"Follow your passion." It's the career advice we hear time and time again -- but what happens when things don't go as planned?
After many years in a career she didn't particularly like, 59-year-old Steffny says she gave herself permission to finally step away and find something new. Only now, she's been bouncing from job to job, struggling with money and feeling blocked. Looking for advice, she turns to contemporary spiritual teacher Panache Desai on OWN's "Help Desk" series.
The Discovering Your Soul Signature author begins by reassuring Steffny that no experience in life is ever wasted. "So what you're going to do is going to be some form of hybrid of what you've already done, but you're going to do it in a different way," Desai says.
Rather than make a complete 180, Desai believes we can use our current skills to become an "agent of love" in any profession. "Our job is the excuse through which we get to love people. Or as I like to say, our job is the excuse through which the divine gets to love its creation," he says. "And so the key is to open your heart in that arena, whatever the field is, and to allow the love that you are to flow through you."
By seeing work as an opportunity to love, Desai believes we create a shift. "When you're living in alignment with yourself, you're accessing your soul signature," Desai says. "And when you unleash that deepest part of you, the side effect of that is abundance, is health, is everything that you want at the deepest level."
"That, my dear, is your destiny," he tells Steffny.
Desai goes on to explain why we need to rethink our goals. "Success as defined by society is often about money and power," he says. "What I've discovered is that to be successful, actually, is to be at peace with yourself. And our value isn't derived on what we're doing -- it's the degree to which we are present while we're engaged in that."
Desai shares more advice, including how to find gratitude in tough times, on Oprah.com.
"Help Desk" airs Sundays at noon ET on OWN.
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