping The Magic Alive

 

Everybody dreams and no one is an exception. Some people may dream big while some people may dream small. Some dream of their ideal job, while others try to reach for the stars. In this episode, Whitney Lauritsen and Jason Wrobel share what their lives were like prior to finding their passion and calling. They talk about the ups and downs of working your dream job and the challenges they faced in order to keep the magic alive. They also discuss the possible wall you might face when trying to pivot your life into what you truly desire. Know how you can prepare yourself to tackle the obstacles of society and yourself in order to get to the place where you rightfully belong.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Working Your Dream Job And Keeping The Magic Alive

Did you ever have a dream that you wanted badly? The thing finally comes to fruition in your life, this thing that you were praying for, hoping for, and wanting, shows up and manifests in your life and then you’re in it. You realize it isn’t exactly what you thought it would be. Having a conversation with a friend about their significant other, having this dream job and then getting into the dream job, and realizing it wasn’t what you thought it was going to be in reality. It’s the exploration of this idea that we want something badly. We have this idea in our head and our hearts of what we think it’s going to be or what we think it ought to be, but then it manifests in reality and it’s not exactly what we thought it was going to be. It’s an interesting place we find ourselves and that’s what we want to explore, is dreaming big, but it is a weird space by having the dream come to reality and being like, “This isn’t what I thought it was going to be.” How has that shown up in your life, Whitney? I’m curious because we’ve been riffing this topic. How does this show up in reality? More importantly, what I want to explore is, what do we do?

This has shown up for me, mainly with my career change because for a huge chunk of my life, starting when I was a teenager throughout my mid-twenties, I thought that I wanted to be a professional filmmaker. That’s what I went to school for. That’s what I was passionate about and devoted so much of my time and energy and thoughts to this career. It was interesting how it started to shift, which was probably a year or less after I started my website for Eco-Vegan Gal, which initially launched in late 2008 as a blog. Then I started doing videos on YouTube and social media content. I fell in love with that process. At first, that was in addition to everything I was doing in the film industry. I was still creating short films, working in the film industry, and planning to do work mom term. I wanted to be a director. I wanted to act and do so much on camera. It became this natural progression for me because getting on YouTube was easy. It had been something that I was already doing in terms of creating videos. I love talking about veganism and the environment and health wellness.

Once it occurred to me that I could create a career around that, which again was still early on, in terms of making a career for bloggers and content creators. Even that term content creator, it wasn’t something that people use to describe themselves back in 2009, but something shifted in me and I never looked back on my film career, which is interesting. I have a lot of nostalgia for it. Sometimes I miss working on movie sets, TVs, production offices, and all of that, but other than that, I have very little desire to work in that industry. It’s fascinating how fifteen years of my life were consumed by that. Suddenly, it completely shifted into something else very organic.

Was it disillusioning to a degree once? You have this dream of, “I want to be a filmmaker. I want to be in Hollywood. I want to be in LA.” You graduated with a film degree. You’re a filmmaker. You’re doing films and then you get out of LA. You’re in the business. Was there a series of moments, where you were like, “This isn’t what I thought it was going to be?”

Was it in terms of the filmmaking, not what I thought it was going to be?

All of it. Was there a sense of the idea in your head that didn’t match the reality? Was there a sense of disillusionment or disappointment for you in that like, “This isn’t what I thought?” Did it match what you had in your head?

Maybe it is because I grew up in a small town or maybe it’s part of my personality or something about my family life. I always had a little bit of an innocent side of me. I tend to see things through almost rose-colored glasses. I see the positive in things. I don’t feel overwhelmed by challenges, most of the time. I think that everything is possible if you put your mind to it. It was interesting going from this small town of Massachusetts to moving to Los Angeles and then working in the film industry. There are a lot of wonderful elements of living in LA. People are very open-minded and heart-centered here, for the most part. I worked in music videos and television, movies and commercials at times. All of these different elements of production in general, people don’t seem like they’re living in the magic of that type of creation, which is how I viewed it. I always had seen anything creative is magical. You get to write these stories and make them come to life. This is incredible. People think of Los Angeles, in Hollywood, specifically as a magical place, which I see it myself.

