Step beyond “success” by other people’s standards in your career, and consciously choose work that resonates with the core of who you are.
So, you’ve “made it.”
You’re a dependable, upwardly mobile professional, complete with the “right” degrees, house, car, and maybe the family. You’ve got everything you thought you’d need to lead a well-rounded, contented life. There’s just one nagging problem: you aren’t happy.
As lucrative and glamorous as your career may look on the outside, inside you feel like you’re barely hanging on. Maybe you find yourself procrastinating, getting easily stressed or frustrated, doubting that you’re contributing anything meaningful to the world, or something else. In short, you’re wondering how this can possibly be all there is.
You’ve raised these concerns with your friends and loved ones, but they just don’t get it. “People would kill to do the job you do,” they say. Or maybe they assume more creature comforts will take the edge off: “go take a vacation, and buy a bigger-screen TV and higher-end golf equipment while you’re at it.” But simply acquiring more stuff isn’t going to cut it, because the issue is that what you’re doing isn’t aligned with your deepest purpose.
If this sounds eerily like your situation, the reason is that I’ve been there. I played the career/credential-chasing game to the hilt. I got my law degree from Stanford University, did a judicial clerkship, published legal articles, and worked at a big law firm for several years, pulling 18-hour days more times than I’d care to remember.
To the world, I looked like a successful, “high-powered” professional. But inside, I felt empty and directionless.
The Power of Conscious Choice
One day, I finally got the nerve to seriously confront this question: why am I doing this? Just asking this question brought about a surprising realization: I didn’t know, because I didn’t consciously choose my career. Instead, I went into it based on what I assumed others—my parents, friends, “society,” and so on—wanted or expected.
With this realization came a decision: this is no longer acceptable. It was time for me to climb into the driver’s seat of my life, and design it in a way that genuinely inspired me. Determined to find out who I was and what I wanted—not just in terms of my career, but also my deepest nature and purpose—I took up spiritual practices like meditation, yoga and qi gong, did all kinds of workshops, and read every self-help book I could find.
Over time, I started noticing a deep connection between the “inner work” I was doing and my efforts to find a career direction. The more peace and self-understanding I found in meditation and my other practices, the closer I came to an understanding of what I really wanted in my work, and the more the fears and doubts that once blocked me from pursuing my goals began to fall away.
Finally, one day, I felt a sense of total clarity about the work I wanted to do. I wanted to help others “wake up,” as I did, to the reality that they could consciously choose what they did with their lives, and to help them overcome the worries and false beliefs getting in their way. I wanted to help people give their deepest gifts to the world in a way they never imagined possible.
With this goal in mind, I completed trainings in coaching and course leading, and left the law to become an author, speaker and personal coach. Today, I’ve never felt more motivated and fulfilled, and I’ve been bringing my message about finding productivity and career satisfaction “from within” to clients and readers around the world.
What I Can Offer You
How can I help you find the direction and fulfillment you want in your career? Let’s begin with my free Career Satisfaction Support Package. This includes:
* My acclaimed e-book, Career Satisfaction From Within;
* A recording of my “Transcending Procrastination” teleseminar; and
* My free monthly newsletter, with ideas and techniques about finding and pursuing your true calling “from the inside out.”
In these free materials, you’ll learn:
* How to separate the goals that authentically move you in your work from what others tell you that you “should” want;
* A meditation to help you see your career anxiety for what it really is – just a bunch of sensations in your body you can live through and move beyond;
* How to free yourself from the habit of repressing your wants, in your career and elsewhere, to please others;
* A visualization you can use to stop painful memories and concerns about the future from disrupting your focus at work;
* An exercise to help you get back in touch with your spontaneous joy and excitement for life, and rekindle your passion for your work;
* And more . . .
