What is "right livelihood"?

Right livelihood is your life purpose put into action. For example, if your life purpose is to teach, you may become a seminar leader, school teacher, or work in developing nations to help the people improve their living conditions.

Although your life purpose is unchangeable, your right livelihood is always subject to change. In the previous example, one person could easily have experienced all three aspects of their life purpose of teaching.

Very few people have one job for 40 or 50 years any more. Even professionals such as doctors and lawyers who have huge investments of time and money in their professions are changing their right livelihood. For example, I know several lawyers who have shifted their right livelihood from practicing law to becoming life coaches. One is a dear friend of mine who was a divorce lawyer, then became a mediator, and now is a relationship coach. Several years ago my doctor decided to shift the implementation of his life purpose of healing from being a doctor to helping to heal people and the environment by creating a company that manufactured and sold environmentally benign soap products and organic foods.

Over the years, the actualization of my life purpose of teaching has shifted numerous times. At one time, I had my own roofing company and taught many women to become roofers. At a deeper level, I was teaching them self-empowerment and how they could break through self-imposed boundaries of belief about what they were capable of doing. As a Realtor, I taught innumerable buyers and sellers about staying centered and balanced with the use of personal boundaries throughout the often fear-filled process of selling and buying property.

Now I'm a life purpose coach and spiritual teacher, guiding my clients and students toward self-awareness and self-empowerment as they move toward the embodiment of their life purpose as it suits them now.

My right livelihood has changed several times during my life so far, and it will no doubt change in the future as well. As will yours.

So the question then becomes, how will you know when you're in the sweet spot of right livelihood?

It's very simple. You love what you do. In fact, you love it so much you don't want to stop doing it. You lose all track of time when you're doing it. You're not doing it because of the money - in many cases the money you receive from doing what you love is minimal or may even be nonexistent. It doesn't matter. You keep doing it anyway, because you can't help yourself. Doing anything else feels empty and forced.

Because my life purpose is to teach, I'm going to teach you a little technique to help you identify the aspects of your right livelihood. For a moment, think about the work you're doing now. Then...

1. On a sheet of paper, list everything you love or even just like about the work.
2. On another sheet of paper, list all the things you don't like or hate about the work. Knowing a bit about human nature, I'll share with you that the hate list will be hugely easier for you and it will probably be much longer. That's good, because...
3. When you're done with the list of negatives, transform everything into its opposite. Those things you hate so much will then become things you'll love. As an example, my job from hell would include working in an office with no windows and no one to talk to. The opposite for me would be working in an office with views of the forest (which I actually do have and am enjoying as I write this),
4. Add the transformed negatives to your love list.

This will get you started on your way to your right livelihood by helping you to clearly identify the things you love about your life purpose work.

Kathy Wilson helps people get their life unstuck using a co-creative, multi-faceted approach. She and her clients utilize life coaching, spiritual consulting, NLP, vibrational healing, and teaching... whatever is in her client's highest and best interests. She's a Certified Professional Coach, spiritual teacher, Reiki master, vibrational healer, and author of An Inner Journey: Living Your Life Purpose. For information about her products, services, and classes, visit her websites: http://www.under-one-roof.net and http://www.warrior-priestess.com

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