Do you have some dream living inside of you that you know is dying to get out, but yet you haven’t done the necessary work to pursue it?
More than just not pursuing it, it almost feels like you want to get it hidden deep within you.
If so, that’s because it’s quite often much easier to bury that dream deep inside, rather than to face the shame that would be associated with following that dream, only to fail.
So instead, you suppress that voice as much as you can, build a different life, and try to ignore the sounds of that voice when it periodically pipes up.
Sometimes, when people aren’t willing to face the potential failure of following that dream, they pursue a career that is adjacent to the dream, but not the actual dream.
This is called a “shadow career.”
I first learned about this concept from Steven Pressfield, the author of fiction like “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (disregard any thoughts you may have about the movie, he didn’t have anything to do with that) and nonfiction like “The War of Art” and “Turning Pro.”
Steven says,
“Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.”
This concept comes from Carl Jung’s therapeutic approach, “shadow work.” Shadow work is addressing the part of our psyche that we have repressed, usually out of shame. We don’t want to see this part of ourselves, so we hide from it. Or we hide it from the world. Shadow work shines a light on these parts of ourselves that cause us shame and help us accept them and integrate them into our greater consciousness.
I would argue that anyone who has had success has at one point had to address this shadow and accept that it is a part of them. And at that point, not only did they set it free, but they found their true calling. Otherwise, they may get stuck in a shadow career, or shadow calling.
A shadow career could be like a writer who does SEO and copywriting for companies but really wants to write fiction. Or like a friend of mine who was a great trial lawyer, but hated it and left his practice to start a podcast production company and become a speaker, helping other lawyers build their business—his true passion.
In my story, it might look like a filmmaker who wants to write and direct his own creative work but started a video marketing company to help others tell their stories.
I wrote last week about how I feel like I’m starting a new life cycle.
Well, I think the key to that cycle—which I have labeled as a cycle of growth—is to step out of my shadow career and fully lean into my dream. In the past four years, I have come to understand that my most powerful way of impacting this world is through my words.
And while my career does allow me to write, I’m not creating the projects that I have inside of me. It is time for me to let that part of me out of the shadow.
It might be time for you to do so, as well.
If you feel like that might be true, I’ll leave you once again with Steven Pressfield’s words:
“Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan Studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk being an innovator yourself? If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for. That metaphor will point you toward your true calling.”
Rain Bennett is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, and competitive storyteller with over a decade of experience producing documentary films that focus on health and wellness. His mission is simple: to make the world happier and healthier by sharing stories of change.
You can read the rest of “Right as Rain” here, and check back every Wednesday on Chapelboro for a new column!
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