The day-to-day life of working on production, people tend to be very drained. It is interesting because the actors are very tuned into the magic and some directors are as well, but I got to know a lot of directors. Most of them are men, even to this day, which is fascinating how few women either rise to the big positions as directors or maybe not big positions, but doing an A-level type of content out there. It’s still very dominated by men for whatever reason. Even though I think there’s been a lot of acceptance of women, it’s still rare that a movie or TV, music video, or whatever is directed by a woman. There’s a lot of masculine energy onsets. There’s a little bit of jadedness. I’ve met many huge directors over the years, which has been exciting to me, but it seems like a lot of them are a bit jaded and maybe not the type of personality I imagined for them, for people. There are some exceptions like when I met Steven Spielberg. He possesses a magical quality and that was satisfying to see. Rob Reiner is another person that has a bit of his jolliness and he was very consistent. I met Spike Jonze at one point who makes a lot of magical types of content. He seemed to be pretty tuned into that. A lot of the others, I can’t remember their names off the top of my head, but enough where I thought, “This is really interesting.”

Desire is the driver of all creation. Click To Tweet

You think that these people would be in this place of seeming like magical human beings. Instead, a lot of them seem to feel stressed, the producers even more. I’ve met some big producers over the years and a lot of them seem very stressed and almost like they have this tunnel vision. A lot of the times, I would work in roles as a production assistant or something and seeing as a minor role and being treated like you’re not important. That was my experience. I was somebody that was eager, passionate, wanted to help and make a difference, and wanting to learn. There were many times over the years of meeting other people in the film industry or working with other people. I keep saying the film industry, but I mean the whole production side of things is that many people were jaded, stressed, and self-centered or very focused on themselves and the small crowd of people around them. It was very common for unless you were part of their click or unless you had been assigned an important role, you generally were not treated with much respect. That was heartbreaking. I think that there were some years I was willing to tough that out, but over time, I started to lose some of my passions.

That was heartbreaking that a lot of people I worked with, they were trudging along or you’d meet people on production sets that seemed like they were doing it as a job. It was any other job. I’m sitting here thinking, “You’re working on this great project. This isn’t just a job. It’s something that people are going to view and love.” I was surprised at how the majority of people that I experienced did not even seem that grateful to be doing that work. That’s probably where the things started to pivot for me is seeing the side of this industry where it felt almost like corporate or something. It’s these people that are a cog in the wheel. I didn’t want to live my life like that. That was part of the turnoff. Now granted, I had a lot of magical experiences. I met a lot of magical people. I still believe in the magic of Hollywood and the magic of production in general. It’s all about this mindset and perception, but it did wear away at me to an extent. I much prefer doing a lot of things on my own and having fewer people involved in things. Whether I’m making my own YouTube videos, doing everything by myself or I’m working with a couple of people or maybe just Jason and the instance of the podcast. It feels like I can choose the type of personality I’m around. I can find the people that can tap into the magic and the lightheartedness of creating content, which is probably why places like YouTube felt like a better fit for me.

It is this interesting thing of like, “We want things.” There’s an interesting conversation about dreams and desire that I think about a lot where it’s from a Buddhist perspective. It is this idea of not desiring things. In not desiring things, we release attachment to things, but then you look at things like Abraham Hicks and they say, “Desire is the driver of all creation.” We need to desire things to be able to bring life force energy and creative energy into things. To me with dreams and desires, it’s an interesting exploration. Especially as a young person, we have dreams of our entire lives. We have this thing of like, “It’s going to be great. I’m going to have this career. I’m going to do this thing.” Sometimes, it matches the idea we have in our heads. Your experience with the film career is interesting because growing up in a place like Detroit, I had this idea of, “Hollywood is a huge and crazy place.” We both lived in LA for over a decade now. There are moments where it’s funny. You mentioned the word jaded and there are moments where I feel jaded too, being in LA. I will have lucid moments of like, “This is where I dreamed of being as a child.” There’s a reverence, there’s a sense of wonder that gets reinstilled in me and remembering the dream of what I had as a child living in California, living in Los Angeles.

Why did you want to live in Los Angeles?

My dad was out here. One reason is there was this desire to reconnect with my father, which never happened. The other side of it was, it blew my mind that I remember being obsessed with movies and TV as a kid, watching a lot of entertainment and thinking, “All of this magic gets created out there.” I would turnover albums or cassettes of my favorite bands and I would read the liner notes and it would say, “Recorded at Sound City in Studio City, California or recorded at Hollywood Recorders.” I remember thinking, “All of these movies, TV, and albums that I love, they’re all from LA. What is this place?” It seemed like this Fantasy Land of infinite possibility. In many ways, it is. As an adult, there is also a sense of, “This is a place where people work. Not everyone is chasing fame and fortune. People live here and have families, jobs, and lives like they do everywhere else.”

