Body of Work

by Pamela Slim

  Was it a struggle? Absolutely. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

  In the big picture, it is worth it to gain skills and experience that open up better opportunities and industries. She is now positioned to be much more competitive in the job market. And with her broad business skills, she may consult from home so she can spend more time with her kids.

  It is not all about you

  Focusing on your entire body of work rather than solely on a you-centric career has the additional benefit of helping you peer out from behind the curtain of anonymity.

  I often run into clients who get anxiety thinking about what could happen if they gain exposure and notoriety.

  What if I don’t have all the answers?

  What if my life is not all together?

  What if I have spinach in my teeth when I’m interviewed by Matt Lauer?

  When you realize that your job is to contribute to your broader body of work, you can conjure up the following visualization:

  Imagine you are standing up on a big stage with a large space in front of you. This space represents your body of work—the thing you care most about creating.

  Now visualize many people staring directly at you in the form of big beams of light right at your head.

  Now strap a mirror to your forehead.

  Take all these beams of light and direct them from your head to the body of work in front of you.

  Notice how the more people who are staring directly at you, the more illuminated and bright your body of work is?

  Fame is fleeting.

  Consistent impact over the course of your life on a body of work you care about deeply is legacy.

  How do you build a body of work?

  There are very specific skills and steps involved in creating a body of work.

  These steps are as relevant to a recent college graduate as they are to a senior executive looking for a new challenge.

  You will go through these steps at multiple points in your lifetime. They will change depending on your interests, needs, and life situation. For some people, goals will be set for the next one to three years. For others, for five to ten years. You should choose the time frame that works for you. Use the following steps to shape your body of work. Throughout the book, you’ll explore each step in more detail, with stories, case studies, tools, and personal reflections.

  1. Define your root: Which ideas drive you emotionally? Whom do you want to help? What specific changes do you want to create in the world?

  2. Name your ingredients: What are your skills, strengths, and ideas? Which life experiences make you unique, talented, and capable?

  3. Choose your work mode: Think about the positions you’ve had in the past and how you work best. For this next stage of your career, do you want to be an employee, entrepreneur, or freelancer?

  4. Create and innovate: What do you want to bring to life at this stage of your career?

  5. Surf the fear: Define, understand, and manage your fears and anxieties. They are a key part of any endeavor.

  6. Form your team: Gather a specific group of peers, mentors, and collaborators to help you reach your goals.

  7. Define what success means to you: Identify specific, relevant, and meaningful financial and personal goals.

  8. Sell your story: Tie it all together to create a compelling story to convince potential employers, clients, or partners why you are the perfect person for the mission.

  Ready to get started?

  Exercise: Body of Work

  Imagine yourself many years in the future, on the last day of your life, looking back at the things that you created, developed, nurtured, and contributed. What, ideally, would you like to see?

  What do you want to create?

  Write—books, blog posts, e-books, code

  Program—classes, events, workshops, software

  Change the world—movements, organizations, awareness, insight, permission

  Be an artist—art, pictures, music, poetry

  Who do you want to help?

  What are the specific characteristics of people you want to work with?

  Why do they deserve the very best of your intelligence and energy?

  What will they do with what you give them?

  Will they appreciate your gifts and bring out your best self?

  Are they fun and engaging to work with?

  Do they push you to overcome any natural fear and resistance to do important work?

  What drives you?

  What will happen as a result of investing your time and energy in this project? Is it important to you? Is it important to your community? Is it important to the current state of the world?

  Why you? What unique perspective or experience do you bring to this work? If you don’t have decades of experience or advanced degrees, do you care more than someone else? Will you work harder than someone else?

  Is it worth trying, even if it fails miserably?

  Why now? Will you regret not doing it in a year? Is there a reason why this is the perfect time? If not now, when? Will next year be any different than this year?

  Are you pulling your hair out? Are you missing some answers? Do you need more information?

  Have patience. It will serve you well on the rest of your journey.

  CHAPTER 2

  Define Your Roots

  At the end of time I want my art to stand up and my soul to bow down.

  —Rob Ryser, author of Great Desires for Absent Things

  It was seven thirty on a cold Long Island winter night when Amanda Wang arrived home from work.

  She had been up since 4:30 A.M., practicing her training routine for the Golden Gloves boxing competition, which was two days away. She had run three miles first thing in the morning and then she took the commuter train into Manhattan to train for three hours at the boxing gym before heading to her job as a graphic designer. After working all day, she took the commuter train back home and collapsed on her bed.

