“WTF am I doing with my life? - The 2020 mantra of Everyone. Everywhere.
If you found yourself with an inordinate amount of time to think in the void that was 2020, you might have found yourself wondering:
“Is this all there is?"
Maybe it was the petty politics and endless meetings that triggered the existential questions. Or maybe it was simply a yearning to feel more fulfillment in your work.
Either way, the Great Resignation –when the “quit rate” of employees leaving their jobs hit a 20-year high at the end of 2021–suggests you’re not alone.
The real question is: what will you do in this unprecedented moment? Will you succumb to the human tendency to take the path of least resistance and settle for incremental job improvements and temporarily enhanced vanity metrics (i.e. money, titles)?
Or, will you step back, ask bigger questions and pursue exponential growth?
This is not the moment to play it safe.
The unintended benefit of living in global chaos and uncertainty is that our brains start leaning towards “fu#k it” type behaviors. If anything can happen, nothing seems that crazy and we get to override our tendency towards inertia. Typically, our neural pathways keep us trapped safely in the comfort of what’s known, understood and expected, but right now we have an openness that doesn’t come naturally to humans.
And, if that’s not incentive enough to think bigger in this moment, it’s worth noting that we’re screwed. While we were messing around on the Houseparty app, the robots gained five years on us; the world tilted farther into crisis, suggesting the pandemic might have only been the catalyst for the real crisis; and, Web3 made most of us, in our current state, irrelevant. Even if we wanted to grasp onto safety and security, we don’t get to.
Therefore, if there was a moment to go big and pull a “Prince Harry,” it’s now.
If you want to go for purpose, meaning and fulfillment in your work, rather than the short-term hit of a salary boost, here are six essential mindset shifts that will propel you in that direction:
1. Stop thinking about a job change. Start examining your yearning.
I get it. You want a new job. Why?
When that vacuum opened up inside your brain in those sudden silent moments of quarantine, what was the actual yearning all about? For most of us, the yearning wasn’t for a different job or a better salary—it was for something more. Something more meaningful, fulfilling or impactful. Something we couldn’t quite name. Something scary to pursue—possibly more scary than 2020 itself.
Deep yearning usually doesn’t come with clarity. On a good day, our yearning makes us disoriented and on a bad day sends us into a full-blown mental spiral.
When my lack of fulfillment peaked, I would wake up in the silence of the night not caring if I kept living. What’s the point of all this? Is this how I’m going to spend all my time until the end?
The hopelessness set in when I realized I had no idea how to pursue anything different or how to find something resembling Purpose.
I tried to fill the void with the next shiny job and guess what? Like an annoying rash that has been treated but not cured, the yearning came back with a vengeance. And, being in a new job with the same old yearning didn’t help my reputation or my bank account when I promptly had to quit.
Don't fill the void. Try to identify the deeper yearning.
What the heck are you actually yearning for? What’s missing? (Hint: it’s not better snacks in the cafeteria)
2. Stop thinking about what feels realistic. Start thinking about what would make your parents, partner, or people you respect uncomfortable.
If you’re embarrassed about your yearning, you should probably be pursuing it. But be warned, your brain will not be on board.
To override the shame of even thinking you could pursue something exciting and inspiring, your brain will direct you toward what’s comfortable and expected. It will create an easy path towards someplace where you’ll fit in and get an easy call back.
Your brain will even try to convince you that’s what you truly want.
After I made the awkward exit from my “void-filling” job, I finally had a confrontation with my brain, “WTF,” I told it, “I’m going to map out what I really want.”
My brain went on the offensive and swore I didn’t have a bigger vision—it said my mind was blank.
“Don’t worry,” I told it, “I’m not going to actually do this. I’m just writing it secretly, where no one will ever see it.”
That allowed me to imagine something more.
I wrote myself a question: What’s the most unrealistic, most exciting and inspiring thing I can do?
And the crazy started to flow: A Netflix series, a retreat center, a brand with unique merch, thousands of lives changed via content. It’s all still too embarrassing to say out loud, and that’s a good thing. That means some of it’s worth pursuing.
Tell your brain: “Chill. Stop taking this so seriously. This is not what I’m going to do right now. It’s just a guide to help me know what to do next.”
Don’t do what’s expected. Pursue what’s expansive.
So, what’s your embarrassing vision? And, what’s the next step that inches you toward it?
3. Stop thinking about what you want. Start thinking about what you’re willing to sacrifice.
As I said, I know what you want: the comfort of the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to, ideally with multiple vacations, work-from-home flexibility, and an expanding savings account, without trading anything off.
But let me ask you this: Did your comfortable salary, stock options, vacation time, or dream car satiate your yearning and deliver true fulfillment? If they had, you wouldn’t be wrestling the haunting questions or reading this article.
So, what are you willing to give up to pursue your embarrassing vision? How are you willing to change in order to open the time and headspace to focus on figuring out what you really want and how to pursue it?
If you aren’t willing to give anything up, you probably don’t want it enough to create it.
