A colleague of mine once worked with an engineering firm, helping the staff understand their teams thinking talents and how to use them on behalf of their business goals. One middle-aged gentleman stood out. His partners complained that, while they admired Jim as a person, he seemed to be just going through the motions. When their talents were plotted, his were very different than all the rest of the group. Jim was strong in empathy, caring for and about the feelings of others. But he spent all his days in a mechanical world. When asked how he ever became an engineer, he said it was because his high school guidance counselor said it was a good profession for him!
This story has a happy ending. Once Jim realized that he was miserable not because there was something wrong with him but because hed been living a life designed by his high school teacher, he became the human resources person in his firm. Spending his days helping to solve people problems, he began to blossom. He was happy because he was doing what he was meant to do and the firm was happy because he was contributing his gifts in a useful way.
I believe it was Joseph Campbell who once said that the spiritual imperative to be ourselves is so strong that the soul would rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone elses. The great poet Kalil Gibran said, God has placed in each soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that is within them. The more we are able to listen to the apostle within, the more we end up fully ourselves, joyfully living our own dreams and answerable for our own choices.
About the Author:
M.J. Ryan is one of the creators of The New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series and the author of many other bestselling books, including her latest: AdaptAbility: How to Survive Change You Didn't Ask For. She is a contributing editor to Health and Good Housekeeping magazines and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, and hundreds of radio programs..
