There is a current popular idea inspired by the work of Marsha Sinetar and others that if you follow your heart's desire in your work or career life, then money and success will naturally follow. This is a very valuable concept that we would like to expand on based on our experience with the relationship between people's lives and their health. We have found consistently in our helping patients achieve optimal well-being, that if a part or all of you is dissatisfied with the type of work you are doing, you will probably get sick in one form or another. Chronic work stress and frustration or the inability to find your life work can cause any kind of health problem from recurrent colds to cancer. Because we are always trying to
help people heal at the deepest level possible, we have found ourselves engaged
quite frequently in our own form of career counseling in which we guide them in discovering what they truly love to do and empowering them to go ahead and do it. So many of us have unfortunately accepted the idea that work is drudgery and that they simply have to put in 8 hours a day at something they hate. We want to tell you not only that it IS possible to change what you're doing, however
drastically, so that your work is really in alignment with your higher self and
your mission, but that it is essential for you to do so if you want to achieve excellent health.
If you find yourself calling in sick a lot, or wishing you could, or if
you keep wondering what you would actually enjoy for a living but can't seem to
figure it out, this article is for you. Boredom, worry, deadlines, a bad boss,
and too much work with too little income can all cause the kind of stress which
results in physical, mental, or emotional symptoms. Doing a job that you feel
is beneath you or which makes no use of your inherent talents and abilities can
lower your self-esteem and increase your doubt and self-criticism. Feeling
stuck or dead-ended in a position with no hope for advancement is one of the
most difficult places to be. As long as people feel hopeful that a better
future lies ahead, they are willing to put up with some stress now, if the
eventual payoff seems big enough. But when there's no apparent hope of escaping
a bad situation, many people subconsciously choose poor health or even death as
a way out. It is socially acceptable to avoid work if you are sick, and there
are other benefits like sick pay, being taken care of, receiving extra love and
attention, having more time to yourself and getting to rest and relax. If you
fail to make a conscious choice in the direction of improving your work life,
your bodymind may make the choice for you. This may result in some kind of
imbalance or disease process which you would not ordinarily be interested in
having, and which may cause a lot of suffering and disability. It's much
better to enjoy your time off when you are well, rather than "enjoying" poor
health through sick time.
When you decide to be active in changing your life and work, however,
remarkable changes can occur. Recurrent, long-standing and even "terminal"
illnesses can improve dramatically or simply disappear when you get in touch
with and accept the vision of what you truly want for yourself. We recently had
a wonderful experience with one of our patients who has been signifi-
cantly depressed by the past year due to a divorce. She suffered from terrible
self doubt and feared that any job she might attempt would end in failure and
embarrassment despite the fact
that she was a talented landscape architect. We guided her to dialogue with her
self-critic and her terrified child who confessed that, underneath all the
mental self-battering, they really
loved her and wanted her to succeed. She committed herself to making at least 8
job phone calls the following week. She came in beaming a week later, having
been shocked to find that she had
been offered a fantastic job in her field doing just what she wanted. Since she
was still quite fearful of failing at her new job, we spent time strategizing
as to how she could feel most secure and have the greatest likelihood of
success. She's doing great!