Monday Mojo: How to uncover your path to fulfilment and meaning in your work and life.

Last week I was sharing a coaching session with a client who is preparing to write her first book (excitement!). We were discussing our personal stories relating to our road of trials to transform our careers, health and relationships.

It felt on my heart to share this journey (even though it initially gave me anxiety to share this on LinkedIn) so you know the typical feelings and experiences that arise when you start your transformation along the road of trials. 

?No matter where it starts for you, whether it be a 'me-too incident', a redundancy, or burnout the one thing that is consistent is that things don't feel right anymore and you've lost your mojo for what used to make you smile.

Look around you, on the bus, on the train do people around you seem happy? Is your team going through the motions, or do you find you're at work but scrolling your instagram feed in an attempt to gain a dopamine hit to get you through the day.

It's okay, seven in ten Smart Girls would hit the reset button on your career if you had the courage.

I was one of them. I knew I was on the cusp of a transformation when my work didn't feel right anymore. It was a place full of bully cockroaches, but I couldn't break-up with it, as it was all me (and my ego) knew.

However one day, my soul started to stir during yet another pointless meeting...

"There are  children starving in Africa right now... WTF... Why all these smoke and mirrors, and lying about your results, just so you can make your bonus."

And then six months later, as screams bellowed from the bully cockroach directed at me, I broke. 

"What did you do that for, you're incompetent, you can't speak to the IT team about this transformation, it's my remit, WTF are you doing?".

I went into the bathroom and cried. I told myself to get my shit together and go and get the bully fired.

Which I did.

But you see the soul sickness was so bad and I felt so sad that this act only made me feel worse. As I laid in the fetal position in my mother's arms I started to let the verbally incontinent bitch in my head say  "how did I end up like this? I'm smart, successful, but I just can't go on".

My path along the road of trials to transform my health, career and relationships started that morning. It started because I had to fess up, to stop ignoring the signs and start accepting that I was destined for a different life even though I didn't know what it looked like.

I just knew I had to try.

Since that day I vowed that I'll never let myself feel that soul level incongruence again or end up in a culture like that. And that no matter what from this day forward my soul had a voice and I must listen to her because she knows my truth.

Over time the inner congruence dissipated as my reliance on the fancy title, the flashy car or business cards abated. How did this happen? Because I consciously chose to hit the reset button on my identity, my ego, my beliefs, my values and my vision and started to actively choose to become the creator of me version 2.0.

Then the next phase of the road of trials began, one, my colleague Katrina summed up by saying...

"Now I get it, there's a reason, a divine reason why we do what we do, why we get out of bed in the morning, it's something bigger than us, something we can't quantify but it just feels like a divine energy".

Allowing the divine energy in relies on us to trust and surrender that with the right support, the right thinking and the right feeling that our answers will emerge. This is a beautiful and renewing time, but one of turbulence, because our value to society isn't quantifiable, a time when our 'paycheck self-worth' may not be there and our true inner self-worth replace the society defined version.

Typically then, we experiment through our own spiritual and physical pilgrimages to places inside and out of us to seek answers, divine intervention and direction (many Smart Girls find this in India).

This is a time of much inner reflection and a time where we reunite with our inner child. For me, this was a place of reconnecting with my long lost creativity through photography, revelling in the joy of play through my sailing and deepening though a committed yoga practice.

This is where we find alignment, where our values become expressed and our beliefs are reshaping and we find ourselves as the little Smart Girl or Boy we were before the world started to write our beliefs on the invisible synapses in our brain.

The next phase of our road of trials occurs when we return to society, a more confident, in full bloom version of ourselves, one that embraces an emergent vision to serve others.

One who trusts that by embracing the right thinking, the right action and the right people new projects, collaborations and experiences will occur.  

For me, this is the period I birthed Smart Girls Screw Up Too. I allowed her to channel out of me. It was the time I learned I had a special gift to coach women who were about to enter their own road of trials and nurture them through it so they felt held and empowered through the highs and lows.

These days I don't have a business card. Maybe the legacy of Smart Girls has become an everlasting one, perhaps on second thoughts not, as it offers so much more to the world than a flashy title ever will. 

Fast forward six years down the road of trials the feeling on incongruence has completely gone. I work with people I like and deeply respect and spend more time in gratitude for simple things like I've got enough food to eat and enough money to gift back to little girls in Africa. 

That said these days the road of trials brings different challenges.

For instance, staying congruent in a world of disposable and endless consumerism, looking after myself whilst coaching my team to achieve their potential and wondering how in the hell we'll be able to expand the touch of the divine energy to more people so you can feel so congruent in what you do that you don't even question why you're getting out of bed on a Monday morning.

Wherever you are on the road of trials, please know this.

You are held, it is your right and obligation to stop whatever it is that is breaking your soul and start letting the divine energy meet you. 

Bella ??

~~~

Bella Zanesco is Australia's leading sustainable high-performance leadership author, in-demand keynote speaker and high-performance career and wellbeing strategist.

Her smash hit book "Smart Girls Screw Up Too — The no-nonsense guide to creating the life you want" (Wiley) features her own comeback story from a $5 billion burnout and insights from the Global Executive Wellbeing Report she founded to help you love Mondays, be magnetic and get financially fit.

Bella is a World Champion sailor and was named UK Top Young 50 Changemaker by the City of London. To become Fully Expressed sign up to Bella's weekly Monday Mojo here or book Bella to speak at your next event by emailing [email protected].