CHAPTER 1
Turning Passion Into Possibility
"If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."
Maya Angelou
Finding your passion and realizing it is your career purpose in life is an exhilarating feeling. It is like a breath of fresh air filling up every cell in your body. You have renewed interest and energy to re-create your life and discover more meaning in what you do every day. It's that moment of bliss and delight that comes before you can even ask yourself, "How?" and allow self-doubt to come rushing in. As you will see from my client Rachel's story, acknowledging your passions is one thing; putting them into action and overcoming life's obstacles and other people's expectations is quite another. If you don't follow through, you deny yourself the opportunity to do the things you love.
Teenaged Rachel spent countless hours browsing fashion magazines and dreaming of how she would look in high-fashion outfits. She learned how to sew and modify the clothes in her closet to look more like the designer trends she loved so much. She dreamed that one day she would find her place in the fashion industry and build a career that would allow her to, not only wear the clothes she loved so much, but also to make her own contribution to the fashion world.
But it didn't work out that way. The youngest of three girls whose immigrant parents had done well for themselves, Rachel had grown up with privilege, private schooling, and the advantages money could provide. With these advantages, however, came the expectation that Rachel and her sisters would go to college and choose a "proper" professional career rather than studying something creative that might not be as lucrative.
Rachel was expected to study the "right" things, marry a man who would be a good provider for the family, have a few children, and generally fulfill her family's very traditional expectations, all intended to keep her safe and secure. Since Rachel respected her parents and wanted to please them, she made what seemed like the "right" choice: she gave up on her dream of a fashion career and majored in journalism. She told herself it was okay. This way, she could be somewhat creative without taking on the risk of doing what she really wanted to do, which sounded crazy: dress people for a living.
But this denial of her passions led Rachel down a few dark paths in college; she never felt like she fully fit in anywhere. While her sisters got married and started their families, she felt stalled by failure and dashed expectations. Even meeting and marrying Jack, a kind, hardworking, religious man who wanted to have kids right away, didn't "fix" things. Why wasn't she feeling completely satisfied? She ignored this question that lightly tugged on her, determined to keep everyone else's dream for her intact.
Rachel loved being pregnant. She would find ways to dress herself in the styles she loved. When she dressed herself and her belly, she felt like the women in the magazines she adored. She adorned herself in accessories and styled her clothes in such ways that either concealed or revealed her baby bump, depending on what she wanted that day. She loved playing dress up with herself and her changing body. She was a highly fashionable pregnant woman, and her friends took notice, telling her that they, too, wanted to look put-together and stylish while pregnant.
Rachel started giving fashion advice and going shopping with friends, helping them find maternity clothes that looked like the everyday outfits they normally would wear, instead of the oversized and unflattering tents they'd been settling for. Then she'd go back to her friends' houses and end up clearing space in their closets by explaining what was no longer in style and creating fresh, more contemporary outfits with what they already had.
When Rachel dressed her friends, she felt nourished by the experience. She loved not only how her friends looked in their new clothes, but also how they felt like their best selves when the clothes fit so well and highlighted their personalities. Helping her friends in this way reignited her passion for fashion and allowed her to be home with her two young boys.
She knew that staying in the life she'd created from making the "right" choices would continue to feel uninspired, and that she'd just be going through the motions to meet other people's expectations. But she couldn't figure out how to make money doing what she loved. Here she was, a creative professional and a budding fashion coach, and she didn't know how to ask to get paid. How would she be able to explain her services and what she represented in a compelling way without coming across as pushy and scaring people off?
Like many new coaches, Rachel hid, at first, behind a blog she'd started for fun. She would highlight the fashion trends she was interested in, write about how the reader could save money putting the look together, and then invite them to hire her for help. But because the only people who read her blog were family and friends, she didn't get paying clients.
Writing came easily, but the idea of getting out of the house and soliciting strangers to talk to about fashion was harrowing. How could she talk in front of groups of people? Did she have anything to say? Why would anyone take her seriously? Sure, she had experience dressing her friends – but they were her friends and they knew and trusted her. She felt selfish and guilty for wanting to follow her passion. Those feelings and insecurities got in the way of her bringing her passion for fashion out into the world and offering her expertise and services to those who would benefit greatly.
