Breaking the Shackles
At some point most of us will feel stuck and powerless but go nowhere because we lack the confidence to make significant changes. To break the shackles requires a new vision, guided by three simple questions that go to the heart of our existence: Who am I? What do I want? And once I know, how would I get there?
Yet how many of us ever think about such things – and where would we find the answers? This is not work many of us know how to do.
Many successful people I work with are asking themselves those questions because whatever motivation got them to where they are now has run out. For example, one client has built a successful engineering business employing over a hundred people but is now saying, “I can’t face many more years like this.”
You’d think he has everything, but he’s hit a plateau. I can relate. Over nine years, I grew a thriving consulting firm employing more than 40 people, but eventually I ran out of ideas and enthusiasm. A year later, my boss got someone new to take over.
The problem for both my client and me was that our visions had expired.
We’re all designed to aim for a vision that matters to us and try to make it happen. While it is alive, the vision pulls us forward from the future. But when it’s fulfilled, the vision expires. We stop expanding, hit a plateau, and soon begin to contract.
After stepping down as the boss, I returned to consulting but was full of regret and self-criticism, awakening at three o’clock in the morning wondering how to fix all the broken parts of myself. When I asked the three big questions above, the only answer that came back was, “I don’t want to be the failure who lost his prestigious job.”
I was desperate to find something similar to keep up appearances!
Fortunately, a mentor took me down a different path. He’d gone through the same experience years before. We laughed at how much we both strive to impress others and look good. He encouraged me instead to look inside for validation, not to the outside world. I felt peaceful, even though I had no idea where I was going. When it was time to create a different kind of vision, I turned my search away from external validation to inner truth.
I didn’t bother to look for another leadership role that could have conferred money, status, maybe a partnership to make me feel back on top. Instead I chose to work with my wife on our own mentoring business. Initially some did not understand my choice. I also doubted myself, feeling like I’d given up my ambitions.
But now my decision feels right. Nothing needs fixing because nothing is broken. I don’t have to be like anyone else. Instead, that which I both enjoy and do well is the way I contribute to the world.
Who am I? What do I want? How do I get there? These are good questions, best answered looking inwards rather than out.
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