(Jottings from Marsha Sinetar, Do What You Love,
the Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood, Dell
Publishing, 666 Fifth Avenue, NY, 10103, 1987).

Introductory notes: 1. I bought this from Denver’s
largest bookshop, oddly called ‘The Tattered Cover Book Store’,
November 1990, in the month I was deciding to resign from World
Vision, and ‘go it alone’ to begin John Mark Ministries, serving
pastors and ex-pastors. 2. Marsha Sinetar is an organizational
psychologist, mediator and writer, who has also written Ordinary
People as Monks and Mystics (Paulist Press, 1986). [A superficial
reading could conclude she is New Age-ish. I don’t think she is,
although I would have liked more Bible and less Suzuki (the Zen
Suzuki, that is). Thomas Merton is obviously a favourite of hers
– and also of mine. But her linking ‘integrity’ with Merton’s
notion of ‘final integration’ limits the potential of that concept,
unfortunately. With those reservations, she is worth reading].

# What you can conceive you can achieve: do what
you love, the money will follow!

# Work, love, play and devotion are unified into
a cohesive activity for the fully developed, self-actualizing
personality.

1. Your work ought to fit your personality as shoes
fit your feet. Otherwise you’re destined for discomfort! Every
species in the natural world has a place and function that is
specifically suited to its capabilities. The very best way to
relate to your work is to choose it. Once you accept your talents
as a blueprint for a satisfying vocational life, then you can
stop looking to others for approval and direction. Abraham Maslow’s
‘self-actualizing’ personalities ensure that their entire lives
become an outward expression of their true inner selves. They
have a sense of their own worth and are likely to experiment,
to be creative, to ask for what they want and need. Their high
self-esteem and subsequent risk-taking/creativity bring them a
host of competencies that are indispensable to locating work they
want. They also develop the tenacity and optimism which allows
them to stick with their choices until the financial rewards come.
They are life affirming…

The best-kept secret is that people want to work
hard for something they feel is meaningful, something they believe
in. Quaker Douglas Steere: ‘Work without contemplation is never
enough’.

2. People with high self-esteem hear themselves,
are able to pay attention to the silent, indwelling push to pursue
one career or life-path over another. They know they must respond
to trouble, so they face squarely whatever challenges they meet.
They are willing to pay the costs of being in charge of their
own lives. Sometimes, yes, they will feel spent, fatigued, perhaps
even fearful. (Coach Vince Lombardi: ‘Fatigue makes cowards of
all of us’). Self-esteem is our earliest self-verdict.

3. We must, however, come to know and accept our
dark side – our ‘shadow’ as Jung called it. In terms of the elder
brother in the story of the Prodigal Son, the work of our adult
lives – if we have not learned it in childhood or adolescence
– is to quiet the voice of the ‘second son’.

Idea-incubation means resting, being alone, thinking
in solitude (so unlearn part of your inherited Puritan work ethic!).
If you’re creative, you may have to flout the company’s open door
policy and work in isolation (accepting the criticisms of others).
‘Time out’ activities are important – like sleeping, watching
TV, fishing, listening to music, daydreaming a little…

When we cling to parental ‘shoulds’ we may cast ourselves
out of our own house. Strokes (‘units of human recognition’) from
others are good, but treating yourself well is better. Listen
to yourself through your dreams. Gayle Delaney, a noted dream
therapist, suggests (Living Your Dreams) that prior to sleep,
you could ask yourself for the kind of dream you wish to have
(‘dream incubation’), though perhaps a bad dream is the thing
in us that we fear just wanting our love. Forgiving ourselves
dissolves all kinds of unhealthy attitudes – about ourselves and
about the other. Jung taught us that the shadowy self of questionable
courage or virtue is our dark brother, without whom we could not
be whole.

With pen and notebook handy, ask yourself ‘What is
my life’s real purpose?’ ‘How, specifically, would I have to think,
speak and act in order to bring it into being?’ ‘What activities
– daily choices, attitudes and concrete accomplishments – would
I do if I lived as if my purpose meant something to me?’ ‘How
would I live, on a day to day basis, if I respected myself, others,
my life’s purpose?’

4. ‘Small steps’, day by day, are important. One
of the hallmarks of self-defeat is to try to do things in a grand
manner and show others how great we are. People with low self-esteem
often idealize themselves by seeing themselves achieve in a flashy
manner. They bite off too much and set themselves up for failure.
So what small daily actions fill me with delight, make me feel
energized and optimistic?