That’s why I felt frustrated because it is another place, but there is something energetically about Los Angeles that draws similar to New York. Generally, people either are into New York, into California and Los Angeles specifically or both. Both cities seem to have endless possibilities. They’re huge cities. The possibilities are partial because of the number of people here. The more people, the more variety. We have access to so much and anything that you could dream is possible here. It’s amazing in that sense versus growing up in a small town, any city. I lived in Boston. That was lovely as a city, but there’s something about LA that I feel like every day that anything I want is possible and that’s exciting to me. I still believe that. That’s partially why I felt frustrated thinking like, “Here I am amongst all of these people. Why would anybody feel jaded by this? Why would people not be grateful for these things?” It’s incredible.

I still feel in awe when I see a “celebrity,” somebody whose name I know. Someone I see in a TV show or a movie and you see them on the street. Jason and I saw a pretty big name at the local store down the block from me. I felt in awe of that moment. That is a great example of anything that could happen at any time. This is one of those cities where everybody is connected. You’re one person away from being connected to somebody that you admire. That’s happened to me many times and it blows my mind. It’s part of me feeling annoyed like, “How could you possibly not feel the magic? How could you possibly not be tapped into the magic? It is the frustration line to shake someone and say, “Don’t you realize how lucky you are to live here, to work here, to be surrounded by these people? What is it that is causing you to feel ungrateful or this is just another day? That’s part of the human condition. We get used to things and we lose sight of how magical they are. Magic is also very relative. I suppose if you experience the magic on a regular basis, then maybe you forget that it’s magic, to begin with, or it doesn’t feel magical to you anymore because you’re used to it,

It becomes your new normal.

 

Jason, you’ve worked with some big names while doing private chef work. What was your experience with? You were in that world. You would work on movie sets, sometimes.

Do you mean my experience?

Do you find that there was a lot of jadedness? Do you think that maybe your role is different? I worked as a production assistant, if you’re unfamiliar with what that means, it’s like the “bottom rung” where you are that person that gets paid very little. As a Jack of all trades, you could be asked to do anything and you feel almost invisible because you’re running around and doing all of these random jobs. It’s one of those jobs that it’s acceptable to not appreciate that person, even though that person is important. It is like the cog in the wheel. If it wasn’t for that person, a lot of things would not get done and wouldn’t be as efficient. Some of the experiences that I had were when I was in that role. I did a lot of assistant work and maybe that was part of why I experienced that. I worked as a secretary at the front desk of the production offices. I worked as a personal assistant, as an editorial assistant or office assistant. All of these different roles were generally like in that assistant category. It’s almost like you feel unimportant, even though you know that you’re doing important work. Maybe for you Jason, as a chef, you were seen as more valuable. You weren’t as exposed to that type of energy that I was feeling for many years.

It was a mixed bag because I feel like I’m getting to see the intimate lives of celebrities, their families, how they live and feeding them. My experience was pretty intimate. I had some interesting conversations with them. This isn’t about the nature of celebrity. That could be a totally different subject that we could explore, but I found that the world was exciting to me because I got to finally see the components of how a movie is made. I was also a student filmmaker in high school and early college. Much like Whitney, I got a film scholarship to go to Columbia for film school and ended up not graduating with a film degree.

How is that much like me? I did not get a scholarship, but I did graduate with a film degree.

You went to film school. That’s what I meant much like you. You went to one of the top film schools in the country as I did. That’s something we share. I never was able to get under the hood and see exactly how a film was made. The greatest pleasure I had was being behind the scenes, making food and also being able to be on set, delivering food to certain people and certain clients I had. Sitting there and watching them do takes, watching them do scenes, and watching them reset and being there in the late hours of the night was an extremely exciting experience for me. To your point, I noticed there were people who seem to be joyful, jubilant, and creative in the flow and knowing the thing and certain production people felt to me with their demeanor and their attitude consistently, was just like getting a paycheck or punching a paycheck.

