Foreplay without climax

Does your career feel like interminable foreplay with no climax in sight?

I look at people I know and I can instantly tell who is experiencing real pleasure from their work, and who's "faking" it.

Of course, Canada is a free country, like the United States. Every citizen has the constitutional right to fake all he/she wants.

In my Career Brainstorming workshop, I tell participants that "it's your career, it's your life. What you do with it is totally up to you. I may have a bit of knowledge to transfer to you, but YOU have the ultimate power. You have the power of decision. Exercise your power of decision and you will have an incredibly RICH life. You will have an amazing life!"

Personally, I've had many "career climaxes." A friend even used the F word in complimenting me: "F---, Peter, how many careers do you have?!"

What I've found is that foreplay quality has little to do with duration, a lot to do with the skill with which it is performed. Foreplay is necessary, foreplay is great, and I will forever praise the utility and beauty of foreplay. But trust me, you and I and everybody wants and needs the climax.

Foreplay is just a platform for the carefully orchestrated and strategic buildup leading inevitably to the, shall we say, fireworks.

I use a very sexual metaphor to refer to one's career because work is becoming more and more personal, intimate and demanding. At the same time, work today can become an outlet for people to express so much of who they are and how they feel.

If you don't feel pleasure or passion, or if you don't feel any climax coming up soon, it's time to seriously reconsider why you're hanging on to that job.

Life is just too short to fake it.