Another obstacle was that Rachel, like many of us, was taught that business is conducted in one specific way, a series of policies and procedures that need to be precisely followed in order to be successful. But Rachel, also like many of us, is a creative; she isn't her most productive inside a traditional and inflexible structure. Rachel had a short attention span, and she also needed to divide that scattered attention between many things, including being a stay-at-home mom. How was she ever going to make this work?
Many coaches and creative professionals find their passion careers later in life, when they are no longer able to ignore their calling. Because these passions aren't commonly taught in a college setting, many don't know that building a creative business is even an option. The traditional world doesn't teach that you can create a business out of your hobbies. Instead, we're taught that we must follow specific steps, in specific ways, and under specific circumstances in order to be successful, make money, and live a comfortable life.
This just isn't true. There are ways to figure out your own working style so you can be the most productive version of yourself in your business. There is a business you can put together from all the things you love to do: a business that will make sense and be of benefit to others. Many new coaches start off their practices thinking they have to do things in a particular way, and often do not see that their other interests and passions can be a part of their businesses. Your puzzle pieces, just like mine, do fit together when you find the connecting thread that tells the story of how they all work together. The trick is finding that story and connecting all the dots in a way that makes sense to you – and then it will make sense to your clients too.
There are so many professionals, like Rachel, who followed the career path they thought they should for reasons of false security. And there are so many parents that pressure their kids onto a specific path because they just want the best for them. It's really not your fault that you didn't know there were other options and other, less traditional, ways of doing business and being of service to others. Even if there'd been an instruction manual somewhere on making a career out of doing what you love when it doesn't fit a traditional business model, there still wasn't a 101-level class at school.
Now that you understand why following your passion pays off, the next question becomes, "Where do I start?" The short answer is: with yourself! The process of starting a new business or coaching practice in any industry is tough. New coaches must take an inventory of their interests and life experiences to figure out how they will coach, who they want to work with, and on which topics. The process of starting a business that really speaks to who you are and how you want to work with others starts to bring up your patterns and self-doubt that will have you blocking yourself in so many ways that you will think these are legitimate reasons not to forge ahead. You may be reading this book because you have already started this process and you are stuck somewhere trying to figure out how to bring yourself and your creation into the world. There are so many places to hide in the process of reconfiguring ourselves and building our creative business! If you can cultivate the awareness that all that is simply resistance and keep moving along and observing what comes up in every step, it may be a smoother journey.
At this point you may be asking yourself, "What makes Stacey Weckstein (or however you pronounce her name) an expert in any of this?" Sometimes I ask myself the same question – that's one of the places my insecurities come up. The definition of expert is a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area. What makes me an expert is having been through this process on which you are embarking. I understand how you feel. I know the places where you could potentially block yourself technically or emotionally, and I know how to guide you to the other side without getting stuck in all the places I did. By reading this book, you are allowing me to fulfill my full potential and passion in being a teacher and guide. In turn, I am supporting you as you learn to understand yourself better, gain the confidence to come into who you are, and serve others as the expert you are meant to be. It is truly my pleasure to be of service to you in this way, and I am deeply honored to have paved the way, every bump and heavy brick, to make this journey smoother for you.
CHAPTER 2
Possibility Into Purpose
"Soul work is not a high road. It's a deep fall into an unforgiving darkness that won't let you go until you find the song that sings you home."
McCall Erickson
There are no coincidences, only synchronicities that do not always make sense until the story has fully revealed itself. I offer my story as an example of how life purpose can come together and make sense once you can identify the answers to a few key questions.
As I was growing up, there were lots of different sports, arts and crafts, music, and religious studies available to me. I would bounce around from one thing to the next, feeling excited about each new activity, until I quickly moved on to the next thing that caught my interest. It was fun to try new things, and to feel my body and mind used in different ways. But once I figured out the strategy behind the new interest, I would start to become bored because I felt I had mastered the activity. Mastery, in my mind, was gaining full understanding – as opposed to practicing it for long amounts of time to reach a certain degree of proficiency. My plan was to collect skills: as many as interested me.