I think that’s the case with any profession. To realize that perhaps in those moments, what comes up for me is when it’s not glamorous. If we’re not feeling the magic, if we’re not feeling in the flow, can we still be committed to showing up and doing our best? Are we open to rediscovering the magic in something? That’s an interesting conversation because sometimes I feel like I will be super passionate about something. I have had many interesting career permutations before this and sometimes I was able to resurrect the magic, sometimes I haven’t. I have felt in my heart that it was time to go. It was time to end that particular part of my career. That’s an interesting place to be in, do I commit to finding the newness, finding the magic, and finding the spark again? Perhaps looking at this in a different way or is it time for me to move on to something new?

It’s like a relationship.

Magic is relative. If you experience it on a regular basis, you forget that it’s magic to begin with. Click To Tweet

Very much.

It’s with another person. We have relationships with our jobs. It’s interesting because I bounced around from a lot of different positions working in the film industry, which I’m grateful for looking back because I had many different experiences. I worked in a ton of different offices. I got to see it from many different angles and that was a blessing because I feel very satisfied with what I did when I worked in production. I’m not sure there is much that I did not experience. I think it’s nice when you can feel confident that you got as much out of something as felt necessary to you, as much as you thought that you could. That way, you can look back and not feel like you didn’t try hard enough or you didn’t do enough. It helps relieve any feelings of regret. I don’t feel regret about it. It feels interesting that I’m no longer doing something that I thought was going to be my life’s work. That’s why I feel less of an attachment now or an expectation now with the work that I’m doing.

I’ve been doing it for many years now. It has been very intimate. I felt like it’s in full alignment because of my past experience of changing careers. I feel like anything could happen. If I had you asked me when I still worked in production, if I was going to do anything else with my life, I probably would’ve said no. It wasn’t like there was a point where I thought, “I don’t like this anymore. What can I do instead?” It was almost as if the two overlapped, one ended and one began. I am grateful for that. We were talking about a mutual friend of ours who’s in a place of thinking, “This career, I thought I wanted, I don’t want anymore and I don’t know what to do.” Have you experienced that? I just said I have not. I can’t fully relate to that feeling.

I have, 100%.

I know what it’s like to not have a job and think, “I don’t know what my next job is going to be.” I know it in terms of going from one thing to another and trying to figure out how I can pivot. As a profession, as a whole or a thematic overview of the type of work I was doing, it was for one chunk of my life working in production and the next chunk of my life working in wellness and online content creation. The minute details changed in each of those different phases of my life, but I was never at a place of feeling like I was starting at square one again. Have you?

Absolutely. I have stopped, ended and started things many times in my life. It’s making my head spin to think about it. It does. It’s interesting to look back on what I wanted, the track that I started to go down, and how I would pivot and end things and start something new. It feels like it’s happened a lot for me in my life. Out of high school, I had won some film competitions for my student work. I got a film scholarship to go to Columbia and went there to do film school. I was in film school and realized that I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to do acting. I pivoted and started doing acting and I realized that I wanted to also have an education in marketing because I felt like it would behoove me to learn how to market myself as a performer and artist in the world. I ended up not getting a film degree at all. I ended up getting a marketing communications degree with a minor in theater. I didn’t expect that. I ended up working as a copywriter for the first five years of my career in advertising agencies. I was working as a copywriter and writing ads and creating that type of persuasive entertainment. In 2005, I had a bunch of money saved and I realized I did not want to be living the life I wanted anymore. I quit early that year. I traveled the world most of 2005 and by the end of the year, I was like, “I want to be in LA.” I moved out to LA and here I am.

Why did you say you wanted to move to LA?

I’d always wanted to move to LA, even as a child.

 

It is because of your dad.

My dad and also, if you want to be an actor or musician, this is where you go, or New York. I didn’t want to be in New York, yet. Of course, I ended up being in New York. That’s another part of the journey. I quit my career as a copywriter. I was in the ad industry. I was making good money but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart didn’t want to do it anymore. I wanted to be a performer. I wanted to be a singer and pursue acting then ended up going to culinary school and then got out of culinary school.

How did you make that decision to go to culinary school?

I wasn’t making any money as an actor or a musician and I was in LA.

Why culinary all of a sudden?

I had always enjoyed making food. It was an art form that I enjoyed. I was curious if I applied myself with formal education about how I would do.

It’s interesting because if you ask most people who know you, they would describe you as a chef. Yet, here you are saying it was one of these, “I like making food, I’ll go do this.”

That was pretty much it.

