Whose life are you living, anyway?
When we were kids, we were told that we could do anything, be anything. But, as we begin to navigate life, we begin to learn and understand that may not be true.
Our careers, relationships, and lives are shaped by those around us, and as we start to march towards their definitions of success and happiness, we often lose sight of what we're truly capable of, and what would truly make us happy.
Why is that? Well, think back to when you were about 5-7 years old. When asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you probably answered with something awesome, like being astronaut, or an artist, or a doctor, or a professional athlete.
Our parents often laughed at our “crazy” ideas, shared them with their friends, and told us anything was possible. However, as we started to grow up, we learned the hard truth about our dreams. While anything is possible, we learn that many things aren’t probable, and we start to shift our focus.
Think about the astronaut example, so few people actually get accepted into NASA’s space program and even less walk on the moon. It would take years of applied math and physics to even have a shot, and likely, it would never come to fruition.
Many, many, people become doctors, but not without warnings of massive student debt and 10 years of post-graduate work before becoming full time. Also, you better be good at science.
How many of you aspired to be an artist or an athlete, but were encouraged to get a second degree in business so that you could pay the bills?
Although people don’t truly mean harm with their comments about potential careers. All of them teach us that in some way, shape, or form, our dreams are too big. That we are not good enough and that we should look for a plan B.
Without having much else to go on, we start following the suggestions of others. If you’re good at math you’re told you should go into finance. If you come from a strong line of Military folks, you should join and support our country. If you love computers, you should go into IT. You’re good at spinning the truth and getting your way? Become a lawyer or a sales rep.
These suggestions, our Plan B, continues to be molded and shaped until slowly it becomes Plan A. We go to college, get a job and consider it huge win if we can graduate with a job in the same field as our degree. We then seek the advice of our managers, our mentors, our peers about what our next steps should be, how can we move up in our career – make more money, get a better title, be successful? We start to define success and happiness by the next step, and we march towards it blindly. Except with every promotion or every raise, we want more. It’s like a crazy hamster wheel, where those feelings of success, happiness and fulfillment are always just out of reach. And then one day, we're sitting at our desk, thinking "what if?" What if I had studied something else in college? What if I went back to school to learn a new trade? What if I just quit?
Why do so many people fall into this trap? I believe that it is because very few of us take a step back to evaluate what it is about our careers that make us happy or fulfilled. That we confuse success with happiness and believe that when we achieve success, we’ll magically become happy.
If you are one of the few who are truly fulfilled and happy with your job, thank you. You provide hope for the rest of us.
If you’re like the majority of Corporate Americans and are stuck on the hamster wheel chasing someone else’s definition of success and happiness, don’t fear. You have the power to get off that wheel and start defining the life and career that you personally find fulfilling, leading to greater happiness and success than you ever dreamed possible. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of internal work to break down barriers we’ve created for ourselves over the years, but I’m here to tell you, not only is living a more fulfilling and happier life possible, it’s probable.
You have the power to choose your next step, to write your next chapter. I welcome you to jump off that hamster wheel. To curl up with a cup of coffee, tea, or glass of wine, and start reflecting on what it would mean to live a more fulfilling, happier, and successful life.
To get you started, I’ve created a FREE empowerment journal filled with multiple prompts to help you start crafting the life of your dreams.
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