Many of us are stuck in the habit of waiting for permission to do our “real work.”  By real work, I mean a career in keeping with our strongest desire or true calling.  Although we know what sort of work we’d find most fulfilling, we’re nagged by the feeling that we don’t have what it takes to do that work yet.  Perhaps we believe we need more courage, energy, education, money, or something else.  Whatever we think we need, we’re hoping that, at some point, it will come along and all our doubts and fears will disappear.

This observation hit home recently when I was talking to a woman at a party.  She was telling me she’d wanted, for some time, to train to be a psychologist, but she didn’t feel she was ready yet.  The reason, in her eyes, was that she needed to work on her own “issues” a little more before she could hope to help others with theirs.  Maybe she needed to read more self-help books, take more courses, see a therapist, or something else.  She wasn’t sure, but she’d know what she needed when it arrived.

The most interesting part of the conversation came when I asked what she thought would happen if she started before she felt ready.  What would be the consequences, in other words, if she didn’t fully “work through her issues” before learning how to work through someone else’s?  She thought for a bit, and eventually said she was worried that people would ask her “who are you to be doing this?”  Other people, to her mind, would say she wasn’t qualified to be a therapist, and she’d feel hurt or scared as a result.

Importantly, the woman wasn’t holding back from pursuing her calling because she was afraid of hurting people or doing her job badly.  In other words, she wasn’t afraid of somehow damaging her therapy clients by working with them before she’d done enough work on herself.  Instead, she was afraid other people in her life would judge her harshly, saying she was being arrogant or presumptuous by becoming a therapist before her own “issues” were resolved.

In my experience, many people who find themselves waiting for the right event to happen before they can do their “real work” are coming up against the same fear.  To them, if they pursued their passion in their careers, someone would criticize them and suggest they don’t deserve to do what they want.  They aren’t afraid of performing poorly in their ideal careers, or harming someone with the work they do—instead, their anxieties focus on other people’s possible opinions.

Of course, this mindset puts severe limits on what we can achieve and how much fulfillment we can get out of our careers.  We can never truly anticipate what others are going to say about our choices in life, and it’s always possible—no matter how much talent and education we have—that someone will put us down for going after what we want.  Thus, if we take it seriously, this fear can indefinitely keep us from pursuing the work we truly desire.

In Zen And The Art Of Making A Living, Laurence G. Boldt has an inspiring passage on the futility of waiting to be perfect before pursuing the career you want:

You’ll never have all the pieces. You’ll never have all the parts. Don’t wait to be perfect before you start. Walt Whitman said to himself, “Walt, you contain enough. Why don’t you let it out then?” You are a dynamic life force filled with mystery and wonder, not a machine to which all the parts can be added and properly arranged. Building your skills and resources is helpful to the extent that it is moving you forward; don’t let it become a trap.

How do we develop the comfort we need to stop settling for second-best in our careers and begin our “real work”?  How do we stop making such a big deal out of others’ possible criticism of our choices? 

I’ll say first off that I won’t simply tell you not to be concerned about others’ opinions.  There are legitimate reasons why you may have decided it’s important to avoid criticism.  Some event or series of events in your life taught you it hurts when others condemn your choices in life, and anyone else who went through those events would probably have developed the same concerns.

However, if you’re holding back from pursuing your ideal career to avoid being criticized, I will suggest you take a look at what may have caused you to develop that anxiety.  Put differently, what happened in your life that’s having you design your career situation to make sure no one puts you down?  When I ask people this question, they often recall the incidents that had them develop this kind of fear very quickly.  Perhaps, for example, they had critical parents, judgmental siblings or friends, a failure in some project they did, or something else.

Just understanding what started you worrying about being judged immediately gives you some perspective on, and some freedom from, that worry.  When we understand what event caused us to limit ourselves the way we do today, we also begin to grasp that we’re responding to circumstances that no longer exist in the present.  The people who may have attacked, criticized, or otherwise hurt us in the past have no power over us in this moment.  As we’re intelligent, capable, self-loving adults, it’s safe for us to go for what we want even if it doesn’t please everyone in our lives.

I’ll also suggest that, when you go for what you really want in your career and other areas of your life, the fulfillment you create for yourself becomes a gift to others as well.  When you walk through the world more satisfied with what you do, your passion and joy rub off on everyone you interact with.  If you stop waiting to do your real work, you’ll bring more peace and happiness into the world just by making that choice.

Related posts:

1. Don’t Wait To Do Your “Real Work,” Part II: Finding Real Security
2. Guest Article At Dumb Little Man: “How To Separate ‘Real’ Wants From ‘Should’ Wants”
3. How To Stop Work From Feeling Like Work
4. Unfreezing: Managing Work Anxiety
5. Why We Don’t Really Want “Work We Love”