I abandoned my plan to buy a house so I could invest every dollar I had in growing and developing myself. I moved to a cheaper city far from all my friends and colleagues for three years so I could avoid FOMO and distractions while I was writing, learning, and evolving. I even (mostly) stopped drinking to save my brain cells.
As I watched my friends grow further into their comfortable lifestyles while I drifted into what felt like an abyss, it hurt. I still don’t know when those sacrifices and investments will pay off, but I’m committed because I don’t want the rash of yearning to come back.
Don’t focus on what you want to get. Focus on what you are going to give.
So, what are you willing to give up? It doesn’t have to be traumatic. It can be basic! Please don’t isolate yourself for three years, unless you are a FOMO addict like me.
4. Stop thinking about how to position yourself in the market. Start thinking about how to extract and capture your unique internal value.
Now that you’ve sacrificed sleep or alcohol or whatever, here’s the good news: This is going to be easier than you think. You have everything you need to pursue that bigger vision; you just have to excavate it.
You can’t currently see it because you've spent most of your life morphing yourself into a resume and adapting who you are to fit the needs of the market. You’ve been straining to try to figure out what Company X wants you to be and then focusing on how to be that. Unfortunately, that has left you blind to your true and unique value.
When I wanted to stop morphing myself into resume boxes to fit the market, I had to flip the typical process. Instead of looking for jobs, finding opportunities, and then talking to people about how to get into their world, I did the opposite.
I looked within and broke down my temperament, skills, and ownable insights. Then I stacked all those together in various ways, like Legos, and packaged them into an original story.
Once I could see my own internal value, I could also see all the ways to apply it in the outside world and the market started coming to me, asking for me, the person I wanted to be.
Don’t build your external value. Go within and extract your internal value. Then find ways to share it.
How do your skills, insight, story, and knowledge come together to create your unique internal value? Where/how can you contribute that?
5. Stop asking, “What’s the next episode?” Start gearing up for a 7-part docuseries—with multiple seasons.
Digging for your internal value and aiming for your embarrassing vision requires that you become the person who is ready to live that vision.
Think of it this way: How many characters in your favorite story got to the big turning point after their first big opponent?
None.
All great characters fight their battles in incremental stages. As they survive each battle, they evolve to be ready for the next opponent. They don’t get to meet the real villain right away because they aren’t ready. They have to become the person who will be able to win at the big turning point.
After I had my moonshot vision outlined, the only thing I wanted was to make it happen -yesterday. I wanted the outcome, the bliss, and the peace that was going to accompany it immediately. And then I had to wait. And wait.
And wait some more.
I now see that I was waiting for myself to catch up. I had to learn things I didn’t know I needed to learn. The process was more overwhelming than I had imagined, so I needed the experience to unfold in phases.
The journey still feels long. I’m still waiting for the twist ending.. But when you surrender to a long-term evolution, you start to understand that like a financial investment, personal growth compounds. Even though there is no clear outcome at the beginning, it eventually morphs into explosive change and momentum as each of your insights and learnings builds on the next.
Don’t try to force a career revolution. Become who you need to be to live your vision through a long-term evolution.
Who do you need to become before you’re ready for that embarrassing vision? How patient are you willing to be while your growth is compounding?
6. Stop daydreaming about what’s possible. Start focusing on what’s inevitable if you don’t do what’s possible.
Daydreaming is easy. Patience is not. It’s common to be disappointed, year after year, when your vision doesn’t look like reality.
If you want to go on this journey, you have to override your deep desire to be at the end—yesterday. The only way I’ve found to do that is to focus on the consequences of not pursuing something bigger, rather than on the vison itself.
When I wanted to ensure I was motivated to make a big pivot, I created a visual of my “life sentence” or what my reality would look like if I didn’t keep taking steps toward my vision. Rather than creating a typical vision board about my dreams, my life sentence vision board included images of all the clients I hated and the bosses I didn’t want to become. I put it on my wall to remind me what my life would look like if I stayed on the easy course, if I let inertia win.
Your true vision will rarely motivate you. It’s too big, too scary, too unrealistic, too far away, and too unclear. In the depths of despair—which is where growth inevitably takes us—you will feel inadequate and ashamed that you haven’t reached it.
And that’s why you must remind yourself of the life sentence you’re signing up for if you don’t at least try to pursue what’s possible.
Your life sentence is the only thing that’s clear as day. You already know what you don’t want to be. You know what you don’t want to be doing. You know what you hate, and you know why you hate it.
When you focus on taking steps away from your life sentence, reaching your vision kind of becomes irrelevant. Who cares if you reach it, as long as you know you’re making every effort to not end up in the life sentence?
Don’t focus on the outcome you want. Instead, focus on the pain of what’s inevitable, if you don’t take steps to change and pursue something bigger.
What are the consequences of not pivoting? What will your life look like if you don’t pursue something expansive? How will you be stuck and trapped?
So, are your ready for your “Prince Harry” moment?
If you want to align your work with your Purpose, apply here for an advanced training on the 3-part framework that will help you uncover your Genius and adapt your expertise to new career opportunities.
And let us know in the comments...where are you in the journey to find your Purpose? What's your most annoying struggle in that journey?