ARE YOU CLOSE OR FAR AWAY?

In early 2005 I found myself very far away.  I had labored in sales for seven years; and even though I’d been somewhat successful, “fish out of water” was an understatement.  I had loathed the daily work, the self-induced stress, and the seemingly hopeless career trajectory.

Destiny was laughing its arse off at me.

To make matters worse, I became quite sick.  Although I had always been active and athletic, my body started to crack.  My hair started falling out.  I had bloated, painful joints as arthritis set in.  To put a nice bow on things, a doctor finally informed me that I had lupus.  I’ll spare you the litany of details on failed medicines, pain mismanagement, and the emotional toll it took.  Let’s just say the hardest battle of my life had begun.

DIVE INTO YOUR WATERS

During that time, a close friend became a regular mentor, and that seemed to change everything.  Our relationship was a great example of Tom Landry’s quote:  “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, gets you to see what you don’t want to see, and helps you to become who you always knew you could be.”  

As my sales career came to an end, I had no clue what my new beginning would be.  Although I’d always been interested in teaching and training, I knew that the local school system wasn’t for me.  After all, I understand that strangling unruly juveniles usually carries a prison sentence along with it.

Diving into business ownership, while risky, made the most sense for me.  While it produced a series of budget complications (imagine subtracting a sure $4200 from your income every month), it was the right thing to do.  

Having watched Braveheart multiple times, the idea of freedom was too alluring for me to stay in wage slavery.  There’s a scene in the moviewhere the Scots were facing a battle against an English army that was three times as large.  Some of the Scots hesitated, and demanded to know why Wallace (the Scots leader) was leading them into almost sure defeat.  Wallace responded with a resounding message, convincing his army that dying for freedom beats living in bondage.  

In short, I think what had happened with me is that I had become too complacent with my own slavery – much like the Scots had.  My job had no other meaning beyond “I do X to earn Y dollars” and that had become unfulfilling.  I had to get out, and I did.  So in June of 2005, Oberata Consulting was launched!

IT HAS BEEN A PIECE OF CAKE

Not really!  Like most any business owner, death is just “one iceberg away.”  

The message I’d like to most share is that work has to carry a significant meaning for you.  No matter how much money you may make, your work – or your business – must serve something larger than itself.  This requires you, in almost every case, to people others first.  It means taking risks that you wouldn’t take if self-preservation were your prime directive.

This may sound anti-capitalist or anti-profit.  Let me get one thing straight here, I am not talking about giving stuff away, and throwing yourself to the lions just because they are hungry.  But the truth is that people will always pay for value.  Value never goes away.  So if your business provides value – especially if that value is centered around your true asset (or identity), you’ll have little competition, and it’s likely you will thrive, no matter the economic conditions.

PROOF IN THE PUDDING

In 1960, a 20-year study of graduate students was begun. The study compared two groups of people depending upon how they answered this question:

“Should I focus first on financial security, and then pursue what is fulfilling to me? Or should I follow my interests, and trust that money will eventually follow?”

83% of the people in the study decided that making money should come first in order to create the opportunity to pursue their true interests. It’s a decision that most of us make when we face reality.

But as time goes by, we may find that a growing dissatisfaction with our work settles in. And we begin to question the validity of our decisions.

Perhaps you’ve asked yourself…

“Should I continue working in a business or career that provides little satisfaction… because it pays the bills? Or have I reached a point in my life that it’s time do something significant?”

Looking back at the two groups of graduate students, during the study an amazing pattern emerged. After 20 years, 101 of them were millionaires. Only 1 of them came from the group that decided to put making money first. The other 100 millionaires all came from the small group (17%) that decided that their true interests were worth pursuing first.

Now most of us aren’t necessarily seeking to become millionaires, but isn’t that precisely the point? Doing work that is personally fulfilling for you has a much greater likelihood of producing an outcome that includes financial security.

In other words, you can have both significance and success.

Special Thanks to Kevin Max, whose song “Be” and lyrics helped to inspire this post