Experiment 1: Walking the talk and pausing!

In early 2018 I read Pause by Rachael O’Meara. O’Meara is an executive at Google who wrote her book based on a sabbatical. She had hit the wall and felt miserable and disconnected and needed time out to see give her the space to identify what is important in her life and to pursue what she loved.

I could relate to some of her emotions. There have been times over the past few years that I have not enjoyed my work. I loved some of my work but some of my work was sapping my creativity. This delayed the finishing of my book. If it wasn’t for my love of running and a break in September, I am not sure I would have lasted to the end of 2018.

So I decided to ‘pause’ my own career for three main reasons.

First, I wanted to walk the talk. How can I bring my best to my clients in terms of my own energy, creativity and agility if I wasn’t at my best? I was earning good revenue but at what short and long term cost. I work my clients about being the best version of themselves, but I wasn’t embodying it in the way I wanted to.

Secondly, as I was writing my book early this year, I recognised that I needed to embody my own agility by experimenting and stretching outside my comfort zone. I started seeing a coach who helped me enormously in defining my purpose, letting go of security needs, surfacing my fears and embracing a lifestyle of ambiguity. So, my decision to take 6 months off was the first big experiment and stretch. In essence I am giving up revenue for 6 months although it will probably be longer (although this was probably harder for my Accountant!). I have had to disappoint clients. I have had to knock work back and I have to risk potential clients going somewhere else. So whilst I am blessed to take 6 months off (a first world problem) it is still a stretch and will no doubt evoke some anxiety along the way. The learning has started. What I notice through my coaching and my own work is that no matter what happens I will be ok. I don’t need to worry about the future. The future will take care of itself. My focus is to keep growing and embrace ambiguity and the here and now. The more I do that the better consultant and person I will become.

Thirdly, I wanted to have more fun. We spend so much time being busy rather than just being. We get on planes, we work long hours and we invest time in our work rather than in ourselves or others. Having fun such as my improvisation comedy ahs energised me in the latter part of the year (more about that in another post).

What this might mean for you?

• If you want to be the best version of yourself then you need to love what you are doing as much as possible.
• Working on your purpose and aligning to it is so energising
• If you want to be creative then you need to create space and energy to enable it to emerge.
• If you feel disconnected and caught up in the relentless day to day pressures then find a good coach to help you (I am free from June 1 onwards) 🙂

Please follow and like us: