In February, I published a three part interview with writer, creator and Pathless Pather, Paul Millerd.

Just like Paul's books and his newsletter, his interview was dripping with wisdom.

Here’s one Q&A from the interview which includes 6 little words which sum up the whole game of life and work:

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Tom: Your new book is called Good Work. How do you define “Good Work” and how does it differ from the kind of work most people do?

Paul: Good Work is a reframe from thinking about work as the thing that happens to us or we have to do and instead as something that we connect with on a deeper level. It’s saying that there is work that matters to almost everyone and prioritizing that, even if it doesn’t “make sense”, is an important thing for most people to do to be happy in their lives. I don’t think most people see work like this at all.

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The six little words I refer to?

It’s when Paul says even if it doesn’t “make sense”

This take on things reminded me of something the American “supercoach” Michael Neill said on a group coaching call recently.

How did Michael phrase it?

"The number of reasons we have for doing something is inversely proportional to how much we actually want to do it."

That’s a nice way of putting it too.

In fact, I’d go so far to say that you know you’ve found your thing when it makes no sense whatsoever, but you can't NOT do it.

And if your friends, parents, colleagues or Uber driver are quizzing you on what you’re up to with the very reasonable question “but why?” and you don’t have a good answer…

Congratulations! 

You’ve found what you’re on this planet to do.

Example:

I started writing daily newsletters because the idea of writing a daily newsletter seemed so goddamn frickin’ cool. There really wasn’t a “why” behind it. It just grabbed me and drew me in. Daily emails had a fizz and a buzz about them which, try as I might, I couldn’t ignore.

Interestingly, it seems that success comes much more easily when you follow this feeling of “goddamn cool” too.

Take Guillermo Del Toro’s new Frankenstein movie. A movie which recently got a 13 minute standing ovation at Cannes.

Yet G-Dog himself is on record saying that, in many ways, completing the movie and getting a 13 minute standing ovation isn’t the reason “why” he does what he does. 

The champagne and confetti aren’t even something he celebrates.

Instead, he sees it as the price he has to pay!

In Guillermo’s own words:

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Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything. Part of me wants to do a version of it and part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. 

I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever, but then if you make it, you've made it. Whether it's great or not, it's done. You cannot dream about it anymore.

That's the tragedy of a filmmaker. You landed a 10 or you landed a 6.5, but you were at the Olympics already.

***

i.e. the joy is in the doing, not in the outcome.

And guess what?

It’s not just Paul, Michael and Guillermo who think this.

Maya Angelou put it like this:

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

I quite agree.

I believe we all have a song. We all have music playing inside us, as the late, great Wayne Dyer once wrote.

The question then is – are you listening to it?

If you’ve ever felt a quiet pull that doesn’t make logical sense but hums and flutters inside you instead, you know the music Wayne’s talking about.

Most people ignore this music or explain it away. That’s what I did for 20+ years.

But in my new program The Music Inside You, we take that quiet hum in your chest, crank up the volume and turn it into your anthem. 

An anthem that echoes through everything you do.

If you’d like to reconnect with what matters to you, here’s the link to my new program:

The Music Inside You

If you're not sure if this program is right for you, you can book a discovery call with me using the link above too. 

To fulfilment,

Tom