Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead.
And how does a shadow career relate to a real career?
That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career.
Something that supports what I meant to do. Good training? Yes, it sure is. This will come in handy. After all, I have to prepare, lay some groundwork, ramp up, get my eye on the prize, reach out, share, connect, engage, interact, throw around some more clichés. Because it wasn’t built in a day, was it?
Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same.
Doing it. Getting it done. Hitting my marks. As good as.
But a shadow career entails no real risk.
So I can fail at it. You can, too. No problem. We’re all supportive. And you know how much they talk about the value of failure. Best thing that could happen, from the sounds of it.
Are you pursuing a shadow career?
Steven Pressfield is a favorite of mine. That’s him I’m quoting, from his new book.
But he may have written an even more elusive, eloquent adumbration into his new book than he knew.
About us. His fellow writers.
Pressfield’s new book is Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work, just out this summer. I’ve listed it in Reading on the Ether for a while. It’s not coming off that list any time soon.
I wish I liked the title better. Sounds like one of those Brian Tracy biz books, doesn’t it? Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed. Or Reinvention: How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life. Always with the subtitles. Always with the inspi-vational implication that you have to belieeeeeeeeve in yourself, Lena Horne.
Nothing against Brian Tracy, by the way. I just counted 25 different success-o-rama books to his name on Amazon before I stopped. And he’s not bad, have you ever read him? When that’s what you need, Brian’s your guy.
Steve Pressfield? Very different animal.