I was coaching a client this week and he got emotional when talking about why he does the work that he does.  He had forgotten why his work mattered to him.  He had been phoning it in for a long time and getting back in touch with his reason for being moved him.

Just the session before we had discussed how he wasn’t happy and something was off.  He was jumping from one responsibility to the next without fully diving in.  He took whatever work was offered as long as the money was good.  He was overwhelmed, spread too thin, and dropping the ball.  I could see on his face that he was unraveled.  I didn’t even know him that well and it was clear he wasn’t himself.

Between that painful session and the one we had this week he worked through some exercises that helped him get back in touch with some of his core values and his vision for himself.  He then made critical choices about what to drop, what to walk away from and what to grasp more tightly.  He got in touch with what mattered to him and saw that many of the projects he was working on, clients he was doing work for, and ways he was spending his time didn’t match up with what mattered to him and what he wanted.  So he ditched all that stuff.  He found his way again.

Unfortunately, too many professionals are in this same position.  They have been on the hampster wheel so long that they have forgotten why they got into their career to begin with.

We schedule time to get our teeth cleaned, our cars serviced, and our hair cut, but when was the last time you sat down and mapped out the vision you have for yourself and whether the life you are living is in synch?  Turning autopilot off and taking inventory instead is a worthwhile endeavor.