Are you happy at work?

I answered the question below from a user of Linkedin, and thought I'd share it with you. Many people, indeed, are in great danger of missing their vocation in life. Indeed, research shows that when confronted with a major problem, 85% of percent of people engage in self-denial. Often, to blot out the pain in their lives (such as a meaningless job where they don't feel fulfilled), they will tend to grab superficial pleasures like TV, shopping, video games, etc. The key, really, is to face the problem squarely in the face and do something about it.

Anyways, will post more about this later. :-)

QUESTION:

What is the danger?

What is it about YOUR livelihood that does not provide you with the satisfaction you are seeking? Why is that a problem for YOU?

I am interested in personal experience, not general societal observations. Don't hesitate to reply as a private (email) as I am most interested in real introspective honesty and will absolutely treat your comments with privacy and discretion.

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ANSWER:

In 2000, I quit corporate America for good, and if you had asked me the question then, I would have been unable to respond. I just knew something was missing, and it did, indeed as you phrased your question, feel like I was in "danger" of missing something important in my life.

So over the following years, I engaged in a search for my true career, and that somehow, most serendipitously, led to the creation of a framework that has helped me to visualize my "ideal career." The framework in fact is called "Ideal Career Framework." (This powerful framework / methodology is currently offered to all North American companies so let me know if you're interested, for personal or corporate use).

Anyways, my master premise is that one cannot build a career without having the basic knowhow about "career design," in the same way that one cannot design and build a building without architectural knowhow. Most people, unfortunately, think about their career in a very narrow-minded, piecemeal, reactive and fragmentary manner, which is why it leads to suboptimal results. We think of "jobs" and "salary surveys" and external stuff like that, which has little to do with who we truly are. This leads to perpetual dissatisfaction and lack of meaning.

Einstein said it best: we live in an age of profusion of means and confusion of ends. We can do basically anything, but we don't know WHAT we want to do (let alone WHO we want to become). These are not general societal observations, but truths that pertain to every human being. Indeed, the funny thing I discovered was that all the tools I created to discover and manage my own career can, in fact, be reused by millions of other people who are serious enough about their career and life to search for their ideal career.

Note: Here's a powerful technique or secret I discovered by talking to my sister Zoonie (founder of Talentelle -- www.talentelle.com) about career and life matters: "You cannot know how you feel unless you hear what you're saying."

And, of course, you cannot hear what you're saying unless you're talking to someone (otherwise, you would be talking outloud to yourself, and people might think you're a crazy person!). At the same time, verbalizing one's feelings is not enough. You have to be able to correctly INTERPRET your feelings. This is why the Ideal Career Framework (ICF) is so useful: it allows a person to correctly interpret and organize her thoughts and feelings. In the end, if there's chaos in your mind, there will be chaos in your life and career.

I will write more on this important subject.