Work, life and things in between – Day 103 – The mission!
Jill, a new friend from my Executive coaching program, and I were in a similar place in life. Sort of. She had just walked away from a thirty year public servant career, a successful one at that, and I had just left the corporate world, also a successful place.
She could have retired but had still way too much wind in her sail to do so. I felt the same. She had a nice home she shared with her husband and whether she worked or not had nothing to do with being able to pay off the mortgage!
That was where our lives split!
As I listened to her telling me about her coaching ambitions and her mission I got a funny feeling. Wasn’t her desire to help and support those in her previous work environment, to help them do the things she, in the end, was never able to do for lack of resources, support and vision, similar to mine?
Didn’t I want to coach Executives in senior positions who, as I, were on the road all the time, tired, lonely and for ever trying to catch up?
Were we looking to establish a business for ourselves or were we hoping at long last to be able to save the world? That old nagging feeling. Was this Peter Drucker or Mother Teresa we had in mind?
When one embarks on a new journey, one needs to make sure she does not carry old stuff with her. Old stuff would be unresolved issues, grudges, old dreams that never came true, etc…. Perhaps there is a reason why these things never made it to reality. Could be that one was in the wrong place to make them come true, or that they were the wrong things to do.
This is what the transition period is all about; figuring it out.
Cleaning house! what stays? what goes? Come on, that is the fun stuff! You can’t figure it out? ask a friend, write it down, put it on the wall and look at it morning and night, say it on tape and listen to yourself over and over again, talk about it on the train, on the plane, in your sleep. Flip a coin and see how you feel. Don’t stop until you drop!
I know a hamster that specializes in these things…
We talked some more but both of us felt like we had some more thinking to do around who our client was and given where we were, that was a good thing. To day 104.