Your Work. Your Life. Your Way.

I was grateful for my work. Passionate about my work. But I was tired — literally exhausted from the inside out. I was so weary that my bones ached most days. I was moving from one thing to the next with no time to process, to reflect, to celebrate. I was running a race at a pace I couldn’t keep, and my body was paying for it.

My heart knew it was time to make a change, to finally manifest my dream to start my own coaching and consulting practice and join communities that were doing big and meaningful things that I also valued. Yet the louder voice in my head told me I had to stay — and to stay quiet. And so the tension built, igniting a crisis between my head and my heart.

Why leaving felt hard

I worked with smart, passionate clients all around the world. My work took me into the day-to-day lives of all types of leaders and teams, especially during times of great change and struggle. I traveled the US, Asia and Europe, which fueled both my personal and professional aspirations.

The money was also compelling. The last few years with salary, bonus and stock I broke the $1,000,000 mark. Hard work yes, but also some luck. I landed in the Silicon Valley boom in the 1990’s right out of grad school and was fortunate the biotech boom found me, too.

And I looked happy, and on most days I was. I remained energetic, thanks to a healthy stream of adrenaline that seems to pour through my bloodstream with ease. I can genuinely find passion in all things, even when they don’t deserve it.

Yet there were times I actively considered leaving — just not enough.

What would leaving say about me? That I couldn’t do it? Wouldn’t do it? Didn’t want to do it?

All of these felt like I was risking my superwoman identity being discovered as a fraud.

Following My Heart: The Road Less Traveled

Part of going out on my own was to do more of what felt like my ‘lifes’ work’’. Another part of my calling was about rebalancing — changing the energy and flow of my day-to-day life. It was also about being more present with the people I cared about most.

While I had loved my career I also knew deep in my soul that my lifes’ work was not within the corporate world. I also knew, when I was being honest, that I had missed out on a lot with my family. Things I couldn’t get back — and those things kept adding up.

I had been back in the US about a year since living and working oversees for five, when the quieter voice inside my head, the one telling me it was finally time to leave, turned up the volume. Her gift to me was simple. Here is what she said:

“Who you are, what you have done, and what you have — is already enough.”

Enough?

Couldn’t be. Yet my heart leapt at the chance for that to be true.

And so my journey to leave my corporate life — the people, contexts, and identities that served me and fueled my whole professional career — was beginning. I knew I would grieve and I did. I also believed that what would be birthed would make the grief worth it.

While it felt like I was jumping into a void, I had faith — as Kate Evans says in her memoir Call It Wonder — that the void would be fertile. I ultimately trusted the call — which is what it now had become — a call I had no choice but to follow.

There’s a reason to call it a void: I didn’t know what my life would look like. And the shape of what to expect didn’t show itself immediately.

It took several months of deep and honest reflection, meditation and a lot of support from people who knew and loved me for my new something to become clear.

I joined several women’s groups, attended a few writing retreats to dive deeper into my experience, and started doing yoga regularly. All of this helped me to stay present with my experience — not to run. Not to judge (as much). Not to lose faith in my decision.

Now that I had stepped out of the corporate world, did that mean I no longer had a career?

Somehow that didn’t feel right.

Did I need to rely on an external structure to be my “career”?

Eventually I started to call my new something a “lifestyle career”. A career that would fundamentally allow me to work and live my way. A way that fed my head, heart and body. Work that fulfilled me intellectually and spiritually. Work that brought value and meaning to the communities I served.

Most importantly, work that sustained me but didn’t own me.

Work that provided me with spacious and guilt-free time to be with family and friends.

Slowing down sounds easy — it wasn’t

For the first few months after leaving my corporate life, the change in pace was challenging. While I yearned for a slower, more organic way of being and working, it took me a while to adjust. I felt like an overheated car engine in the garage. For months I would check on her to find her still smoking and popping. While my calendar may have cleared, my nervous system needed a lot more time to settle in.

My head was also not yet convinced.

Can you be successful on your own? Will you make enough money? Who are you to do even bigger work in the world? Why do you deserve it?

What ultimately anchored me? Knowing without a doubt that I had made the right decision, at the right time in my life. I had earned the right to do my life’s work, my way.

Four Considerations Before Making the Big Career Move

Are you considering a big work change? Are you feeling called to transition from a corporate role to a lifestyle career — a career where your work and life are more in balance and your passions integrated in healthy and meaningful ways?

Before making the big jump, here are four considerations with specific questions to explore.

1. My Why

Why is a change calling me?

What inspires me about it? What scares me?

If I don’t make the move, what will be my regrets?

How will this move serve other important people in my life?

2. My Current Reality

What do I love about my current work and corporate experiences?

How has it fed me? How does it still feed me?

How does it deplete me? What is the impact of that depletion?

Can I make it work financially, with some sacrifice?

3. Know the Signals

What tells me that now is the time to make this kind of move?

What does it feel like to consider the possibility?

What does it feel like to ignore the possibility?

Who around me is ready to support my venture? Who might not be?

4. My Expectations

What am I fantasizing will be different or better?

What am I ready to change, let go of, pursue with passion to thrive in my lifestyle career?

What habits will serve me? Which ones might not? What is my plan for breaking old habits and adopting new ones?

Do I have faith that the void is fertile, that clearing out what I don’t want will make way for new, fulfilling possibilities?

Most importantly, listen to your heart and body (not just your head). Feel their answers swim your head to your heart and into your belly.

Do they ground you or shake you? Do they make you sing, cry, and dance or want to run and hide?

Once you decide, trust yourself.

Offer yourself compassion when things don’t go exactly as planned. Because they won’t. And that’s okay. In fact, it was during some of these moments where some of the bigger wins happened. The journey constantly reminds you not to hold too tightly.

Stay present, with every moment. Acknowledge the small and big successes. Acknowledge the setbacks; they are opportunities for learning and growth.

Remind yourself why you took such a courageous step towards living a life you love. And embrace that decision without regret!

Keep working hard. Just because you may not be tired to the bone anymore, being on your own still takes an immense amount of focus, effort and heart. You still get up early, plan your calendar, travel for business and make business contacts, but it is upon your own volition, not at the direction of someone else. Making a lifestyle career change still requires personal accountability, if not more so. But the payout is simply so much greater.

Renée is an HR executive, strategy and change consultant, leadership coach and leadership development expert with more than 20 years of experience in the U.S. and abroad. She has built leadership and organizational capability in more than 40 countries in the biotech, pharmaceuticals, health care, technology, internet, and service industries.

Renée is deeply passionate and committed to developing more conscious organizations, leaders, entrepreneurs, and human beings who love themselves, live their lives and lead their organizations and communities with greater presence, intention, care and flow.

Today she runs her own global coaching and consulting practice out of California, with an important focus on women and leadership. She believes that the new era of women’s leadership calls us to step more fully into our role as changemakers, requiring greater attention to self-care and our true aspirations. Only then can women achieve the freedom, discernment and choiceful balance needed to do their best work.

In her free time, Renée and her family are fueled by our passion for travel, which includes 45+ countries and counting. Inspired by these experiences, she is writing a book she hopes will expand some of the limiting paradigms that keep parents from traveling with children. Her blog on the topic can be found at www.travelmomentswithkids.com.