Follow Your Bliss!: A Practical, Soul-Centered Guide to Job Hunting and Career-Life Planning

By Haley Fox

Life is too short to be spent at a job that holds no personal value—or, in the worst-case scenario, a job that evokes apathy, misery, or contempt. And yet, many of us feel painfully insecure about our abilities to find meaning and satisfaction in work. Everyone deserves that joy and satisfaction, but many people behave as though they don’t deserve it.

In Follow Your Bliss!, author Haley Fox shows that you deserve more than just a job. You deserve bliss, and you have the potential to achieve it. You have an obligation to use the gifts and talents that uniquely equip you for soul-nourishing work. This second edition, first published in 2000 under the author’s former name, Helen Nienhaus Barba, has been updated and expanded, offering more current information about the working world.

This volume journeys through the entire job-seeking process, beginning with getting a lay of the land, then taking stock of who you are and what you have to offer, and finally acquiring the skills to master the nuts and bolts of job hunting. Topics include preparing a portfolio of application materials, goal-setting, and fine-tuning interview skills. Imaginative exercises offer practical guidance grounded in an awareness of bliss as a guiding force. Drawing upon years of experience as an artist and psychotherapist, Fox offers a unique, heart-based, antichecklist approach to career-life planning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532091414

Haley Fox

Haley Fox (formerly known as Helen Nienhaus Barba) Is a board-certified art and music therapist and a registered expressive arts therapist, licensed as a professional clinical counselor in Minnesota and Massachusetts and also certified as a clinical supervisor in art therapy. She has her PhD in clinical psychology and currently teaches graduate students in counseling and art therapy at Adler University in Chicago, Illinois.

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Copyright © 2019 Haley Fox.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9140-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9141-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019921176

iUniverse rev. date:  01/17/2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword to the Second Edition

Preface

Acknowledgments

Table of Exercises

Table of Figures

Step 1: Reimagining the Game

The Power of Imagination

Courage

Imagine Employers

Imagine Yourself

Imagine Success

Reframing Strengths and Weaknesses

What Personality Is Not

Step 2: Coming to Terms with the Misery

Step 3: Getting in Touch with Bliss

Priming Yourself

The Burns Sensual Awareness Inventory (SAI)

Step 4: Art and the Way to Self-Awareness

Values

Interests and Talents

Letting Images Emerge

Step 5: Giving Substance to Images

Professional Portfolios and the Art of Résumé Writing

Gathering Data

Résumé Anatomy

Artistic Presentation and Style

Professional References

Letters of Recommendation

Cover Letters

Preparing for Change: Goal-Setting and Planning

Priorities

Goal-Setting

Time/Event Management

Where the Jobs Are

Internet Search Engines

Pet Organizations and Professional Journals

School-Based Resources

State and Private Employment Agencies

Other Sources of Leads

Classified Ads and Job Postings

Step 6: Mustering Courage to Follow Bliss

Using the Telephone

Interviewing

Volunteer and Internship Opportunities

Overcoming Self-Sabotage

Closing Remarks

Creating with the Workplace: Foreword to the 2000 Edition

References

About the Author

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

I first met Haley Fox in the late 1970s in Portland, Oregon. I was a Vietnam veteran who had been injured in the war. At that time, I was as working as a job developer for disabled veterans, helping to establish the beginnings of what would eventually become the disability civil rights movement, which twenty years later (in 1990) resulted in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Haley was coordinating a national program advocating for the employment of persons with epilepsy. We met at a free community training I was conducting for persons with disabilities on job finding and the role employment can have on increasing the quality of life for those who find the right job.

We have kept in touch over the years, and I have been both pleased and enlightened with the way that she has stayed the course. Her studies concerning the relationship between work and life satisfaction have redefined the way many of her peers in the employment field now view work. They have come to see a job as more than just a way to achieve the goal of making a living, but also as a way to enhance the quality and meaning of our lives.

I have been fortunate enough to be involved with work that has allowed me to grow, develop, and follow my bliss. While I know that everyone will not achieve this, I nonetheless remain convinced that everyone deserves it.

I meet people every day. One of the questions I am most often asked is, What do you do? While this is an employment question, it is potentially a metaphysical question as well. When I am asked that question, I simply answer, About what? The reaction I see in their faces is precious. It is more than just a question that strangers ask us. It is also a question we should ask ourselves. The answer can be the bridge that connects your bliss to your job.

I encourage you not to just take my word for it. I would like to share with you some thoughts of others who have influenced me.

This quote is commonly attributed to Albert Einstein: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. The question many of us ask when we read this quote is, What is my genius? The book Follow Your Bliss! does so much more than just ask that. It challenges each of us to take the next positive step in our journey. It encourages us to escape the dense vocational forest that so many of us find ourselves in. It helps to light our path to leave the trees and to search for our lake. Once in that lake, we will not have the time to ask what our genius is. We will be too busy blissfully swimming to give it even a second thought.

