The worst was over. I had freed myself from the state I had been in. I had quit. So here is where I like to use an analogy, a metaphor…I had escaped the trenches. Knee deep in human mud is where I had come from. Human beings are fascinating creatures but they are messy and weighed down with muck. It was this muck that I waded through each day. The muck of the mess that results from living a life where one cannot rise above their own ‘stuff’, and so, naturally their stuff became my stuff and I would wade through their muck thinking how did this become my life?
I was not free to think my own thoughts without their issues invading my every moment. You see I am the queen of taking on other people’s issues and thinking I am to blame if those issues result in myself being…….overpowered. Let me be clear here, I am not without stuff. I am stuffed with stuff. But it wasn’t until I became so heavy with the weight of others’ issues that I collapsed. I fell in the mud, face first and once I finally managed to look up I saw the sky, the clear blue sky of ‘nup, no more’.

We all have to work. Well, not all, as I often notice some who have found that sweet spot in life, where well-being and work are beautifully balanced. A school term before I had freed myself from the trenches, I had a rare yard-duty-free day. Hurray! I decided to make my life less stressful. I would help my future self by giving up my present self’s yard-duty-free lunch and pop down to the local health food shop to buy my beloved apple and cinnamon granola. I only ever eat breakfast for lunch at work and find this experience freeing because when I sit down at my desk to eat it I feel like I am on holidays. Cereal is my holiday food you see. So I parked my car and hurried to the store not wanting to arrive back at work late, to find a line of very restless 5 year olds waiting for me to take them into class.

Door open, smell of fruit, nuts, organic cleaning products and silence. The shop was always the right temperature, not too cold, not too hot, like the jasmine scented cool towel one gets when one arrives at a Balinese hotel. I used the shop’s stratosphere to soothe my hot and bothered soul and began to fill my brown paper bag with granola. To my left I saw my colleague. She had long sandy blonde hair, the kind that sat smoothly on her shoulders and moved with grace as she flitted her head from left to right looking for the walnuts that were tucked away in plastic drawers that sat side by side.
She looked up, noticing my energy first, as I had been studying her. We exchanged hellos and she laughed about how she had the day off, how she had two days off in fact and the rest of the week was spent teaching. I asked her how she managed that? Her reply, as she was in fact a very ‘spiritually minded’ lady, came with advice. She simply manifested it. Simply manifested it, huh. Now I had written a book on manifestation and yes I knew the ins and outs of this process, drawing in with light the experiences I wanted. I admit I no longer had bits and pieces of drama in my life, but I was indeed blocked in the particular area of having a desirable work, life balance. She eased her way over to the counter and I followed, waiting for more subtle advice. She explained, as she unpacked her basket full of nuts and organic vegetables, that she consciously decided she needed time to reflect, to recharge for at least two days out of a week. She would not make any other commitments and as a result had managed to secure this work life balance. All well and good I thought, but how could she survive without a weekly income? I dared not delve into asking her and I was already late in returning to my class.

For days after I contemplated this encounter. It wasn’t that at times I didn’t love my work. It always gave me joy when little Heidi would come skipping into class and give me a giant front-toothless six year old grin and wrap her arms around my neck as I crouched down, squeaking out with joy, a good morning Mrs Steventon. However the joy was often short lived and quickly replaced with high levels of stress after weeks of teaching. So I began the self inquiry of how I might find this elusive work/life balance.
Here’s the thing, we are trained to work, and work we must to survive. From a young age we go through an industry type school experience that gears us towards a work life that we must engage in. We must find a career, or a job and that is what mainstream schools prepare us for. This is how we are taught to think; that work is life and allows you to live a life as there is nothing worse than being poor and purpose-less. I agree that having purpose in life is paramount, but over time, as I became more and more determined to be free, I felt and most likely always have felt, that this purpose should not be money driven, but joy driven.

I recall once someone saying that if you work from a place of joy in what you do, the money will come. But I had been too scared to risk that and had little trust, despite the multitude of spiritual confirmations I’d had over the years, that Source, Spirit would always come through for me. Point blank I’d stayed home to raise my children and had little money during that time so I did not want to be lacking again, nor did I want to be putting my hand out for ten bucks to fill the car with petrol. So I strove, and the success I’d had so far with my work had not been without the ingredient of this striving. To strive for what one wants is based in the knowledge that sheer tenacity is what gets you where you would like to be. Ramana, my Sufi Saint has said….

So I fought and persevered on to find that success in work and had the joy at times, but it was crushed by this overwhelming need to keep striving and then what I pushed for shifted, it turned on me as I knew deep down it was not the big picture I’d hoped for.
I worked every day, as most do. But something kept calling me, another life, another striving for what I knew was part of my path in work and life. I wondered about others, how they might feel, did they question, did they listen to this call, did others feel this call too? In tarot what I call The Call, is indicated in the symbolism of the Judgement card; a call to a higher way of living. It is a rise in consciousness where your physical life reflects this shift in being. But I had ignored my higher calling for years and as a result much time passed and I became stuck and joyless.

