Dance in your sunny spots! How to build more vitality and momentum into a life on pause

Image: Anthony Ginsbrook

I’ve heard many people say that since lockdown they feel their life is on hold. They feel they’re treading water until normal service can be resumed. I must admit I’ve experienced a touch of the same feeling myself over the past 5 months.

But while life and work have been impacted by Covid, it’s also possible to create something more intentional from this global hiatus. If you’re yearning to change careers, work differently, or explore alternatives, there are many things you can do today to shift energy and focus.

This article is for you if you feel:

·      You’ve run out of fresh ideas

·      You’re treading water and life is on permanent repeat

·      Progress on your career change or towards your ideal life is slow to non-existent

Here are 6 ideas to build more autonomy, positivity, joy and luck into your current circumstances, and bring your career dreams closer and more alive to you right now.

I wonder if you can spot the golden thread that weaves through all these propositions?

1.Planned Happenstance – develop the art of being lucky

The first time I came across the John Krumbolz’s career theory of ‘planned happenstance’ I felt I was reading my own thoughts. This seemed less a theory and more how I’d accidentally been living for several years. I particularly liked the blend of fortune and intention in this idea.

It’s about opening yourself to the learning inherent in chance encounters or events. By embracing uncertainty and cultivating more open-ended opportunities into your life, without knowing precisely where they’ll lead, you can meet interesting people, find out more about yourself and you career interests.

This might include going to an online conference in a subject that fascinates you, taking an online course to develop skills that you enjoy, learning more about a subject that intrigues you, spending time with people who energise you, or doing more for a cause you care about. All of these require action and each could generate unforeseen opportunities.

Some of the skills demanded to develop more ‘planned happenstance’ in your life are:

1. Curiosity: exploring new learning opportunities


2. Persistence: exerting effort despite setbacks


3. Flexibility: changing attitudes and circumstances


4. Optimism: viewing new opportunities as possible and attainable


5. RiskTaking: taking action in the face of uncertain outcomes 

Expect, plan, welcome and learn from chance encounters, you never know what might come from that next ‘chance’ meeting. When I attended a career conference while I was re-training as a career advisor I had no idea that a few weeks later it would lead to a job interview and the first role in a new career! Those fortuitous conversations in lifts really can change your life.

2. Bring more flow in your life

When you feel totally engaged in an activity, when it employs your talents at just the right level and leaves you energized rather than stressed and drained, you could well be ‘in flow.’

You’ll know when it happens because time just flies and you lose yourself in the activity. 

In my work as a career coach, I experience this state while coaching, when designing a new piece of marketing artwork or when writing an article. It’s not accidental that these are three of the core activities in my working week – I’ve designed it that way!

If you want to discover more about your own ‘in flow’ activities, download the free ‘Discover Work That Sets You Alight’ workbook. It will help you uncover new areas that could point towards a more fulfilling career, or just give you more joy in your life right now.

3.Doing what you love – Ikigai

One of the cornerstones of the Japanese concept of Ikigai – roughly translated as ‘a reason for being’ – is ‘doing what you love.’ I wonder if you have ever actually listed what you love doing, or thought about it now, as an adult?

This is another great place to start if you’re looking for more interest, joy or potential excitement in your working life.

Yes, it’s a fair leap from this question to creating a new career direction, but it’s an important part of my career change programme, and with an open mind (nurtured by planned happenstance) could lead to some inspiring ideas to explore.

At the very least, doing more of the activities that give you pleasure will lift your mood and introduce more pleasure into your week.

4. Trying stuff – design thinking

Life designers Bill Burnett and Dave Evans have developed a series of mindsets and actionable ideas to re-design your life.

As professors at Stanford University they created an effective and creative system to help students, adults and would-be career-changers explore completely new ideas to ‘find happiness at work.’

One of their core concepts is to ‘try stuff’. This overlaps neatly with each of the three points described earlier and basically means thinking and acting like a designer – prototyping potential new ideas.

This concept is built into my own career change process and a key part of any career change strategy. By ‘trying stuff’ you can test out an activity and uncover what it really involves. Learning and developing new skills, volunteering, and part-time or gig-working are all ways of ‘trying out’ ideas you may be toying with.

So what activity or subject have you been wanting to test out? Perhaps now’s the perfect time to give it a go – and find out what it could offer you.

Need an effective career change process?

Find out more here

5. Practise joy-spotting

We probably all experience bursts of joy every single day, but how can we make the most of this energy and its potential to lift our spirits?

Ingrid Fetell Lee has written about this in her book ‘Joyful: the surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness.’

Like many good practices, it starts with awareness – simply noticing what gives us joy. It may be a particular colour we love, an aroma that evokes a personal memory, the surprise sighting of a person or landscape, a rainbow, or daffodils after a long winter.

Ingrid Fetell Lee calls this ‘joy spotting’ and she encourages us to see daily joys in the most ordinary locations and experiences. By developing that joy-spotting muscle we are also increasing our capacity for happiness in the simplest of experiences.

Perhaps keeping a joy journal would work for you, or maybe just relishing the enjoyment a velvet cushion or chocolate milkshake can give. Something as simple as wearing a colour that makes you feel more alive will have an impact on your day.

Practising joy-spotting is an active investment in your happiness. And most of the time it will cost you nothing.

If you’d like to find out more about Ingrid Fetell Lee and her Aesthetics of joy, this article is a great jumping off point: Recalculating - Finding Your Bearings in a Crisis.

6. Grow your gratitude habit

You might think that when you experience joy, the next act would be to feel gratitude. But what if the reverse is actually true?

When best-selling author and academic Brené Brown was researching vulnerability she made a surprising discovery: when we practise gratitude, we invite more joy into our lives.

This means more than feeling just a passing sense of thankfulness for our lives, our loved ones or our homes. It means creating a regular ritual to really feel that gratitude – a gratitude journal, a mental gratitude list before you sleep, a gratitude jar containing reminders of who or what we’re thankful for, or a family gratitude practice where each person says one thing they’re grateful for that day.

Since building a gratitude list into my going to bed ritual, I head off to the land of nod with a full heart and a smile on my lips.

You can listen to Brené Brown talk about gratitude and joy here.

Brené Brown

Image: Randal Ford

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So, did you spot it? The thread that links all these 6 ideas for dancing in your sunny spots? 

Well I cheated because I believe there is more than one. But the one I had most in mind as I sat down to write this article is the idea of doing more of what gives you joy and makes you feel alive. The actions and habits I’ve described are all nurturing, and provide strength to withstand uncertainty, loss and many of life’s challenges. But they can also be a revealing part of your career change strategy.

Making big changes in your life isn’t just about surviving (although that imperative can feel very powerful), but also about thriving. And for that, I believe we could all learn to dance more in our sunny spots.

I wonder what one thing has struck a chord with you? I’d love to hear what you’re inviting into your life - please leave me your idea in the comments below.