Because we need to earn money, most of us work. But it’s not always something we feel happy about, despite giving it hours of our lives.

Which can set up a daily sense of despair.

One that’s not always helped by the “find the work you love” brigade, who approach things from the perspective that each of us SHOULD be able to nail our heart, and therefore our work, on something or other.

I’ve got to tell you, that hasn’t been my experience.

What I love doing has shifted over the years. Yeah, there’s been a common denominator in that it’s all people development stuff, but the way I’ve loved doing that has ranged from having a paid job to various forms of working for myself.

Which at times has made me feel a bit of an imposter. I’ve thought, if I can’t figure it out, and my thing is helping people live and work on their terms, who can?

Some years ago, however, I had a bit of an twofold epiphany.

The first bit of it was that I was just going to tune out the “find the work you love” messages. They were making me anxious and so even less likely to be clear on exactly what it was I did indeed love.

The second was a major reframe. One that I’d like to offer to you. It goes like this:

It’s never a job per se that creates the feeling of love – or not. It’s what goes on in your mind as you’re doing that job.

And, while you may not always be able to change your job in the short term, your mind is more in your control.

So, rather than waiting for that illusive experience of “work you love” to come along and wrap its arms round you, take an attitude of love into what you’re doing just now.

Here’s how:

Revise your definition of love

Many people think of love as some gooey emotion; something that “happens” to them, as if by magic.

It’s not. Love is a choice. It’s an energy. A decision we can make about how we extend ourselves to other people and situations. Even people and situations that at times can be difficult and annoying.

You can decide to go find the best things in the work you’re doing right now.

You can choose that the project ahead of you will be something you’ll enjoy or something that will bore you shitless. Choose the former and you open yourself up and expand your energies. Choose the latter and you close yourself down and make life heavy for yourself.

Why suffer? Decide to enjoy what you do.

Be of service

So many of us go to work, wondering what it’s going to give us. What we’re going to get. This often just sets us up to be disappointed.

How about changing things round and asking what you can give; who you can serve?

It needn’t be a huge gesture. Maybe just offering a colleague uninterrupted time to talk through a problem. Or your boss an alternative way of handling a particular client. The important thing is that it comes from the heart.

Do it with no requirement that you get anything back.

Then see how it the feel-good factor bounces back at you as you experience extending your own horizons.

Don’t judge others

If we’re not enjoying work much, one of the symptoms can be judging others we work with and for. It’s pretty human. But judgement is such a heavy thing to carry. And it ends up separating us from people with whom we could otherwise have good connection with.

See things from other people’s perspectives. Empathise with them. Understand their experience. Be curious about it.

Practice forgiveness

If someone crosses you, try not to get caught in the drama. Forgive them.

If you’ve played small on something and have judged yourself, forgive yourself. Let it go.

Appreciate what work gives you

Be grateful for the things the work you do gives you. Do so on a daily basis. Write it down if it helps.

You can find gratitude for many things – a colleague bringing you back a Starbucks without even asking. A client writing a testimonial about you and sending it to your boss. The fact that what you’re doing has put money in your bank account again this month, keeping you financially viable.

Active appreciation again enables you to feel good about what you do.

Sure, it can take a bit of effort to rouse yourself to choose to love what you’re doing.

But a key benefit is that it helps you be lighter and clearer. Creating the space for you to consider what you really do love.

How do you bring love into your work? What results does it have for you and for others?

Alan Watts

Monday didn’t start out as a good day.

I hit snooze too many times, meaning my morning started with a scramble to get ready, and morphed into me feeling just a little behind all day.

Please tell me you have days like this too!

It didn’t improve. Instead of staying focused on what I needed to do, I skittered around on email and Facebook.

Then, late morning, for no good reason other than I wanted to, I stepped away from my desk to fetch coffee, and ended up buying a muffin. On a day I’d promised myself to be “good”.

I don’t think it was helping that it was another grey day here in England, nor that everyone I spoke to was bemoaning the fact.

By early afternoon, I was thinking of calling the whole day off and starting afresh the following, when the sun appeared.

I just looked up from my computer, where I’d actually managed to make some progress on a proposal I was writing, and the field outside my office window was basking in it. I had to go out, and did so, telling myself I’d mull over my proposal as I walked.

And I did. Well, for the first ten minutes or so, until a family of pheasants caught my eye in a field I was walking past. I stood there for ages just watching and listening to them. They are at once gawky and beautiful. I love the way they seem to hobble along the ground with their chins jutting out, like drunken hard men.

I reached in my pocket for my iPhone, thinking I’d get some great pictures for Facebook. But I didn’t have it.

A moment’s disappointment was replaced by me laughing to myself. I love it when the universe steps in. I wasn’t supposed to be taking pictures of the moment.  I was supposed to be in it.

Point taken, I carried on with my walk, now much more present to what was going on around me. I saw a red kite swoop down right in front of me, picking up a branch, presumably for nest building. I saw some new little lambs with their protective mothers eating grass nearby. I saw a couple of ducks fly overhead. And, just as I got home, I saw a tiny deer cross the field in front of me.

Home, I made a cup of tea and took stock. I had a choice. I could either focus for the rest of the day, or I could fritter. Doing both was making me unhappy. I struck a deal with myself. I’d focus for the next couple of hours. Then I’d allow myself to hang out.

So, I switched off all possible interruptions and got my head inside my Mac.

The proposal that had taken hours, was finished and sent off in less than sixty minutes. Language seemed to flow better and it was all hanging together with more grace. Meaning I had two whole hours in which to chill.

