This approach starts every day by focusing on what you want to create, a way of working that begins with the question that is the title of this book: What Do You Want to Create Today? This is the approach you’ll learn in these pages. We’ll begin in the same place I started: learning about yourself.
Ken Sasaki was serious when he told me he wanted his life at work to be better. He was only thirty-seven and had what many would call success. Most people would think Ken had it made. We were sitting on thousand-dollar chairs around a huge mahogany table in the executive boardroom on the thirty-ninth floor of a new skyscraper. But Ken, the president of a large insurance company, wasn’t happy.
He had an idea of what he wanted work to be, but this certainly wasn’t it. Being a senior officer of this big international company looked good, but the way he saw it, work was one set of problems after another. It was late-night conference calls, inquiries from governmental regulating agencies, conferences with analysts to explain why profitability was up or down, streams of emails from headquarters all marked urgent. Some days things did slow down, but on those days he was bored and didn’t know what to do with his time.
He told me he disliked the people he worked with too, even though he had hired most of them. He described many of them as too conservative or incompetent. In his opinion, his boss was the worst of all. Ken called him a “control freak,” and even though his boss was in Singapore, Ken considered him a micromanager. Ken sat across from me, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Work’s got to be better than this.” It was as if there were a dark cloud hanging over him preventing him from seeing clearly. I knew exactly what Ken was talking about. I had been very much like him.
Do you know anyone in this situation? I’ll bet you do.
A Common Problem
There was a time when I would have been shocked by what Ken said, but not anymore. I meet people like him every day: bankers, lawyers, doctors, professors, entrepreneurs. They all have professional, respected jobs with good incomes—jobs that people around the world aspire to. But in their cases, the work isn’t working out the way they want. They’re too busy, they’re hassled, they don’t like their bosses, they’re not challenged enough, there’s too much pressure, they’re not learning enough.
Put simply, work isn’t working and they are not having the kind of lives they want. As you can imagine, they had all worked extremely hard, done well in college, and achieved a lot in their professional lives. Yet they could not escape a reckoning with their own sense of disillusionment.
Most were worried about what else they could do or what new actions they could take. In many cases, these successful professionals spoke in terms of confinement and fear. They say they “keep busy in order not to think,” “can’t sleep,” “can’t escape from worrying”; they “want to do something else”; or they love their job, it’s their boss they hate. Others say they like the work, but it’s the clients/the vendors/the employees who are driving them crazy.
I do not tell them to change jobs. That’s not the answer. What I see over and over is that when these people change their jobs, within a year they’re having the same kinds of problems in the new job as they had in the old one. Unless a person deals with the hard questions of who they are and who they want to be, the complaints start all over again. If you change your job without changing yourself, the result will be greater anxiety, unhappiness, and the same problems you tried to escape from.
I don’t tell them to take a vacation either. That’s the ultimate short-term response. I have clients who leave every weekend for time in the countryside or a long holiday at an expensive resort. “Work is hell,” they tell me, “so I need to escape.” As pleasurable as these places are, their trips are not so much for enjoyment as they are for forgetting the week. Why not develop a more satisfying way of working?
I also don’t tell them, “Do what you have to do and the hell with your family.” We all need people to support us, and we have to consider the impact of our decisions on our loved ones. Nor do I say, “Your boss is a jerk.” We have to learn how to work with many different kinds of people. Part of our job is handling the boss, the clients, and the people with whom we work.
What I do tell them is that work can be a whole lot better. The first message I delivered to Ken (and hundreds like him I meet as an executive coach and conference speaker) was a tough one: The underlying problem lies within you. It starts with you, not anyone else.
It’s not an easy notion for many people to accept. Can you? Let’s find out.
I ask people the same questions I have asked myself. I ask them about the kind of life they want at work. I ask them to imagine what that would look and feel like to them. I ask them if they want to be having the same conversation with me a year from now. I ask them if they can let go of some of their ideas about what work has to be. I ask them what action they could take to break down some of the barriers to the kind of life they want at work. I listen to the answers without comment and then I ask even more questions.
Initially, it feels like I am not understanding the pain they feel. But eventually I see a different look on people’s faces. And it’s a look of understanding: Understanding the necessity of letting go of a strongly held belief about how they have to work. It may be letting go of an idea of what it means to be a leader, recognizing there are other ways to communicate with our bosses, or recognizing what is missing from work. Eventually, I see a look on their faces that shows they understand they are the ones who have to take action. Eventually, people recognize they have to shift their perceptions and actions and do something.
I know it is easy to get locked into seeing your situation as fixed, final, set in stone. Pema Chodron, the author and American Buddhist nun, tells this story of how hard it is to give up our views even in the face of compelling evidence: “A man’s only son was reported dead in battle,” she wrote. “The father locked himself in his house for three weeks, refusing all support and kindness. In the fourth week, the son returned home. Seeing that he was not dead, the people of the village were moved to tears. Overjoyed, they accompanied the young man to his father’s house and knocked on the door. ‘Father,’ called the son, ‘I have returned.’ But the old man refused to answer. ‘Your son is here, he was not killed,’ called the people. But the old man would not come to the door. ‘Go away and leave me to grieve!’ he screamed. ‘I know my son is gone forever and you cannot deceive me with your lies.’”1
So it is with all of us. We are certain we must continue our way of seeing and doing things, our truth. We too often think that our way of working and living is the only way. It’s not. Breaking away will take some courage, some risk, and some tough work.
It Starts with You
I used to wonder why many people do not have the kind of life they want at work. They’re smart. They have a solid skill set, a good education, money, graduate degrees. In fact, it looks like they are in the best situation possible. Shouldn’t work be better? Shouldn’t life be better? After all, work is such a big part of life.
But often these individuals think of their career first and postpone the long process of learning who they are. They have things backward. The first step for you to gain satisfaction in your career is to know yourself and know what you want.
I always ask new clients, “What do you want?” You’d be surprised at the long silences that typically follow that question. You’d think I was asking