You imagined not just becoming a doctor, but curing cancer.  You didn’t just day-dream about starting a business, but creating inventions that solved big problems.  You didn’t just see yourself as a poet, but the bard who reignited modern culture’s interest in verse.  (Okay, maybe that last one was just me.)

Over time, you reset your expectations of the possible.  Why?

First, friends and family urged you to be “realistic.”  Then the self-doubt crept in.  You became more cautious while also raising your standards.

After all, if you’re going to do something amazing, you have to be amazing, don’t you?

Finally, you realized the whole thing was taking a lot longer than you’d thought it would.  You were tired and your motivation was quickly sapping.

Finally you told yourself: who needs those silly dreams anyway?

When I put together the self-study version of my No Regrets Career Academy last year, I tried to answer all the questions about how to choose a career that I could conceive of in the material itself.

But the most common question I got back wasn’t about how to choose a new career at all.  What most people wanted to know was: how can I stay motivated to keep going on my quest?

In trying to answer one of the most important questions of their lives, too many wanted to just give up.

The problems that caused them to give up on their dream careers the first time were the same issues that caused them to quit the second, third, or fourth time around.  The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t dream big (though that got harder each time they gave up), but that they couldn’t sustain their efforts on a project that felt so huge.

In this post, I discuss the simple solution that’s helping my clients get over the hump, so to speak.  And why I realized I needed a dose of my own medicine.

The surprising reason we quit

In trying to help my clients when they felt overwhelmed and inadequate, the answer seemed obvious: you need to create incremental rewards.

You must take the time to celebrate your small successes, your insights and a-ha moments, not just the end result.

You can’t put the only prize at the end of a very long journey and expect that will be enough.  It would be like asking yourself to cross a desert without a glass of water, with the promise of a lake at the other end.  At some point, you’ll say, “Screw the lake, just take away the pain of this parched throat … now!”

But as an ordinary human (and fellow over-achiever, as many of my clients are), I realized I made the same mistake, just with other endeavors and journeys.

If it hasn’t been obvious from my posts, I’ve been on a bit of an emotional roller-coaster the last couple of months.  Instead of celebrating my successes, I’ve used them to propel me further and faster.

Sounds great, and there were times my happiness soared.  But riding what felt like momentum came with a cost, one that threatened to dissolve everything I’d built as well as my entrepreneurial self-confidence.

When you’re tired and anxious and feel like giving up, it’s easy to ask: what’s wrong with me?  Am I on the wrong path?

The relationship between success and celebration

This week I turned 40.  Last week, Everyday Bright turned 2.

There’s nothing particularly notable about turning 40 as opposed to 39, or a blog turning anything beyond the first 6 months, but it did feel like an important milestone.  Instead of continuing to ask what was wrong, I used the turning point to ask: what am I doing right?

I realized I’ve done so many things that, just a few short years ago, seemed impossible or at the least, overly optimistic.

• I’m living overseas in Europe, probably the biggest item on my life’s bucket list
• My business turned profitable in less than a year, despite a massive investment (too much really) in education and training
• I’ve built a community of people I love to interact with here on Everyday Bright
• I spend far more quality time with my daughter (around 15 more hours every week, plus 14 weeks of vacation a year)
• Recently, I made key friendships a priority, making time for friends near and far instead of always giving in to my introverted, workaholic nature

I succeed at resetting my potential and my view of what was possible.

What was wrong was that I failed to pause and enjoy it.  I hardly ever took time to look back and say to myself, “Wow, look at how far I’ve come!  What a view!”

Part of the problem, at least in my mind, is that the word “celebration” seems to imply more work in addition to the reward.  I have to plan something or save some money to pay for the treat.  And when I’m already busy, the last thing I want is more work.

As I’m trying to teach myself (and my clients), a simple celebration is nearly always better than a complicated one.

• Instead of planning a huge birthday party for all my friends, I’m having our personal chef make one of my favorite meals and a cake for the family
• Instead of buying something that feels good in the short term but just adds to the clutter, I’m buying books on my Kindle (and giving myself the time to read them)
• Instead of keeping myself up with worry by repeating “There’s more that needs doing,” I’m rewarding a day’s work with a good night’s sleep

These are small things that deliver bigger impacts to your quality of life … and work.