I was so delighted that I kept everything off and read for a while. It felt like a holiday and I was harbouring no guilt.

A lot of guts.

You have to stand against the norm in so many respects. And that requires a whole lot of courage.

Which at times can be tough. It helps to have a bold endeavour – something you’re really passionate about. Your “why” as Simon Sinek would put it.

But you still need all kinds of courage to carve out your own life.

Here’s my list of the different types of courage I see the need to exercise. And how to begin to do just that.

The courage to take your dreams seriously

We grow up socialised in what’s acceptable if we want to do well and fit in with life. Get the grades, get the job, the promotions, the partner, the children, the apartment, the car…

One day we wake up to the gnawing doubt that our perfect lives don’t feel so perfect lived from the inside. That we want something else; something different. We begin to imagine what different might look like.

People creating life and work on their terms dare to take their dreams seriously. They don’t just see them as something they allow on a drunken night on vacation, only to pack away again with the sun cream. They talk them out. They say them to the world. Speaking them gives them voice and form and legitimacy and shape.

Want to take your dreams seriously? Start to talk them out with people who will listen. See how it feels just to allow them space.

The courage to try

Next, there’s the courage to try to give life to your dreams.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” goes the saying. What would that single first step be for you?

Want to free yourself from a dependent relationship with a client or employer? Open yourself to all the possible alternatives for you and allow yourself to explore them.

Want a job that better suits your strengths? Describe the job for yourself, update your CV making sure that it builds your case, then go find recruiters who handle such positions.

Your dream is of writing a book? Maybe the first step is creating a blog to rally some interest around your subject and then writing a short eBook that you sell via Amazon to road-test the idea.

Trying, as we’ll come to in a moment, doesn’t mean setting yourself up to either succeed or fail. Have the courage to see trying as an experiment. Something you can learn from.

The courage to say what’s true for you

Living and working on your terms means having the courage to speak your truth. What does that mean?

It means being honest in giving an opinion on things, or in saying where things are at for you.

Remember the story of the Emperor’s new clothes? The one where an important figure is tricked into believing he’s wearing a new suit when he’s utterly naked, and everyone goes along with the deception for fear of being found to be unfit? Speaking the truth is saying, as the child did: “the Emperor is naked”.

In business, it’s about having the courage to put a value on your work and sticking with it.

In relationships, it’s about saying honestly what you feel, what you fear, what is and isn’t working.

Is that going to upset people? It may do. But sometimes living on your terms challenges you to face that upset down. Stop fitting in or playing the game.

The courage to look like a fool

Often living life on your terms means doing things that, today, even to yourself seem stupid.

Ritchie Norton tells the story of how Jeff Bezos was sitting in a secure, well-paying job, when he had the idea to start Amazon. From the perspective of today, Amazon was not such a foolish idea. But, in the mid 1990s, when Jeff took his decision to quit and set up an internet company that he was going to run out of his garage, the idea looked like insanity.

The courage I imagine Jeff used at that point was the courage to look like a fool. To hear the doubters and the folks thinking he’d lost it, but not take on their judgement.

Last year, three kick-ass international coaching friends (Vanessa Horn, Melissa Ford, and Nadja Taranczewski) and I were talking.

We were upping the ante on ourselves around how we ran our practices. We wanted to step out from some of the restricting norms around what it meant to be a coach. Be ourselves in how we work. Channel that into how we create clients. How we offer bespoke approaches. How and what we charge.

One of our persistent questions was how you notice the doubters and move beyond them. The people who think you’re crazy. The folks who challenge:

“And who do you think you are?”

We set up a mastermind group with that name to support one another in finding the courage to grow beyond where we were, and move in different directions.

Our experience: you have to recognise the doubters and dare to stare them down.

The courage to change

We can hold the belief that, once we’ve got through school and university and committed ourselves to a particular lifestyle, it should be like that forever.

That if our friends, families, significant others see us as a particular kind of person, we shouldn’t become something different.

But does that need to be true?

Sure, we may have commitments around finances, family and relationships that we will of course want to honour. But does that have to restrict us to a life of massive compromise?

So, another form of courage is that of daring to get creative about separating out what your committed to, from how you’ll honour your commitments. Also of helping people really get, that if you change, you want and value their support and you want to take them with you.

The courage to fail

Oh, yes. You won’t always get things right. Don’t even expect it.

If you’re anything like me, there will be times when you will screw up big time. Or outcomes won’t be as you imagined.

Here’s a thing: it’s not failing that’s a problem. It’s how you deal with it.

So, the work you thought plays better to your strengths doesn’t live up to your expectations. Don’t castigate yourself for it.

The first book doesn’t sell.

That piece of work you thought you’d contracted vanishes.

The courage here is about looking failure in the eye and seeing what you got from it. What things are you proud of doing, no matter the outcome here? What did it teach you? What are you grateful for in the experience?

“I handled myself with dignity. I was me throughout. I kept my word. I gave it my best.”

Then it’s about picking yourself back up and keeping going.

The courage to succeed

You might think it’s odd that I list this at all, never mind that I list it last. But being successful in living life on your terms takes a different kind of courage again.

It’s about allowing yourself to acknowledge when you’ve broken through things that have been personal barriers for you, and starting to really feel the benefits.

The book gets its own small audience on Amazon or your blog, and it’s helping bring you into contact with people who share the same sense of what matters as you do.

You said you wanted to shift your client base and you’re starting to see signs of new business opportunities open up.

That idea you thought no-one would buy is gaining traction and you’re being invited to consult with clients on how they might integrate it into their business.