Tapping into your passion is a beautiful thing, but it can also be scary. Click To Tweet

It wasn’t like, “I love food my whole life.”

It wasn’t that. I think about that sometimes. My relationship with my profession has changed and my viewpoint on it is different than it was a few years back. Most people regard me as a chef and that’s fine, but spoiler alert, it’s not the thing I’m most passionate about.

What is the thing that you are most passionate about?

That’s a great question.

You don’t know off the top of your head?

The first thing that came to me was entertaining people because a few years ago at a New Year’s Eve gathering, I was with a mutual friend of ours who is one of the most famous music managers in the history of music. It was ridiculous. We were talking about art, career and everything. She looked at me and she goes, “Jason, you’re an entertainer. That’s what you are. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You could do food. You could do music. You could be on the camera. You are an entertainer. You were born to entertain people.” That’s very acquiesced. When she said that, it resonated and I was like, “You’re right. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I want to bring joy and entertainment to people. I want to move them. I want to light them up.” No matter what I’m doing. That’s the thing I’m most passionate about is I love and I always have loved to entertain people. What form that takes? It’s changed a lot in my life, for sure. At the heart of things, for someone to say, “He’s a great entertainer.” That resonates and my heart goes, “You’re right. Thank you.”

There was strength through it all.

With film, writing, acting, music and food, there’s a degree of leveraging my artistic desires to entertain people, move them, or bring them something that maybe impacts their life in a positive way. I’ve always had this idea in terms of dreams or career choice that I had to pick one thing and stick to it. There’s always been this conflict within me, even as a young man of thinking, “Why should you stick with one thing?” That’s how Picasso, Bob Dylan or Michael Jordan did it. This idea in my head of the greats, in all of the professions that have inspired me. If I examine that, it’s not true. If I look at my artistic heroes, people who have deeply inspired me, they didn’t choose one thing. They might’ve been known for one thing, but they had other artistic pursuits that were of equal value and measure to them. We’re in a state now that if I look at the entertainment world in general, it’s not that I know I’ve expected, a person who comes to mind of the current generation is the like of Justin Timberlake.

 

When you think of him, the first thing you think of is an amazing singer, an amazing dancer, a great songwriter, and he can act. He is hilarious too. He’s funny as hell. He’s a great actor. What I grew up in is like David Bowie. He is one of the greatest musicians and chameleon to creative people in the history of our culture. He is also a phenomenal actor and a great writer. This paradigm I think that I have been holding onto, I need to pick one thing and stick to it. If I look at my heroes of the artists that truly inspire me, they have multiple things going on all the time. It’s apropos that most people associate me with food, but I’m still deeply passionate about music and comedy and being on camera and entertaining people. Food is just what most people associate me with.

It is interesting. I think there’s an element of feeling, passion for something, doing it for a while, and then realizing that you’re no longer interested in it. For me, it’s fascinating. I haven’t given it too much thought because it came about organically for me to switch directions. It wasn’t that I was throwing away something, it was that the things that the two careers have in common with one another are the video content. For me, growing up, YouTube didn’t exist at that time. It wasn’t even something that was happening when I was in college. There was never even an option to be a YouTuber or a content creator of any sort. I wonder what it would have been like to have those options when I was in college. Would I have pursued that? I was very traditional. I wanted to direct, write and act in movies. That was my passion. That was the direction in which I was headed. I was determined to make it happen.

Even though there were those moments of me getting a bit discouraged, frustrated, and resentful of other people in the industry, which I think is part of the reason it’s hard. Interacting and dealing with all these challenging people in the production world, it was emotionally draining for me. Maybe that’s where it started to occur to me that I was passionate about making a difference. In fact, my second to the last job was one of the best that I had in the whole entertainment world. That’s where I started recognizing how much I cared about environmental things. I was passionate and I was getting frustrated with people that weren’t into environmental issues. That’s where it started to get funneled naturally into this blog and eventually, the videos. I thought like, “I can educate people. I can make a difference. I can help, but I can also be creative with it.”

