Make Your Work Remarkable

by Laurel Donnellan, Chief Possibilities Officer, Passion into Practice Inc.

If you are doing remarkable work, you wake up most mornings excited about what you are going to do that day, committed to what is possible, and free to show up as your most authentic self.

Remarkable work is work where you feel engaged, whole and ready to transform.

Remarkable work is the best way to express your passions while contributing to yourself and others. I believe that this work is an outer expression of an inner call to purpose, and that seeking and following it is a noble endeavor. About nine years ago I dedicated my life to helping people navigate this journey and began studying people that had found ways to put their passions into practice at work. I call them the super-satisfied workers whether they are on their own or working within organizations.

In this process, I identified twelve principles and practices that this group shared and organized them into a practical three phase methodology called The Path to Remarkable Work. This path consists of three distinct but connected pathways.

The first pathway is called The Way to Engagement and allows you to retrace your past and explore the principles of courage, faith, awareness, and truth. The second pathway is called The Way to Wholeness, and will lead you to a deeper understanding about your attitudes and behaviors concerning health, relationships, money and work. The last pathway is called The Way to Transformation and will prepare you for a future that includes remarkable work.

People dedicated to this path learn to be brave. They often have to fight off ideas of what is widely accepted as "successful" in order to carve their own way. Whether they infiltrate corporate structures with kindness, defy American materialism by devoting themselves to teaching children, or proudly make cupcakes as stay-at-home moms, they all have one thing in common: they have been or are currently on a search for work that is aligned with their personal values and natural talents.

The good news is that anyone that chooses can have remarkable work if they adapt these principles and dedicate themselves to this deep process over the long term. If you care about finding your place in society and search for meaning in all activities, including work, you are ready for The Path to Remarkable Work.

Here is a brief introduction to five of the twelve practices from The Path to Remarkable Work that you can begin today:

1. Be a visionary: Whether you want to make your current job more meaningful or move to a new situation the first step is to give yourself permission and the time to dream again. Spend an hour a week or some dedicated time on your summer vacation reflecting on this brave question: What am I passionate about and how can I incorporate these passions into my next career chapter?
2. Play with Possibilities: Allow yourself to get out of your head and into your heart by being creative. Create a collage that contains the elements of your perfect work environment and put it up in a place you can see it each day. Leave it up for a while and put up post-it notes with your ideas for future projects, jobs and/or careers and work around the collage.
3. Claim a Purpose: You probably have a mission statement for your company but do you have a personal purpose statement for your own career? The statement should be inspiring to you and answer this question: Why do I work?
4. See Dream Work: Dream Work is the absolute best way to express your passions and purpose. This is completely individual and can include raising children, vegetables or venture capital, or exploring another country, creating a new way to knit or inventing software. Project yourself into the year 2015 and see yourself doing your version of dream work. If you need to develop some clarity, write yourself a letter from this future offering advice to the person you are today.
5. Do Remarkable Work: As you are excavating your best future, it is important to perform as well as you possibly can in your current work, whether or not you are doing your dream. This will build your self-esteem and help you gather energy for the transition ahead.

Laurel Donnellan is the Chief Possibilities Officer and founder of Passion into Practice. Passion into Practice provides one-on-one guided experiences, group workshops, professional coaching certifications and organizational consulting. Her vision is to help millions of people find passions and do remarkable work. She recently completed a book called Passion into Practice: The Path to Remarkable Work.