Whatever, you’re loving the greater sense of freedom and well-being it’s giving you. Have the courage to allow yourself to really feel that.

Conclusion

Living your own life means being yourself, and that requires a lot of determination and daring.

Courage takes many forms. These are the key ones for me.

But, what have I missed? What kind of courage have you had to engage to support yourself? What else might you try?

Maybe it’s a business thing. Or something you think your company could benefit from. Or that your community could use. Maybe it’s even a romantic inkling.

But you’re hesitant to act on it.

You have lots of reasons why not:

• You don’t have the time
• You don’t have the courage
• You don’t have the money
• You don’t have the skills

Besides, you haven’t really thought it through perfectly.

What if you ended up failing and looking like a fool?

“Who do you think you are to try that…?”

And maybe the whole thing is just stupid.

If this all sounds familiar, you want to read Richie Norton’s The Power Of Starting Something Stupid. His view is that “stupid is the new smart”, and his book is about helping you “get” that mindset and then putting it into play.

Even if you’re someone who’s already a bit of a positive deviant, you should take a look, if only for the introduction. Richie’s heart-breaking story of losing first a brother-in-law, and then a young son – both called Gavin – will remind you that life is short and that no-one should hang about.

Beyond that, there were three other pieces that stood out for me:

Where you don’t want to be: lost in waiting

Here, Richie talks about how so many of us defer doing something until we’ve achieved something else. I guess, like me, you know what he means – putting off allowing ourselves to feel fulfilled until we’ve retired. Putting off dating, or going for a big job interview until we’ve dropped a dress size. Putting off talking about an idea until we’ve got more clarity about it.

Reading about this made me ask myself whether I might currently be waiting for something. And I had to admit that I’ve had this idea now for a couple of years about getting a book published.

Why am I waiting? All kinds of spurious reasons: till my concept is clearer; till I have more time; till I have more courage. Reflecting on Richie’s words made me call myself out on these things.

I’ll have neither more time, nor a clearer concept unless I put myself to the task of creating. And the first step to having courage tomorrow, is to find enough to get started today.

Stupid projects: how one thing leads to another

Often imagining where to start with some of our ideas is the problem. It’s like the proverbial elephant. Where to start?  Richie has an interesting take on this which is, instead of being so precious about whatever it is, think of it as a project, or experiment. Take it from being nebulous into some manageable actions we can get our heads and arms around. And begin.

And from there kind of allow the thing to shape its own direction. Not put pressure on it to succeed or fail. Allow it to be a work in progress.

So, my book idea? Well, before I realised I was making excuses about just getting on with it, I’d signed myself up for a workshop, run by a group of publishers, on how to write best-seller. However, no sooner had I committed to getting on with the job when an email landed in my inbox from the organisers inviting me to take part in a book proposal competition.

At first I thought, OMG, I can’t possibly do that.

I’m not ready.

What if I write something and it’s crap?

What if I don’t get shortlisted?

Then I thought, hold on. Let’s look at it as an experiment.

I’m going to write this book anyway – either it’ll get published or I’ll self publish. Either way, I can’t fail by pitching a proposal.

I will be curious to see the response, and take that as information on what will and won’t work around my writing.

And I’ll stay open to the process from there. It may go in one of several ways at the moment, all of which is fine with me.

There’s a path from stupid to meaningful success

One of the things Richie does well is describe the principles required for the journey from having an idea to experiencing success. These are:

1. Crush fear
2. End pride
3. Overcome procrastination
4. Be authentic
5. Serve, thank, ask, receive, trust
6. Leverage existing resources

This really reminds me that we are ourselves the biggest obstacles to our successes and that the path through these obstacles is one of self-development and self-mastery. It’s about owning our own creativity – by which I mean our ability to make things happen – and building our mental and emotional muscle to help do so.

Take pride, as an example. So many of us don’t go after our wild ideas because we don’t want to risk looking stupid – particularly to our family or peer group, and particularly if we’ve till now created a life based on relatively more superficial values. To get past this we need to own our human vulnerability; see it as a strength.

Might I look stupid if nothing comes from telling you what I’ve shared here about my book? I guess so. But it also feels real to be able to share with you something from my own experience.

Don’t wait. Start something stupid

Sure, there are concepts in this book that you can read about more fully elsewhere. The importance of honoring your word; the value in connecting with your “why”… But, Richie makes these things tangible, relevant and very accessible.

Like I say, go read.

And then, go do!

Meanwhile, a question for you:

What are you hesitating on? What’s your stupid idea? What’s making you wait? How might you start to get your idea moving?

Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Smart, professional people hurtling through life at break-neck speed, overwhelmed by just how much you have to do. And feeling in an almost permanent state of exhaustion.

Waiting for the weekend, or your next holiday to catch up on sleep and re-energise.

And maybe you do.

But, too often, these times get used for preparing for the next onslaught. And then there’s your constant companion, your smart phone, happy to interrupt you or to enable you to interrupt others if something “urgent” comes up.

It’s not that you don’t love your job. But that you have times of wondering whether it’s going to be this way forever.

You don’t want things to be less exciting or interesting. But you do want to feel less out of control.

You know how I know this?

Because I’m you.

My wake up call

“You are depressed.”

I sat there opposite the nice doctor and burst into tears. I was working all the hours God sent, trying to keep up with all that was demanded of me, and keeping myself afloat on a diet of chocolate, coffee and wine. I was looking like I’d aged ten years in less than twelve months, and I’d put on more than a stone in weight.

Most alarming of all was that my drinking habit was getting out of control.