5. The unfulfilled prefer comfort over challenge,
safety over growth. ‘Amniosis’, says John Sanford, is an inability
to come out of the amniotic fluid and be born, a desire to return
to the safe hiding place of the womb. They want to go through
life without making any ripples. Indeed, Psychiatrist Robert Lindner
(Prescription for Rebellion, NY: Grove Press, 1952) believed that
adjustment was a synonym for conformity, and society conditions
each human infant away from his or her own uniqueness. Successful
rebels transcend these barriers.

6. A ‘Script’ is a parental/ancestral blueprint for
an individual’s life. So we are dominated by ‘shoulds’: men should
be active, strong, brave, should not show their vulnerable side…
So, says Levinson, people suffering ‘burn-out’ have * chronic
fatigue, * anger at those making demands, * self-criticism for
putting up with the demands, * cynicism, negativism and irritability,
* a sense of being besieged, and * hair-trigger display of emotions…
Males sometimes would rather die in battle than risk being a ‘coward’;
or would rather die at their desks prematurely than free themselves
from their compulsive patterns and pursuits.

Women are also highly influenced by family, media
or friends, perhaps achieving self-definition through Super-Mom
status. So 84% of private psychotherapy patients, 70% of those
using medically-prescribed mood-altering drugs, are women. Women
are allowing themselves and their ‘conditions’ to be largely defined
by men. They sometimes assume an inordinate responsibility for
their husband’s, parent’s or children’s happiness and comfort.

So: find role models, people already living the way
you want to live; write down in your journal the positive things
you do each day; in a quiet period, reward yourself with some
encouragement at the end of each working day – this reinforces
the good things you are learning to do.

7. You will have to give up safety if you want to
grow. The confident person knows ‘No matter what comes along,
I can figure out a solution’. But they must stay away from negative
people, and get out of bed (preferably early) in the morning!
They will also measure their worth, not by the amount they earn,
but by ‘inner wealth’. They produce what other people want, but
often just enough monetarily to support themselves and their family.
So once we have a clear idea of our goals, and of our inner talents,
the money will follow. But we mustn’t be intimidated by a culture
that equates high monetary worth with worth as a person.

8. Resourcefulness is little more than creativity,
and innovative types will try something new, even when they have
other responsibilities (such as families to support). They are
never too ‘old’ to do what they really want.

Dr William Glasser, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, studied
people who had a long history of some sort of disciplined activity
like meditation or long-distance running. In Positive Addiction
he suggests there are many psychological advantages in the practice
of a personal, solitary, regular discipline for at least one hour
per day for several months. This helps us believe in ourselves,
knowing that we have all the skill, intelligence and wit to meet
our every need.

9. ‘The majority work to make a living; some work
to acquire wealth or fame, while a few work because there is something
within them which demands expression… Only a few truly love
it’ (Edmond Boreaux Szekely). Workaholics are motivated by fear:
they are alienated, anxious, aggressive, stressed individuals
who use work to stave off buried hostility, maladaptive social
attitudes, and feelings of inadequacy. Workaphiles ‘have light’
in themselves (Schweitzer): they don’t crave respect or rank,
titles, large offices, special parking places, top floor suites…

10. Here is Thomas Merton’s translation of a classical
poem by Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu:

When an archer is shooting for nothing he has all
the skills. If he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous…
The prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning than
of shooting – and the need to win Drains him of power.

Mother Teresa was in Ethiopia, amongst one of its
worst droughts and famine. She was caring for the needy, blessing
dying children, although people were dying around her at alarming
rates. A reporter who happened on the scene asked her if she didn’t
get discouraged seeing, day after day, so many people die despite
her efforts to help them. She briskly replied, ‘We are not here
to be successful. We are here to be faithful.’

Vocationally integrated persons do not long for love:
they have it. They do not yearn for happiness: they have it. They
do not strive for completion, finality, satisfaction: they have
these… The healthier the personality, the more likely that the
individual experiences his or her entire life (including their
vocational life) in this abundant manner.

As Erich Fromm once wrote when talking about active
listening, to be concentrated in anything makes us more awake,
while every unconcentrated, unconscious activity fatigues us,
makes us more tired. When we learn to function with full concentration
and purposefulness, we are the ones who are energized, activated,
alert.

Through these acts and attitudes, we grow to see
that our work is more than something by which to ‘earn a living’;
it is that which helps us build our life.