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Will You Live Your Great Work, or Let Your Soul Die?

By on May 3, 2010 in Living Your Truth

I spent most of my existence on this earth defined by the shoulds.

When I was a kid I created a music video for a project in my grade school’s gifted program. It was a story of an injured girl in a wheelchair who overcame her challenges to walk by the end of the song, set to “What a Feeling” by Irene Cara … but the video never got made.

That just wasn’t important or realistic for a 6th grader to do.

And my life slipped into a thousand other compromises and shoulds and reasonableness.

The college student interested in taking classes in literature and economics and science and math but picked just three majors because that’s how many blanks were allocated on the admissions office form.

The law student who loved figuring out the nature of society by its legal systems, but took & passed the patent bar because lawyers with science backgrounds were supposed to go into intellectual property law.

The lawyer who loved saving people in civil clinic from negligent landlords, but got a job in a fancy biglaw firm because that’s the job that magna cum laude law review editor law school grads were supposed to get.

The adventurous & crazy woman who got married and bought a cute house in the suburbs and filled it with stuff and had a kid, because that’s what grown ups do.

The business owner who wanted freedom and challenge and to help people, but who practiced financial planning and wrote estate plans and long form sales letters because that’s how people make money.

Until I couldn’t freaking stand the pain of being out of sync with myself anymore.

As scared and unsure as I was, I hoped there might be something else, some other way of being, some other way of living life and making business, that would be real. That would work for me. That would make money. That would be it.

A way to make money that is a natural expression of who I really am.

A way to live life, a way to be successful, a way to be fulfilled, a way to change the world that is a natural expression of who I really am.

Live Your Truth is not just my tag line. It’s not just the name of my website. It’s not just something tattooed upon the inside of my left wrist.

Live Your Truth is the Great Work of my Life.

And if you are reading this post, you also have a Great Work.

And you know, deep in your bones, what it is.

But it scares the crap out of you.

Because you don’t believe that you can do it, or that you have permission to do it, or that it’s that important or valuable, or that it’s realistic or possible or okay with the people in your life, or that there’s a way to make money at it.

But you must do it.

Because not doing it would be wound part of your soul.

Eventually, even kill part of your soul.

And I refuse to watch that happen when I know I can help you.

This year I will be launching programs where I’ll lead you through different aspects of bringing your Great Work, your personal Truth, into manifest into your life.

It will include programs on recognizing your Truth, that natural expression of who you really are. On speaking it and finding others who resonate with it. On creating with it, and taken action on it. On marketing it. On getting paid for it.

The part that I can offer you right now is the tool of creating videos to communicate your truth online.

I invite you now to learn how to use the tool of online videos to find & bring your great work into manifest into your business. To communicate your truth online.

And this works even if you don’t know your truth. Even if you have not yet realized your Great Work.

Because the only way to find your truth is to speak it.

Right now, buy a seat for the 3 Days to Video live virtual workshop – or if the dates/times don’t work for you, the 4 Weeks to Video self-study program.

Stop waiting on your life to start and join me on this adventure.

I’ll see you there.

(I’d like to thank Michael Bungay Stanier & his book “Do More Great Work” for the inspiration for this post!)

Do you know your Great Work?

Are you still searching?

Are you waiting for something before you start living your truth?

I’d love to hear from you below!

Related posts:

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  3. Is it weird for me to work at home while I send Gracie to preschool?
  4. The Other Kind of Resistance: Listening to the Quiet Message From Your Soul
  5. How to Live Your Truth

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  • alexisneely

    Are you speaking to me EPW?!? There's a part of me that thinks I'm living my Great Work, but there's a part of me that says I'm not. Inner conflict. And what's funny is that I KNOW my ultimate Great Work is about helping people resolve conflict from the inside out. Ha, that's what my blog post was just about – doing our own work on ourselves. So, I guess that's the next frontier.

  • http://www.caseymccann.com/blog Casey McCann

    I'm getting closer and closer – these posts really help with the ol' clarity. I love how you list all the ways you were not living your truth – that honesty intensifies and illuminates your message and makes my own hesitations and compromises pop out at me.

    P.S. I'm sure I'm not alone in suggesting that it's time for you to make the Flashdance video after all… :-D

  • http://allisonnazarian.com/ Allison Nazarian

    Being reasonable. Ug. All I can say is Thank God the reason and “shoulds” came crashing in our 30s and not our 90s. This blog post goes along with the line from you yesterday about our job is not to know but to do.
    #loveyou

  • meganmatthieson

    If you woke up in the middle of the night to write this….It was worth it. :) Boil it down for us Elizabeth!