I woke up one morning and had no memory of how I’d got home the night before. That’s when I knew I needed help.

I had no clue what “help” might actually look like, but I figured a good starting point was my GP.

I imagined I’d walk in and tell him I was drinking too much, in the same way I might tell him I had tonsillitis, and he’d give me some prescription or advice that would sort things out. All very business-like, and I’d go away happy.

I hadn’t anticipated he’d ask me why I was drinking so much, nor that I’d start unravelling when explaining just how out of control my work and life was.

All I could do was just sit there and go with it.

“It’s not healthy to be working the way you are,” was what he said to me. “It’s making you ill. You’re using drink as an escape. We need to get you some help.”

Back then, I’d never done any form of counselling or coaching. I was the boss. I referred staff to these services. I was aghast that I might need some myself.

But the doctor referred me to a wonderful psychologist with whose help things began to change.

How keeping yourself too busy messes you up

Truth is, when you’re a professional, your work means a lot to you, and you love being plugged into it. You love to feel it needs you; that you’re indispensable. That you make a difference to it.

All these little interactions – the email and text exchanges; the voice messages; the IMs on the intranet – they can become impulsive. And they can give you a buzz. To our brains, they can be like little alarms.

Thing is, our brains can’t discriminate between one form of alarm or another. It reacts to them all in flight or fight mode and by dumping adrenaline into our bloodstream. Adrenaline’s function is to keep us alert. We can become very “adrenal” and get caught in a vicious circle where we need lots of stimulation in order to be able to stay that way.

But too much of it over too long a period wreaks havoc with our blood sugar levels. Which in turn messes up lots of things from our ability to metabolise fats and our heart health, to our brain chemistry and our outlook on life.

Its impact on me was to cause me to become depressed.

My doctor prescribed anti-depressants, which at the time I gladly took. But I didn’t want to be a long time user and knew that I needed to sort out my experience of always being overwhelmed.

I’m going to tell you the 5 key things that have worked for me in taming that monster.

Before I do, you should know that there are 2 core principles underlying all of these.

Understand that you have choice

“I’ve got client work to do.” “I have to get back to a colleague on something.” “I just want to hear back from someone on a proposal and then I’ll stop working.”

I tell myself these things all the time.

But if you want to be feel more in control, and – dare I say it – more balanced in yourself, they’re signs that you’re, at least for the moment, hooked in.

The reality is successful people, who are also healthy, understand that they have choice and they exercise that choice consciously every day.

Yes, you have to engage with your boss, your clients and your colleagues. But who is pulling your strings? You or them?

You HAVE TO be the first person to respect your life and your choices, otherwise how can you expect others to respect them?

Get clear about your personal boundaries

Exercising your choice means getting very clear for yourself about what your boundaries are.

In other words, what is and isn’t okay for you?

How long will you work every day? What compromises are you prepared to make, and what not? What’s a “yes” for you, and what’s a “no”.

You might not yet be clear about these things. That may take some time, exploration and, frankly, getting it wrong on more than a few occasions.

You may have to open your eyes in a new way to the forces at large in you, and in your company culture, that play their part in inviting you to feel overwhelmed.

Managing your boundaries means developing a bit of personal toughness. Some assertiveness, if you will. Walking out the door at 6pm. Leaving a call unanswered to the following day, if at all.

When you do this at first, colleagues may look at you a bit oddly. Or make a bit of a joke. Don’t worry. Keep going.

Is that difficult? It can be.

But it’s the only way.

Putting that all into practice looks like this:

1. Create every day your way

This seems unimaginable when you’re on automatic pilot and fulfilling a diary full of calls and meetings that have been set up by others.

But if you want to assert choice in how you will do your work so that you calm the overwhelm, you need to find 5 or 10 minutes at the beginning of each day to decide what you want from it.

• How do you want to turn up for yourself and for the world today?
• What will you do today that furthers your key objectives?
• Who will you serve today?
• What do you need not to do today?

Leave off checking email, text or social media until you’ve done this, so that you can get ready for your day in calm, and without already being bombarded by thoughts of other things you “should” do.

2. Switch things off

One of the traps we can all fall into, me included, is to be constantly “on”. So, you’re in the middle of an important conversation, or you’re thinking through something important and there’s a ping or buzz as an email, text message, or call comes through.

You immediately get distracted and need to know both who it’s from, and whether it’s important.

Either way, you’ve succumbed to the alarm, dumped another load of adrenaline into your system, and added to whatever chaos is out there in your world.

To rein things in, switch email off in the background of your computer when you’re working on something that deserves your full presence. And your phone off, whenever you’re with someone to whom you want to give the experience of your undivided presence. You know, like your partner, friend, child, direct report…

3. Decide how much time you want to spend working

One of the great things about technology is that we don’t need to be in offices all the time in order to be working. Mobile telephony allows us to be, well, mobile and to work virtually. I love that.

But the downside is that the boundary between work and the rest of our lives can become blurred, meaning we can end up working all hours of the day or night.

When was the last time a business colleague sent you an email at midnight? Or at 5am? When was the last time you sent an email at that kind of time?

If you want to feel less overwhelmed by work, you need to create some cut-off for yourself around when it’s okay for you to work, and not. And then exercise it that way.

For example, I figured with my consulting job that I’d work late two nights a week – on the nights when there were team meetings or team dinners.

The rest of the time, I finished in good time to get myself to the gym, and still have time for a healthy dinner. I deliberately did not check email or voicemail on these evenings. Which meant I began to start feeling a lot more refreshed on a daily basis.

