Cali Bird - Dont Give Up Your Day Job: Practical Ways to Lead a Fulfilling Life and Still Pay the Mortgage

Its not all or nothing

It is a myth that in order to lead a fulfilling and wholesome life you have to immediately give up your mundane, boring or stressful job the job that you never intended to do anyway let alone for the last five, ten or fifteen years! It does not have to be true that in order to earn lots of money you have to do a job you hate and that doing a job you love will bring in less money. It is possible to earn sufficient money and enjoy your life at the same time.

My philosophy as a life coach is that you dont need to give up your day job tomorrow in order to achieve your dreams, but you do need to start taking action towards them while you still carry out your current responsibilities. I call this developing plan B on the side. I have found from my own experience, and from that of my coaching clients, that developing your own plan B outside of work reduces stress from within the workplace. If you are starting to take action towards your desired life then you are no longer trapped by your day job. You know that eventually there will be a life beyond it. Also, because you are being motivated to take action for yourself, some of that motivation and excitement will inevitably spill over into your day job and this will make it easier and less stressful. It doesnt matter how long it takes to achieve your dreams, what matters is that you start to do something towards them and continue with this action when you can.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty I would like to share my own story with you, to show you that it took me fourteen years from the time I first decided that I wanted to be a motivational speaker to when I gave my first personal development seminar for money under the banner of Lead The Life You Want To Lead.

For my first job I ended up training to be a chartered accountant at a prestigious firm of accountants in London. This was not something I had planned to do. At university I had studied music but as I neared the end of my degree I realised that the only music related careers open to me were being a music teacher or an unemployed flute player. Neither of these appealed so I trotted off to the university careers service where they advised me to go into accountancy. They claimed that I didnt need a relevant degree, it would give me a solid business background and I would triple my salary in three years. They were right. The business knowledge to this day is extremely useful and I did ratchet myself up the salary food-chain in a short amount of time. As soon as I qualified I left the world of debits and credits and went into investment banking. It was a lot sexier than being an auditor but it wasnt the life that I had dreamed of and it did not honour my creative abilities.

During my mid-twenties I went backpacking through South East Asia and finally arrived in Sydney where I intended to work for a few months. While I was there I came across Herbalife, a nutrition and weight-loss company, that worked on a multi-level marketing basis. (Dont panic, this book isnt about pyramid selling or flogging stuff to your friends!) Herbalife introduced me into the world of motivational speakers. I attended their conferences and seminars and was transfixed by the wisdom, panache and knowledge of the people who led them, particularly the late Jim Rohn. (For those of you that have never heard of Jim Rohn, he was one of Anthony Robbinss teachers. Apparently the young Anthony used to be on the door collecting the admission fee for some of Jims seminars. In recent years Jim has become known as the grand-daddy of the personal development world.) During these talks I realised that I didnt care that much about selling weight loss products but that I did want to be the person up on the podium, giving the talk and inspiring an audience. The seeds of Lead The Life You Want To Lead had been planted.

When I returned to the UK I went back into investment banking and gradually moved from a finance to a technology role and eventually I became an IT consultant. In 1999 I was fortunate to be earning what I called more money than God but I was thoroughly bored and unfulfilled. However, during that year three important events occurred.

Firstly, I saw Jim Rohn speak in London and I remembered that I had this dream to be a motivational speaker. However now the dream troubled me. I had observed that speakers such as Jim Rohn had a story that went something like once I was broke then I met a teacher who taught me stuff that made me rich and now Im going to make even more money teaching you the same stuff . They had achieved an extraordinary transition in their lives and then sold the story of how they had done it. Unfortunately for me I lacked the after picture: I had the before picture of once upon a time I was an accountant and a computer programmer but could not say and now I do this and its fabulous and Im going to teach you how you too can be as fabulous as me!

The second significant event of 1999 initially looked as though it could have been a solution to my problem. I was on holiday and decided, for fun, to see an astrologer. I explained my predicament that I felt I had so much more potential but I didnt have a clue how to tap that potential. He too had a creative background in classical music and had worked in IT. He suggested that I start writing a journal, do it for a year and see what came out of it. Then he looked at my astrology chart, said lots of things that went over my head and then exclaimed, You have Gemini in your mid heaven [or something like that]; this suggests youd be very good at writing.

For me this was a light bulb moment. The only job I had ever enjoyed from my IT experience was when I worked as a trainer and wrote the training manuals. I had found it satisfying, tangible and, despite being about human resource systems, it had an element of creativity about it. The astrologer recommended two books for me to work through, both were by Julia Cameron: The Right To Write and The Artists Way. I went straight to the bookshop, bought the books and a journal, and started there and then.

I was very excited about my writing because I thought it would give me the solution to my problem. Now I would be able to say in talks once upon a time I was an accountant and a computer programmer, now Im a bestselling author and this is how I did it. Hurrah! I had my after picture but unfortunately I realised that becoming a bestselling author is not a quick or easy endeavour more on that later!

The third significant event of 1999 happened a few weeks after my New York trip: I came across a British inspirational speaker called Nick Williams. Over the next three years I went to many of Nicks talks, workshops and seminars. I was also writing the early drafts of a novel and had managed to persuade my IT client to let me work part-time instead of full-time so that I had more time to write.

I have practiced Buddhism since 1988 and regularly give study lectures within our Buddhist movement. In late 2002 I gave a lecture about the Buddhist perspective of mission and life purpose. The lectures are given on a voluntary basis and are nothing to do with business. However I received exceptionally good feedback from members of the audience on that particular lecture and I started to wonder if the time had arrived for me to speak professionally, on secular themes, in the outside world. I also noticed that although I was not yet a published author, I was inspiring the people around me with my creative efforts. At work, other writers came out of the woodwork and were impressed that I used to write every morning before going to the office. With Nicks encouragement I decided to give a one-off prototype motivational talk to family, friends and friends of friends. I gave this talk on 16th October 2003 in a function room at my local pub to an audience of over twenty people.