The Naked Truth About YOU

Chapter 13
Engage in Your Life’s Work

What is your Life’s Work?
You are alive for a reason. Your life is important. You are on this earth to complete your Life’s Work.

Your Life’s Work is defined as using your unique gifts, talents and ability in your field of interest, to fulfil a need in the world. In short, your Life’s Work is: contributing to your environment by doing what you love and what you are good at. A need exists in the world that you were born to fulfil.

Why should you engage in your Life’s Work?
Working is a given part of our way of life. You can correctly assume you will engage in some form of work throughout most of your life. Even if you choose to be a stay-at-home parent, it is a vocation, not a vacation. Therefore, if working is a given, wouldn’t life be much more enjoyable if you could work to your strengths, be good at what you do and enjoy your work?

Performing your Life’s Work guarantees you will:
 Work to your strengths
 Be good at what you do
 Be passionate about your work
 Enjoy what you do
 The bonus is that you will contribute to the world in a significant and meaningful manner
 Fulfilling a world need by doing what you love

If you are going to work anyway, why would you choose to be ‘stuck’ doing something other than your Life’s Work? Doing your Life’s Work is very gratifying and rewarding and it satisfies a need in the world. A true win-win situation.

The world is filled with need
Watching and listening to the news gives you a sense of the need that exists in the world. The world seems to be a needy place, offering ample opportunity for you to contribute and assist. The good news, therefore, is that this need creates an opportunity for you to do what you love and what you are good at. Doing your Life’s Work will not be burdensome; it is contributing to your world by doing what you love and are good at.

For example, a need exists in the world for people to eat and enjoy food. This need creates an opportunity for some people to become chefs and cooks. If you are gifted and talented at cooking and passionate about food, then being a chef or cook might be your Life’s Work. If so, your body will have the capability to fully experience the subtle flavours and textures of any food you taste. You will also take great pleasure in creating wonderful eating experiences for others. In short, you will be good at cooking, love feeding people and be passionate about food. Your Life’s Work will be to create wonderful eating experiences for others, thus contributing to your environment by doing what you love and what you are good at.

Seasons of your Life’s Work…
As with your life, your Life’s Work moves through seasons or phases. Each phase in your quest to discover, define and engage in your Life’s Work will follow a path through a season. Just like the natural seasons that exist in the world, there is a progression from one phase to another. There are four seasons relating to your Life’s Work:
1. Preparation phase.
2. Seeking phase.
3. Defining phase.
4. Engaging phase.

Preparation Phase:
This is the first phase of your Life’s Work journey. During your preparation phase, you grow, develop and prepare for your Life’s Work. Your preparation began from the moment you were born and continues through your childhood and into your young adult life. This phase of your life may take as little as five years or sixty-five years to complete.

Seeking Phase:
Your second phase is heralded when you become aware there is something more to your life than what you are currently experiencing. You sense there is something missing in your life; something more you wish to accomplish; a need to decide on your occupation, or an awareness you need to view what you are doing in a different way. It is a time where you develop a sense that you are not engaged in the work that will ultimately satisfy and energise you. This encourages you to seek out your Life’s Work. The age at which you will progress though this phase is unique to you, but you will recognise your seeking phase by a sense of restlessness and seeking; a sense that you must define that which you were born to do.

This is a restless phase with questions and quests driving you to find your Life’s Work. It is marked with dissatisfaction concerning your current situation. The seeking phase is your quest for uncovering the work for which you were ultimately created. Sadly, many people never progress beyond this phase, as they tend to look for the answer in all the wrong places. If you are stuck in the seeking phase, become excited! At the end of this chapter there is information on how to uncover your Life’s Work.

This becomes a time when you want to define what it is that you should be doing in order to live a life filled with greater satisfaction, enjoyment and significance. It allows you to take control of where you want your life to head, seek out the unique gifts you possess and determine how you can contribute effectively to the world. This is an important phase in your life – you are seeking your Life’s Work.

Defining Phase:
Your defining phase is your opportunity to define and write a Life’s Work statement - a broad understanding of your Life’s Work and the direction in which you will be heading. This is the foundation to defining the specifics of what your Life’s Work will entail, allowing you to take the steps towards engaging with your Life’s Work.

Engaging and Doing Phase:
This is the most exciting and rewarding phase of the process; it is where you actively engage with your Life’s Work. You are now able to commence with or work towards your Life’s Work, contributing to your environment by doing what you are good at and what you love to do.

Initially, you will have to earn the right to do your Life’s Work by training and developing the required skills and knowledge. This will also require you to make an investment or down payment into your Life’s Work; something you will probably have to do before others will believe in your Life’s Work.

You will now be able to move into the stage of contributing to the world; granting the world the benefit of your strengths, passion, energy and attention. It is also a time where you are able to see a return on your investment, as you too benefit from doing your Life’s Work.

Once you have progressed through each season, you will engage in all four stages simultaneously. As you travel on your journey, you will grow in experience and knowledge, inadvertently preparing and being prepared for your future Life’s Work. You will also seek, think and dream about your future - what your next Life’s Work contribution will be. Your Life’s Work statement is a broad understanding of your Life’s Work, pointing to a direction. However, as you grow and progress on your journey, your understanding of the specifics of what you are meant to do will grow and develop too. You will constantly define and redefine your Life’s Work and the opportunities to contribute to your world in a more meaningful way.

To fully complete your Life’s Work, you will be required to reach your full potential. You will find yourself growing and stretching in attempt to fulfil your Life’s Work, however each stage through which you move allows you to gain greater access to your full potential as you prepare for, seek, define and engage in your Life’s Work.