Why it is not an option but a critical part of the journey to  the Land of Happy, Healthy and Free

In 2003, I had a 2-year-old and was 7 months pregnant with my second child when my father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Although my dad fought his disease valiantly for 18 months (he died in 2005), the reality was that by the time of his diagnosis, it was already too late. When they found it, the cancer had already spread throughout his body.

I spent the last month of his life flying back and forth between Orlando and Chicago, trying to balance caring for a baby and a toddler and not wanting to miss out on my dad’s last days on earth. Watching my dad battle this disease changed my life, completely.

Tim McGraw had a new song out at the time. The song, “Live Like You Were Dying,” was about a 40-something-year-old man wrestling with a terminal diagnosis. In the song, when asked what he did upon hearing the diagnosis, the man says:

“I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
“I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
“And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
“And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.”
An’ he said: “Some day, I hope you get the chance,
“To live like you were dyin’.”¹

I vividly remember listening to that song over and over again every time I flew from Orlando to Chicago and back. It functioned as a backdrop to my life at that time.

I grew up in a Jewish home, which means when someone dies, the family and friends sit Shiva (do nothing but grieve) for a week. As I sat, I pondered the words to this song and considered my life. Was I living as if I were dying or was I merely marking time? I had a good job, prestigious for certain, but I had become bored with it. And I had relationship issues which I had long ignored that weren’t getting any better.

I came back from my dad’s funeral with a personal commitment: I was going to go the Land of Happy, Healthy and Free. The people in my life could come with me if they wanted; but, one way or the other, I was going.

Leaving the Land of Unhappy, Unhealthy and Un-free

Leaving the land of unhappy, unhealthy and un-free starts with a decision, is sustained by living in truth and then finalized by making truly difficult choices. The decision was that I wanted to leave where I was and find the land of happy, healthy and free–and I was willing to pay the price for this change. I wanted this, regardless of the cost. In the Bible, this is called the “pearl of great price” or the “treasure in the field.”

To me, wanting to go to the Land of Happy, Healthy and Free isn’t just about middle-age angst and wanting to be more satisfied with life. More importantly, it was and still is about removing anything that is keeping me from living my life as God intended. So I asked myself some hard questions, like: “How was choosing comfort over truth getting in the way of my happiness?” and “How was my style of relating keeping me from loving people the way God wanted me to?”

I had to give serious thought to living in truth, which meant facing some hard facts about my life, my relationships and my job. For one thing, I was getting close to burnout at work. Worse, I had small children I never saw because the best parts of my self and my day were given over to my job.

And I had to make tough decisions, including hard choices about my relationships. In addition, I took a major risk by leaving the comfort and security of my job and going out on my own. None of this was easy, and all of it involved risk.

Why the Old Land is hard to leave

There are many reasons why the old land is hard to leave. From a career standpoint, here are two:

1. Lack of self-esteem
2. Lack of awareness of personal gifts, strengths and talents

Consider the table below:

Being rightly employed means working in a career that is well suited to you and supports you on your way to the land of Happy, Healthy and Free. For this to happen, you need a high-alignment career that combines well with your talents, passion and high self-esteem.

If you know who you are and what you are good at but have low self-esteem, you might be at risk of being over-employed. This means you are in a relatively good job fit that is burning you out, which is exactly where I was.

If you have high self-esteem but don’t know who you are, you might be mis-employed. This means that you have a job or have had a series of jobs, but you don’t have an actual career, a demonstrated expertise or a body of work that you feel proud of. Darin, who was one of my clients, had this problem. He liked to brag about the variety of careers he’d had over the years, at least until his last career, which was in the mortgage business, brought his financial house crashing down in every respect.

If you have low self-esteem but don’t know who you are. . . Well, that is obviously the worst situation to be in, because you risk being chronically unemployed or under-employed, a situation in which you are working well below your potential at a greatly diminished earning potential.

The common and systemic problem of low self-esteem

Barbara, one of my first career coaching clients, is one of the most talented artists I have ever met. Able to do wonders with wire, fabric, wood, food, etc., she is at home in any medium, and has the ability to create real beauty out of ordinary things. When I met Barbara she was a very competent accountant. She was unhappy with her career, but lacked the self-esteem to take the risk of leaving her safe job and doing what she loved.

At the same time, I was working with Mary, who excelled in research and communication. She was in a role that leveraged her talents but she worked…and worked…and worked. Although she was miserable in her role, feeling overworked and desperately under-satisfied, she struggled with giving up the comfort and predictability of her role.

