How do you make career bliss actually happen?

You’re busy enough as it is. Right?

Work practically owns your ass. There’s social media, emails to return or write, worrying that things will be worse than they are now and creating strategies for what you should do if they do get worse. And then there is your in-person social life with people that you may or may not like or want in your life (so it’s work not to think about that too). And let’s not forget trying to stay or get started on being physically healthy. Laundry, dishes and dusting.

There really, truly, honestly isn’t room for a single thing more.

But still that ache for something known as the illusive “more” visits.

Isn’t there “more” than just “this”? A voice within asks sounding quite like a desperate plea. Wondering how to keep going or why to keep going.

You wish that ache would just go away.

You wish you could un-invite it.

It seems to want to complicate your already complicated life.

I remember when this was my day-to-day real life. And though writing the words feels like lore and legend now, I try not to forget that this used to be my life.

Julia Cameron writes that: “… we pass through the same issues over and over again at slightly differing altitudes … [these issues are not] banished, just disguised.”

(And let’s face it, I’ve seen my fair share of ‘spiritual’ people lack integrity in real life practice. So really, what would make me so special that I wouldn’t be human if they still are, right?)

So I share my hindsight for insight. It feels generous to do so. And that’s something I want to see more of in the world.

(And I truly sigh with dreamy gratitude each day for the life that I have now knowing what things were once upon a time. Ask my dog. It’s usually around her and it’s often for her.)

So what happened in my life that could be waiting to happen in your life?

Before I answer that, I want to reassure you by saying that I remember searching for meaning outside of myself for a long time. As I was taught to do. And all I felt was fear and a sense of unfairness at how the world worked. It seemed to me like some people were the lucky ones. Why not me? What’s wrong with me?

I could sense that void within. But I was still scared that if I actually looked and acknowledged, I would discover something bigger. Something more like a deep and endless chasm.

Something else I really didn’t have time for.

So here are words to spark a transformation –

Thomas Edison once said: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

This quote found me awhile ago and it nagged at me to look at it again and again and again. It wanted me to study it. And then I read it again one day as though for the first time and I saw what I had been missing – a bridge of explanation:

Genius is 1% inspiration.

And what is genius, but your gift?

What you came here to offer?

What you came here to do?

The meaning you’re craving?

So here’s the thing: You’re giving a lot to everything you do. Too much in fact. One percent too much.

You’re 100% perspiration. 0% Inspiration.

You don’t even really know why you are doing what you are doing and if they’re really the things you want to be spending your time on at all.

That 1% of inspiration would make all the difference in your world.

The other 99% of what you do is still perspiration. Except now that 99% is configured, shaped, orchestrated, prioritized and made most of all meaningful by 1% inspiration.

Hello genius.

What do you do, can you do, and/or do you want to do to make up your 1% inspiration come true?