Feeling Ambivalent? Maybe it's time to shift from success to significance.

Shifting your focus from success to significance by unleashing your unique strengths to take care of what matters and create a positive impact is the secret to your vitality.

By mid-career, you may find the accomplishments on your path to success no longer fuel your ambition, enthusiasm and energy. Something feels amiss, and a longing for significance and meaning replaces the desire for success alone.  

 Vitality results from many things, self-care, rest, healthy relationships and a sense of contribution and service.  Vitality is what we experience when we realign our capabilities to create value for the sake of having an impact on things that matters to us. And to do this, we need to stretch more fully into realizing our potential.

To take a chance to pursue and step into your next level of potential is a risk. The ladder's rungs to success have been carefully climbed and to step off or step sideways is a mixed cocktail of excitement, anxiousness, and fear.  Unleashing to create more meaningful work is not the path of least resistance.  The way of the changemaker is a course lined with unseen mud pits and often paralyzing internal resistance. 

There's no guarantee when you decide to take a chance for more meaning and impact that others will want or appreciate what you have to offer. Instead, it's on you to risk it, to be a designer of your path, and to choose to face the muddy mess of uncertainty. The edges you face when you commit to your bold course are endless. You will experience inflection points of unprecedented growth and evolution. Leaning into your unique genius (thank you, Gay Hendricks, author of the Big Leap, for articulating this so clearly), your tenacity grows.  Stay the course, and you deepen your commitment to be courageous, committed to your vision, and expand your skill to make change happen.

Honouring your longing for more meaning in your work and carving an inspired and intentional path is a source of creativity, freedom and vitality. You get to choose what you want next, and you don't have to wait for someone to extend permission for you to share your idea, offer and be a contribution.  

I've been coaching women entrepreneurs and changemakers for over a decade, and, like them, I've faced frequent, if not daily, resistance in the pursuit to use my voice, own the value I have to offer and be more visible as I bring new ideas forward. I've learned that one of the most crucial barriers we face is falling prey to the external drivers of success and abandoning our desire to lean into our deeper ambition to make a radical contribution. It is so much easier to fall in line, get busy and lose sight of why we started on this path in the first place. But the cost of giving up on finding and committing to your unique and purposeful work is steep. Career ambitions fizzle or enthusiasm for your business flames out, leaving you feeling ambivalent, depleted and often resigned. If this resonates,  you are likely entangled in a crisis of purposeful conviction.

 I can tell when a woman I am working with has doubled down on productivity to quiet the internal saboteur, stay relevant, or appease their desire to please or keep the peace. I recognize the call to reimagine a different future when they dig to find a connection between their pressing daily agendas and why they do what they do. The drain of daily activities amplifies the disconnect between doing work and doing work that matters. Often this disconnect is paired with a quiet yet persistent niggling that this can't be it, that you have more to offer. When your unique talents feel untapped or stagnated, it can compound a feeling of ambivalence in your work and invariably robs you of your vitality. 

Reclaiming your vitality, creativity and purposeful conviction happens when you connect your care to intentional committed action. While it sounds simple, it isn't. But this choice is the ride of a lifetime and worth every moment of fear-induced nausea that results from putting up your hand, making an offer and taking a chance. Figuring out what you care about and intentionally taking action to pursue it is laced with potholes. Your purpose can feel evasive and hard to pin down. With so much noise and calendars jammed with activity, it is hard to pay attention to the subtle hints your purpose drops.

To pursue work that has meaning, it's imperative to pause and find moments of quiet to reflect and listen to what your heart has to say. Be curious and bring awareness to your more resonant and intuitive knowing. There is no one or right answer, only a deepening awareness of your cares and desire for change. Your purpose can be as simple as being a gift to others in your business partnerships or leveraging your strengths to find a new solution for food insecurity or by helping your team have courageous conversations or making someone's day a little bit better by sharing your presence.

Shifting from success to meaning and significance is energy-giving, generative and expansive. And, if this year has taught us anything, it's that tomorrow isn't a given, and there is an endless supply of complex challenges looking for purpose-driven changemakers to dive in and be a force for good. Make time to listen to longings and nudges of your heart. There is never a better moment than this moment to make a difference with one person, one team, community or the world.

 If you're looking to dig deeper to align your unique strengths, nurture your vitality and chart a bold and for 2021, The Impact Incubator may be exactly what you are looking for. Schedule your free strategy call with us to see if what we offer will help you design your most meaningful and invigorating path forward.