  “As I lay there, motionless, feeling my head and muscles throbbing, I began to cry; I still had to put in a three-mile run in the dead of winter, all before dinner. I didn’t want to move. I thought if I pushed myself anymore, I’d make myself sick. I’d crack. I struggled to even put my running pants on. If I couldn’t even put on my pants, how was I supposed to run three miles? I felt entitled to a little self-pity.”

  But she made herself put on her running pants and stepped outside, moving sluggishly at first, then slowly picking up speed and feeling her head clear.

  As she tells it:

  It was one of those winter nights where you can smell fireplaces through the cool and crisp air and see the moon peek through the clouds. I had my favorite music playing in the background, the one that centers me and makes me realize why running is good for my soul.

  Then, in a quick moment, a memory came flooding back. It was the movie reel of my previous life—the one that culminated with a stint at the psychiatric hospital. There I was, rocking back and forth, all curled up in the bathroom of the psychiatric floor, wailing and crying for thirty minutes straight. I was in so much pain and confusion, so much fear and suffering that I constantly looked at the ceiling to see which beam could hold my weight.

  I hadn’t thought about that in some time, perhaps trying to block it out. It was the most painful, confusing, and lonely place I have ever been at, and I was both surprised and curious as to why the vivid memory had returned to me during my run. It seemed like such a long time ago. I can’t even believe that was me, thinking where I am now. Back then I met eight of the nine criteria for borderline personality disorder; now I meet none.

  But then I remembered that there were other people in that same moment (and some much worse) who felt as I had five years ago. People, like me, who don’t know this diagnosis exists. People, like me, who do
n’t know we could be taught a different way to live. People, like me, who don’t know treatment could help put their lives back in order so that they could do the things they didn’t even know they wanted to do in the first place.

  Two miles into my run, I said to myself, “As bad as today was, as painful and exhausted as I felt today, it will never be as bad as that day in the bathroom five years ago. Look how far I’ve come that I can even do this—being able to transform my suffering into meaning.” Pain cannot always be avoided. And in that moment, the physical pain lingered but the suffering went away.

  In her recollection of this cold winter run, Amanda described the root of what motivates her to keep going: her mission as a mental health advocate for borderline personality disorder (BPD) patients, their families, and the physicians and therapists who serve them.

  Amanda was diagnosed with BPD five years ago. Symptoms of BPD include self-doubt, self-injury, and frequent thoughts of suicide. Receiving appropriate treatment and medication has turned her life around. “My therapist told me that once you begin to get in recovery for BPD, you regain the will to live. But then you need to find a reason to keep living.”

  So she decided to train for the Golden Gloves and make a documentary film about the experience, called The Fight Within Us. The title signifies both the daily battle in her head between peaceful and disturbing thoughts, as well as the strength and courage within all of us to keep moving through adversity and get to a better place in our lives.

  While many of Amanda’s self-limiting beliefs come from her mental illness, everyone faces doubts and challenges while building a significant body of work.

  Money, status, recognition, and fame are not enough.

  We must tap into our deepest roots.

  What are your roots?

  Your roots are the purpose, beliefs, and convictions that provide the foundation for your body of work. They keep you strong and stable when you face challenges in your career and remind you why it is important to keep moving through adversity. They also provide depth and meaning to your creative process and remind you why it is important to chase the things you want to create.

  Many people think their roots are in building a fortune. “I work for money. Money gives me the things that make me happy.”

  In my experience coaching all kinds of people over twenty years, I will tell you that money is not enough of a driver to make it through the truly challenging times. You will eventually face difficulties in every job or business that lead you to question if you have the strength to stick with your chosen career path.

  When these moments appear, I like to ask the following questions:

  Why are you doing this (business) (parenting) (difficult project) (job)?

  What will happen if you succeed?

  Will it be worth it even if you fail?

  Why does it matter?

  What will you regret not doing?

  What will you rejoice leaving as a legacy at the end of your life?

  No matter your current job or position, each person will have different answers to these questions depending on their specific roots: who they are, what they value, and what drives them.

  Kelly Fiori makes a good living teaching martial arts to small children, teens, and adults. He is skilled at teaching kicks and punches and knows how to quiet a roomful of squealing kids in an instant. But if you ask him what is at the root of his work, his passion becomes visible on his face and resonates in his voice. “I don’t want any child, anywhere, to suffer from bullying.”

