Although the advice is usually basic knowledge that I could get from anyone, I appreciate the timeliness of her random bits of wisdom.
There's this thought process that seems to permeate our culture that once you follow your intuition, determine what it is that your soul-calling may be, that everything just falls into place. Once you get it, you're supposed to just be able to get it - whatever that it may be. Whether it's realizing your purpose and going for a specific job or however your intuition seems to communicate with you, there's this expectation that realizing your thing should mean it's guaranteed to happen.
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For me, following my intuition meant moving up to New Jersey to live with my grandparents and feel like a poor, leech for months until I landed my first job working at CBS in Philly. For me, following my intuition meant blindly sending out demo reel after demo reel in hopes of someone seeing my potential. For me, following my intuition meant being let down time and time again as news director after news director said they saw my potential but couldn't make a commitment.
See, I knew in my heart that being a reporter was where I was supposed to be. I could tell by the way it felt to get a story done on a deadline, I could feel it whenever I did an interview, but quite frankly, following my intuition would have sucked immensely if I had thought it was all an act of grace with no work behind it.
This concept also seems to come into place when addressing our belief system. I am a Christian. I identify as such and try to live as such...but a lot of times, I encounter a similar thinking about faith. That because we have come to some grand conclusion that Christianity is the only way for us, that everything should fall into place. God, why haven't I come into my full potential? God, why haven't I received my blessings yet? It's thinking like that which tends to make people bitter, especially if they see people around them succeeding.
So what does one have to do with the other? Well...over the weekend, I attended the 2013 Youth Winter Retreat as a leader and it had me thinking about the way we tend to try and barter with God without taking into account that we have to do some work too. If I'm willing to put in all this effort to try and have a successful career based off my "instinctive feeling" that this path was right for me, how much more effort should I put in on something that I want to base my life on? Now that's not to say that grace isn't an immense part of my belief system, but it does say that you can't expect things to change in your life if you aren't willing to put some action behind your intuition.
Just a thought.
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