The fear is that you’ll get less done if you dare to take this approach. My experience, and the experience of folks I coach around this, is that the opposite is true.

4. Figure what else you want life to be about and go do it

When I ended up at my doctor’s door, and started talking to my therapist, I began to understand that work was my life and my life was work.

I was holding some big, deep-seated resentments about lots of things, from never having enough time, or energy, to get to the gym, to having no social life beyond the pub time I spent with work colleagues.

As I said above, part of my kissing overwhelm goodbye, was deciding to make the gym important and carving time out for it.

One of my clients some years ago decided that writing was important to him and found a way to create an afternoon a week where he took himself off with his Moleskin and just wrote.

Another client decided that good old family TV time was important for him and re-created his entire way of working to enable it.

5. Calm your system down

While there’s much you can do around how you behave, these things will have limited effect if you keep overloading your system with caffeine, chocolate, alcohol and other stimulants.

Once I knew that alcohol was a crutch for me, I gave it up for a while.

But the coffee thing I find much more difficult. What I do now is allow myself 2 good coffees in the morning and then that’s it for the day. You might want to take a similar approach. If you need something in the afternoon, try a green tea. Or even just one regular English Breakfast tea.

But being a bit more measured – without necessarily being perfect – on these things allows you to sleep better and for your poor old adrenals got get a bit of a rest. Which just allows you to become more resourceful and on top of your game.

The bottom line?

Do something

You know, reading this is well and good, but if you really want more balance, you have to make it happen for yourself. No-one is going to give you permission, and all the signs are that more and more people are burning out from the overwhelmingness of professional life.

It will almost certainly take you time. I put some of the key things in place immediately I confronted my own overwhelm and felt much more in control within a month. But it took a good six months after that, if not longer, to really feel that I’d cracked it and that I was still doing a good job.

But it’s worth the effort. I can still have times, as I’m sure we all can, of feeling there’s just too much to do. But for the most part, I’m calm, happy and far from overwhelmed.

What about you? When do things seem crazy for you? What do you do to tame the overwhelm monster?

I’d loved him and it was harrowing to be there.

Still, I was heartened by the sheer number of friends, colleagues and clients who’d turned up to see him off.

At the get together afterwards, we all spoke of what he’d meant to us. I’m sure if he’d been there to hear our words, he’d have cried too.

Ben knew his stuff. He worked hard. He was courageous. He was naughty. He was funny. He was caring. He was loving.

But beyond all else, in a world where so many people hide behind an invented version of themselves, he was real.

Real.

And that stayed with me beyond Ben’s Do and into the past days.

Legacy: what do you want to leave behind when you die?

You’ve probably read the same stuff I have about legacy. Maybe it’s something that’s come up for you in some of the courses, or weekend workshops you’ve attended.

What do you want your life to have been about? What is it you want to leave behind when you die?

Often the emphasis is on tangible things. Money, a business, a novel, a work of art, a movement. I must admit that’s how I used to see it.

But I’ve begun to reframe it since Ben died.

I’ve begun to feel that, like Ben, the biggest thing I could leave to others is the sense that I’d been real. That, for good or bad, I’d lived a life, true to myself and my values. And that, in the process, I’d given others implicit permission to do the same.

The big job opportunity and the myths of self-employment

Maybe I already had a sense of that emerging earlier this year when I said no to an opportunity to take my work in a different direction.

A group of friends and former colleagues are setting up a new consulting company, and I was involved in some exploratory conversations. They are great guys, and from time to time we hook up to do some great facilitation and coaching work. I got really excited about the opportunity that emerged for me, which was to lead part of the business.

If you’re a regular reader here, it might surprise you to know I’d been tempted by what was, after all, a job.

But, you know, there’s a whole lot of mythology out there about how easy it is to work for yourself. How it’s an escape from the drudgery of corporate life. How you can make up your own rules and create your own game and it’s light and happiness all the way.

You absolutely can create your own life.

But that has its own set of challenges. You have to turn up for yourself every day. You have to be very disciplined about what you will and won’t give focus to in order that you stay viable, profitable, and not working all the hours God sends.

You have to decide for yourself the bigger sense of purpose and direction you’ll follow – there’s no big organisation, or brand, other than the one you create.

Sometimes that requires you to dig into yourself and to confront and challenge yourself in ways you’d really rather not.

Even if you are successful today, there’s a whole stream of tomorrow’s success you have to enable. After all, there’s no-one other than you putting a salary in your bank account every month, or whenever you decide to pay yourself.

It’s also tough sometimes to stand outside the norm and to be the person who is playing a different game.

To be the one who challenges the status quo, says things that no-one else will and trust you’ll still be profitable.

Sometimes I just ache to fit in. To be part of something bigger.

I think that consulting group caught me at a moment of questioning all that. Of believing that maybe I’d got it wrong.

I was ready to buy some new power suits, get behind a brand that was bigger than me, and go sell it.

But I began to have doubts.

I began to look past my self-criticism of the last couple of years – the fact, for example, that I’d almost given up on this blog – and see what I’d actually created.

The truth? I’ve created a life on my terms. I do wonderful work – a mixture of corporate and individual coaching. I tend to do no more than three paid days a week. Last year I had twelve weeks holiday, traveled to six different long haul destinations, and still earned well.

Last summer I moved house and love where I’ve ended up. A city style house in a friendly village, and within easy reach of a few nice towns.

Perhaps most important of all, I have a fabulous relationship with a man I love and whose company I adore.

And I began to see the value in having created all of that.

For me. For my clients. For the world.

