1. Fulfillment is the new career benchmark
According to this 2013 Harvard Business Review article, titled Building a Career Worth Having, stated:
“ Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace study found that as many as 70% of working Americans were unfulfilled with their jobs, 18% to such an extent that they are actively undermining their co-workers. This is a marked increase in workplace dissatisfaction from 2010, when Conference Board found that 55% of Americans were dissatisfied with their jobs .”
Ironically in 2010, Forbes published this article, Career Fulfillment: Why it Matters, emphasizing the importance of finding work that doesn’t feel “empty” or like a “death sentence”. Clearly, the mere 1389 views it received was not sufficient to turn the tide…
2. Focusing on goal achievement alone won’t create fulfillment
Fast forward to 2014, when Business Insider published its piece How to Make Sure Your Success Leads to Fulfillment, highlighting that achievement and fulfillment are often mutually exclusive, especially if you’re simply achieving for achievement sake.
That same year, I was personally quoted in this similar article in Forbes: 4 Expert Tips for Fearlessly Changing Your Career. My tip was to be authentic, which means to be true to your soul first, and your goals second. Here’s a quote I made in reference:
“When what you do for a living goes from a means to earn an income to an absolute moral imperative, you have found your life’s calling,” she says. “Stop listening to everyone else and start listening to yourself. You are the only qualified expert to lead your life.”- Kathleen O’Grady (2014)
3. Fulfillment is the whole point of living
This point is so simple, yet so easily forgotten.
We are human BEINGS not human DOINGS. In the endless quest for external validation, people spend their whole lives checking boxes and satisfying a conventional and conformist expectation of who they should be, not who they really are.
As an authentic leadership coach at Authentic Leadership Advisors, and global trainer of Certified Authentic Leadership Coaches at Authentic Leadership Advisors Academy, I’m committed to shifting away from focusing on surface-level goals, which are designed by the ego to keep us in a perpetual achievement cycle, and instead focus my attention on coaching to the soul and authentic self of my clients, which brings them back to a sense of meaning, a feeling of fulfillment, and ultimately, helps them love themselves even in the absence of external approval.
GOT LOVE?!
If not, I’d be honored to help you find it.
With Love, Kathleen 🙂
