How To Find Your Groove

Every day I pick a song to post on LinkedIn, unless I forget. So far I've picked about 300 songs. You can find some of them here.

I choose songs that speak to me. People write to us and say "Thank you for posting that song today! It went straight to my heart." Music takes us away from everyday life. When we get into a groove listening to a favorite song, we go to a different place. We feel connected to something.

Music is vibration, as the Beach Boys told us many years ago. Musical pitches are vibrations at different frequencies. We resonate with some of them. The chords move something inside us. That's when we feel lost in the groove -- in a good way!

The powerful feelings that music can evoke in us are worth paying attention to. When we are lifted up by a song, a movie or a passage in a book, we go to our higher place. Our daily to-do items and petty concerns recede in importance when we are in that place.

We don't have to reserve that 'lifted-up' feeling for our leisure time. We all know what it feels like to be completely immersed in an activity, so much so that we almost stop noticing the passage of time. People call it Being in the Zone. When you are doing something you love to do, you're completely in your body and out of your busy chattering mind, alive in the moment.

You've felt that way before. It happens in mid-play on a football field, skating across the ice or singing in a choir where every voice is focused on the music and one another.

You live in the moment when you're running a footrace and when you're rocking a baby to sleep. You feel that way when you're alone with your sweetheart and can focus on onr another. You feel that way sometimes when you're alone, walking in the woods or doing something creative, like drawing or playing the piano.

We can feel the same way at work. There's no reason why work should be any less joyful and creative than other human activities, although we have been taught that work doesn't have to be fun. That's a lie!

When you find your groove, you find the place where you and the people around you resonate at the same frequency. In your groove, you're working on something bigger than a paycheck. You're united in a community, and all of you are moving toward the same goal.

Some people have never had that experience at work. They've never tumbled into The Zone when they were on the clock. They didn't know they had a right to seek a job they'd love, much less to expect one.

You can demand a job that lets you plug into your power source and that allows you to be completely yourself at work. You may have to work hard to find it. The key is to know that it's out there and to listen to your trusty gut for guidance.

Our client Sam worked as a Marketing person in a not-for-profit agency. "How's the job?" we asked him.

"I want to quit," he said. "All we talk about at work is the mission, but there's no one there who understands what the mission means."

"What do you mean, exactly?" we asked. "Can you say more about that?"

"My not-for-profit agency is run like a business," said Sam, "and I liked that idea when I took the job. I liked the idea that we would be smart and logical in running the agency, because a lot of not-for-profits are not especially professional in the way they are run.

"I was happy to hear that my new agency took a long-term view. Then I was dismayed to find out that the stated mission is just a bunch of words my colleagues repeat. No one except me believes that our mission should influence our decisions.

"No one at my job cares about our clients as actual people. When there's a choice between a human decision and a dollars-and-cents decision, they always decide in favor of the more profitable but less compassionate alternative. At this point it's really hard for me to be there. It's all crank and no flame."

What is your flame? It's your belief in your own mission. You have a reason for being down here on the planet, and that reason is not to get a good performance review or to get promoted. Your mission is higher than that.

Finding your groove is not a matter of sorting and sifting through career options down in the weeds, looking for one that will pay what you need and ask as little of you as possible. That would be a great goal if all you cared about was the paycheck.

If you didn't care about your groove, you could find a job where you'd show up, follow a script and turn your brain and heart to Silent Mode. The real you would be under cover at work. You'd turn back into yourself again at home.

That wouldn't be your groove, though!

If you take the time to look behind you at your path in life so far, and ahead of you at the rest of your life, little by little you'll discover what you're passionate about. We call this process Getting Altitude.

Your groove is something you have to find through experience. No one else can tell you where your groove lies. You will feel it!

Your groove is not an X + Y = Z equation. In order to find it, you may need to get more in touch with your body than you are right now. A lot of people who work white-collar jobs live completely in their minds. They forget that they even have a body.

The comedian Drew Carey used to say "I think of my body as something that moves my head from room to room" and he is not the only person who feels that way.

No one can give you the answer to the question "What should I do next in my life and career?" because it is the most personal question there is.

When we stop and focus on finding our groove, the question we ask ourselves is "What was I born to do?"

Your answer won't come from an aptitude test. Whatever you call the power that put us down here - God or Mother Nature, for instance - I can guarantee that that power did not go to the trouble of bringing you into existence so you could take an aptitude test and then do what the test results told you to do.

Instead of taking tests, ask yourself "What are my talents meant to be used for? What is my contribution to the world going to be? What will I make happen or bring about with the rest of my time here on earth?"

You will find your groove when you lift your sights higher than "I'll choose this career path because I'm qualified for it" or "I can make more money as a Project Manager than I could as a Quality Control Engineer."

If you get more money at work and still have no idea why you were born, what have you gained? One of the biggest problems with the traditional, Godzilla structure of business and government is that the rigid structure and expectations can crowd out the wise, quiet voice that is trying to tell you where your priorities lie.

Your manager may give you yardsticks to hit, but those yardsticks have nothing to do with your purpose here on the planet. As soon as you hit one, you'll be given a bigger yardstick to hit.

The gold stars and trophies you receive for hitting more and more yardsticks won't quiet that little voice in the middle of the night when it asks you "Great job earning that quarterly bonus, but what's the point of it? Where are you headed? Are you headed anywhere?"

Your groove is not hidden away in a dark corner of the universe. It is all around you. You will find your groove when you understand what you bring to the world and take the first step toward giving something powerful back.

You'll give back when you discover the incredible gifts you brought down here with you to share with all of us who are lucky enough to be alive alongside you.

Sam quit his job and began setting up coffee dates. Sam was looking for people who saw their missions as real things to be realized, not platitudes and posters on the wall. He found them. His flame was re-lit, even though he was jobless for several months. Sam and two friends of his found a fledgling organization that had a great mission and needed to build a bigger platform for it.

"I make less cash compensation now, but I have more vacation days!" said Sam. "More importantly, our team lives our mission every day. I have to feel that energy flowing in my veins, knowing that I'm helping people. I couldn't go to work otherwise."

Sam's new employer is a for-profit company that lives its mission more authentically than the not-for-profit organization he left.

Your job can represent nothing more than a paycheck, but what a sad misuse of your talents that would be!

Your work can have meaning. Our mission at Human Workplace to reinvent work for people is the only reason we are here. Our mission informs every decision we make.

It clarifies our thinking. It makes the road ahead clearer. It makes daily annoyances and headaches easier to deal with. Nothing can stop our forward motion, and nothing will stop you, either!

Your mission will carry you forward and give you the confidence you need to make your vision real, once you open a channel to your higher self and let your mission come through.

When you find your groove, your step will be lighter. You'll feel like singing and dancing, and we'll feel like singing and dancing with you!

Reinvention is a physical process, so a great thing to do is get out and ride your bike or hike or walk or garden. Use your body and try to push your busy mind aside. What will come through to you will astonish you -- and then you will astonish all of us! The whole universe is waiting to resonate in harmony with you. You just have to sound the first notes!