What is your Life’s Work?

In 1994, when I first created a flyer and called myself a “career companion” I was able to imagine what it would FEEL like to support and guide others as they realized their dreams for more meaningful work. I did not imagine, however, all the external twists and turns that would bring invitations to work with gritty entrepreneurs, leadership teams, executives, founders of causes, first-generation college students, and yes, every day human beings facing the painful transitions addressed by hospice and grief centers.

How We Refine Our Life’s Work is a Playful Quest

In my early 20’s I explored a vision that a creative thinker in my life helped me clarify when she simply asked, “If you could do anything, what would you do?”  I began exploring a whim that arose in my body when I was surprised by the answer. It was different than the answer in my head that had already calculated a career that looked very different. My gut simply said, 

“I want to play my guitar for kids in the hospital.”  

This playful quest resulted in me finding a residency that paid me for a year to study spiritual care and grief counseling at Grace Hospital in central city Detroit. Working first in the hospital and then with a pediatric hospice, I found it very clarifying being with people at the end of life. It was a daily exercise in clarifying my own values and daily decisions through the ancient spiritual exercise of imagining myself looking back on my own life on my own death bed.

With this view, we can clearly see the long term impact of our actions.

I was surrounded by teachers at an early age who were the patients of the oncology unit and then the hospices I served.

I remember one of my first teachers, a very gritty man who turned to me the night before he would die and said, “I’ve brought kids into the world and grandkids. I’ve left the world a better place.” 

With this awareness, he died with a sense of peace. 

 Looking back, I possessed an underlying confidence in my bones at a young age. This confidence was tested in the presence of everyday fears, worries and challenges.

If all these internal visions and fears were at a dance, my confidence would have been spinning in the middle of the room to music, while my anxieties and doubts would be sitting on the sidelines making sniping comments.

Where did this confidence  to dance to my life’s work, in the face of these internal negative comments, come from? In short, it was a lot of effort and grace.

I was also given some powerful tools when exploring a recovery program that strengthened my commitment to pausing often, asking for guidance and trusting. In my case “grace” was not just a vague notion, it was a concrete daily experience for two years of practicing being a guide for people in transition that started at Grace Hospital. 

Gifted with these powerful formational experiences, I was well equipped to begin the quest of answering complex questions like, “Who Am I? What Am I Doing Here?”  In each season of life, our answer to this question evolves. Since we all need a safe and empowering container to discern how to connect our internal conviction with the external journey, I’ve created Awake8 as a program to align the best of what we are learning from neuroscience with common sense practices from our ancestors. By embracing both science and the art of living a heart-centered life, we are continuously improving ourselves as conduits of a work that is greater than any one of us.  

8 Pathways of Internal Development:

Privately, I’ve been gathering all these tools and curating them into one place. Today, Awake8 offers you 8 Pathways for Internal Development that each contain 8 essential tools. Together, this journey offers 64 ways to address the complex question of creating meaningful work. After 30 years of mousing around to make this nest of tools, my deepest desire is for you find something that supports you among this buffet of options. These tools have all been vetted in workshops, during one-on-one career strategy sessions and by practicing them in my own life.  

What ARE these Pathways? More about that next week!

As I step into a full-time focus on offering you the Awake8 framework, I’m here to serve each of you and the people that you introduce to this work in a few simple ways:

1.        If you want to reach out and hold an exploratory conversation, please book time on my calendar in the coming months. We can check in for 30-minutes and ask, “What are you seeing or needing about the services I’m offering this year?”

2.        For some of you, you may want to participate in the low-cost Seasonal Online Retreats I’m going to begin this Spring.  These retreats are for every day human beings who are facing the burden of living with an open heart in a heavy world. 

3.        For others, you may want to join the 4 leaders already enrolled in the first cohort of 8 leaders bringing home 8 bold visions for their work in the world using the Awake8 framework. I will share more about this program in the weeks to come. If you are an early adopter of emerging programs, I would love to hear from you.

Please be good and kind to yourself, especially if you are up to redefining your work in the world!  Anyone who is practicing dancing with their internal confidence and boldness is my favorite type of person to support! :)

Supporting your clarity, joy and purpose,

Patrick Davis, MA

Career & Life Transitions Strategist

Founder Awake8