How to "Follow Your Bliss" in a Thousand Really Hard Steps

A big part of effective leadership is feeling like you belong where you lead. Sometimes things in our lives change and we no longer feel like we quite fit in to a career, a community or a lifestyle anymore. Usually this happens when we've grown in some way and our outer circumstances are no longer reflecting how we see ourselves on the inside. This has recently been the case for me. After several decades on the career path I chose while in college I've made a significant change. I've moved from the advertising and marketing world to the community development and non-profit arena. For many years I truly loved the "ad biz" and thrived on fast deadlines, late night press checks, the creative competition and collaboration and all that the business entailed. But lately I knew my passion for it was fading.

About seven years ago I was accepted into a community leadership program. I hoped that I would learn a lot and looked forward to growing my leadership skills and meeting new people. I expected that it would expand my network and lead to new business opportunities for my firm. I had no idea it would set my feet on a completely new path that would eventually lead me where I am today.

All the sudden I realized I had interest in things I had never really considered like economic and community development, public policy issues, stakeholder development and such. I found ways to dip my toes into this new pool: joining a economic development committee at my local chamber, joining the chamber's board of directors and then others, agreeing to chair a major non-profit fundraiser. The idea of a new career wasn't even a possibility in those early days. I was just following my passion but I had no idea where it was all taking me.

I sought out mentors eventually and one convinced me to take a week long course in community development. Some very dear colleagues on my chamber board chipped in and provided a scholarship for me to go. At the end of that week I felt like I had found a new home.

The story of how this interest developed into a passion and then developed into a new job is one for another blog post and one I will tell because changing careers, I've learned, isn't for the faint of heart. But for now what I've learned is that you have to listen to the voice, or feeling, inside you that is leading you to something new. There isn't a single final destination but rather signposts along the way to let you know to keep walking that direction even when you can't articulate to anyone yet why you are doing what you are doing. Most of the signs aren't even big, more like postage stamps or post-it notes! But, if you truly love it you'll notice the signs, even the smallest. Yeah, this is what it means when someone says "follow your bliss"! Even when it feels confusing, awkward, unnatural, impossible, or crazy it still feels right.