career-building saboteurs


We hang onto beliefs long passed their utility has expired – which means that decades can literally go by. We experience them as the saboteurs that keep us from feeling on our path in jobs that are otherwise a wonderful fit for the present moment.

The ones that need reflection are the ones that create the most pain and workplace grief. Beliefs therefore need not be assessed as being right or not, but rather for their ability to be useful. Whether they meet the criteria of being live-serving, ultimately joy producing, life-affirming … or not.

Reflect upon: What do you know that just ain’t so?

It was inspired by a Mark Twain quote:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The great secret impetus for real change is this: You can change your mind at any moment if you want a different experience for yourself.

Looking back at what I know that just ain’t so, I used to tell myself that it was “the stupidity of my youth” or that “hindsight is 20/20” or “if I knew better I would have done better” …  All just window dressing really for my real reasons for avoiding feelings and saying no to the gifts were waiting for me to take them up and blaze my own trail of blissful career creation.

To engage with life from a different space, there comes a time when you need to say to yourself: “I really thought this is how it was and I’m now open to learning from that experience and listening to my truth.”

Compassion for your truth = your wisdom = your life to live as you choose

Here’s a trip down memory lane for me:

Saboteur #1: In order for everything to be (al)right, I have to know what I want to be when I grow up. A secure job is necessary so that no one will have to worry about me. Including me.

Truthfully speaking, I knew what other people wanted me to be so that I wouldn’t be a bother or a worry. So I put a lot of pressure on myself as a result. Turns out that nothing others wanted for me actually appealed to me. As a grown up, I needed to dig deep to not know what I wanted to be, but rather how I was going to choose to be. Genuine, freedom loving, creative, soulful, strategic, dreamy. Then wouldn’t you know? My vocation revealed itself to me.

Saboteur #2: Love is sacrifice. There is a cost to having love in your life.

Truthfully speaking, I am love and in being that love, I draw to me, those that I journey with. This includes an intimate partner, but also the enterprising soul mates that help make my vocation manifest. Manifesting is about love. And because I work from this place, there is no room nor place for sacrifice. If I’m sacrificing, it’s movement away from love, not towards it. I choose to create with the whole of me, not pieces.

Saboteur #3: To be or belong with others I can’t be my true self.

Truthfully speaking, it was only when I dared to speak my truth and share my inner world with others at work that I felt appreciated, accepted and wanted. This was perplexing because I had been raised a people pleaser. I took that habit to work with me. My colleagues, unbeknownst to me at the time, wanted a colleague. Not a pleaser. More interesting work got offered to me because I revealed who I truly was. My problem was never finding work tho’, it was finding work that fit me.

Saboteur #4: There is a certain order to life and if I live it in that order I will be happy (aka “Happiness can wait”).

Truthfully speaking, a time-line is a prison for each of us lives a unique path. I created a lot of prestige in my career, but gave it all up because it wasn’t the least bit satisfying. It was more satisfying to begin anew and create a career on the foundation of authenticity. For my so-called “job” and I are inseparable. I do what I am. There is no longer a fight against that. Each step is honoured as one never taken before by any single human being before me. No one will live my life in the future, no one has lived it in the past. It’s just me and it’s just this once.

Solution: Happy journey = happy destination, no exceptions.

Reveal your own saboteurs to discover your own truth and wisdom.

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