Being Successful in Your Career: Part 3
Having a successful career is much like making a pizza from scratch. It takes time, careful planning, choosing the ingredients, nurturing the soil, lots of sunlight and water, and the farmers love. Little by little the plants grow to bear their fruit, and we grow a career that fits us. It takes time to figure out what we are made of.
Knowing our ingredients better prepares us for the oven, the real world, to try ourselves out. Being fulfilled in your work begins with a shift in career language, from the noun form—having a career, to the verb form—being your career.
To make your own way is to “be your career.” Put another way, a career is your way of practicing what you are.
Career is a verb: being yourself, doing what you cannot help but do.
When you’re in action, doing what comes naturally, you are a verb. This kind of career is notably obvious in great jazz musicians. In their performance it seems like the music is just flowing out them. They exude music. Charles Mingus wrote, “In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am.”
For the Love of the Game
When career is a verb, success is built in. Nothing extra is needed to feel successful. Michael Jordan’s basketball career is a perfect example. When he signed with the Chicago Bulls in 1984 they wanted him to sign a clause that said he could not play basketball in the off season without permission from the team. The team had the right to end his contract if he got hurt.
Jordan would not sign unless they added an addendum to the clause: freedom to play “for the love of the game.” He could not live without practicing when he wanted to—he was committed to the actual “playing” of the sport; the season games were icing on the cake. Michael Jordan spent most of his life mastering his profession. His career began in the moment of commitment to the daily practice of the game. Every day, well before he made it big, he was engaging the verb that he is.
It takes lots of time and special care to be masterful. Fulfillment comes naturally if you enjoy the day-in and day-out process of developing your natural abilities. With the right amount of nurturing, over time your fruit begins to show.
Success comes with the process of getting to know what verb you are and enjoying the journey of practicing it. Finding your way, little by little, from scratch. Your career is every step you take once you commit to being what you are. When you suddenly find yourself doing something for the love of it, you and your career will become one.
When that day comes, you’ll be happy to call yourself by a career noun, too. If you decide to exercise your unique talents, most likely, you’ll be a success in your own eyes—the kind that makes your heart full. You are a verb to be reckoned with. What verb are you?
