Where Is My Beautiful Career?

“And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’" 

Talking Heads

I have many regrets in my life. One is never seeing the original Talking Heads perform. The attraction of the David Byrne solo show is always alluring, yet a narrative in my mind makes me feel this would be a semi-hollow experience. I also once saw The Tom Tom Club (featuring Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz) which included Jerry Harrison being a guest member for that tour…again, super cool to see three TH founders on stage, but not what I was looking for.

Regardless of my musical misgivings, this epic band has formed the headline and inspo of this month’s blog. It’s a song centered on the loss of self-awareness, the auto-pilot forces that shape our lives, and the evil forces of passivity and resignation that can swarm over any of us.

Where is my beautiful life?

How did I get here?

Where does that highway go?

Let’s be straight; it’s so easy to drift in your career. At some point, you find yourself far from an animating vision for the thing that you thought you’d become. It’s increasingly hard to keep hold of that thread of purpose running through your days. The joy is rarer and rarer. The days become heavy and long. The career remorse starts to settle in. It feels like a Road To Nowhere.

My God, what have I done!?

So how did we get here? 

The problem is self-forgetfulness. We lose sight of who we are, why we do what we do, and what is leading our journey.

We get buried beneath layers of business and obligation. While we might grow in our careers in measures like money, status and title, we’re growing further away from ourselves. The sliders on the mixing board are going the opposite directions, and it creates a lot of feedback and dissonance.

Some of this is by design. In our 20s and early 30s, we’re in a purposeful period of experimentation, learning, and connecting.  We prototype, we learn, we fail, and we start to spin some threads that we will pull through our later years.

Then we age. The obligations of life start to pile up. We’re surrounded by so much noise, making it hard to hear the signals of our life and our Encodings.

So how do we solve this problem of self-forgetfulness?

We shift our energy and focus to self-discovery.

Using the many tools around us (such as books, self-assessments, coaches, journaling, colleagues, and podcasts), we can start a deliberate and planned process of self-actualization. We orchestrate a reunion with the core vision of our heart. We set the conditions for our natural Encodings and “native mode” to run wild across our work and life.

No matter who we are, we need a Wayfinder.

A Wayfinder is related to the idea of navigation. It’s the ancient Polynesian practice of navigating the open oceans using deep knowledge and intense observation. A Wayfinder is about what you look to and rely on when you’ve lost your way. It’s about how you traverse and move through your life and career with deep knowledge and intense observation. Of what? You!

Eventually, we can discover our Essence. We heed the unending call of our passions, feel the power of our natural operating system, and realize the equity of the immense self-awareness and wisdom we’ve accumulated in our lives. 

We have the courage to shift the conversation from “who do I work for?” or “what do I do next?” to “who am I to become?”

So some of you might be saying…”OK cool, but it’s too late for me to do that.”

Wrong. 

In his latest book What To Make of a Life, Jim Collins did deep research and came to an amazing realization within his study group - that almost half of people find their second and most purposeful career chapter in their 50s and 60s. 

It completely reframes how we viewcareer progression. It’s yet another sign that life isn't linear, and that early success isn't the only path. Hitting a wall, experiencing a career cliff, or losing clarity in middle age isn't a sign that your professional life is over—statistically, it is one of the most common runways for launching the most meaningful phase of your working life. 

Believe it or not, this is a hopeful message: you don't have to have it all figured out early, and a period of wandering is a necessary part of the process, not a failure. You’re never too late to design the career you’ve always yearned for. It’s within you.

So if this is resonating with you, today is your nudge to find your own path to self-discovery. Here are some questions to get you going:

What are your yearnings? What are your highest desires?

What’s missing in your career that you always wish you had? 

What were you truly built to do?