Where's your path leading?
Have you ever stopped to think about where your life's path is
leading?
Is it leading you on a journey of ever increasing aliveness and
self expression or is taking you to a place of conformity,
mediocrity and discomfort?
My Reality Check
A year and a half ago I had to accept the reality that my life's
path wasn't heading in the direction that I wanted it to.
On the outside, I had no doubt that I projected an image of
success. I had pushed my way up the corporate ladder at quite a
rapid rate given my age. I was obscenely well paid, wore tailor
made suits and holidayed in exotic locations.
But on the inside, I felt anything but successful. Each day that
I dragged myself into office felt as if I was selling another
piece of my soul.
For 60-70 hours per week, I performed work that I found deeply
dissatisfying in environments that I was completely unsuited to.
Now believe me when I say that this wasn't some kind of passing
phase either. In my 8-9 working years since graduating from
business school, I had managed to secure consulting contracts
with some of the most prestigious corporations in the world.
Funnily enough, I had similar work experiences in almost all of
them.
To add insult to injury, there always seemed to be at least one
person in authority that I would mysteriously come into conflict
with in each workplace. They appeared to go out of their way to
make my working life extremely awkward and uncomfortable.
Early on in my career, I used to fully engage in the drama of
being victimised by these evil tyrants! But over time however, I
came to the realisation that these people were actually not my
enemies, but my teachers. By letting me know that I didn't fit
into their model of the world (and I must admit they did have a
solid argument!), they were unknowingly pushing me forward to
follow my innermost passion for doing bigger things in the
world.
So What Was Going Wrong? Over the span of my corporate career I
had plenty of time to think about what was going wrong. On many
different levels it seemed as if I was following all the rules
correctly. I got good grades, went to a very well respected
university and had a CV that most aspiring corporate climbers
would kill for. So why then wasn't I experiencing a deep sense
of happiness and fulfilment portrayed in the photos of all the
corporate recruitment brochures? Why did I feel so empty?
After years of considered thought, I discovered that the reason
why I was so unhappy with my professional life was the fact that
I was following society's preconditioned path of success and not
my own. I was trying hard to fit into the corporate world by
being someone else. Deep down, the only person I really wanted
to be, was me.
I Visualised My Life Not Changing.
The thing that really helped me to make the changes that I
needed to make was to visualise how unbearable the rest of my
life would be if I didn't find the courage to change. I
visualised what it would be like to do the same uninspired job,
in the same uninspired work place, with the same uninspired work
colleagues, for the next 35 years of my life. It wasn't a pretty
picture let me tell you!
The great thing about following this process was that it created
a scenario in my mind that was so painful that it propelled me
to do whatever it took to make the necessary changes.
So how do you know if you're on the wrong path?
As a society we are conditioned to look to external sources for
guidance on what we should be doing with our lives. We are
conditioned into mistrusting our own intuition. But when it
really comes down to it, the best and most effective way to find
out whether or not you are on the wrong path is to look deeply
inside yourself.
Taking this kind of approach will take a lot of courage,
particularly if you have spent any length of time masquerading
as someone else as I had done. Not only that, the answers that
you find may not be exactly what you want to hear either. But
stick with it. It will be worth it.
Keep pushing yourself to greater and greater levels of self
honesty. Let your actions be directed by your new level of self
awareness. And most importantly, surround yourself with people
that encourage, motivate and inspire you to be all you possibly
can be.