The work I did with my career coach was unlike anything I had ever done in my life.  Even though I would consider myself pretty introspective, I wasn’t accustomed to dissecting myself in that way.  I approached it with an open mind because at that point, I was willing to do anything to make a change.

The first step was to discover “who am I?”

We started with the basics to find that answer, addressing the concept of a higher self. The higher self is the part of you that knows everything.  It’s your intuition, your wisdom.  It’s the part that’s at the core of who you are amidst a world of distractions, pressures, and outside influences.  I had very little awareness of this concept, and it took a short while for me to really understand it.  Maybe that’s because mine was dormant.  A lifetime of trying to please others, fit in, or just exist the only way I knew how pushed my higher self so far into the darkest corners of my being, that I didn’t even know it existed.

It was quite a learning experience.

We dissected certain aspects of my personality that were driving my emotions, and we compartmentalized them as if they were all different characters that make up me.  There was the perfectionist: the part of me that still cringes when I think of certain procedures that didn’t go exactly as I had intended.  There was the practical me: the me that had to make a good living, act responsibly, and keep up with the mortgage.  She made sure to remind me that there was no way I could survive without a steady income.  There was the people-pleaser: that girl who wanted to make sure everyone around me liked me and was happy.  And there was the 4-year-old girl: all she wanted to do was play and have fun while all the other “mes” were ignoring her, denying her wishes.  As Shawn pointed out to me, we were all on this bus together traveling through my life, each one fighting to be in the driver’s seat.  And where was my higher self?

She was taking a nap in the back of the bus.  But it was time for her to take the wheel.

It was so eye-opening to see what was guiding me through these hard times, or you could say, what wasn’t guiding me.  It was a bunch of chaos.  I had no idea what I wanted.  So if I didn’t know what I wanted, how could I move toward or away from anything?  This was the first piece to getting unstuck.  I didn’t know if I really hated dentistry or if I just didn’t want to have adult responsibilities.  I didn’t know what I liked and didn’t like.  What were my true passions?  I had no sense of creativity in my life.  I felt like a robot going through the motions, without any sense of who I was.

And this was where the work began.

How about you?  Are you wandering through life like a zombie?  Living someone else’s dreams? Or wondering if you’ll wake up 30 years from now realizing that you wasted precious time being someone you don’t want to be?  If so, what’s stopping you?

If you’re looking for a change, and you’re not ready to ask someone to help you, I recommend a book called Finding Your Own North Star.  It breaks down the concept of the essential self and the social self.  The essential self is who you really are– the dreams, desires, and passions that move you.  The social self is the part of you who has been manipulated by everything around you to feel you need to be a certain way.  The two may be in conflict with each other, and the trick is to reconnect with your essential self.