When you’re busy, it’s tempting to forget about the celebration and move on to working on the next accomplishment.  But that would be a huge mistake.

We like to say “life is a celebration,” but that’s only true if we make time for it, on our calendars and in our hearts.

I have to be very deliberate about my revelry.  I realized I take pride in telling people how hard I work and how busy I am–probably a hold over from a long career in corporate, where such traits are prized.

Turns out, I’d be a lot better off taking and talking about my celebrations.  People get tired of hearing how tired you are.  And the more you hear yourself say how tired you are, the more you’ll feel it.

I said in my post Is Self-Improvement Ruining Your Life that I was going to embrace my over-achiever nature instead of fighting it.

That meant I had to see taking time to celebrate as a mechanism to achieve.  And that’s not hard to do.

Over the last few months, I’ve learned if you continually short change your celebration, you’ll eventually hamstring your accomplishment.

I’m not giving up.

Instead, I’m going to nurture my potential by cultivating the habit of pause and reflection, by taking the time to enjoy those accomplishments as they’re happening.

Which means sometimes a post will be a day late, so I can celebrate 40 years of good living with a fancy dinner out and a classic West End show.

And if I’ve done my celebrating right, when I come back to work, I’ll feel energized, ready to chase my dreams, and darn lucky to have the opportunity to do so.

It was never perfect, sure, but what is?  You figured the irritations and self-doubt would go away, that you could change things with time.  After all, every relationship has its growing pains.

Except the feelings don’t go away.  They get worse.

You feel impatient, restless, and sometimes, yes, a little depressed.  When you’re being honest, you admit this isn’t the life you imagined.

Just when you’re about to give up, something happens that reminds you why you fell in love in the first place.  You think, “I just have to hang in there and give this a chance.”

Over time the spark begins to dim.  Again.

If we were talking romantic relationships, most of us would probably advise a friend in this situation to just move on already.  If you’ve been at it for years and you’re still unsure, what makes you think it’s going to get any better? There are lots of other fish in the sea, as the saying goes.

When it comes to careers, many of us fail to find the courage in our professional lives that we possess in our personal lives.  It seems so … different.

But is it?

Turns out, as your friend and career advisor, I’m going to give you the same advice: love it or leave it. But I’ll also do one better.

I’ll show you how to choose.

Love it

Many discount this option too early.  We assume we either have to settle for something less than what we want or look elsewhere.

If your career isn’t making you as happy as you’d hoped, there are things you can do to try to improve the relationship.  Here are just a few ideas.

1. Remember the good times–then recreate them.  Chances are, even in a career that’s weighing you down, there’s something about it you love. Maybe you love brainstorming with your colleagues or dreaming up new ways to impress your customers.  Find that spark, and look for ways to do a lot more of it.  It may just be that the “urgent” tasks are taking you away from what you love.
2. Ask for what you want.  Someone recently told me, “You have not because you ask not.”  It was true.  As a blogger, I waited a long time, hoping I’d be noticed and get asked to write for bigger blogs, then got frustrated when the opportunities didn’t magically arrive.  Once I started asking for what I wanted, I often got it.  When I got turned down, I worked to understand what skills I could develop to make me more competitive, then asked again.
3. Don’t take it personally.  In a relationship, when someone says, “It’s not you, it’s me,” we assume they’re lying.  In your career, it might be the truth.  Maybe you didn’t get promoted because they have another (and better) trajectory in mind.  Maybe you misunderstood the policy.  Whenever possible, give your career the benefit of the doubt.
4. Quit complaining.  Focusing on the negative is a vicious cycle.  That doesn’t mean things won’t happen that depress you or irritate you.  But as best as you can, let it go.  Accept that some days will be better than others, and see if your overall outlook improves.
5. Reset your expectations.  We see others who seem so happy all the time, like their career is charmed, and it’s hard not to feel a bit jealous.  Steven Furtick said, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”  Maybe it’s time to step back and think about what you really want and need from your career, instead of what other’s appear to have.
6. Find the real problem … then fix it. You know how sometimes you argue about something, but the real problem is something else?  It’s possible you’re suffering the same problem with your career.  You  have to get to the root issue, but then you also have to work to fix it.  Remember, it takes two to tango.

