Excerpted from the book Test-Drive Your Dream Job: A Step-By-Step Guide To Finding And Creating The Work You Love By Brian Kurth Founder and President of VocationVacations (www.vocationvacations.com) Copyright © 2008  Excerpts from Chapter One – “Vocationing” You know—if you’re considering a dream-job—that the push toward a dream career is not just about how you spend your working hours. It’s about meshing your work life with your deepest sense of self. It’s about having work that matches your values, that feeds instead of exhausts you, that doesn’t require you to leave your priorities at home and check your heart at the door. When we imagine a dream-job we imagine a job in which we are fully ourselves, in which our hearts and minds are equally engaged.

That engagement is what people feel while vocationing. And once they reconnect with that deepest sense of self, few are willing to return to the status quo.

I’ve watched an IT programmer test-drive a career in voice-over and a lawyer roll up her sleeves as a cheese maker. I’ve cheered as an airline pilot got behind the mike as a sports announcer and a web designer sat behind the desk in an architect’s office. I’ve watched software engineers put down roots as vintners and a veterinary technician don hat and apron as a pastry chef. People of both genders and all ages, heads of households and single moms, post-retirement planners and people just starting out, have all gone starry-eyed into vocationing and come out with something closer to 20/20 vision. And almost every one of them has come away buoyed, invigorated and more determined than ever to make his or her dream-job happen. When I call vocationers six months later, many have actually gone ahead and written business plans, relocated, started school, or in other ways moved their dream-job forward. After years of fantasy, something about living the job for just a few days empowered them to take action. Partly it was the learning—the concrete knowledge they gained about their desired business. Partly it was the mentor, who held their hand, boosted their confidence and offered ongoing help. Partly it was the contacts they made that made taking the next steps easier. But above and beyond those practical things, there was something else: the vocationing awakened and energized something deep inside them. It connected them with the truest part of themselves, a part that had previously felt dormant and that once awakened, refused to be ignored.

The biggest surprise for people who find or create their dream-jobs is that it doesn’t have to happen all at once. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing, hold-your-nose leap from security into the unknown. Instead, it can be a series of small steps that you take only as you feel ready. Sure, there are the few really bold (or independently wealthy) vocationers who cut the ties to their previous careers and hurl themselves full-time into the new. But most people take it more slowly. They continue at their current job while transitioning gradually into the dream. They do research, they write a business plan, they figure out how to begin the new career without taking on more risk than they can handle. Some go to school to get more training. Some dedicate a period of time to paying off debt and building savings so they’ll have funds for the new career. Some find work in the new field while they put together a business of their own. The path and the timeline varies with the vocationer; what they all have in common, though, is the passion and the vision to move ahead.

Of course, after vocationing, some people find that the job they tried was not the job they thought they wanted. A woman who vocationed with the general manager of a hotel came away exhausted, shocked at the amount of physical energy the job required. Her mentor helpfully brainstormed other hotel-related jobs with her that would involve her financial services background but better suit her “laid back” manner. A woman who dreamed of being a veterinarian learned while vocationing that while she loved the animals, she hated dealing with their owners—and that a better job for her would be working as a veterinary surgeon where she would have minimal owner contact. Finding that you don’t love your “dream-job” as much as you’d hoped can be disappointing; the dream is dashed, the “what next?” question is alarmingly re-opened. But even people who have that experience usually consider their test-drive a success; they’re thankful that it showed them what they didn’t want before they ventured further.

For most people—whether they find their dream-job or not—vocationing is like opening the door to a long-closed room. Sunlight and fresh air touch something that has long been in the dark, and the result is a renewed sense of self and a new sense of possibility.

So perhaps I should offer a word of caution. Vocationing will be fun (it is a vacation, after all); it may be exhausting (people tend to work hard at the jobs they love); it will be exhilarating to spend time with someone who works at his or her passion. But it will probably leave you changed.

This book will tell you how to test drive your dream-job by creating a vocation vacation of your own. It will tell you how to find a mentor, how to prepare for the vocation, and most importantly, what to do once the vocationing is over. It will map out the small steps you can take to move from where you are now to where you really want to be. Along the way you’ll meet lots of people who have done it—the former real estate agent who opened her own clothing boutique, the former therapist who became an airline pilot, the architect and air traffic controller who together opened an artisan bread bakery and coffee house. You’ll hear from them and many others about the fears and challenges, the mistakes and lucky breaks, the surprises and accomplishments they experienced as they moved into their dream careers.

What helped many of these vocationers was realizing that the risks they needed to take were not as overwhelming as the ones they had imagined. The scariest moments—quitting their jobs, purchasing property, signing a bank loan, moving cross-country—didn’t occur until they were already far along in their planning, or even until after their new career was already up and running. It was still scary; it was still a risk; but it was a calculated risk. By the time they took it, they felt they were likely to succeed.