It’s the first day of April, the sun’s shining, the birds are singing and I’ve been out shoveling. I’m no seasoned gardener, but I enjoy the work. I think I was a laborer in a past life.

In this life, I’ve had a multitude of jobs and a couple of ‘careers’ and so I count myself lucky. Off the top of my head, I’ve cleaned hotel rooms, changing rooms and loos. I’ve worked in factories, in offices and in stores. I’ve served businessmen breakfast, wedding guests lunch and New Year Eve celebrators spirits until 3 in the morning. I’ve taught Middle Eastern ladies how to speak English, I’ve taught elementary school students math and I’ve taught high schoolers about the literature and history of our world. I’ve written company training material on diversity, business writing and customer service. As a physio’s aide, I’ve helped elderly diabetics cross miniature assault courses with their prosthetic limbs. I’ve listened to people with alcoholism tell me their life story and I’ve sat with at-risk girls, as they’ve worked through their pregnancy and the problems in their life.  Aside from my stint in a toy store working for a rather short, rather sharp and rather unfriendly lady who made me clean every single lead soldier in the display cabinet, every single day of the working week, I have to say, I’ve loved every one of my jobs and I’ve especially loved the people I’ve met doing them.

Doing what we love and loving what we do, is the recipe for an abundant working life – and when I say abundant, I mean it. Abundance of course, comes in many forms. Being in a job that you love brings abundance of joy, can bring an abundance of friendships, can bring abundance of wealth and abundance of fulfillment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a computer programmer, a welder, a martial arts teacher, or a stay-at-home mum, it doesn’t matter if you work on power lines, out at sea, or in a canteen – if you are happy, you are in flow and flow is essential when it comes to abundance.

Of course, there are many people who will say that they don’t know what their ideal job is – but that’s no problem either. As my own experiences concur, there may not be one ideal job, but there many be one or several tasks that you love to do, that you need to do, to ensure that you feel excited for work each day.

Those of you who know me, will know that I love people, love teaching, love counseling, love writing, love spirituality, like to have fun and need to be creative. I know what I like and I run with it. Did working as an Energy Engineer’s administrative assistant fit with my preferred task list – not entirely, until I approached my boss with a little design for her project which was to promote the saving of energy in local schools. My ‘wise owl’ with its light bulb ideas for saving energy, became the new brand of our project and I got to visit elementary schools with our new marketing posters and take energy measurements,and chat with the little ones which was fun. In a roundabout way, I managed to create a better role for myself (interaction with kids, creativity, design and development) out of a job that was, um, a little boring.

Identifying the tasks that we love to do, or even identifying the tasks that we loathe doing, is a great way to ascertain what it is that we really should be doing to make work, work. If you’re someone like me who is just as happy sitting at a computer designing training material, as I am standing in front of a group training that material, then your choices and therefore opportunities, grow. So many of us are told as teens that we have to focus on one area of expertise in our life, and to me, that’s just plain silly! Whose rule was that one anyway?

I happen to think that as we age, we grow and develop. Through that maturation process, we learn more about ourselves, our skills and our talents. Who we are at eighteen, is not the person we become at forty, or sixty or eighty. So, there’s no point trying to stick ourselves in a box at any age – and that’s the beauty of it all. We change and we should allow our changes to be reflected in the work that we do, if that’s what we want.

Of course, my own work has taken a slightly different path, in recent years. What started out as an interest in the metaphysical world when I was a teen, has now grown itself into a business and yes, career. My work allows me to incorporate many facets of what I love and what I prefer to do (counseling, teaching, spirituality and writing) while meeting my needs as a parent of three small children. I can work out of my home, doing what I want, when I want and that suits me fine. Did I think, when I first achieved my teacher’s license, that one day I would be educating adults about spirituality, of course not! But I’m glad that it’s worked out this way. It’s my path, for now – and it’s evolving even as we speak. I’m finding ways to expand my services (including the implementation of a mind, body, and spirit coaching class for the empowerment of women) that allows me to get up, get excited and get going. Sitting still, never got anyone anywhere, as we all know.

Finding our way in life, finding our way at work, is important. It honors who we are and what we want and while changing it up is not always easy, it’s essential if we want to feel fulfilled and to be more than, rather than less than. It’s essential for happiness and for our well-being..

And so, while you’re out kicking at the soil this weekend wondering if you’ll ever see those tulips bud, or those bright daffodil heads, take a moment to reflect upon where you are in your life right now. Ask yourself the question, ‘Do I love what I do?’ if the answer is “Yes’ – then give yourself a metaphorical clap on the back and then ask yourself what is your next step. Where do you want to be in this field that fires your passion, five years from now? Ten years from now? Think about it, toy with ideas and then start dreaming big – after all, there’s no time like the present to start investing in the future.

If you know that you don’t love what you do, take a moment to think through what it is that isn’t working for you. Is it the specific tasks that you do? Is it the specific field that you are in or is it the specific company that you are working for? If it’s the tasks, then think creatively – how could you make your tasks more compelling? How could you change it up, so that you were doing more of the tasks that you like to do, and less of the tasks that you don’t? What mentors could advise you or advocate for you, so that you can rotate yourself into a new position and a more fulfilling one? As they say in the world of work, strategize, strategize, strategize and then implement. One change, any change, will have an effect and if the effect isn’t what you want, do something different. Ultimately, your willingness to take responsibility for your own happiness will have a profound and positive result. So, go for it!

For those of you who are working for the wrong company, determine what it is that doesn’t work? Is it just your department that is wrong or does it go larger than that? Is the environment stultifying, too competitive or just unreasonable? Are you better off working in a much smaller or much larger arena? What is it that the company or your department is neither doing or saying, that is frustrating for you? Once you identify these answers, you can start to make decisions. It might be that you are able to address your grievances, so that changes are implemented that make work more manageable – maybe not. However, by thinking this through you can finally identify what you want and it might be that will necessitate a job move whether internal or external, and that’s okay – even in this economy, even in this job market you can make that change, if you want it badly enough. Trust the Universe.

For those of you who are in the wrong field – ask yourself what the right field looks like? If you’re not sure, that ask yourself what it is that you like to do or that you are good at doing. Go and buy the perennial classic, ‘What Color is Your Parachute,’ see a careers’ counselor, fill out a Myers Briggs’ assessment, employ a life coach. In taking these steps, you honor the part of you that wants to be excited and enthused about life. Taking determined steps, creates change, because as you become more acquainted with yourself, you will learn what it is that you can accept, won’t accept and can work with – and that’s huge.

Loving what you do and doing what you love, is essential for our fulfillment, it’s essential for our wellbeing, it’s essential for our pockets. We spend a lot of time at work and we want to ensure that those hours are meaningful ones. And so this spring, while you’re out clearing the beds, turning the soil, aerating the grass, readying the ground for this year’s harvest, make a conscious decision that this year you’ll plant yourself some new seeds, seeds that will add color to your life and that that will flower with gusto for many years to come.

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