At first, I reflected on my own writing process, the fits and starts I go through writing blog posting and content for my newsletters, workshops, exercises and website. But after the initial chuckle of recognition wore off, I found myself reflecting on how getting started in writing is a lot like getting started in other parts of my career and life.

While I was reflecting, I picked up one of my favorite books, Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott and skimmed through the chapters. In my flipping, I found a quote I’d never noticed before.  Lamott references E.L. Doctorow who is quoted as saying, “writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. “ The quote hit me like a ton of bricks and I couldn’t help but whole-heartedly agree with Lamott’s remark that this was the best advice she ever got about writing and life.

Even if you only have a vague idea of what you’d like to do or where we want to go, get started.  Drive the first 200 feet and see where it takes you. See what your headlights illuminate in those first 200 feet. There may be a bridge-out that forces you to turn around or find a new path. There may be a crossroads that forces you to make a new choice.  But you might also find a road sign that says you’re on the right track.

My mind jumped back to Bolton’s blog, “The blank page. The blinking cursor.” They mock us when we’re trying to get started and can defeat us if we let them. Too often we believe that we have to know the whole story or the destination in order to write the first word or take the first step.

The same can be said of our careers.  For many of us, the blinking cursor is the daily grind of waking up and going to a job we detest.  The blank page is our deep desire of wanting a new direction but not knowing what our new destination is. We feel mocked.  Eventually we feel defeated.

But if we go back to the words of Doctorow, we can find liberation in them.  It’s not necessary to know the final destination.  Perhaps it’s not even possible to know exactly what the final destination is.  All we can do is shine those headlights and see what the next 200 feet reveal to us. Slow down. Explore. Take notes.

What clues can you find in what you see in front of you?

In what’s working and not working in your current job.

In what you like to do; dislike to do.

In what you’re passionate about.

In what you have a natural talent for (and what you don’t.)

In what your preferences are for the ideal environment that will nourish you and allow your best to shine.

Follow the signs.  Take it one exit at a time.  Correct your course along the way. Make a left turn if your attention is grabbed by something you like.  Trust that you will make it to your destination by progressing 200 feet at a time, no matter which direction you take.  You may find that the destination changes along the way.  That’s ok.  The key is to get started and keep taking it 200 feet at a time.

Action is the best way to overcome the overwhelming paralysis we can often feel when it comes to making a change in our careers and lives.

What are the next 200 feet of the road ahead revealing about your final destination?

“I don’t have enough time to focus on myself.”

“It’s a luxury to have a career you love. No one enjoys work.”

“I can’t spend time or money on myself to figure out what will make me happy.”

“I’ll figure it out later. With the bad economy, I just have to put my head down and make money to pay the bills.”

Have you ever said these things?  I know I’ve had these thoughts.  And I hear them pretty often from friends, family, colleagues and clients.

Where do these beliefs come from, I began to wonder. And how are they serving us individually and collectively?

My guess is that these beliefs do protect us in some ways.  On the surface, “not having enough time,” allows us to hide behind humility and virtue.  It presents us an opportunity to not seem selfish.  As human beings, we have a strong desire to be caretakers and supporters of our friends and loved ones around us.  What we are taught reinforces this value that many of us hold.  And to focus on our own wants and needs seems to contradict this value.

But is it a contradiction?  Is carving out time to care of our own needs and seeing ourselves as worth it really in opposition of being supportive of others?  I’m not sure. If we go deeper, we see that to be truly supportive of others in the way we desire, we must be at our best.  This allows us to fully give our gifts to the world.  And in order to be our best, we must see ourselves as worthy enough of the time it takes for self-care and an investment in our personal growth and development.

To simply say we don’t have enough time may be just another way we avoid facing our fears.

Fear of what you might ask?  The list is long.  It takes multiple shapes for many of us.

Fear of not finding the career that will fulfill us.
Fear of never finding enough clarity to move forward.
Fear of making the wrong decision.
Fear of making a change and still not being happy.
Fear of the difficult journey it will be to find and pursue a new path.
Fear that happiness and making money are mutually exclusive.
Fear that you will not be capable and effective if you pursue an area of passion.

The list could go on.  The underlying fear as I see it, is a fear of the unknown.

It is human nature to fear the unknown – to choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

But although we have a great capacity to endure undesirable situations, there is something deep within us that knows it is worth doing something about.  So what can we do about it?  How can we begin to make the changes in ourselves in order to make a positive impact for our immediate circle and the world?

We find that in order to conquer a fear, we need to define it.

In Tim Ferris’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week, he has readers face what I see as a brilliant question in helping us define our fear of the unknown.

What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action? Don’t only evaluate the potential downside of action.  It is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction.  If you don’t pursue the things that excite you, where will you be in one year, five years, ten years?  How will you feel having allowed circumstance to impose itself upon you and having allowed ten more years of your finite life to pass doing what you know will not fulfill you?  If you telescope 10 years and know with 100% certainty that it is a path of disappointment and regret, and if we define risk as “the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome,” inaction is the greatest risk of all.

And I’d like to add, what is it costing those around you?

How is your inaction impacting your friends and loved ones?  Your colleagues?  The world at large?