No matter the specifics of any of my clients’ stories, everything always boils down to low self-esteem as the main inhibitor of career satisfaction. I am able to help them gain greater awareness of their gifts and strengths, but without self-esteem, they are unable to experience any growth in the area of career satisfaction.

There is a wide variety of reasons why people have low self-esteem. But the reasons that people stay in a posture of low self-esteem pretty much boil down to:

• If I stay in that posture, I don’t have to risk anything.
• I want to keep the bar low.
• I would rather maintain an illusion of progress than face this head-on.
• I accept the negative things that others say about me because I believe them.
• I don’t want to give up the comfort of staying hidden.
• I don’t want to risk failing or disappointing anyone.
• I don’t want to risk opening myself up to rejection, which feels like death to me.
• If I step out, I’ll be asked to start doing more and more.

“You are more than what you have become”

The 1995 cartoon called the “Lion King” is about Simba, a lion cub and heir to the throne of Pride Rock. Simba is guilt-ridden, because he thinks he killed his father. So he flees into exile and abandons his identity as the future Lion King. Simba deliberately “forgets” about his true identity until his childhood pal Nala shows up to remind him. Her reminder wasn’t enough, however, until Simba received a vision from his father, who said, “You have forgotten who you are, and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become.”

If you will heed those words, whispered to your soul, then you will have the courage to take the risk, to leave the old land and embrace the new one of Happy, Healthy and Free. When Simba embraced his reality, he not only returned to Pride Rock, but he also fought valiantly for his place as King. When we accept who we really are and have a vision of what we want, then we will not settle for less than total satisfaction in both our lives and our careers. And striving for that satisfaction becomes not only an option but also an imperative: I must go. I will not stop.

Writer and poet Audre Lorde once said, “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision – then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

We are not cats; we don’t have nine lives. We have just one, and this is it. What are you going to do with your one life? Are you going to waste it by staying in a career that sucks the living daylights out of you, because you are afraid to move onward and upward? Are you working at a job that takes you away from your family and friends but gives you few, if any, emotional deposits? Are you going to remain in a constant state of job-to-job flux, never really happy or making the kind of money you have the potential to make, and limiting your ability to experience as much life as you should be able to?

As humans, we are designed for meaningful work. Work is not merely intended to be something that we endure so we can put food on the table. Of course, sometimes there are seasons in which we all just do what we have to do. For example, I am a horrible food-server, and I do not like doing that job. I have, however, worked at waiting on tables more than once in my life, because I needed to make money. It was necessary for me to do what I had to at the time, but I can’t live there—and neither should you.

And for work to be meaningful, we have to connect the dots intellectually and emotionally between the use of our gifts and serving others. My professional mentor, Alan Weiss, defines self-esteem as the “honest-to-God belief that I can help others.” If I am not using my gifts to help others, I cannot grow in my self-esteem. It is a reinforcing dynamic. The more I use my gifts to help others, the better I feel about myself. The better I feel about myself, the more I am able to help others.

The Bottom Line: “It’s my life, and it is now or never…”

My husband and I were at a dueling piano bar in Las Vegas this past October. Also at the piano bar were three young military men enjoying a final hurrah before going off on their first tour of duty overseas. The final song of the night was Jon Bon Jovi’s, “It’s My Life.” Watching these young men sing their hearts out to, “It’s my life; it’s now or never, I ain’t gonna live forever, I just wanna live while I’m alive,” brought tears to my husband’s eyes and to mine, because for those young men the song was especially true. They were going into a military zone, and they really didn’t know if they were coming back.

By the same token, we don’t know about tomorrow, either. We don’t know if at our next medical checkup, the doctor will find we have terminal cancer or congestive heart failure. We don’t know what will happen the next time we get on a plane to go on vacation or into a car to take our kids to school. We. . . Don’t. . . Know. . .

So what are you waiting for? This is it. This is your life. Career satisfaction is not an option; it is an imperative. You only have one life to live. Do you really want to live it working at a job that you don’t like, or one that offers you less than stellar emotional and financial rewards? What will it take for you to live like you were dying? Don’t wait until the crisis happens or the terminal diagnosis is made. Embrace who you are and the life have been given. Now.

Are you ready to join me on the journey to the Land of Happy, Healthy and Free? Make that choice today, take the first step and call me at 407.376.8522 for a free consultation (including a free assessment: Are you satisfied with your career).

1 McGraw, Tim. “Live Like You Were Dying.” _Live Like You Were Dying_. Curb Records, 2004.