Is it love? The great news is that all the above suggestions shouldn’t take long to try, but you do need to give it your best effort.  Give it a few months (not years!) and see if you can rekindle the romance.  If you still find yourself entertaining thoughts of leaving, then this career probably isn’t meant to be.

Leave it

Once you know the love is gone and gone for good, leaving doesn’t have to be hard or unnecessarily dramatic.

You don’t have to have a sure thing waiting in the wings, though a little flirting with new faces and places might be a good idea.

Will your new career break your heart too?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

But maybe that walk into the unknown is exactly what you crave, in fact, it could even be exactly what you need.  Maybe the problem isn’t that your career failed you, but you failed yourself.  You took the easy route, and now you can’t find your way back to that adventure called life.

A client of mine sent me a passage from a book she was reading, Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design.  The author quotes the poet Robert Frost

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

And so does a career, she argues.

What I have learned from the relationships that failed me and the one that sustains me, what I have gleaned from my own impossible, unsettling career journey is this: the best things begin with fear.

The fear you’ll never find it, the fear you’ll lose it, that you’ll never be worthy, or that someone will take it away.

It’s hard to walk into those fears. But don’t be the one to take the opportunity for true love away from yourself.

Love it or leave it.

It’s as simple as that.

Editor’s note: Niall Doherty contacted me some time last year and offered to buy me a cup of tea while passing through London.  We became friends and I’m now a huge, raving lunatic fan of his blog.  This is his guest post.

I met a couple of Spanish guys last November at a hostel in Munich. Unable to find employment back home, they’d moved to Germany hoping for better luck. I’d run into them every few days in the kitchen or the lobby, and inquire about how their job search was going.

They never had good news to report.

When I inquired a little deeper, about how they were going about their search, I began to understand why. They were doing the same thing I suspect every other job seeker in Munich was doing: going through the local listings in newspapers and such and handing in lots of resumes.

They had enough savings to last them until Christmas, and if they hadn’t found employment by then they’d be returning home and making do there as best they could.

These amigos were also on the hunt for an apartment. They’d been finding that search equally unrewarding. The first day I met them I told them about the tactic I had used to secure a spiffy gaff in Amsterdam at 60% of the asking price within 48 hours of my arrival in the city. I suggested they try something similar. They didn’t seem all that excited about the idea, and I doubt they ever gave it as much as a second thought.

Now these were two pretty smart and together guys, nice people you wouldn’t mind working alongside or sharing an apartment with. They were following all the rules and hoping for the best. But, barring a miracle, I suspect they failed in their mission and had to return home to Spain at the end of the year, tails planted firmly between their legs.

Why?

Because there are surely tens of thousands of people just like them in Germany right now, all looking for jobs and apartments, all via the same channels. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough happy endings to go around. Only the exceptional will succeed.

Luckily enough, everyone has a shot at becoming exceptional, and thereby achieving success. There are two ways to do it:

1. Be the best
2. Be different

In the long run, being the best is your best bet. Work hard on yourself and build the necessary skills/resources so that you become the obvious choice for that job or apartment or whatever is in high demand.

But if you don’t have time to become the best, then I highly recommend being different instead. Ignore what everyone else is doing and try something else. Instead of sending a regular paper resume that gets lost in a stack with a hundred others, record a video pitch for the position and post it on YouTube. Or pick up the phone and have a conversation with the person doing the hiring.

If it’s an apartment you’re after, try the same approach I used in Amsterdam, or come up with something even more unusual. Don’t just keep doing the same thing as everyone else and hoping for a miracle. Nobody’s going to think you’re exceptional unless you actually do something exceptional.

And a quick hint: usually it takes courage to be different.