  • http://elizabethpottsweinstein.com ElizabethPW

    oh crap, I knew someone would say that. ;)

    but isn't it funny, one of my unfinishednesses of my youth … and now I make videos as part of my work. interesting ….

  • http://elizabethpottsweinstein.com ElizabethPW

    I wonder if you're living part of your work but not yet stepped into all of it. Kind of like a shoulder that's *almost* in socket but isn't quite there, almost more painful than being out of socket completely.

  • http://elizabethpottsweinstein.com ElizabethPW

    I know, thank god we woke up in our 30s.

    And yes, I wrote this on Sunday night, hence my texts to you yesterday. :)

    #loveyoutoo

  • http://elizabethpottsweinstein.com ElizabethPW

    Yes, this post was written after midnight. And yes, I think it was worth it too.

    (but I'd really love to be able to write between the hours of 6 am and 10 pm. sigh.)

  • http://www.giuliettathemuse.com/blog giulietta

    Hey Elizabeth,

    That's a “great” book. Just finished it.

    Doing great work (DGW) scares folks. It's incredibly POWERFUL. When you're DGW you're in the Power Zone and for lots of people, especially women, that's a place not associated with being a lady or being liked.

    NewsFlash: I feel amazingly sexy & beautiful when I'm DGW. Life radiates out of my pores!

    Thanks!

    Giulietta, Inspirational Rebel

  • annettenack

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    It's like you've been reading my mind because for some reason or another, I've woken up over the last year of my life and said screw it to a lot of things that I've “supposed” to have been doing. Enter in the LYTP and I've decided that there is no way that I'm going to do something just because I'm supposed to or because someone expects me to do it.

    I've stopped doing the shoulds and have started doing things that I really love and I think that's where the magic happens. Life starts being about living and experiencing all over again like we had when we were kids and didn't care about what others thought. How awesome is that?

    Finally, someone speaking out for us folks who want to live our lives without regrets and fully in our power and passions!

  • TaniaLanin

    Not many posts make me cry. This one did.
    THANKS for writing this, and for making me feel I'm on the right path – and the only path I could take really to prevent my soul from dying.

    Thanks for being you :)

  • Tami Morello

    Elizabeth, I think you are attracting an incredible tribe around you partly (or mostly) because of your honesty in sharing your own journey and struggles in this truth finding business of life. I especially resonate with not being able to “stand the pain of being out of sync with myself anymore.” I think my Great Work is buried within some things I'm already doing, but I'm still working on bringing it all into full-scale reality in a way that is truly me. My hard work right now is weeding out and excavating.

  • http://twitter.com/orangemathtutor Jane Vedell

    What an exciting year!

    “This year I will be launching programs where I’ll lead you through different aspects of bringing your Great Work, your personal Truth, into manifest into your life.”

  • BizBuildersUSA

    Beginning to Live Your Truth and doing your Great Work is bound to be a growth process much like growing as from a baby to adulthood, but mentally and emotionally. The legs that we run with first have to be strengthened by us crawling around on our knees. That is, we need to crawl around in discovery, and building courage, and gaining skills before we can stand on these legs of accomplishment. And then, we walk.

    Doing the Great Work, I am discovering, leads us to a deeper Great Work, a Greater Work. We see new needs and opportunities as we travel to our horizon, and as we gain in stature.

    Lastly, what does it mean that I am the only male that commented on this topic?

  • http://TheManifestationMaven.com Kimberly Schneider

    Brilliant Elizabeth. Love your authenticity. My hat is off to another recovering lawyer who is dancing to the song of her soul.

  • http://www.CreativeGuideToLife.com Susan

    I think some people just aren't prepared to live their great work. They think that compromising on those 'sae' ideals of a paycheck and house are a sacrifice. Instead of the other way around. Not doing your work is the sacrifice. The house is just a pile of rocks. The money is just paper. They're meaningless without your soul in sync with it.

  • http://www.CreativeGuideToLife.com Susan

    Yikes! 'safe' ideals, not 'sae'

    :-)

  • http://www.emptyingofmie.blogspot.com Mie

    Hi there Elizabeth, I have been reading you for quite a few weeks now and I love how you express your thoughts in words. I have a personal blog but I am not so good on expressing what I am thinking or feeling on words. I have written a post in my blog and made a link here. You are great!