You’re reaching—because there’s got to be an answer out there somewhere.

You’re reaching for a solution in all the likely and habitual places.

Maybe you’re considering another training, certification or degree.

Or you’re wanting to gather more information and do more research.

To find examples of how what you want to do is being done—and how you could do it better.

To understand what you’re missing that could finally make things click.

Or you’re procrastinating on what you think you should be doing.

What you think you need to learn—or to implement.

Or on what you think needs to be done first.

Before you can do the work you really want to do—how you want to do it.

You might be reaching back to do what you’ve always done.

And for who you have always been.

Trying to change aspects of your professional self—or lessen their load—without letting them go.

Despite the fact that you feel like your profession is suffocating you.

Because your professional identity is all tangled up with who you know yourself to be—and how you value yourself—in complex and vulnerable ways.

And you know that old professional self really damned well (and so does everyone else).

That you is sharp—and serious.

People easily understand what you do—and they respect it.

They take it seriously.

(It doesn’t challenge their sense of the order and rightness of things; it doesn’t confront their fear—or their longing.)

That you is excellent at what you do.

And that gives you a sense of purpose and accomplishment (even if you’re not satisfied or fully alive).

That you has a focus and a direction (even if it’s not what you’re ultimately here to do).

That you knows who you are (even if it sacrifices essential and powerful parts of who you actually are).

And being her feels like solid ground when the work that’s calling you is boundless,  uncertain—and vulnerable.

(You can feel naked and disoriented in it—devalued even.)

As much as you long to do the work you know you are here to do, you also long for safety, belonging and understanding.

(You’re human after all.)

But that makes you question everything (and perhaps blame yourself).

You question how the work you really want to do fits into the world.

You question how you fit into your profession.

You question whether you’ll make any money at it—whether it’s viable, valuable, wanted by clients.

You wonder if making the deeper, transformational aspects of your work visible—and committing yourself to them—will diminish your professionalism and obscure your mastery of your craft.

And you wonder if maybe you should give up and go back to what you’ve always done.

Your heart breaks with your longing and desire to feel actualized.

To bring forth this work—and to lead.

And it breaks with the pain of not being able to figure it the fuck out.

(That is not like you.)

You know what to do—and there is only one thing keeping you from it.

(Seriously. It sounds like some cheap marketing ploy, but there really is ever only one thing at the root of it. Untangle that, and it shifts everything.)

But it is requiring more of you right now.

It’s requiring the shifts and surrender that will birth the work you are here to do—and the way you are here to lead—from whole cloth.

And it is likely requiring a different approach.

(You are not going to think or strategize your way out of this one.)

Join me in a 90-minute One Thing Workshop to get clear on:

• what that one thing is for you; and
• how to most effectively untangle it at its root.

I’d love to work with you.