The Great Reimagining

“If you do not address your childhood traumas, your career will.” Talk about a truth bomb! I recently saw this posted on Instagram by @thecareertherapist, and it really got my attention. Because it articulated so simply and clearly what I’ve experienced in my life, as well as what I’ve seen in the lives of my friends, colleagues and clients. How many times have I made decisions from the place of outdated and limiting beliefs about myself? Too many to count. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing for a long time. I just knew things weren’t going how I wanted them to go, but I didn’t know how to change it. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that I was reenacting roles that had at one time in my life had helped keep me safe, but now were limiting my ability to be the person – and have the career – that I wanted to be and knew I could have. For me, that looked like holding myself to impossibly high standards and at the same time needing to not call too much attention to myself. I had the impossible task of being perfect and also invisible. A weird hybrid of the Lost Child and Hero roles. A lot has changed for me, and in the meantime a lot has changed collectively for all of us. Over the past year or so, we’ve all heard about The Great Resignation. People are feeling really done. People are tired of tolerating what they have tolerated at work for so long. People want flexibility, fulfillment and respect. So they are leaving. You might have heard me say before that we now have an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine what our work will look like, particularly those of us who have struggled to feel empowered in our careers. I propose that we think of this as The Great Reimagining. Let’s reimagine how we want to feel day to day in our work. Let’s do the healing work we need to do to leave those old survival strategies behind and step into curiosity and new learning about what’s possible for us. Then let’s get busy doing it, one messy, shaky, imperfect step at a time. Because, while the world needs your service now more than ever, you need to have the version of your work that serves you now more than ever too. My blessing for you today is that you would catch a glimpse of the reimagined vision of your work that would allow you to serve from the highest and best version of you.