Transcriber: Simon Chou Reviewer: Taher Koja
Wow.
What if
What if your job isn't really about your job at all?
What if your job is about you becoming?
What if your job is about you evolving as a being?
What if it’s about you and I
co-creating, co-evolving as we share
this planet we call Earth?
I want to tell you a story to clarify that. Can I tell you a story? Okay.
And the story was about my life and
I wanted to ask you that as you listen to this story, hear my words,
but then also listen internally and find where you can identify
to begin to better understand my questions of what if’s
and to answer the question for yourself.
Here we go.
My first real job when I started adulting was in accounting.
It lasted all of three weeks.
I recently graduated from what I refer to as
the best HBCU in the land.
That's Howard University. Any Howard out there. Let me hear you.
I chose that major because I was forced to answer the question:
What do you want to do when you grow up?
A teenager hanging out with her friends,
thinking about what I'm going to wear next is not thinking about what
I want to do with my life.
Layer on top of that, that since elementary school,
all the way even through college. I got straight A’s in math always.
So they tracked back then, I think it was legal, right.
And I got tracked right into the business track,
which then led me into holding a seat in the accounting class where
I was still getting A’s. So when I was forced to answer the question:
What do you want to do when you grow up, a.k.a. declare a major?
I figured, Well, this accounting thing seems to be working out, so let's do that.
About my second year into the program. I realize, Sharon, this ain't it.
Nevertheless, I press through.
And with my accounting degree in hand, I went to that job. And like I said.
Three weeks later, I was out of there. Oh, good!
So here I am again, thinking, what do I want to do when I grow up?
Well, I looked around and my friends who were also accounting majors,
they all left. I find it so funny. They all left the field.
And they all started becoming teachers. So I thought to myself, well,
this is a noble profession. I like to talk.
I like to help people learn stuff.
I'll be a teacher. I'm telling you,
a few months into my master's degree program, I started thinking, Well,
I don’t think this classroom thing is the thing.
Nevertheless. I pressed on.
Three times.
Three times I tried to leave this field of education.
But it took two job related hospitalizations.
Being diagnosed with anxiety and depression related to my job.
Being prescribed medication for the anxiety and
the depression to be able to cope with the job. Does this sound crazy? Okay.
Thank you. And then
being laid off three times in a row despite doing
a great job, I said to myself, Wait a minute, now what?
And you can probably say with me, I said,
Sharon. This. All right. Thank you.
This ain't it.
Around that time of my last layoff,
I read a book by Michael Singer called The Surrender Experiment,
where he was talking about surrendering to the flow of life.
And I was like, maybe I should try this surrender thing.
Because for my entire adult career here, you know, the last two decades,
I have been doing this thing where I'm figuring it out, making it happen.
This was my favorite phrase back then, making moves.
I don't know if you know that one
and working my way to the top.
And here I was once again asking myself,
what do I want to do when I grow up?
And I was in my forties now.
So I'm not working.
And I need to make ends meet. So I use what's in my tool kit.
I started teaching yoga. Mm hmm. I started doing health coaching. Mm hmm.
But then I ended up having to move because
the ends weren't meeting that well.
And one day out of the blue,
a college friend of mine who used to also be
an accounting major turned data analyst, just called me just to talk.
And one thing led to another in our conversation.
And the next thing I know,
she was offering her place for me to come and live with her while
I got myself together at this time in life.
So I figured, hey, I'm doing this surrender thing. Let's go.
A month later, I found myself in my car with everything that I could fit in it
on the highway, driving down to Saint Petersburg, Florida,
I knew nobody. I networked like crazy.
I joined every group I could find to begin to know people.
And I volunteered to build connections in my community.
Experiences led to opportunities,
and opportunities led me to the job that I have now,
one that I never even aspired to in my life.
Nevertheless, out of 200 plus applicants.
I found myself being announced as the CEO and executive director of
the Tampa Bay Health Care Collaborative. What?
There are so many things that
I could talk about that has happened since that time in the two and
a half years since I've had the role.
Like, for instance,
last year we launched an app to help nonprofits
find each other so that they could collaborate
and foster community well-being and health equity.
Another thing, I wrote a book recently,
just had a book launch celebration this past Monday.
The book is called The Conscious Collaboration Pathway,
also to help nonprofits with a methodology to go along with
the platform, the app. For successful collaboration. And
won awards
regionally, statewide and most recently globally.
Okay. I’m saying globally.
And I’m sitting here saying to myself, now, wait a minute.
Two and a half years.
Why didn’t all this stuff happen in my past two decades?
In my last career? Huh.
I know why. Ask me why. Thank you.
Because
I hear it. It’s about how I show up to do what I do.
And not what I do.
When I show up to work,
I surrender to what life puts in front of me.
And I do it from a place of love.
The Institute for Research
on Unlimited Love has done extensive studies over about the last two decades
on the benefits of working with love.
They define unlimited love differently than compassion and sympathy.
It's not the same thing. Unlimited love is when you care about
the well-being of the other as much as you care about the well-being
of yourself. Okay. That’s not sympathy. That’s not.
I wish them well or I want to see the best for them. Think about it.
Think about how much you care about your own well-being.
And then think about caring for
the well-being of another to that magnitude. That is unlimited love.
Now someone might be thinking maybe in the room.
SHARON Okay, I hear you on this love stuff,
but I get that get in the way of work. Okay.
I have two questions to answer for you. No
and no.
The Institute has shown through studies
that when we work from a place of love,
workplace productivity increases.
It increases.
During that time when I was laid off, I wrote another book.
That last time I was laid off, I wrote another book.
It's called The Wellness Purpose Connection.
And it's funny because I see now that that book was literally for me,
that was my journey that I needed to reflect on. It's like I wrote the book.
Close it up. Turn around. Handed it to myself and say, Here, read this.
What I learned was that your your well-being is connected to your work,
your purpose. I learned that when you are in alignment with
the work you are to do and you get in that alignment by doing what life puts
in front of you, you experience less stress.
You reduce your chances of experiencing the diseases related to
the stress. And you reduce your chances of having to take
the medication related to the diseases. And that's something.
Working in alignment with unlimited love
and doing what life puts in front of you
could actually help your well-being.
I know that bringing love into the workplace could be
a challenging thing for people to consider.
Because you wonder how do I do that?
You do it by paying attention
to the little signs that are given to you along your path in life.
Now when you do that, you're able to experience less stress.
Remember, I'm sharing my story
and you're thinking about your own journey.
You're able to experience less stress
because you're not worried about who you're measured up to.
You're doing your thing. You're not worried about what's the economy doing
because you're moving according to what's being shown to you
and you're not worried about what is some supervisor going to say or do
because you’re moving according to what you’re being shown to do.
You are taking the steps as they are laid before you,
and you are working from a place of unlimited love.
I know that many of us in the room have probably been asked the question.
What are you going to do when you grow up?
But what I want to propose to you,
to think for yourself and for younger people in your life.
Please don't ask them that question.
I want you to replace that question with
how do I want to be in my work?
If you are not able
to fully express who you are
working according to a path that is being shown to you.
And fully expressing unlimited love in the work that you do.
Then perhaps.
You have some thinking to do.
Thank you.