Many of my clients come to me at a time when they are dissatisfied with their career. Often they already know that the work they do each day is something that in their heart they no longer want to do. Some are deeply dissatisfied, enduring every day. Most however are just mildly satisfied, life is, ‘not too bad’, they have status, outward signs of success, all the ‘frosting’ they think they need in life.

What keeps them where they are is often their thoughts about the external world.

Many of us are told that work is something we should endure, tolerate. That if we do the hard work, literally drag ourselves out of bed every day and ‘hack’ it one day we will get ‘there’, ‘there’ being successful, satisfied and happy. Those what quit, they couldn’t ‘hack’ it. There were not ‘cut out’ for the game.

But what if they left simply because they wanted to do something else? As human beings most of us can ‘hack’ anything if we want to. We can endure the long hours, the challenges, the set backs when we are doing something we love. There it is! Something we love! Do you love what you do each day?

So they left because they wanted to do something that was fun, exciting, creative, challenging in a way that brought out the best of them out? What if you could do something that was fun, creative, challenging? Something that you want to get out of bed to do? Something that felt more like play than work?

I am not suggesting that this would be a career without challenge, failure and risk. Far from it.

When I made the decision to leave my legal career I left a career that gave me all the outward signs of success and took a huge risk. I chose to act anomalously. I broke the implicit rules of my social group and the belief system I was raised in. I did this to choose an uncertain path. But I had ignored the silent pull inside of me for too long and could no longer just endure my career. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t miserable. I was ‘mildly satisfied’. But I decided that if my last day on earth was one that was ‘mildly satisfying’ that wasn’t good enough for me. This journey we call life isn’t a holiday, it is an adventure. There is challenge, there is risk, there are failures. But we get to decide what it is we want to do and when you make a decision based on your internal version of success quitting is not an option. Because you have made a decision to live with integrity, to do what makes you thrive, to what you have committed to it.

What started as a journey to uncover my own inner peace and to thrive has become my gift to others, my career.

Do you believe in what you do every day? Start there. Decide, commit, believe and create the life you want for yourself.