The Secret to Finding Your Egg

People ask me “What’s up with the egg and the baby doll on your site?”*

Quite simply, it’s an image of what motivates me: we all have our egg and hatching it is fun.  Yes, hatching it can be a ton of work, too, but it’s still outrageously fun.  And that work-fun combo plate is a huge part of what makes life delicious.

Turns out, helping people who are ready find their egg and hatch it is one of my superpowers.

So what makes you ready?

Being a grumblebunny at what you do now?  No, definitely not.  My experience says that people fare better when they go toward something that attracts them rather than away from something that repels them.  If you are feeling that pull toward something, then you are ready to explore your egg.

Being a grumblebunny does have its uses though.  Let it motivate you to ask yourself why in the world you are doing something that makes you miserable or even just less than joyful.

Oh, I can hear the chorus now: “for the money.”

Okay, but why THIS activity for the money?  Is it worth it? Unwind the choices that landed you here with your pile of money (even if it’s a pile that disappears every month).  Ask where along that path did you make choices that attracted you deeply vs. taking the easy path, the “I ought to” path, or the even more insidious, the “someone else thought I ought to” path.

My family joked for years that I became a math major in college because it was the shortest line during registration (I’m old enough that we didn’t register online then.)  It wasn’t far from the truth – it was the shortest line to what I thought I ought to be doing.  And it was really fine then, just not now.  Guess what?  We don’t have to keep doing what we’ve always done.

Unwinding those choices for myself was very enlightening.  I learned that I didn’t want to be just a techie geek.  But, thanks to the experiences I had doing those geeky jobs, I also had the opportunity to learn many things that I love doing like teaching, mentoring, speaking, writing, working with groups, noticing people’s patterns, working independently, and more.

While you’re flipping your own pages backward, make notes on what you learned about what you DID like during each chapter.  It might even make you feel like less of a grumblebunny now.

What is the secret to finding your egg when you are ready?

You feel it.

You don’t think it.  I didn’t say “you know it.”  I said “you feel it.”  Don’t worry; there will be plenty of thinking in the hatching phase. I’m not asking you to abandon your senses – quite the opposite!  I’m asking you to connect to ALL of your senses and quit relying solely on your analytical nature.

Part of how I found my egg was by letting go of my techie attachments.  And I’m not talking email and hard drives – I’m talking about ego’s attachments to my tech identity. All of that ego was keeping me from feeling things on a deeper level.  I didn’t rashly quit my techie job to go find myself.  I just let go inside and surrendered my ideas about “ought to” and “should have” and even got to a point where I didn’t have to “know” at all.  Part of my personal tradition was prayer so I used that, too.  I prayed for guidance and started making time to just be quiet and be open.  And then things got interesting.  I started feeling very drawn to books, events, and opportunities that led me to my current work of professional coaching in a surprisingly efficient way.

All I did was to keep following the things that made me tingle a little (or a lot).  I felt my way past my ego and to my egg.

Here’s what I want you to know: finding your egg is important (and thrilling and wild and sometimes messy) but only you can do it.  The really good news is that your egg wants to be found.

It’s just waiting for you to feel it.

I would love to hear your eggs-perience (how could I resist?!?)  Have you found your egg yet?  How did you feel it? How can you help yourself be more open so that you can feel it?

Thank you for being here.  It makes my egg eggs-tra happy.  Oh, there should be a law (or at least a biscuit…)

photo credit: jimdeane
Update: At one time my blog banner included a picture of a baby doll hatching out of an egg. Things change.