Many of us look to find a job that will finally bring us bliss. But does a job really bring bliss to us, or do we bring our bliss to our jobs? This book explores in a very fundamental way whether work and its environment gives us bliss or whether work provides us with an environment that allows the bliss that is already in us and constantly developing to thrive and amalgamate with our work to create a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

In order to realize that we should search for our lake, we first must discover that we want to swim. That is why this book guides us to first identify what our bliss is and then find the work environment where it can thrive.

In 2007, I was asked to give a talk for a free children’s hospital in Dallas. The audience was made up of parents of the children, medical staff, and volunteers. This is what I said: The shortest distance between where these children are now and where they want to be is a road that is illuminated by their own dreams. Not the dreams that we have for them. No matter how much we know or how much we love them.

Your road is illuminated by your own dreams. Don’t change your dreams to fit your situation; change your situation to fit your dreams. This book is a blueprint for doing just that.

Here are two similar quotes that have had a significant impact on my view of the role of employment and its relationship to our personal satisfaction.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.).

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them (Henry David Thoreau).

When I first read the book Follow Your Bliss!, I realized that it was an affirmation that none of us should ever go to our graves with our music still inside us or our songs unsung. We all have music. This book does more than instruct us to find that music; it helps us to believe our music is worthwhile, and having found our music, this book helps us find a work environment where our music can be played by us and appreciated by all who hear it.

In my early days of job developing for disabled veterans, there were three elements that I believed were necessary for my job satisfaction.

1. Belong: I must find a work environment where I feel I belong. Where I am comfortable, respected, and valued.

2. Believe: I need a work environment where I believe that what I am doing is more than just the sum of its parts—that I am accomplishing something that has a greater purpose than the mundane, day-to-day parts of my job. That my contribution makes a difference to support something greater than just myself. I never wished to be large. I wished to be a part of something larger than myself.

3. Become: Life is more than a job. I am always learning, evolving, and becoming more than I was the day before. My ideal job not only helps me to make a difference to others but also to make a difference to myself.

I believe this book will help you find and follow your bliss. Not just because you can do it. Haley Fox wrote it for a far more important reason than that. She wrote it because you are worth it.

Dr. Richard Pimentel

April 15, 2019

PREFACE

I’ll do anything. I don’t care about a career. I just need a job.

—Anonymous

Life is too short to be spent at a job that holds no personal value—or, in the worst-case scenario, a job that evokes apathy, misery, or contempt. And yet, many of us feel painfully insecure about our abilities to find meaning and satisfaction in work.

On the other hand, let me introduce you to Joe the Conductor. Around the time I wrote the first edition of this book, I often spoke about Joe in workshops I conducted around Massachusetts. I never knew Joe’s real name, but I knew his presence well. He rode the commuter rail between Boston and Fitchburg, and he lived and breathed his job so naturally, with such zest and pride, that it was nearly impossible to imagine him in any other role. I could tell by the proud way he sauntered through the aisles and bellowed out his stops that he loved his job. The most amazing thing was, the moment I began to describe Joe during my workshops, at least one or two people in the room who had ridden the rail knew exactly of whom I spoke.

Joe the Conductor was one of those fortunate individuals who had found a way to follow his bliss, to borrow a phrase from the late Joseph Campbell. I have grown fond of the term bliss. Webster defines bliss as perfect happiness and heavenly joy, which implies a divine connection. The word is originally derived from the Greek bhlei, meaning to shine. For me, bliss arrives in grace-filled moments when I am me most completely; when I lose track of time in the midst of a creative endeavor; when a tragedy calls forth strengths I didn’t know I had; when a stunning sunset prompts me to pause and consider my place in the universe. Bliss even accompanies rare moments when I let down my guard and face my inadequacies.

In the pages to follow, I hope to make the path to bliss more available to you and to advance the following notions.

• Like everyone, you deserve more than just a job; you deserve bliss.

• You have the potential to achieve bliss.

• You have an obligation to make use of the gifts and talents that uniquely equip you for soul-nourishing work—and, incidentally, lead to bliss.

It may seem easy to acknowledge that everyone deserves joy and satisfaction in work. Still, many people behave as though they do not deserve it. The phenomenon seems to have sprouted in part from puritanical roots that framed work as drudgery to be performed with perseverance and humility, but not necessarily with enjoyment—or, heaven forbid, with passion.

The attitude of work as drudgery reflects in the way we use language to describe work. We make clear distinctions between work and play. And those who dare to admit, I love this job—I can’t believe they pay me to do this! can meet with disapproval, jealousy, or derision. Some may feel inclined to apologize for enjoying their work.

When people view joy and passion in work as a luxury—or worse, as mutually exclusive terms—we should not be surprised that they approach a job search with reluctance or dread and low expectations. Paradoxically, this attitude