Download - Testdrive Your Dream Job in Paris (3)
Testdrive Your Dream Job in Paris (3) By Peter de Kuster What is a Dream Job for You? You know -‐ if you’re considering a dream job – that the push toward a dream career is not just about how you spend your working hours. It’s about meshing your work life with your deepest sense of yourself. It’s about having work that matches your values, that feeds insteads of exhausts you, that doesn’t require you to leave your priorities at home and check your heart at the door. When we imagine a dream job, we imagine a job where we are fully ourselves, in which our hearts and minds are equally engaged. This engagement is what people feel on a Testdrive Your Dreamjob. And once they reconnect with that deepest sense of self, few are willing to return to the status quo.
Les Deux Magots: one of the places from which Julia Child made her discovery journey of Paris and undertook her Testdrive Your Dream Job.
Which of course brings up the next question; what happens after the Testdrive Your Dream Job? You go; you fall in love with a career; you leave fired up to work in your chosen field…and then what? Sure, you had a great couple of days, weeks, months; sure, you know what you want to do – but there’s a whole other story between wanting and making it happen. And when you look to that story it’s full of house payments, car payments, bills for the kids, food bills, health care, … How exactly do you take the next step?.
It took a while before Julia searched for her Dream Job in the direction of her passion for “French Food”. She discovered this in small (jolly) steps. The question is its own answer. You take the next step. The next small step. The biggest surprise for people who find or create their dream job is that it doesn’t have to happen all at once. It doesn’t have to be an all-‐or-‐nothing leap from security in the unknown. Instead, it can be a series of small steps that you take only as you feel ready. Sure, there are the few really bold (or independently wealthy) Dream Job Hunters who cut the ties to their previous careers and hurl themselves full-‐time into new ones. But most people take it more slowly. They continue at their current jobs while transitioning gradually into the dream. They do research, they write a business story, they figure out how to begin their new career without taking on more risk than they can handle. Some go to school to get more training.
Some dedicate a period of time to paying off debt and building savings so they’ll have funds for their new careers. Some find work in the new field while they put together a business of their own. The path and the timeline vary from person to person; what they all have in common, though, is the passion and the inspiring story to move ahead.
Your Dream Job is where Your Heart is Ofcourse, after a Testdrive Your Dream Job, some people find that the job they tried was not the job they thought they wanted. Finding that you don’t love your dream job as much as you’d hoped can be disappointing; the dream is crashed, the “what next?” question is alarmingly reopened. But even people who have that experience usually consider their test-‐drive a success; they’re thankful that it showed them what they didn’t want before they ventured further. For most people – whether or not they find their dream job the journey is like opening the door to a long – closed room. Sunlight and fresh air touch something that has long been in the dark, and the result is a renewed sense of self and a new sense of possibility. Testdriving your dream job will be fun (it is a vacation, after all); it may be exhausting (people tend to work hard at the jobs they love); it will be
exhilarating to spend time with someone who works at his or her passion. And it will probably leave you changed. So don’t make a Testdrive Your Dream Job if you’re afraid of sparking something passionate inside you. Do it only if you’re ready to be renewed.
The quote from Julia Child “Bon Appetit” who became famous as the culinary writer who made the french kitchen accesible for the American audience. But it started with her “Testdrive your Dream Job”.