Who hasn’t heard of tidying guru Marie Kondo’s new Netflix series, read one of her best-selling books on decluttering and home-organising or tried her folding methods to maintain a perfectly tidy underwear drawer? (Now you know what I was doing this weekend!).

At the heart of the Marie’s decluttering and organising method is the “spark joy” philosophy.  It’s not so much thinking in terms of what you can throw away, as thinking about keeping only the things that “spark joy” for you.  And as I was carefully folding and arranging my smalls I mused that before I had even heard much of, let alone hopped on the “spark joy” band wagon, I had used a similar approach to get clear on what my dream working life would look like. Now I am loving the invigorating mix in my week that is two different areas of clinical work, research, business and coaching.  But discovering that that would be what I would find exciting and fulfilling (at least at this point in time) wasn’t easy.

As I was finishing my medical speciality training, the closer I got to getting started as a fully qualified specialist, the itchier my feet got! I was a multi-passionate person who had ended up down the narrow, and at times all-consuming, path of medicine.  In the early days, as a junior doctor, despite the long hours I found the energy and inclination to fit in all sorts of hobbies and pursuits into my time after work.  But after becoming a new parent, my non-clinical passions (well lets face it, anything that wasn’t essential for survival) fell by the wayside.  I still loved clinical endocrinology but felt trapped by the idea of being a full time hospital physician. “What else could I do to bring in an income?” I asked (myself)… and there was no answer (at least none that I liked).

But as they say, there is no point looking for the answer if you are asking the wrong question.  It was only when I started asking “what do I love”, or in other words what “sparks joy” that the vision of my dream work-life blend became clear.  After that, figuring out how to make it happen was surprisingly the easy part!

So if your foreseeable career path is currently falling short of being the working life of your dreams, and the way forward is not clear, let me leave you pondering the same thing…

What do you love to do? What sparks joy for you?   

X

Sasha

PS:  later this week…keep an eye out for more details on the 1:1 program for multi-passionate professionals, I will be sending out an email to my list (sign up if you haven’t already!) with a break-down of the program modules.