Having fun led me to work I love.
Hi, I’m Mary-Elizabeth👋🏾
So when I was about ten, I started getting the feeling that I was born to do something great. My mistake was that I kept thinking about what I could do instead of following what got me excited.
I was living as a Michigander in Kenya when all of that thinking was going on, and by the time the mid-80s rolled around I decided that working on a cure for AIDS would be “doing greatness.” And trust me, I tried hard to make that happen: I went to MIT, Hopkins and joined an HIV lab, PhD in hand.
But 16 months later, I quit, and years of sad jobs followed after that.
By claiming that I was wasting my life in my jobs, I made myself ill, stopped working to resuscitate and reinvent myself and lost my condo in the process. BUT, the good news was that I came to see that if my stories could plunge me into crisis, I could tell new ones to get myself out.
Feeling like a failure while facing foreclosure, I started telling myself the tale, “I’m building an entrepreneurial empire,” based on nothing but a wish. But the more I told myself that story and did things that I found fun—without trying to be “productive”—the more I remembered that I loved to tell stories and various ventures based on storytelling started forming in my mind.
I no longer feel the need to grow an empire to feel better about myself, but I’m growing my footprint all the same by using storytelling to build a business around fostering caring communities—villages—in the United States, which includes nurturing various passion projects.
The beauty of the work I do now is that every single job that I claimed was wasting my life turned out to have given me perfect preparation and a perspective that allows me to set myself apart.
I know the pain of feeling confused and like you’ve botched your career. But I also know that it ain’t over ’til it’s over, and that we can to go from feeling like all hope is lost in our work to work we love. And here’s another thing I know: Breakthroughs don’t happen when we’re wadded up in worry.
If your work is getting you down, try to lighten your mood as best as you can. The more at peace we feel and do things that feel like fun, the more we can access great ideas, curiosity, inspiration, vision, intuition that lead us toward lives that feel better.
Instead of pushing harder, I preach feeling better—like through resting, playing, going outside and daydreaming—to access higher intelligence.
That sound good to you?
If so, get The Prosperity Papers Recap for a monthly roundup of my stories and updates to help kind and caring neighbors to have fun, feel more alive and stay up on all my work with ONE subscription.
If you’ve already had a breakthrough in your work and are turning your expertise into a business, learn about my build-a-brand support for solopreneurs.
Before I go, are you wondering why my brands focus on neighbors? Here’s why:
- It’s because neighbors can help us evolve our way to work we love, also…
- I believe that no matter how much we love our work, feeling fully alive requires caring communities and caring economies, and those grow from neighborhoods up.
HARAMBEE!
HARAMBEE! (Ha-rahm-bay) is Swahili for “Let’s ALL band together” to prosper!