Yes, this takes work. Yes, I want to achieve even more and different. Yes, this takes me back to myself time and time again.

But, for me, it’s real.

Because, being real is about being who you are.

Sure, a former me could do power suits and all that stuff. And part of me still does. But she’s not all of me. And so I really saw that I couldn’t shut the creative, maverick, different kind of me out.

I took courage in both hands and spoke to my friends. I had some concern that, in deciding to be real, I’d lose their love and friendship. I’m sure that fear’s not uncommon. In fact I know it’s what often keeps people trapped.

Still, I told them that as much as I’d love to work with them, a “job” wasn’t me.

To my surprise, if anything, I think they’ve ended up respecting me even more.

What’s really worth it in the end?

I don’t know about you, but when I die, I won’t be thinking about power suits or corporate identity or whether I was an ace at this job or that. I’ll be asking myself whether the people I love knew it beyond it beyond any doubt. Beyond that, was I happy? Had I lived well? Was I true to myself? Did I do the things I wanted in life? Go to the places I wanted Spend time with the people I wanted to spend time with?

These are the things that to me are worth living and working for.

These are the things that are real.

What about you? Where do you allow yourself to be real? Where is it more difficult? Share your thoughts in the comments and let’s talk about it some more there.

It’s changing the game.

Which is why Julia Briggs’ company, Interimity, has recently caught my attention.

At a moment in time when traditional recruitment companies – including their interim management practices – are struggling, Interimity threatens to change the playing field.

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, Interimity takes a community based approach to finding and sourcing HR Interim assignments.

But where did the idea come from and what does anyone get out of it?

I caught up with Julia in London the other day to hear more:

Why

“I started the group after a shocking 3 months of dealing with interim agencies as a candidate. I’d rarely been impressed with recruitment firms during my previous 15 years on the client side. But it was being on the other side of the fence that made me see it was no wonder things were so bad.

“Due diligence, understanding and basic manners were in short supply.

“So, how could it be done better?

“Not just for clients and prospective candidates, but also for HR independents like me. How could I harness the trusted talent network that I knew was potentially out there?

“The solution was Interimity – a recommendation only network of HR interims and consultants – never more than 150 to 200, with an ‘up or out’ policy to keep the focus on quality and collaboration.”

But you’ve invited me to be part of this high calibre, exclusive group, and I’m not an interim

“It was a deliberate choice to mix consultants and interims and it has really paid off. Broad brush stroke, but the former tend to be more collaborative by nature and have encouraged a contributory mindset from those who tend to be more focused on individual assignments.

“I have also included ‘friends’ in the community – people in our space – like you – who would never look to us for work, but who we rate and vice – versa. They include editors, employment law specialists, branding experts etc. even specialist accountants who can answer some of our personal business questions.

“Our friends have provided us with some great PR – for one of them we produce 6 articles a month (www.hrbuzz.com) – they get content and the individual and Interimity gets exposure.”

Sounds great. But are you really a business? Do you really make money?

“Yes, it is a business. And was set up as such, so your comment about community based organisations ‘not setting out to make money’ is interesting. And you may be right.

“However, the idea was always not just to have a network (we share on line and off-line) but to market us to potential clients. So far, we have clients in outsourcing, retail, utilities, professional services and IT. More would be nice. And as well as running the community side of things, it’s very much my role to build client relationships and win assignments.

“That’s made easier with potential clients coming both from the group and from referrals from group members. I also ask for recommendations of who we should be speaking to, or if I am targeting a particular client, for any insight or connections. And I usually get a good response.

“However, it’s not about me making loads of money – I have always said there will be profit share……(and we are now in profit) and one day, I might even turn it into some sort of co-operative, or widen the ownership in some way. Just a thought at the moment, but…….”

So, what’s in it for clients? What’s different?

“As well as turning around assignments incredibly quickly (being on line, knowing the members well) an added layer within the group is that you cannot be considered for client work unless you have passed an in-depth, four-stage assessment process which currently has a 30% fail rate.

“As a client I wanted really well qualified candidates put in front of me. That’s the agency’s job – to do the hard work.

“About one third of the group have completed the process even though they have not necessarily gone forward for a role – but because you get detailed feedback, it is attractive from a personal development perspective. Members see it as a badge of honour as well, and post in the group that they have passed, or mention it to others at our bi-monthly drinks sessions.

“Members also recommend potential candidates for roles who might not be in the group yet, but seeing the assignment details reminds them of someone they would like to have recommended. The rule for candidates (and indeed members) is one degree of separation. If they are not already group members, they have to be recommended by someone I know (and opinion I trust) who has worked with them.”

And what do the members get?

“They get a new (thoroughly vetted) network which they should be able to trust.

“If they are savvy they can use that network to raise their profile amongst a group of potential commissioners or recommenders (HR people tend to commission HR services for clients). They get great input from members on all sorts of different topics – from coaching questions to recommendations on which providers to use (or not).

“And of course they get access to assignments.

“We filled one job from the group that had also been on other recruiters’ books; recruiters who had not contacted some of the excellent folks in the group, because their experience didn’t have specific key words or labels. Because, if you have loads of people just on a database, how else can you sift?

“So, through the community, we’re able to give a much more targeted and personalised service all round.

“And people get masses of feedback. On things like their CV, marketing, how to present themselves etc. From me as part of the accreditation process, and from other group members as they connect. And they get a chance to pay it forward, to make a ‘small’ contribution which may help someone else initially, but each small contribution from every member, if harnessed properly, ultimately provides a really big opportunity for all of us.”