That’s natural and folding of realizing things, maybe it had never occurred to me, but had been something on my heart my entire life. This idea of doing something good for the world. That can also happen. You get into this mindset almost like a program. Oftentimes, it can be our parents drilling it into our heads over and over again. “You need to do this job to get this money or you can pick from these careers to make money.” We have all these ideas of what money means for us. It’s almost like a lot of people grew up trying to fit into a mold. It’s their teachers, their family members, their friends and society, all these things that were programmed, trained, conditioned into wanting. You think, “If I want to have that family, those children in that house, and that car and all the other components, I need to have a job that can pay for those things.” My parents said that these are the jobs that I could have or these are the jobs that my friends are going after. I’m going to do that. You hear about these midlife crises that some people have. I wonder if it’s because you spend so much time doing something and then one day you realize that you’ve never had to do it. You thought that you had to do that or that those were the only options.

It’s amazing when somebody makes a pivot at any point in their life and decides to tap further into what their passion is. It’s such a beautiful thing, but it can often feel very scary because it’s shaking up the status quo or it’s shaking up the foundation in which they’ve built their whole lives. Maybe that’s where the confusion lies is with this friend that we’re referring to. They have to step back and take the time to tap into themselves and find out what else do they love. What did they love about what they were doing before? How can they use that love to pursue something else or a different version of it or something? It can take some time, especially if you’re not in the practice of being very conscious, it seems to me that a lot of people are not. If you’re not in a regular practice of meditation, yoga, reflection, journaling, writing or any type of self-inquiry and self-development. If that’s not something that you’re practicing regularly, then I imagine it’s incredibly frightening when you have to step back and say, “What do I want?” If you’re not in the practice of asking yourself what you want.

Maybe you never have.

I bet you there are a lot of people out there. Maybe that’s not the way they were raised. Maybe meditation seems silly or journaling seems frivolous, whatever label you’ve put on these things. Whereas for me, I’ve always been very self-reflective. I’ve been journaling, processing, and I’ve been into whatever self-inquiry methods I could find even therapy. If you’ve never gone to therapy before, maybe you’ve never sat with yourself and reflected on who you are, what you want, and why you’re doing things. I imagine anybody reading this is probably interested in self-inquiry, but maybe there’s someone in your life who’s struggling to figure out who they are and what they want. I imagine that’s also very challenging, emotionally to be in that place of thinking. You’re almost at a standstill, “I’m unhappy and I want to do something different, but I don’t know what that thing is yet.”

All the attendant fears that come with that as an adult.

It requires a lot of courage to change and let go of something that you’ve been holding on to for so long. Click To Tweet

It is the fear of the unknown.

It’s a lot more than that, I think. It’s ultimately the fear of letting people down. It’s the fear of being destitute. It’s the fear of losing everything you’ve built, making the wrong choice, losing what you’ve built, climbing back down the other side of the mountain after you’ve scaled whatever mountain that is. There’s a lot to this.

You are starting from scratch when you’re in your 30’s, 40’s or later. This could happen at any point in your life. This happens to a lot of people in college and after college. We see it as this young twenty-something thing, but there’s another view of it. When you’re in your 30s or 40s, what are you doing changing your career? What do you mean you don’t know who you are and what you want to do? People have so much shame around that that they don’t even want to admit it publicly.

I feel that a lot. This subject is hitting home for me. It’s hitting home for me because, in my early 40s, especially 2019, I’m in a process of reevaluating things. A lot of things that I have known professionally have fallen away at the beginning of the year. Certain relationships, certain income sources, I think there is something about having the courage to put yourself into unknown regions and go into the darkest part of the forest as Joseph Campbell used to say, “There is no path. There’s no clear path, but you’re going to walk in this part of the forest because it’s leading you somewhere.” I think there is a lot of shame or feelings around. When you’re in your teens, in your twenties, that’s the time to experiment. By the time you’re in your 30s to 50s or beyond, you need to be anchored in your thing. If you’re not, there’s something wrong with you.

It’s funny when you think about it, who’s setting these cultural expectations or rules?

The Minister of Culture, I don’t know.

Why does it matter if you want to change and pivot? Why is there shame around that? It’s perplexing discussing it. Who cares? It’s different if you feel there’s someone depending on you. I think that there’s a lot of pressure there. If you’re married or you have other obligations, family or otherwise, and you feel like you need to generate a certain amount of income and thus, you can’t change because it would throw everything off. You have to wait and make sure there’s a sure thing. As I’m saying this, I’m thinking about people I know who have quit careers to pursue their big passions. They finally found the courage for it. They don’t have any dependents. It doesn’t even matter, but they’re afraid of not making it or they’re afraid of failing. They’re afraid of running out of money and not being able to pay rent and all of these things. It’s very understandable.

