your career doesn’t define your authentic life
From time to time I think it’s important to remind you that what you do does not define who you are or your authentic life.
Yes, I’d love for everyone’s career to be their passion, but that’s not always going to be the case and that is okay.
I was reminded of this earlier this week. A friend and I were catching up, and naturally, work came up in the conversation. He confided that he didn’t necessarily love his job—it wasn’t his passion, but it fit his current stage of life.
He is able to provide for his family.
He isn’t bothered with work stuff once he got home.
He has a lot of freedom and autonomy.
He is a better husband and more present father than past jobs allowed.
I told him that sometimes the career is a means to an end, and as long as that means isn’t making him unhappy, creating unnecessary stress, or negatively impacting the critical areas of his life like family and health, it’s serving an essential purpose.
He’s still living his authentic life, despite not loving his career.
He has made a conscious decision to continue with his current job because of all of the positives it provides for his family—the important part of this is the conscious decision; he is aware of why his career is not his passion and has made the decision to leverage it to prioritize his family life.
Who knows where this current job may take him and shape his future authentic life?
I share this for two reasons:
1. A reminder that your career does not have to be your passion and it does not define your authentic life.
2. When you make a conscious decision to do something less than ideal, it is perfectly acceptable because you know why you’re making the sacrifice; I struggle when I see people unaware of why they are in a less-than-ideal situation.
Even as you live your authentic life, you will need to make tradeoffs–the authentic life is not a perfect life, and often, the tradeoff shows up in your work.
🎧 Listen to today's Note on the LifeDesign+ podcast.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
🦅 Some ways I might be able to help you live your authentic life:
🤝 One on Ones Let's hop on Zoom to do a guided meditation, a creative brainstorming session, or an overcoming an obstacle session.
📝 LifeDesign+ LifeDesign+ is rooted in the Kinder Institute of Life Planning’s EVOKE process, which is a five-step process to help discover what your authentic life looks like and begin to design a plan to bring that life to reality. It continues to incorporate the alignment of your spirit, mind, and body to ensure you evolve with your authentic life, as the authentic life is not a destination, it’s an evolution.
💸 AlignedLife+ AlignedLife+ (and the one-time engagement AlignedLife) takes LifeDesign+ to the next level by aligning your finances with your authentic life at RLS Wealth. For individuals looking for a financial advisor to help design and manage their financial plan while maintaining the alignment of spirit, mind, body, and money, AlignedLife+ was created specifically for you.
📈 LifeDesign+ for financial advisors LifeDesign+ for financial advisors mirrors the LifeDesign+ relationship, including the focus on the alignment of spirit, mind, and body, with an important distinction—once the plan for your authentic life has been designed, we shift our focus to integrating your new plan with your practice.
🤝 Outsourced life planning As your outsourced life planner, you bring me in to take your client through the Kinder Institute of Life Planning’s EVOKE process to help them better understand who they are, what they want their life to look like, and create a vision of this life for you to execute on the financial plan. Since you are their financial advisor, you will be a part of each of the meetings, so you understand the “why” behind your client’s new plan.