  Erik Proulx is a filmmaker who is inspired by the city of Detroit. He made a documentary called Lemonade: Detroit about the rebirth of a city plagued by poverty. The city is a giant metaphor for the rebirth of anything we have written off, ignored, or feared. One of Erik’s roots is that he understands the power of using creativity to comprehend and work through difficult, even impossible, situations.

  Carlos Aceituno was a Guatemalan immigrant to San Francisco who loved Brazilian culture. He was a skilled music and martial arts teacher. He could really dance. But his root was using music to uplift, to heal, to strengthen, and to inspire communities. Kids who learned from him felt like family through the love that permeated his teaching, and adults felt their life force surge and spirits awaken by learning to play and dance Afro-Brazilian music. Carlos died unexpectedly at the age of forty-six, but the roots of his work continue to flourish in the community he taught and nourished.

  To create a great body of work, you must first identify your roots. To make a strong and lasting impact, you must rely on them.

  How do you identify your roots?

  When you name your roots, just like Amanda did on that night when she felt like she could not muster the strength to put on her shoes, you remind yourself why your struggle is worth it in the long run if you want to create a significant body of work.

  You discover your roots by reflecting on six primary questions:

  1.What do you value?

  Your values describe what is most important to you. They help guide you to make decisions and set boundaries around what you will accept in your life and career.

  When you know your values, you can answer questions like:

  Should I take this job?

  Is this the right person to marry?

  Should I try this marketing approach in my business?

  Should I partner with this person?

  When you make decisions in harmony with your values, you feel grounded and at ease.

  When you make decisions in conflict with your values, you feel uneasy and ineffective.

  Values can also be called character strengths.

  Example: You value critical thinking (thinking things through), honesty (authenticity, integrity), kindness (generosity, compassion), prudence (being careful about choices), and fairness (treating all people the same). You work for a financial institution that you know is engaged in unethical lending practices that prey on vulnerable communities. In this situation, no matter how much you try to make your job work, because the environment is in direct conflict with your values, you would be better served to look for an organization that is more aligned with your values.

  2.What do you believe?

  Your beliefs are unique to you and form the foundation for how you interpret and act in the world. They are shaped by your childhood, your life experiences, your education, advice you have received from teachers and mentors, and your philosophical or spiritual orientation. A simple way to understand what you believe is to answer the question “What do you know to be true?”

  Example: One of your beliefs is that everyone, regardless of his or her background, has the capability to do great things.

  3.Why do you believe it?

  Which experiences have shaped your values and your beliefs?

  What has made you secure and certain in your values and beliefs?

  Example: You believe that everyone, regardless of background, has the capability to do great things. You believe this because you watched your father, who came to this country as an immigrant in his early twenties, build a successful business with next to no money, even though he was not fluent in English.

  4.Whom do you care deeply about serving?

  Of all the people who you could impact during your time on earth, whom do you want to work with? Which type of person “gets” you and really needs what you have to offer?

  Example: You are a training and development manager with a humanities background, but you love to work with highly technical people. You appreciate their intelligence, curiosity, and critical perspective. You notice that when you teach them, you are pushed to deliver the highest quality, tested training classes. When you are able to earn their trust, you make a huge difference in their lives because they take what you teach and apply it methodically in their lives.

  5.W
hich problems do you want to solve?

  Which challenges get you really fired up?

  What impact do you want to have in the world?

  What specific knowledge do you have that you think can make a difference in the world?

  Example: You are passionate about childhood nutrition. You notice that parents, especially moms, are so busy that they don’t have time to plan and cook healthy meals. So you really want to help solve the childhood nutrition problem by discovering ways to support busy moms.

  6.What drives you to act?

  Most of us have long to-do lists. Very few of us can check off every item at the end of the day. What motivated you to accomplish great things in the past? What motivated you to finish? Pay special attention to thoughts, conditions, or techniques that cause you to take action.

  Example: You always wanted to run a marathon but constantly found excuses for not going through with it. Then your mother got breast cancer, and you suddenly felt inspired to run in a fund-raising marathon on her behalf. From this experience, you learn that you are inspired to take action when you see a direct benefit for someone you care about.

  Don’t sweat it if you can’t answer all six of these questions yet. Simply plant the questions in your head and pay attention to the answers as they come to you.

  As a career counselor, I have seen scores of people make themselves completely paralyzed looking for the “right answer” to their perfect vocation, or the meaning of their life. They believe that until they have the answer, they cannot move forward with anything else.

  Viktor Frankl, in his stark and powerful book Man’s Search for Meaning, provides the best antidote to this affliction:

  As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.