Are you doing the work that YOU are meant to do?

This is Day 8 of the Diagnose Your Career Unhappiness. Want to listen to the?expanded audio versions?of these lessons? You can find them on Apple, Spotify,?and Everywhere Else.

“I know I’m helping people, but I don’t feel like I’m helping people.”

This is a message I received from a physician in my FB group.

She was talking about her work in clinical medicine.

While she knew on some level she was making a difference in people’s lives

There was something about it that didn’t feel quite meaningful to her.

This is what it feels like when your contribution is misaligned.

To review, your contribution is essentially how you add value to the world

how you are making a difference in people’s lives.

Let’s go into some of the common symptoms you might experience if your contribution is misaligned.

The work doesn’t feel meaningful

Just like the physician from my FB group, you can have this sense that you aren’t personally connecting to the work.

You might crave a deeper or different type of impact than your current role allows.

Even if you're making a difference,

if you're not personally invested

or if the work feels too impersonal

it can diminish the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

I experienced this when I was working as an OB GYN.

I was delivering babies

literally bringing life into the world.

It's this event that's supposed to be so meaningful, but it just didn't quite matter to me.

It just felt empty

You feel a sense that “this isn’t my work”

this one can be SO subtle and so easy to miss

so we really have to pay attention.

I had a client recently who, on some level, knew that she was in the wrong career path.

She would be sitting in meetings and just kept having this nagging sense of:

this is not my work

this is not what I'm meant to be doing.

And it was just this clear, underlying knowing

a gut feeling that she started to tune into more and more.

You have a longing for something MORE

You have a persistent idea or dream about another way you could be contributing

like how Moana, kept dreaming of venturing out into the ocean

even though she was supposed to accept her role as chief of the island

the ocean kept calling to her.

the longing for more is a deeply felt sense that there's something beyond your current experiences that's calling to you.

It’s an intuition that you're meant to contribute, engage, or express yourself in a more significant, fulfilling way.

So if you have this nagging idea for how you want to be contributing to the world

if you have this longing for the ways that you'd love to be helping people

but your current career is Not allowing you to express those ideas or live out those longings.

That's going to be a huge source of discontent.

It doesn't matter if the work that you're doing is “supposed to be meaningful” If it's not the work that you are here to do, it won't feel that way to you and that's okay. Even if your job checks all the boxes.

if it’s not aligned with YOUR unique contribution

you aren't going to feel that deeper sense of meaning or satisfaction in the work.

And you WILL experience signs and symptoms of career unhappiness.

Just like this quote circling around Instagram says:

“The universe will never give you peace in something that you weren't meant to settle in.”

Let this sink in and really land for you.

And I will see you back here tomorrow for our final day- where we will tie it all together!

Want the audio version of this lesson, where I expand on each piece a little more? It’s on the Life After Medicine Podcast on Apple, Spotify,?and Everywhere Else.