Underneath everything – the daily headlines of massive layoffs and bank failures, the squawking of bad news, and your unopened 40l(k) statements – there’s an internal dialogue of worry.
Not the worry that this Plan A you are living will be over. You’re pretty sure it will be.
The static in your head is because you screwed up.
See, you’ve been living Plan A so top-notch well, because you planned to swap it out eventually. It’s all coming back to you now, isn’t it?
Your Plan A has been based on this premise: work really, really, really hard … really hard … and then you can swap it out for the life you really want.
Where did you get that thinking? Who told you that? Is the tooth fairy your psychotherapist?
Right now, you might have a chance to go back and find a new plan, a Plan B that should have been “A” all along. Careful. The swap-out strategy at the end doesn’t work. It’s one of life’s biggest lessons, and the recession is giving you the gift of it.
A career demands time – give it, but not ALL of it. Whatever you want to do in your life, try doing it in tandem with work. It’s a new way of thinking - life AND work. Tune it in. No static.
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[...] After I’ve finished … dug out any fries that have fallen down beside my car seat, wiped down my steering wheel with a Handi Wipe (I’m not kidding), and disposed of the bag, so it doesn’t stink up my car … I am often disgusted with myself. Until I remind myself that I just gave a little money to a company that was a trailblazer in providing the kind of career ladder that I believe should be a part of every American story – a career “lattice”, really, that includes sabbaticals along the way, allowing people to work AND live. [...]