There's a saying: "Jack of all trades, master of none." That was definitely me and I liked it that way. But my process of collecting skills and tools was seen to the outside world as the inability to commit and stick with one thing long enough to become a master. Instead of seeing my process for the creative exploration it was, I began to see it as a character flaw. I felt ashamed and forced myself to sit through things in boredom in order to prove to my parents that I could stay with something. It didn't last. I realize now (and teach my clients) that there is no shame in having many tools. In fact, it's a huge asset, this ability to combine many skills, interests, and trades into the perfect, personalized, right-fit business.
I pride myself on accomplishing tasks quickly. I do not feel I have to have them perfectly done, and most the time I won't go back and correct my mistakes. My college experience reflected this, as I zoomed through all the boring required courses in order to finally decide on a major that I would love, psychology. I had been in therapy since I was five. My mother thought I needed someone to talk to after my parent's divorce. The therapist taught me how to take my feelings and put them into words. When I spoke my feelings, the tightness and butterflies in my body would flutter out, and I could relax.
As with the extracurricular activities I did when I was young, I wanted to quickly understand psychology and the way that it worked, and then put it in my toolbox. I minored in mythology, because it interested me and because, like psychology, all the stories had meanings that explained the archetypes of life. It actually made no sense to keep taking mythology courses, but the teacher was truly insightful in a way that kept me interested and looking for the hidden meanings in what people said and what I read.
The theme for me in all things that I chose to do was to look behind what was going on in front of my face. It was like an intriguing puzzle to be solved. Of course, at the time I had no idea this is what I was doing. I just knew that I liked what I chose to do and it held my interest. When it didn't anymore, I would be on to the next thing.
When I graduated with my BS in psychology, I had no interest in studying further, but the opportunities in my field without going on to graduate school were very limited. I felt hopeless; I was supposed to graduate with a great job on tap and high earning potential. Yet here I was. No other career path presented itself, so off I went to the campus career center for a counselor to help me sort my confusion and choose a new path.
The career center had many diagnostic tools to assess my personality and my abilities. The tests revealed that I was good with my hands and should consider the two top career choices at that point: hair stylist or chef. The problem with traditional career assessment is that it's too straight forward. Here's your skillset; here are the one or two jobs you can do with that skillset. It doesn't take into account creative jobs or how you can fuse your skillsets together to encompass everything you know how to do and also what you love.
Although I was very skilled at dyeing my own hair, I had a true passion for food. I loved textures and flavors of all kinds, and I enjoyed cooking. My mom would only cook things she could make in the microwave or toaster oven, and my grandmother didn't have the correct recipe card to boil water without burning the kettle. So cooking wasn't in my genes. However, my stepmother, who helped raise me from age five, is an amazing cook. She enjoys cooking and trying new recipes; it's one of the ways she shows love and care for her family. My stepmother and I love to talk about food, diets, and restaurants; when I went to college she gave me her arsenal of all my favorite recipes she made while I was growing up. I would throw dinner parties for my friends in my off- campus apartment just to try out recipes and have a reason to cook for more than one.
The day I visited Johnson and Wales University culinary school was one of the most sensational days of my life. Peeking in the windows of the classes and watching the chef instructor teach and walk around to assist at every student station, I instantly knew where my life was headed next. I started culinary school the following fall, and it was one of the best years of my life. But I wondered what I would do with my culinary degree. I couldn't see resigning myself to a kitchen and cooking for the rest of my life, no matter how much I loved food. I learned that the industry itself made it difficult to make a sustainable living and gain a good reputation. I worried about the hours of wear and tear on my body.
I decided to head out west to San Francisco and see what unfolded. The first opportunity that presented itself to me was with a well-known raw food chef. At the time, he was writing his first cookbook. My friend was a waitress at his restaurant and introduced me. I got the job immediately as a prep chef. At the time I had no idea what raw food was or how beneficial the lifestyle was to overall health and wellness. The dishes we prepared were uniquely creative and healthy, with wonderful, bold flavors that weren't quite like anything I'd learned in culinary school. Ironically, I still ate a burger for lunch at the place across the street.
During this period, I had the opportunity to standardize the chef's recipes, train the staff on policy and procedure, and clean up operations in general. Streamlining the processes for efficiency made me feel like I was creating the strategy of the business, and the chef was so impressed he asked me to do his bookkeeping next. But that wasn't something I felt qualified to or interested in doing, so I moved on.
