My client and I were having a spirited conversation about the lifeless rigor of her corporate job, where relentless demands for productivity are issued without any apparent regard for basic human needs - things such as connection or kindness or joy or even a good night's sleep.
She is committed to a creative life of meaning, passion and purpose; her company, meanwhile, is committed to the adoption of a management philosophy centered on predictability, consistency and replicability. The methods and procedures dictated by this philosophy are highly technical, precise and, of course, completely humorless. Its widespread application in companies across corporate America has given rise to an entirely new set of expectations for career advancement - an entirely new career, actually. Layers and layers of densely-packed training courses are required, and people who are serious about their careers plow through them with single-minded focus, keeping
their eye on the prize: a special designation that will sparkle on their resumes and open countless doors to advancement.
My client, however, is not seduced by this alluring vision of career success. She isn't signing up. In our conversation she mused that not jumping enthusiastically on board could be seen as a career-limiting move - which indeed it is. It is also a joyous, wise and intentional move. She is consciously choosing to limit the energy and attention she devotes to work that doesn't nourish her soul, so that her fiercely creative spirit can be freed to dance and grow and forge its own path. She is limiting the career she doesn't want to make room for the life she does.
From the outside in it may appear as if she is cutting off valuable options, but from the inside out she knows she is jettisoning false options so that the real ones can be more clearly seen. When we dare to name what we truly want, we see the costly extravagance of maintaining the stuff of other people's expectations. We see that "keeping our options open" is keeping us from seeing who we really are. We see, paradoxically, that all these options and mandates for career success are encumbering us - and that our freedom lies in making the one sacred choice to follow our longing.
I remember a time in my own career when, finally, I couldn't force myself to sign up for one more Continuing Professional Education course (CPE, for short). I felt more than a little guilty about not pushing through my resistance and proving to the world - and myself - that I had what it takes to succeed in the fast-paced, highly technical world of business, accounting and finance. I was alarmed to consider myself a quitter. A popular saying kept swirling through my mind, taunting me: "A winner never quits and a quitter never wins." How could I ever "win" the career game andget that corner office if I couldn't even maintain my CPE requirements?
And yet, even with all of the self-imposed torment, I stuck by my choice. It was as if I didn't really have a choice: I simply couldn't take one more CPE course. I was exhausted trying to keep it all propped up - the long hours of tedious work, the volunteering for special projects to prove I was a committed player, the clamping down of my natural impulses so that no one would suspect I didn't fit in, the damned CPE courses. It was, finally, thankfully, too much. I had to let something go.
I feared I might be letting go of certain career success, but in truth I was letting go of an outdated map of success that had me pointed in the wrong direction. Throwing away the map left me feeling disoriented and worried, of course, that I had made a fatal, career-limiting move. But inside I was secretly relieved and almost giddy with a newfound sense of freedom. Goody, goody, no more CPE courses!! I looked furtively around me to make sure no one could see my inner spirit jumping up and down in gleeful celebration. No one did, at least for a while. But I knew she was there, cheering me on as I continued to make even more brazen career-limiting moves such as going part-time and, ultimately, walking away from corporate employment. And ever so slowly I realized that my "secret" inner sense of freedom was the loving compass I needed to keep me on course, guiding me one step at a time into my big beautiful life.
Copyright © 2006