Maybe when we have an intuitive idea of how we want to create abundance in our lives, we ignore it and what we actually end up doing, we do for every reason other than for the joy of it. These reasons may vary, ranging from issues such as an obligation to an idea created by a family member, pressures from a significant other to be what they want us to be, pressures from what we think we should be doing rather than what we want to do. So we don’t step across the great divide and place both feet in the land of a fulfilled life because the ‘want to do’ I feel for us humans can be deeply ensconced in our fears and anxieties around surviving. We worry we won’t survive without the ‘have to’ attached to what we do.

We begin to worry that what we want to do, will not include the safety of a solid income, or the security and consistency of financial predictability. We may begin to question what if it doesn’t work out, the dream of working through the inspiration of our passions and what gives us joy? Then we may feel we can’t strive to do what we want as a career because it may not be our best option monetarily.
So we straddle the great divide between working for joy and working to survive, committing to neither fully.
How I see it is there are two options to stepping into having a balanced work-life.

One, we take the opposite foot and place it firmly in the ‘land of’ working from a place of joy. We do what we are passionate about as a career, and it never ceases to give us a sense of joy.

Two, we build a bridge and split ourselves between having a slightly joyless career and creating a solid space in time for doing what brings us joy and equally commit to both, compromising on neither.

Regarding the first option, you have to know what your passion is and what gives you joy, then find a way to make that your work-life. This could mean studying and being poor for a time to get a diploma or degree, investing in a loan and creating a business. But there will be an amount of striving involved and most likely tenacity in this process.

If finding your passion may pose as a challenge ask the Universe for a sign, a path indicator, anything that may clarify what it is you love to do if it is not completely clear to you. But look out for it, the sign, the indicator, because it may be as small as an advertisement on a random website, a comment from a friend, something in a movie, or it may be your hobby. But tune in to that feeling of….what am I good at and what brings me joy? Then follow it to its fruition by finding ways to make that skill or passion a real life path. I did this with teaching and I am glad for its gift as it did bring me joy. But it wasn’t my true source of joy, and it has taken me a long time to work that one out.

Eventually I had to take option two. This way of living allows us to keep what we know rather than start all over again. But we need to set boundaries around how much time we devote to the joyless aspect of our work-life. If we give in to it and neglect what brings us joy then it will swamp us again, take over again. Because there will be energetic links that tie us to ideas around responsibilty and if we give it too much weight, we will fall back into old patterns of giving up what we love to do, for what we think we ought to do.

One may have to say no to others, say no to time being taken away. We may even have to disappoint bosses, partners who might be afraid of us not having a set income. But at some point it has to be done, this striving for what brings us joy in our work life. We then have to nurture and bring to life that which brings us joy. We can make a pragmatic plan, begin by putting small things in place. If it’s creating a product that brings you joy, sign up for markets, if it is art or music, create a website, record, develop it, take pictures and promote. Join groups, find others and ask how they did it, how they began. It might be helping others, so volunteer and take it from there.

However one goes about it, the most important aspect is that you commit to your joy, as much as you commit to your skill that brings in the money. Don’t compromise on either but commit to both equally and build that bridge so both can coexist.

The first step towards a balanced work-life starts when we consciously choose to either step into one land only, or create a bridge that connects the two, and work from that space. For me I had to get out of the state I was stuck in. I did not want to leave teaching behind as it would give me some stability, but I could not stay where I was. I had to take option two. I saw, finally, that I needed to find a balance, bridge my divides and go from there. So I freed myself and quit where I was stuck. I took a leap of faith into the unknown, the ultimate journey of The Fool. Both teaching and tarot would be forever bridged.

When my two weeks notice was up, which happened to be at the end of term, I sat at my desk and felt such joy at emptying its contents into a big bag. No sorting just pouring, pouring the last year into a bag and then packing the rest of my teaching tools into my car. As I drove away from the school I felt such relief. I had taken the leap of faith and knew I would strive to find a way to live with my first love in mind and my skills leading the way. Out of the muck I had waded onto greener pastures, well actually a shower and a cup of tea. I sat in solace in a room that was mine alone, not shared any longer, but mine. The plane was scheduled to leave early and I was to be on it. The change for me did not just entail leaving my job, I was leaving my husband of 23 years. My spirit guide has always told me that ‘timing is everything,’ so for me I timed it all. I flew across the great divide, from the bottom of Australia to the top of of this expansive country, to a new and more balanced life.