What lessons have you learned in the process of setting all of this up?

• It’s bloody hard work running a community and you have to try (and fail) at a lot of things

• It’s hard to generate client work – it’s a very tough market and getting a message out needs a lot of help from others

• People contribute in lots of different ways – and it takes a while for some to get the confidence to do it.

• Some people don’t and will never contribute. Or they’ll contribute in ways that don’t jive with the group – so you give them back the gift of time. It’s not fair on the other members

• But most of all……people are incredibly generous (and good fun)

So, as you can see, Julia and Interimity really are shaking things up in recruitment. And I wonder, how does all of this land with you? How might it inspire you to change your game?

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Turns out you’re not alone.

New research published last week by accountancy recruitment firm, Robert Half, suggests that three in ten UK HR Directors (that’s 30%) say employee burnout is an issue. This figure rises to 35% when you look just at London and the South East.

The research also concludes that:

• Workload is the primary reason for burnout in 67% of situations. (This rises to 75% in large, and 73% in public sector organisations.)
• More than half (56%) blame long working hours.
• 37% talk about “unachievable expectations” and “economic pressures”, and
• 27% cite worklife balance challenges.

8 in 10 HRDs say they’re concerned that their best people will leave because things have just become too pressurised.

Hardly surprising.

When asked what they’re doing about all of this, some say they’re launching initiatives to make working life more liveable. They include “promoting a teamwork-based environment (50%), reviewing/restructuring job functions and tasks (45%), encouraging team–building activities (34%), providing flexible working options (34%) and encouraging employees to take time off (31%).  One in five businesses (19%) plan to hire additional temporary / interim staff to help manage burnout.”

The point about hiring additional staff is good news for Robert Half, and job-seekers generally.

“Initiatives”

But I have to wonder whether these other “initiatives” aren’t actually a huge red herring.

Sure, they’re very logical. And if you look at your people as being another resource that you can control at will, they make a lot of sense.

But, when are more companies going to get beyond these big global solutions, and understand the real, individual, human nature of the people who work for them?

When are they going to be proactive in supporting their people’s well-being, rather than waiting till people burn out before acting?

When are they going to understand that if someone is showing signs of being beyond stressed, that they are are having a healthy response to an unhealthy situation?

Of course, the UK economy is struggling, companies are under more and more pressure first to survive and second to make a return on investment to their shareholders.

But people are  increasingly the thin edge of the wedge. Expected to do more with less, and to integrate work changes without proper training, much less the emotional support to withstand the upheaval.

And we’ve become a much more “on” society.

Laptops, tablets, mobile phones… Social media. We’re all under pressure to act 24/7.

Recent research even shows that 53% of us check our phones before we’ve even got out of bed.

No amount of traditional team building is going to fix that. It’s no wonder more people are burning out.

The answer for businesses?

Believe, really believe, in your people’s well being. That starts with a business’s leaders supporting their own well-being.

Modelling the ability not to work all hours and be successful and productive.

Not demanding things last minute and/or in a way that requires late working or weekends; respecting that to be at their best, people need down time; they need rest and other non-work interests to revitalise them.

Taking proper holiday themselves and not expecting their people to be available when they are on holiday.

And you? What if you’re caught in the burnout trap?

Well, first, stop buying into a system that is harming you.

Don’t wait for your company to give you permission to do something for yourself. It’s easy to get caught up in deliverables, and all the value judgements around whether you’re doing enough or not, and to think that you have no choice. But you do.

Create boundaries for yourself.

Walk out of the office at six – or whenever – and get to the gym, or go home to your family. It may be painful to leave colleagues sitting there or to see your boss do a watch-check as you leave. I’ve been there myself. I know. I’ve had bosses who should know better take me aside at such times and say “what is your problem?”

When bosses give you last minute things that compromise your personal life, push back. Say no.

And if you find yourself unable to free yourself from what feels like a crazy situation for you, get help. Find a counsellor.

Don’t rush to escape. The chances are you’ll recreate your situation elsewhere.

But, whatever you do, don’t just become another statistic.

So, what about you? Have you experienced burnout? Do you see it in your colleagues? What have you done to support yourself? I’d love to know!

Living the way you want to live is one of the most difficult yet rewarding challenges. We all have moments when we realize our lives have somehow fallen out of whack, and other moments when it becomes clear exactly why we’re on this Earth.

But what do you do in between those realizations?

These five steps can help you to live your life with intention:

Step 1: Know Yourself

Living with intention begins with the process of understanding your own identity, needs and desires. No one else can tell you exactly who you are or what you want, and too often the daily business of survival takes our attention elsewhere.

Being mindful of these facts is the first step toward developing a more intentional lifestyle, and it is important to remember that figuring out who you are and how you want to live is an ongoing process.

Although society often sells us on the narrative that we find ourselves when we’re young and then move on to working life, the truth is that our identities and goals evolve throughout our lives.

Step 2: Set Concrete Goals

OK, so finding yourself again and again is great, but how do you translate that hazy self-knowledge into real-world change?

There’s no overnight trick to creating the life you want, but setting achievable goals is a great starting place. Challenge yourself by setting an objective that is just beyond your comfort zone, then share it with supportive people you trust.

For instance, if you realized in step one that you need to work on your relationship with your body, your first concrete goal might be to adopt a workout routine.

Step 3: Create Plans

Getting into a workout routine sounds simple enough, but for someone who hasn’t been to the gym lately, it might actually involve several daunting steps.

