Why Superficiality Will Kill Your Career

If you do a Google search on “careers” or “career coach” you’ll find thousands upon thousands of books, resources, and coaches are out there in the world attempting to help you build a successful career you’ll love. As a great editor at Forbes recently mentioned to me, the career space in publishing is completely glutted, and there are about 10 books published each day in this arena trying to help the millions of people who are unhappy in their work.

I’ve personally checked out countless career sources and resources in the past few years, and what I’ve found is this: The vast majority of these tools and resources don’t have what it takes to help you build a happier career because they completely miss the point. They’re neglecting a way to help you understand yourself at the deepest core.

Instead, they cover resumes, interviewing, social media, building a great network, mentorship and sponsorship, LinkedIn – all of which are important, but only after you figure out what holds you back most from happiness, joy and reward in your career – you. I’ve seen even the most accomplished, brilliant professionals fail at building happy careers because of inner blocks that won’t let them.

I experienced this too years ago – that thousands of dollars (and hours of time and effort) for career and personality assessment tests, career counseling, and mentoring failed to assist me in creating the professional changes I longed for.

What are these career resources and coaches missing?

You simply cannot craft a successful, rewarding and happy career or life if you don’t know yourself deeply, intimately and fearlessly. If you don’t dig much deeper than you already have, you won’t understand the inner values, beliefs, motivations, blocks, traumas, and triggers at play, and you’ll make the wrong moves (I know because I did, and I see it in my practice hundreds of times a year). I've found that superficiality is the biggest killer of successful careers.

It is how you address the inner dimensions of yourself that will either make you miserable and sick in your work, or successful and fulfilled. I’ve found with the thousands of professionals I’ve worked with, great success and happiness are much more in their grasp than they realized, but not until the inner work is addressed.

If your career is unhappy and leaving you cold, you must begin to operate from a deeper understanding of yourself, rather than pursuing empty, superficial tactics that can’t ever work.

Here's a start: Answer these 10 questions to begin to explore the areas you need to understand about yourself, before you embark on any professional moves:

1. What has been the most significant, impactful event of your entire life (positive or negative)? What did that event teach you?

2. What are the messages you’ve absorbed about yourself and your capabilities, from your childhood and your family?

3. What are you most afraid of doing, and why?

4. Why exactly do you want to work? What outcomes are longing to you to deliver in the world?

5. In what areas are you amazingly talented and gifted? (and don’t say that you’re not because you are – everyone is)

6. What are your special ways of looking at the world and applying that vision that make you different from everyone else on the planet? (because you are)

7. What core themes, passions, and threads have followed you throughout your life?

8. Who is putting you down and stifling your dreams, and why are you letting them?

9. What is the legacy you want to leave behind when you depart from this planet?

10. What is the fantasy you have for your work now — the most awesome thing you’re dying to do?

(Take this survey for more critical questions you need to answer.)

If you can’t seem to answer these questions, you need some outside help. Find a coaching buddy, friend or mentor who can help you look deep within and get to the bottom of who you are and what you want. Once you address these questions thoroughly – and understand the “essence” of you and what you want – then you can identify the right form of work that will make you happy, whether that’s a new job, a career shift, volunteer work, new hobbies, a non-profit cause to support, etc. Following that process, you can determine new ways to make a living so that your work is aligned with what you truly care about.

Many people resist answering these questions because digging deep is often scary and overwhelming. People often stop themselves before answering, and immediately go to the place of pushback, skepticism and intractable doubt.

“I’m too old to do what I want,” they say. Or “It will take too many years of education,” or “I will never make the money I need doing this.” Or “My husband would really push back on this new career idea.” It’s appalling to me how we stop ourselves the second we begin the dreaming process, because the inner skeptic becomes so agitated and anxious that it needs to cut us off at the knees.

The problem with a superficial, overly-rational, linear, analytical approach to life is that it stops you from getting to the heart of who you are and what you want. If you don’t allow yourself to feel your emotions deeply and look your fears squarely in the face, to dig deep and discover the truth of what you long for, and what’s in the way of that, you’ll never get out of the starting gate. I spent 18 years in a career that was wrong for me, for just this reason.

In the end, if you don’t see, feel and understand yourself down to your soul, you can’t create the happiness or success you dream of in your work.

Answer these questions above, then share your thoughts below – What do you really want to do in your life and career, and what holds you back?

(To learn if you’re doing what’s necessary to build a happier, more rewarding career, take my new Career Success Readiness Quiz.)