We are all inter-connected. A change in how we see and treat ourselves will ripple out to the world. Change in the world starts with each one of us. If we all hold back and live from a place of fear, we will continue to build a world of full of distrust, unhappiness, lack and scarcity.

So the next time you find yourself saying, “I don’t have the time to invest in myself” or “I’ll wait until a better time to make a change,”

Ask yourself, “What is it costing me to postpone action?”

And remember…What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

Yet they’ve lost their passion in work and life. They have lost touch with what is meaningful and satisfying to them. And they are tired of watching their life fly by without time to enjoy it.

When they finally decided to reach out for coaching, they’re exhausted, frustrated, and lost.  The first words I often hear are, “I know I want something different, I just don’t know what it is or how to find it.”

One of the first ways we begin turning the tide for them is to reconnect them with their passions. Now I know there’s a lot of talk about passions.  We’ve all heard that if you “find your passion”, money and happiness will follow.  It seems like magic, doesn’t it?  Find the elusive “passion” and all will fall into place.  But I’m a realist and know that for most of us, it’s not that simple.

So how do we in fact find what will make us happy in our work and life?

1. Look for clues in your past

An exercise I love using with clients is a Personal History.  This exercise gives you the opportunity to reflect over your life.

What experiences defined you?  What topics or activities were you attracted to as a kid, a teenager, and a young adult?  What themes or patterns reveal themselves to you about where you derive happiness and strength?

These are “breadcrumbs” that point you in the direction of your passions, strengths, and values.

2. Pay attention to the moments that make you strong, satisfied and successful

Another challenge I love to pose to clients is to be an investigator of their current lives.

Grab a notebook and carry it around for a week taking note of the moments you enjoy, the times you have a smile on your face, the activities in which you “lose yourself,” the times when you feel strong and you’re using a natural talent or strength. Again, like in the Personal Histories, spend time looking at the patterns, clues and “breadcrumbs” that emerge.

Marcus Buckingham has a great definition of success in his latest book, Find Your Strongest Life.  He says, “A strong woman feels successful.  And by “successful”, I don’t mean that she is getting prizes, awards, and big fat bonuses – though she might be.  I mean that she feels effective and capable.”

Effective and capable.  I love that.  It implies that we have the opportunity to fill our days with activities that allow us to use and express our unique strengths. That we get to let the best of us shine for all to see and that we’re acknowledged for those gifts. Without the opportunity to express these strengths and find affirmations of these strengths, we can lose our sense of who we truly are.

So once you identify these moments, what do you do with that knowledge?

3. Start adding more of these moments to your work and life

Often times, even after we’ve uncovered these clues, we’re still unsure if these “breadcrumbs” are truly pointing to a lifelong passion we want to build a career upon or simply to something we enjoy in our spare time.  But in order to learn the truth, you must dive in and try.  Start small if you have to.  Change is a process and it comes easiest when you start to build momentum.

Clear your plate of a handful of activities that are out of alignment with your strengths and passions.  Slowly add new activities that are in alignment.  For example, ask to work on a special project at work, volunteer at an organization that you love, or take a class to learn something new or deepen a skill.  Perhaps you look at your hobbies and push them to the next level to see if you want to have them be a bigger part of your life (e.g. an amateur photographer might enter photos in a contest or sell them online or at a local gallery.)

By diving in and trying these avenues out, you begin to grow clarity around your passions as well as increase your sense of happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction in your work and life.

It seems to be my emerging theme for 2010.

As 2009 drew to a close, I began to notice in many of my clients, in myself and in those around me a collective “holding back”.  Action seemed to take a back burner during the holiday months as the fears of the economy mounted and frustrations of draining, unfulfilling work got the best of us.

For me, it showed up as a kind of paralysis.  My list of to do’s was long, yet each day I spent more time staring at my list than I did accomplishing even the most minor of tasks on it.  I knew I should be doing more yet there was this feeling of “waiting” that came over me.

“Why start something new now?” the voice questioned, “It’s the holidays. Take time off.  Don’t work so hard. Wait until January.”

Was this normal holiday haze or was it something different? The frustrating part for me was that I knew what I needed to do.  I had taken the time to plan.  I had taken the time to explore my fears and know what my blocks were.  But still, there was no action.

As I probed deeper, memories from my last December in corporate America came flooding to my mind and body. The exhaustion caused by the long hours and the push to get the last bit of work done before the holiday break.  I remembered my resentment at the late evening and weekend phone calls with my team that crept into my celebration and shopping time. And unconsciously there was this protective part of me that wasn’t going to let that happen this year now that I was my own boss.

But was I stuck in neutral in spite of myself?  Was I really protecting myself or was I hurting myself and my business? My guess is that I won’t know until more time passes and I have the clarity of hindsight. (I’ll keep  you posted.)

And despite the lack of clarity, something did shift for me.  In the days leading up to the New Year, the itch began to grow.  I started checking things off my list and getting excited to start work again.

And now that 2010 is in full swing, I am seeing the results of my new Just Do It! motto.  How am I doing it?  By following a few simple “rules” I’ve learned over the years.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post when I’ll share these simple tips.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you.  What was your energy like at the close of 2009?  Has that changed in 2010?  What are you doing to stay in action and move towards your goals?