Competent, Accomplished and… Powerless?

Is this you?: You’re an experienced, accomplished professional at the mid-point of your career. However, you find yourself in a job or role in which you have all of the accountability for successful outcomes but none of the power, authority, or recognition to match. You’ve come to hate your job at worst and dislike it at best.

You have a creative side, but you despair that there is nowhere in your work or the rest of your life where you’re able to express it. You’re frustrated by working around manipulative and self-serving people and angry with yourself for not standing up for something better. In playing it safe all these years, your ego tells you that it’s not your responsibility to be more than who you believe yourself to be.

The truth is you know you can do better, are eager to do more, and contribute in a bigger way. Unfortunately, you don’t feel supported in making the effort, and you feel guilty or ashamed for being this way.

The core problem is you feel powerless. You’ve been programmed over the years to conform to everybody else’s expectations, and now you feel defeated. You used to love challenge, adventure, and pushing yourself to new limits, but now you play it clean and safe, just to get along. You don’t make waves, and it pisses you off that you’re like this. You really don’t know what the hell you’re afraid of. You’re just afraid.

The answer is not simply to “snap out of it.” Convenient as that seems, to snap out of it is all together unrealistic. It’s been a long and winding road into these depths and it will take a quest to rise from it. The first step is to feel the pain, the anger, the despair, because they are present. To push them away will only give them more energy, and they will demand your attention all the more forcefully as time goes on.

The second step is to love yourself through these afflictive emotions. This is not selfish but essential. No matter how much your spouse, partner, parents, or friends and family love you, it isn’t possible to feel the full impact of their affection until you agree to love yourself and practice this relentlessly.

The biographic profile of the person described above isn’t everybody. However, if your pain and inner struggle leads you to doubt or deny self love, the first few steps on the quest are the same.

I spark new life in accomplished, mid-career professionals, who are discouraged by having all the accountability but none of the power. Learn more about how I can help you.