Adventures in Career Change: Part VII – Square Peg, Round Hole

“Dammit Mark, when are you going to start living your own life?” – Marshall Goldsmith

I first read Marshall Goldsmith’s book The Earned Life in January 2023. I remember this detail only because of the impact of one particular story Goldsmith recounted in his book. He told of working with one of his coaching clients, a partner at Goldman Sachs named Mark, to help him decide whether to interview for the CEO position at The Nature Conservancy. His client was wavering, struggling with what the partners at Goldman Sachs would think about him if he left. Frustrated, Goldsmith blurted out, “Dammit Mark, when are you going to start living your own life?”

I literally had to put the book down for awhile. Deep down, I knew I hadn’t been living my own life for years. The story punched me in the gut and it haunted me in the months that followed.

In August of that year, my wife and I took a two-week long trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. A decade had passed since I’d been away from work or my day-to-day life for that long. In the days after our return home, I struggled to recognize myself or the life I was living. I felt alive on that mountain; I felt dead at home. Precious little was bringing me joy. My therapist reassured me this was a normal reaction after a long vacation from a life packed with stress and burnout like mine. I suspected I was suffering from severe bouts with both, but this felt like something more problematic—like my soul telling me I’m not living my purpose.

Goldsmith says we are truly living “when the choices, risk, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.” In other words, whether we succeed or we fail is not as important as whether our effort honors our ideals and values regardless of our chances of success or failure. We can find tremendous meaning and purpose even in failure if we align every moment of our life with intention, not others’ expectations.

I found my way back into public accounting over eight years ago, though my current role as Firm Administrator doesn’t have much to do with accounting. I’m glad I earned my CPA license; it’s one of my greatest achievements. But I’m a square peg in the round hole of accounting and my current job has been pointing me toward a purpose that lies elsewhere.

I have enjoyed my job immensely and I wrote about that here. Every day was a new adventure. I was figuring out my role and my place and “building the airplane as we were flying it,” as the saying goes. I was building a new team of promising young professionals and creating a culture on my team (congruent with the firm’s, of course) defined by empowerment, autonomy, and continuous improvement. Though meticulous plans are not my style, I did possess a strong and comprehensive vision for what my group could become and I pushed us to fulfill that purpose. I was helping people grow and develop, I was testing management and leadership theories I had long wanted to implement, and I had a platform to encourage others to consider a different perspective and challenge conventional wisdom. I was making a difference. I was having fun. And I was happy.

Over time, our team became greater than the sum of its parts. With the culture in place and the team members settling into their roles, and with my own role becoming more defined and established, I transitioned from building to maintaining the team and I began taking on more firm-wide projects and tasks. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was moving away from what I love doing and moving toward doing what was expected of me. My work was following the pattern shared with the rest of my life, and I realized it for the first time returning from our trip to Kilimanjaro.

Through my efforts the past couple of years in identifying my core values and my purpose, I learned that fulfillment for me is heavily dependent on freedom and flexibility to cultivate creativity, study ideas and abstractions, challenge conventional wisdom, and serve those in need. I haven’t been doing much of those things lately.

Success is not the result of conforming to the world’s expectations of us. It’s an outcome of focusing on our strengths and finding where they intersect with our passions. I knew I had a smattering of incongruent skills that I struggled to usefully align with my intense passion for writing. What I needed was some perspective to help put the pieces together. It came from an unlikely source in March of 2024.

Coming Soon: Adventures in Career Change 8 – Work Worth Doing