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Lies & Damned Lies: Who Do You Want To Be Today?
Shadow boxing your fears
by TokyoJad

In a culture that defines us by our work -- i.e. I am a teacher, not a person who teaches -- the issue of finding and following our dreams has considerable consequence. Align your interests with your identity, and you may find great satisfaction in what you do; but mismatch the two, and you run the risk of condemning yourself to an unfulfilled life of what ifs.

According to Julia Cameron, author of The Artist Way and Right to Write, people have a calling to a true purpose that, if not followed, will manifest itself in other ways. For example, if a person has an unrealized desire to be a musician, he may enter the music industry as a sales executive. A repressed actor may express her desire to perform by donning the suit of a trial lawyer. Cameron calls these people shadow artists.

In my experience, finding your dreams -- your true purpose -- is easier said than done. (I still worry that my true calling is to teach rather than to write.) Fortunately, your shadow artist may offer some clues to finding your true purpose.

An exercise from What Color Is Your Parachute can help make sense of these clues. Here’s the task: Write down every job, project, hobby, and extracurricular activity in which you’ve been involved. Then, for each item, write down what you did and did not like about it. (You can even do this for idealized jobs that you think you’d love doing, but have never done.)

Most likely, patterns will pop up. For example, before I had done this exercise, I had noticed that I was obsessive about learning the fundamentals of yoga and ballroom dancing. Naturally, I assumed that this meant that I should become a yoga or dance instructor.

However, after going through this exercise, I realized that it wasn’t the activity of doing yoga or dancing that held my interest -- it was learning the fundamentals of these disciplines that I was obsessive about. I then realized that any time I learned a skill -- chess, writing, animation, daytrading, and a dozen other areas of interest -- I enjoyed learning everything I possibly could. I enjoyed the activity of learning.

Finally, the best way to find your dreams is to follow your fears. We usually don’t care about failing at a task that we don’t care about, and conversely, we are terrified to death at failing at what we love the most. I, for example, was not scared of becoming a teacher. But every time I thought of pursuing writing, I created all sorts of obstacles and contingency plans. These were signs of fear, signs indicating that I had found my passion.