Everyday people spin in frustration about whether they are in the "right" job. Work is a really important playground for our value in the world and let’s face it, we spend many of our waking hours “producing”. So our, job, our chosen career, the work we do, and the ideas we have about our future are very important to us as human beings on this planet, doing our physical work. We find ourselves pondering the questions as a regular songtrack in our minds.

Asking…
Right workplace?
Right career?
Right boss?
Right pay?
Right me in the world?

The questions can conjure up negative energy swirling and expletives flying through the “air”. I am in the wrong %^&^*place,  with the wrong @$%^& career that I no longer love and my boss….well, she is a ______and they don’t even pay me enough. 

“Where is my place in the world?”  we demand of the Universe! 

“Please guide me,”  we plead.

I was there for years...years...decades actually.

The weight of doubting myself and not fitting in at work was devastating and a source of constant stress in my life. The self doubt, the inner anger, the trying to be right for everyone else, finally drove my body to shout- “ENOUGH”.

I developed breast cancer 7 years ago. In each breast there were cells telling me all was not ok. I had to pay attention and what I found and heard inside will help you answer these same nagging questions.

“Mo, I didn’t even realize how stuck and miserable I was. I was paralyzed for years.”

One of my clients told me, after she climbed out, found herself, and made her move to a job she enjoys.

The statistics show, that over 70% of us don’t like our jobs. Wow! That’s way too many of us trudging off to work and sending miserable energy into the universe. How many of us are sending poisonous vibes and thoughts that inevitably will ripple back to us? 

We have all read that being in perpetual stress can ruin your body. Literally it can ravage your cells and breakdown your DNA. Real damage, not just theory, but high blood pressure, cholesterol, cancer. I attribute my many years of frustration and inner anger to what tipped me into breast cancer 7 years ago. 

As I recovered from the double mastectomy, I sat in my usual chair in the family room a few days after I returned home from the hospital, in a daze. I looked up at the bright blue sky outside my patio window. Birds were flying around like it was an ordinary day.

There I sat, in the same place I watched movies, celebrated the holidays and cheered on the sports I love. Now, I had drains in my body, pain shooting in places I was not aware of and I faced a painful recovery.

There I sat, in the same place as the world spun around and nature danced outside, nothing changed but me.

The questions still swirling as I sat with stitches, cut up all over my chest and abdomen was I going back to the…

Right workplace?
Right career?
Right boss?
Right pay?
Right me in the world?

I was successful by many standards, but I sat there wondering.

Thinking long and hard about what got me here, how unlikely it was for this to happen to me. I was the fit, positive, spiritually evolved one. But something had been wrong for years.

Sitting in my chair on that sunny November day, with my chest sown back like humpty-dumpty, I saw myself as the young girl looking for her dad to love her more, looking for friends to say how special she was.

I wanted to win at sports, I wanted to succeed at school. I wanted to be popular and charming, but I was shy and imperfect. I had to hide.

I hid because what was inside was not what was called for in the world of success. I had to compete, “only the strong survive”, “you need to push people aside to get ahead”.

All of these cultural norms didn’t fit the shy, imperfect and spiritual girl I was. I covered her up so deeply, she had to demand my attention with cancer.

So, I listened and turned inward. What else do you do when you are recovering from 13 hours of surgery and are feeling blessed that cancer didn’t win?

Hours of journaling, listening to my inner guides and desperately wanting to do things differently, I found myself. I found a loving, warm smart woman who wants to help lift others and do good in the world.

Yes, I still wanted material success, but what I really wanted was the feelings of doing a great job, the feelings that I was being all I could be. I wanted to feel alive.

Where I found my answers

The countless Wayne Dyer books, the Deepak Chopra meditations, all of the Tony Robbins goal setting I had done for years, finally came together for me. I decided to share it with my team when I came back to work. I decided to be a teacher executive. I abandoned the demanding high standards of my previous executive image. I connected with people at work and put myself out there as a champion for change and progress. I decided to lift my team, support their growth and bring all I knew about spiritual and career success and share. I found ways to teach the principles of personal growth and spiritual evolution. 

The way out is not what you think. It is definitely not the quit technique. The quit technique misses the point. That’s just too simple and solves nothing. The underlying reason for wondering whether you are in the right career must be addressed. The underlying reason for those questions is that you don’t know yourself and your true gifts. Once you do, you open up more, and the world opens up more with you.

The questions no longer haunt you once you know YOU!

This process is a game changer and helped me eliminate the nagging questions.

Right workplace?
Right career?
Right boss?
Right pay?
Right me in the world?

Here are the steps:

1.    Find out who you are inside.  Who are you inside? What do you enjoy most of all? What activity are you doing that makes it feel like the time/space linear world slows down? I have a complete workbook on this on my website. Your 30 Minute Mission Statement. Download it here. 

This quick workbook will help you get in touch with the “real” you under all that armor you have collected. Your world view of success may be, like mine was, to hide your true self, work your ass off, diminish yourself in meetings so others can look smart and put in all sorts of hours to prove your worth. But there is a new way, a better way, and a truer way.

When you meet your true self you can begin to incorporate more of that person at work. For me it was teaching neighborhood kids to ride two-wheel bikes without training wheels. I loved riding my bike, the faster the better. It was fun. I loved skidding into a driveway, just in time and having a “wow factor” to my arrival. A grateful parent paid me ten cents for teaching his daughter to ride a bike. I didn’t like watching kids struggle and work so hard at riding their new shiny bikes. I loved helping those kids enjoy their bikes more.

So, I went to work with this persona. I began teaching how to be more successful at work. My teams thrived! And I'd found my soul’s work.

2.    Find out what really matters to you.  Once I uncovered the secret genius of the teacher inside me, I was energized and wanted to get to it right away. What mattered to me was growing others. As long as I had influence and power, I was going to leverage it to grow my team. I began conducting meetings with fun learning experiences and my managers grew and felt alive. What was really important was tapping into my team’s soul and connecting there.

3.    Make sense of the wonderful gifts and talents you have. I found creative ways for me to express the real me. The inner me wanted to teach and delight and share my knowledge and share my secrets to success. I stopped wondering if I was in the right job. I stopped wondering if I was going to get recognized. I kept developing my team, my way and with music and creativity and fun games my team grew. They grew as people, they grew as leaders, they grew as colleagues in the company. We met our goals, hit budgets and when something went wrong, we rallied and solved it. We were creative and loving to one another. It was awesome!

4.    Show up fully and present and with all the soul-power you have.  Each day I reminded myself to show up as me. I reminded my recovering body to express my inner teacher, to be a bright spot in meetings and to lift and elevate others. I began to show up so fully at meetings and shine the light on other people’s brilliance that we were able to reorganize in a fun and inclusive way and start to implement monumental projects. 

And along the way, I stopped asking…

Right workplace?
Right career?
Right boss?
Right pay?
Right me in the world?

One unexpected day an executive recruiter called.  The most perfect job opportunity was presented. I grew into a bigger opportunity, more responsibility, more money, larger company. I had grown as a person so I was ready.

You see… questioning your career means you have drifted away from yourself. Most folks I talk to have spent years perfecting their skills, years of education, formal and on the job.  You have an investment. This investment takes some analyzing before you chuck it. 

Do not give up your day job to seek joy.

When you get to know YOU and you grow inside, then youwill have a clear vision of what’s next. Then you can confidently answer the vexing questions with certainty.

Right workplace!
Right career!
Right boss!
Right pay!
Right me in the world! YES to all!

Want a Career Change? Find yourself first.

Still wondering? Book a FREE Clarity Call with me.

Listen to my show “You Control the View”. The archives are available on Hay House Radio here.