Weight Weight Just Love Me – Alignment – Day 30

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Alignment happens from the overlap between passion, purpose, profession and pay.

Alignment happens from the overlap between passion, purpose, profession and pay.

I’ve been contemplating the image on this post since I saw it a couple days ago.  It illustrates a Japanese concept called “ikigai.”  The more alignment between the four areas of Passion, Mission, Vocation and Profession, the greater the meaning in your life leading to enhanced satisfaction.  For my purposes of contemplation, I relabled this to  – Passion, Purpose, Professions, and Pay.

As part of loving myself more I’m standing on full alert with this concept.  I started last week on a twenty week structural realignment exercise program to get my posture back aligned and in balance to heal my persistent heel pain.  After day four of the first two weeks of exercises my feet are feeling better.

I got to wondering  where else is my life out of alignment?  My passion – that which I love to do – the cooking, yoga, learning, entrepreneurial pursuits, travel, connecting with my family and community – this is the same.  My purpose – inspiring others to joyfully and skillfully pursue their dreams – this is the same.  My profession – well I have became a yoga teacher – this has changed.  I’m still a course developer and teach project management and still love doing that.  But my new profession as a yoga teacher yes this has changed.  And the pay – well I still make my living teaching project management. I’m working on bringing my way of doing accelerated learning into yoga to help people quickly learn how to move through life with more comfort, grace and ease. The pay for the yoga though is no where close to my passion for it.  So yes there is a part of this ikigai image that is a little off kilter right now – just like how my posture is a little off kilter. I could easily bring the ikigai into alignment by adjusting my passion levels for the unique professions commensurate with the pay.  But seriously that feels so out of integrity and oh so not what the yoga teacher calling is all about.  And it got me thinking – hmmm I’ve been here before.  When I got Cheetah Learning  going my passion level there was way out of alignment with the pay as well – but I did it anyhow as I felt called to share what I had developed with the world.  The pay caught up with my passion for my profession then and well time will tell here with the new profession of being a yoga teacher.  So being a bit off kilter for a while is part of the process when it’s imperative for me to live with the passionate fire in my belly of my pursuits.  Loving myself more, I’m good with this now.

 

Kate’s comment: something that Dr. Thorgesen said when I first started at his practice (and I was so holier-than-thou about not over-charging people for my services) was that if I don’t make enough money to sustain myself, how can I expect to help people? I’d have to leave Haines and leave my patients, and then where would that leave them? Dietitian-less.

I’m working on finding the balance and my worth in it all. I find a LOT of worth in what you’re doing with Happy Aging Yoga. The world needs it in a big way. Although money is not what yoga is about at its core, it’s what it takes to get people to move towards their happiest, healthiest selves.  You are a natural capitalist – the proper course will find its way..

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