Most of us in the Internet age are afraid to pick up the phone and speak to a real person. More still are afraid of looking someone in the eye. It’s so much easier to hide behind email or a cover letter. So if you want to be exceptional, work hard on overcoming those common fears and insecurities that your competition won’t be willing to face.

A question for you: Where have you been spinning your wheels? How about abandoning the traditional approach and trying something altogether different?

Niall Doherty is the chief rabble rouser over at Disrupting the Rabblement, where he encourages you to think for yourself, live your dreams, and piss off zombies. He was last seen in Bucharest, the latest stop on his 4-year trip around the world without flying.

“I know you love your work, I just wish it didn’t make you so miserable.”

Say what?  I demanded to know what he meant.

He reminded me that I tended to push myself harder now that I am so engaged with what I’m doing, which means I’m frequently sleep deprived, overworked, and stressed.

“For someone who loves their work as much as you do, you just don’t seem that happy.  That’s all I’m saying.”

And yet if you asked me nearly any day of the week if I am happy, I would smile broadly and give you an emphatic yes.  Nor would I be lying.

Such is the paradox called happiness.

Most of you don’t know this, but I didn’t start this blog talking about careers.  What initially occupied my mind was whether one could design a happier life, because I felt something was missing from mine.  And since my relationships were already in good standing, my writing gradually started to focus on the career part of the equation.

Which is not to say I’ve figured it out.  In fact, I still find happiness to be complicated and occasionally elusive.

So I decided to interview one of my favorite authorities on the topic: Gretchen Rubin, author of the international best-seller The Happiness Project.

I devoured the book and really felt like I’d found a kindred spirit (as is obvious in my rather giddy introduction).  But I still had a ton of questions.  In this interview, Gretchen and I talk about:

• How do deal with your lingering feelings of career illegitimacy, especially if you want to follow your passion
• Why you need an atmosphere of growth, even if it scares you silly
• How to balance short-term stress versus long-term happiness
• How to stop bullying yourself with personal development goals (as I discussed in this post)
• 3 trick questions for uncovering what you really what from work and life
• How success sometimes sets us up for failure (and the surprising way to prevent it)

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Right click to download the audio file (MP3)

Right click to download the transcript

I hope you make time to listen to the interview or read the transcript.  It’s one of my favorites (among some amazing interviews).  But if you don’t, then take away this one quote

Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy

Not that I’m trying to tell my husband I told you so (ahem).

But it was wonderfully reassuring to know that I’m not crazy or delusional or teetering on the edge of that proverbial mid-life crisis. While I still have a lot to learn about designing a happy life, it’s also clear I’ve come a long way.

So what about you?  Are you happy?  And how do you know?

We tell ourselves that change is hard, that it only comes from effort and discipline and resolve.  We worry and plan and steel ourselves for the long haul.

It’s exhausting, but necessary.

Or is it?

As Chip and Dan Heath say in their book, Switch: How to Change when Change is Hard, you need to deal with three things when you want to make a change: your emotions, your rational decision-making, and the situation you operate in.

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

And because it sounds complicated, we often make it complicated.  We try to solve the problem by staging a dramatic struggle (and make no mistake, it is largely an act, though an unconscious one).

We announce flashy resolutions, we have long internal arguments about the importance of willpower, then sink into pitiful despair when we fail to make sustained progress.

What if there was a single exercise that could help you make a big change in just a few hours?

Let me introduce you to Steve, who went from flirting with a mid-life crisis to getting those butterfly feelings of excitement in his stomach for the first time in years–all in just one week.  And then I’ll introduce you to Jennie, who transformed herself from welfare mom to CEO.

The power of clarity

Steve is a recent enrollee in my No Regrets Career Academy.  He just turned 40.  Obviously, Steve joined my course because he really wanted to make a change in his career.

But within the first week, he made a major change in a different part of his life, one that he’d been struggling with for over a year.

Steve wanted to get rid of the clutter in his house.  He knew he had too much stuff and it was weighing him down: literally and figuratively.  But every time he had tried to make progress in the past, he came up with some excuse: either it wasn’t the right time, he was too busy, or he didn’t want to waste the money of a previous purchase by throwing something away.