It comes back to these feelings of survival, but ultimately following your passion and being happy. Feeling fulfilled is also such a crucial part of humanity, at least for our culture. Western culture is very much built around that idea of the individual feeling satisfied. If we don’t feel satisfied with our lives, that’s equally as devastating, that equally can impact our will to live. As human beings, we have to find a reason to get up every day. If every day you’re getting up and doing something that you don’t like and you’re denying something that’s deep within you, then that I feel is like a slow killer.

 

It is.

That is miserable. I remember when I made the change to work for myself, not only to pivot my career but at the time, as I was deciding to pursue something new. I also decided to work for myself. I remember it being very scary, but incredibly liberating because I finally got to make my own schedule. I got to make my own rules. I got to decide what I was going to do every day and when. That fits my personality and the things that I enjoy so much better than getting up and clocking in and following somebody else’s guidance. Some people enjoy the ladder, that’s not me. I would rather struggle and do what I’m doing now in my own terms than feel perfectly financially stable and make life on somebody else’s terms, but each person is going to have a different relationship to all this.

It requires a lot of courage to change and to let go of something that you’ve been holding onto for so long, whether that’s a long-held dream, a career or a relationship, these pivots, these changes. There’s a reason a lot of people don’t ever make them, even though they might be whispering in their ear, whispering in their hearts because it can be terrifying. Also, knowing that I believe from my own experience and other people who have taken the leap over and over again, that somehow, I don’t know if you want to call it grace or the universe has your back, God’s love, whatever you believe in. There is something that happens when we acknowledge and surrender to what’s in our heart to do and go for it that somehow, everything ends up okay. I don’t mean that in a simple or pedantic way. There are certainly incredibly terrifying and tough moments in all of this journey. I think there’s some way the universe shows up with certain resources or certain support when you get so clear about what it is that you want to be focusing on or doing and you go for it.

That’s part of the purpose. It’s like the manager said to you about you being an entertainer. Perhaps that is your purpose. If you do believe in a higher power, then a lot of the spirituality is based around living your purpose what you were here to do. Maybe we were each put on this planet to play a role and to deny that role that is doing a great disservice to the rest of the world. If we look at this from a place of purpose, service, passion, and something that drives us. Something that is in a way the underlying reason and motivation, but behind everything that we do, life is easier, happier and more joyous. I think if we have more joy and passion in this world and magic to go back to what I was saying, it makes the world a better place.

We can remember as children when we saw things from a viewpoint of magic, we’re drawn to magic as human beings. We want to believe in magic. I believe that we all have magic within us. It’s a matter of tuning in, being honest with it, and finding the courage to go after that magic and live our lives based on that magic. Even if that means doing something that you don’t think is the right thing to do or the most lucrative thing to do, or how you think other people should view it. If you’re living your life based on what somebody else thinks that you should be doing with your life, that may or may not be fulfilling for you.

It comes down to this thing, are we living for ourselves or are we living for others? Are we answering the true calling or are we trying to meet others’ expectations of us? It comes down to this examination of people-pleasing, wanting people’s approval, wanting their attention and affection, or living from our own center. This requires a tremendous practice of self-inquiry, getting to know who we are, listening to our hearts, listening to our guts and stepping out and doing it. It’s not just doing it once. I feel like once you choose the path of listening to yourself and listening to your intuition or your gut, it’s a thing of doing it over and over again. It reminds me of this thing Tony Robbins says about burning the ships. It’s like, “Once you make a decision, you burn the ships and you’re on the bank of the shore. You’re in. You’re on your island and you’re doing it.” I think part of this requires a certain mentality like that. You step all the way in, you take the leap and see what happens.

Whatever your dream is, whatever is in your heart to do, we want to encourage you to tap into that. Let it wash over you, listen to the small whispers in your ear that might be nudging you toward a different life, a new exploration, a different career, a new creative path. The more you do that, the more you listen, the more you take those little leaps, you start to build that capacity to take bigger leaps when the time is right. We’re here for you and we appreciate your contribution to what we’re doing in the world. You can always connect with us on our website, which is Wellevatr.com. You can always shoot us an email to [email protected]. Check us out on all of the social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We also have some video content coming out. Check that out and go for it. Go for your dreams, listen to the small still voice inside of you, and keep trusting that you are being led to exactly where you need to be. We’ll catch you soon with another episode.

 

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