The Modern Personal Journey
After 15+ years of leadership experience, 5+ years of coaching and 1000s of hours of client work, here’s what I’ve realised happens to a lot of guys in corporate:
We start our journey full of enthusiasm and with big dreams about how we think the journey after Uni will be
We get some good initial wins and we have some fun
Over time, the wins stop being as exciting, and we start to question how fulfilled we are, and how meaningful the work is. Sometimes we experience setbacks in the form of difficult people at work, or not getting a goal that we thought we would.
As a guy, particularly if you're from an ethnic background, you end up in a weird situation. Because culturally, you're supposed to do well by society's standards, especially after all your parents have sacrificed for you, so you can provide for the family.
But, you're not fulfilled in what you do, so it’s hard to be motivated. And the journey to find something more fulfilling seems like a lot of trial and error, and so it seems easier to just push through where you are. But in doing so, you feel like you’re stagnating, and you end up using distractions and coping mechanisms - some less healthy than others. And somewhere in there, you forget about the ‘spark’ you used to have.
This feeling can last for years (and surely you've seen for some, decades). If the first phase was called "Initial Enthusiasm," this phase is what I call "The Wilderness."
The Wilderness is a place where you can feel like you're losing the 'specialness' that you know yourself to be inside. But what this stage is really calling you to do is understand yourself at a deeper level - to understand your own unique values, and your own unique purpose.
This is hard, because often it's conditioning and experiences from our past (what Steven Covey called “your 1st Blueprint”) which cloud our judgement in figuring out the path to break through.
But, with the right guidance, if you do this, the stronger, greater, unique fire that is you WILL come out. You can create “your 2nd Blueprint.” The realisation of this is the next phase, what I call 'Personal Sovereignty.'
Personal Sovereignty is where you're no longer living by an old story, created at random by past conditioning, and instead, you're living on purpose, on a life and direction that you consciously design, which is not weighed down by the past - because you’ve healthily resolved it.
Mark Twain once wrote "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why."
If you're in your Wilderness, please, take this message as a call to recognise where you're at, and use it as a prompt to find out your "2nd Blueprint," so you can unlock the Personal Sovereignty you know you have inside.
If you'd like a free tool to help you on this journey, click this link below, and you'll find a 3min quiz to help you objectively reflect on where you’re at, and receive personalised instructions on what you can do to improve. If you’d like more assistance than that, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
To your personal sovereignty!
- Dim