One of the most undervalued commodities in our society is clarity.

We think we know what we want.  We think what’s holding us back is circumstance.

We’re wrong.

In the first week of my course, I lead my clients through an exercise to determine their core values.  If you’ve never taken the time to define, in detail, what your values are, it’s easy to think this is a waste of time.

Nearly all of my clients come out of this exercise saying, “Wow, I had no idea! Now I see where I was going wrong.”

Which is great, but that little insight alone won’t change your life.

Steve took things one step further.  One of his values that emerged was “simplicity.”  And maybe it sounds silly, but at that moment, he realized his clutter wasn’t just an unfinished exercise.  He realized he wasn’t living up to his own values.

It was a little like getting slapped in the face with your own hand.

The next day, he vowed to reduce his belongings by 50%.  He sent out a note to everyone he knew, offering up a list of items.  Anything unclaimed would go to charity or ebay.

And for the first time in years, he felt butterflies of excitement instead of fear.  He was doing something that moved him closer to his values, and it was really freaking exciting.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t setbacks.  Many people told him he was crazy.  They were sure he was closer to a mid-life crisis, not further.  Steve started to doubt himself.

And then he got an email from someone who’d taken him up on his offer for a rather unusual item: a clarinet.  The recipient had given the clarinet to her granddaughter, a gift that had made a big difference in the child’s interest and desire to pursue music.

And THIS was the key moment.  Because not only was Steve living up to his value of simplicity, but he unexpectedly lived up to another value he’d uncovered: enable others to express themselves creatively.

The power of Steve’s story is two-fold:

1. He had to get clear on his values, on what he really wanted and was willing to commit to
2. Then he had to act, and act quickly before his doubts took over, in line with those values

There’s a lot of advice out there on action and taking advantage of momentum.  I don’t disagree with it, unless you lack clarity.  Which, unfortunately, is most of us.

Clarity allowed Steve to tap into both his intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, and that was enough to keep him emotionally committed, not just rationally interested, in the effort.

How to lift off

One of the biggest stumbling blocks people tell me about is lack of money.  Maybe they’re in debt or maybe they’ve never found a way to sock away some savings, and the lack of a safety net eats at them.

I can almost hear them shrugging their shoulders, saying, “I made some bad decisions.  What can I do about it now?  I’m trapped.”

They haven’t met Jennie Hernandez Hanks.

I interview a lot of career changers, and Jennie was telling me about how hard her life was after her divorce.  She had no savings, no degree, no house, no job, and 7 kids.  Her Mexican mother advised her to start cleaning houses.   Someone of her background, her mother said, wasn’t suitable for much else.

Her problem seemed insurmountable.

But armed with a clear vision of the life she wanted for her children and the dedication to keep taking small steps, she got a business degree and eventually became the CEO of a Native American tribe.  She was responsible for managing hundreds of millions of dollars.  At the same time, she used her business principles inside the home, helping her kids go from D’s and F’s to college graduates (one recently graduated from Princeton).

I told her it reminded me of the unbelievable stories of a parents lifting a car off of a trapped infant underneath.  She told me, “Anyone can tap into that kind of strength.  They just have to have a good enough reason to lift car.”

In other words, if you can’t see your dream trapped under the obstacle, you’ll never lift it off.  It will seem impossible.

The trick to doing something that seems extraordinary is clarity.  You have to see what you want and what’s really standing in the way.

Which, as Steve might say, sounds a lot like simplicity.

So go ahead: change your life.  Change the world.  Or change the way you think about your problems.

Either way, change doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it.

Editor’s note:  This is a blog about career change, and sometimes change in general, but I’m not a financial expert by any means. Which is why I became an affiliate for Adam Baker’s program You vs. Debt, which reopens today.  I think he’s one of the best teachers on how reduced consumerism and debt can help you afford a life you love. Last year, his students collectively paid off more than $280,000 in debt, thanks to his program.  Because it’s so wildly popular, enrollment will only be open until Friday.  If you need clarity in your career, join the insightful group at the No Regrets Career Academy.  If you need clarity in your bank account, Baker is my go-to recommendation.