For instance, there’s the question of what kind of workouts this routine will involve. Maybe stretching and doing calisthenics at home will provide the challenge you’re looking for; maybe you want to rediscover the rush running gave you in high school or sign up for martial arts lessons.

Phase one of your plan might be to spend a month trying out different things. Phase two might be committing to a workout and establishing a sustainable routine. Phase three might be sticking with what works for a defined period of weeks or months.

Step 4: Make Meaningful Decisions

We all live a lot of our lives on a kind of automatic pilot, not realising that we have choice in much of what we do.

Paying attention to some of our habits, and deciding whether or not they’re in our best interests, is another way to bring mindfulness into the way we live.

For instance, collapsing onto the couch and turning on the TV instead of tackling a difficult problem is easy. Why not turn it around by choosing to tackle the problem and then consciously reward yourself with an episode of your favorite drama?

Take time to think about the small choices you make, with particular attention to why you’re making those decisions and how they fit into the larger plans you outlined in step three.

Step 5: Evaluate Your Progress

Living with intention has a lot to do with how you want to spend the day today and where you want to get to tomorrow, but it’s just as important not to lose sight of where you’ve come from.

Reflecting on the progress you’ve made through your plans and towards your goals is an essential part of understanding yourself – and it helps you feel great too! Part of  making progress is recognizing when a goal may have to be adjusted, or when a plan may need some retooling, so be sure to tweak things accordingly.

—

Perhaps the most important step of these five is the first one, and it is a great place to return when the going gets tough. If you don’t follow through with your plan, or you encounter a setback on the way to a goal you’ve set, don’t beat yourself up about it; instead, reflect on yourself and on the fact that you are engaged in a process of change. Your commitment to that process is the most import thing of all.

Have you started living your life with intention? Share your stories with us!

Author: Gabriela D. Acosta is the community manager for theMSW@USC, which is one of the toponline MSW programs in the nation. She is also passionate about social justice, diversity workshops, and community development.

More about that anon.

While I was gone, my friend Sarah Robinson published a book, Fierce Loyalty.

Apologies, Sarah, to be such a slow adopter, but I finally read it last week.

It’s a pithy, Godin-esque volume.

In it, she shares her wisdom on the qualities and dynamics of successful communities.

In a world where much is currently spoken and written about community, Sarah’s book stands out because it gets down to the building blocks and how-to’s.

Go read it for yourself. Meantime, here are my key takeaways:

The potential benefits of building community are immense

Sarah’s book gives examples of the benefits of community, particularly in a business setting. Take Harley-Davidson, the legendary motorcycle brand, whose owners unite in sharing core values of freedom and non-conformity.

They could have tried to control, contain, or put some spin on all the spontaneous tours and experiences Harley-Davidson bikers were arranging around the world.

Instead, they encouraged and enabled them. Embraced them as a core part of the brand.

So, sure, these bikers, who’ve developed friendships with other Harley-Davidson owners through “euphoric” tours, adventures and other experiences, are unlikely to opt for some other kind of machine when it’s time to buy another bike. In the meantime, they’ve also had a heck of a lot of fun.

So, there’s more to it than traditional ROI.

You can adopt a community approach to a wide range of scenarios

With all the hype around community at the moment, you could mistake it for being primarily about business building and marketing. But, again, there’s more.

For a start, businesses can use it inside their organisations to inform the way they manage their people. It has the capability to be the foundation for a whole new way of thinking about employee engagement.

Also, it’s becoming a business model all of its own. Instead of traditional limited company structures, with employees, and command and control ways of working, some businesses are now adopting a much looser way of going about things.

One that strikes me as a great example from my own connections, quite beyond the book, is Interimity, the UK based HR interim management company created by Julia Briggs. It offers a really agile way of putting “the best HR talent in touch with the best clients”. There’s a “by invitation only ” membership organisation.  Also on- and off-line forums for members to get together and talk about the kind of HR things that are meaningful to them. The quality of people, and the level they’re able to work at shines through from their contributions. Meaning that trust and respect are generated in the group.

Which all makes for the kind of sticky community, that uses its enviable shared connections to open doors to potential clients, and crowdsources candidate shortlists.

In fact, Interimity is such a good example that I’m going to feature it in a separate post all of its own. Again, watch this space.

You need to be clear of your why

Sure, it’s an of-the-moment way about going about things. But if you’re trying to create a community for your business, you should really start by asking, why?

What do you want it to achieve? Is it the raving fans? Is it to help you shape your offering? Is it to give your brand some buzz? Or, if not, what is it for you?

Hint: if your real and only agenda is to make money, your community won’t be sustainable.

Community sounds easy, but does hard

Sarah is someone who really gets “community”. It’s her thing, her passion. She understands the whole organic, emergent process that community is.

That takes a particular type of person or team with a whole particular skill set. Among the qualities I see it needing are: vision, confidence, trust, patience, a real interest in whatever catalyses the community, and a genuine interest in people and connecting.

How many traditional businesses do you know who would get their head round that?

The time is now

Although it’s tough, community is a “now” thing. Our society is shifting. People are getting smarter and wanting more. Whether that’s as a consumer, an employee, or a stand-alone professional. We want to belong. We want to be connected to something that’s bigger than us, where we can experience our little contribution contribute and magnify.

And the whole internet, social media thing is providing ways to enable community to exist and congregate on- and off-line. So many of the enabling tools are there if we just choose to use them.

Ignore it and its message at your peril!

So, Fierce Loyalty has certainly given me lots of food for thought, and I’m sure will continue to do so.

Meantime, tell me how you imagine you could harness the power of community better. What would you wish that to achieve for you?