In January, I wrote an email with the subject line “To anyone who feels something’s missing”.

In the email I suggested that blindly following the advice of so-called “successful” people (experts, leaders, role models, dimfluencers and so on) is a sure-fire recipe for living someone else’s life.

A few days ago I was flicking around LinkedIn when a notification popped up, telling me I’d been tagged in a post by email subscriber Juliet Kapsis.

I clicked on the notification and saw a few lines from my January email staring back at me.

Here’s what Juliet had to say:

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The quote inspiring me today comes from Tom Grundy:

So why would following in the footsteps or blindly heeding the advice of someone who is not you, is not in your situation and has a completely different set of talents, skills & preferences (no two people have the same, after all) ever get you where you want to go?

I can’t see how it would.

Life isn’t like building a bed from Ikea or baking chocolate brownies.  There’s no “right way” to live your life.  There’s certainly no recipe or instruction manual to follow, even if other people say there is.

Tom also writes a superb daily email with *just* the right amount of coaching inspiration.

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Thank you Juliet.  I appreciate the shout out.

And while we’re on the subject, let me add one more log onto this particular fire:

There’s a way to tell if you’ve unknowingly taken on the advice, ideas, habits, suggestions or beliefs of other people.  A sort of warning signal that you might be drifting away from your inner compass and losing touch with yourself.

That signal?

It's this:

Parts of life feeling harder than they need to feel.

This isn’t me saying life won’t have its tough moments.  I'm saying when parts of life feel unnecessarily tough.

Case in point:

When I look back on the unlucky 13 years of my first iteration of my banking career, one thing which is as clear as day is that not being in touch with myself in the office and instead unintentionally morphing into a patchwork quilt made up of the working styles, beliefs, attitudes & mindsets of my colleagues, my boss, various senior bods and the overall cultural dynamic of my organisation became utterly exhausting and, in the end, too difficult to deal with.

This exhaustion and pressure could’ve tipped me the wink.

And if I’d spotted what was happening, I think I could’ve re-adjusted and found my mojo with a few small tweaks.

I certainly wouldn’t have needed to make major changes like ignoring my colleagues or rejecting my company’s culture.  That would’ve been totally counterproductive. 

There are clearly times when we need to adapt, play by the rules or toe the party line.

It’s only when we forget that we’ve adapted and think we are the role we’re playing or the actions we’re taking that we start to lose touch with who we are.

Over months, years & decades, it becomes easier to forget we’re not our jobs.  But once we remember we’re playing a role, all that falls away.  And that was the only tweak I needed to make.  I just needed to remember that whatever advice, suggestions, beliefs or attitudes I took on while I was in the office, none of those were me.

Perhaps this is obvious.  But it wasn’t obvious to me.  It’s only now I’m back in my old job that I can see this clearly.

v2 of my career has an ease & lightness to it and I’m certain that knowing there’s a gap between who I’m asked to be in the office and who I really am is a big part of the reason why.

If you’d like to find more ease and lightness for yourself, you might like to check this out:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That’s all for today.

 - Tom