Nothing Stops A Whole Heart When Working In A Career You Love

One sparrow-boned, average mother in a cotton dress thrusts up a Pontiac Grand Am to rescue a crushed and wailing child. She doesn't think about it. She does not analyze how a woman of one hundred and ten pounds who normally can't lift more than two bags of canned groceries can hoist up a ton of Detroit-fired steel. She doesn't think about her own injuries, the heat and fumes, the angle of the steaming vehicle or the medical expenses to come later. Instead, love fills her with her mission: “I've got to save my baby.” She succeeds. Her story makes the evening news.

That's how you will do work you love. Your primal heart will override common sense, knock you off your fence, and have you raging and storming for your trapped desire instead of against its “temptation.” Then you will engage the totality of your intelligence to find a means to succeed instead of to tally up and analyze the many ways in which you could fail.

By the time I left law, I practically couldn't breathe anymore. I sensed my spacious office shrinking, my file folders sulking, smirking, and accusing, and the phones ringing louder. With each passing day, I knew I had to escape that marble-lined, cream-colored elective incarceration.

Of course I had a thousand and three questions. How will I support myself? What if I can't find another job? What if I'm really not good at writing anyway? What if I ruin my legal career forever and I can never find anything else?

But the day came when I wanted another life even more than I wanted the answers to those paralyzing questions. I guess you could say I had to find a way to twirl a Pontiac on my pinky on a hot summer day, and so I did. That simple, and that amazing.

You will never realize your dreams by focusing on passion-sucking, brain-distracting, imaginary and mutating obstacles. This dream-birthing is not a cool and rational process of sipping iced teas and considering alternatives. Instead you might say it's the recognition that you have no alternative, want no alternative, and can no longer wait for reason and thunder to catch up with the lightning flashes and clairvoyance of your heart.

Our questions distract us from the realization of our answers. The river can only find the sea by following its inner migration toward immensity. I am not saying that to create work you love, you ignore the challenges and concerns of reality. But I am suggesting that you put those doubts and questions in perspective. Commit to your heart's path, then resolve the sticky details. “Do the thing and you shall have the Power,” explained Emerson. You know no strength without resolve. The river doesn’t kiss the sea by inviting doubts to crumpets and tea.

I once saw a magazine ad that pictured a woman rock climber seizing the edge of an outcropping, her muscles taut with intention. The ad read “You Have to Want It.” Her “want” power defied the ravages of gravity, terror, and the unknown strength of the unknown. Yours will too. Nothing stops a whole heart.

Meanwhile, you will always have questions tugging at your sleeves. Reason would have us stand at the crossroads forever.

Live unreasonably.

Decide to live your dreams before you can foresee the means. You can feed attention to your obstacles or you can feed attention to your desire. One gives you magnified obstacles. The other brings you fire.