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The World and the Shadow



Life is weird in the sense that it sometimes leads us down certain paths that we want and yet do not want. Take your regular 40 hour job, for instance. We want it for the stability and money that it brings. Yet at the same time we don't want it because we can't help but feel as if it's just another distraction keeping us from doing what we really want to do.


Steven Pressfield talks about the difference between failing and being addicted to failure. "When we're addicted to failure, we enjoy it. Each time we fail we are secretly relieved."


It's gotten so bad that we humans tend to love romanticizing failure. The starving artist. Supposedly romantic suicides. Or even the fall of man.


There's nothing wrong with failure, per se. It's just a natural part of being human. The problem is when, as Pressfield suggests, we become addicted to it.


There's that strange feeling of relief. Strange because on the one hand, we've been wanting this for so long, yet on the other hand, we feel relieved that we've failed.


Maybe it's because we know that success comes with certain trials and responsibilities. Maybe it's because we know that success requires us to step into the unknown, to navigate through a place we're unfamiliar with.


This is where our shadow selves and shadow careers come in.



The shadow career is basically a career that's somewhat related to what you want, but not really. A writer may, for instance, want to become a full time author. But "reality" sets in, early on, and they settle for just being a copywriter.


It's not totally unrelated to writing. But it's also not the thing they've been pining for for the longest time.


Hence the term, "Shadow Career." It's a state wherein your life's work sustains you, but it hardly ever fulfills you. And you can't help but feel that that's not what you were called on this earth to do, that there's more to life than just living vicariously through someone else's dream.


The biggest problem with this is when we end up forgetting our soul's mission. People like to quote the verse below to refer to just the sinful state of the world. But I think it goes much deeper that that.


"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."


The world has long had many shoulds and have-to's. From birth, we've been programmed to believe certain things about work, about finances, about education, about life. However, these things of the world change all the time.


So rather than focus on what the world wants of you, focus on changing and renewing your mind. Whatever limiting beliefs you've had about work, about success, about money, re-examine them. Are they really, truly, true? Or are those thoughts simply of the world?


It's our Creator's will that we are all taken care of. "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."


Are the beliefs: "I am not enough. What I have to offer the world is not enough. I am not worthy," really from God? Or are they of the world and its conditioning?


Shadow careers, I personally believe, are of the world. Because we each have gifts that we came into this world with, gifts that we were meant to grow and cultivate. And rather than squander that gift, perhaps it's about time to embrace it.

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