Recalibrate Your Work, Rest, and Play.
previous issues of the sabbatical lifestyle
#40: The Connection Between Languishing and Purpose
We know that purpose is a strong predictor of health and wellbeing, cognition, and financial success. And these are all great and important. Now more than ever, though, purpose matters because it’s the perceptible sense that your life has direction.
#39: How to Use Your Purpose Filter When Life Contains Multitudes
Sometimes you’re making progress—you nail that job interview, you hit the gym 4 times a week, you enjoy a fun date that leads to a second date, you make it through a family gathering without fighting—but, soon enough, you’re right back to where you began.
And then, of course, there’s the pandemic.
#38: On Wake-Up Calls and Attunement
Wondering, “Is this all there is to life? What happened to all my ambitions? All my drive?” We’re ready to start answering it. In our own way. Not some version foisted upon us by a corporate ladder or fashion rules based on age.
This is our era of becoming. Our wake-up call. So let’s explore it further.
#36: The Ugly Truth of Ageism in 2021
The high prevalence of long-term unemployment among 45+ job seekers represents a human tragedy on a global scale. People in long-term unemployment typically face significant financial strain—and are more likely to experience mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, with each job rejection being felt on a deeply personal level. Long-term unemployed people also report widespread difficulties in their family relationships.
#35: The 4-Step Mind Map for Negotiating Setback and Failure
Reaching a certain age can conjure dark thoughts of failure: the job you worked for years to get but got passed over for...the former spouse who was wrong for you...the family you didn’t get to start. So you look for new directions...and the answer to achieving your goals, or giving them up, feels obvious: you simply make new ones.
But taking up new projects obscures the problem. When you aim at a future goal, your satisfaction is deferred because your success has yet to come. The moment you succeed, your achievement is in the past. Meanwhile, your engagement with the project subverts itself: you either fail at pursuing a goal or, in succeeding, you end its power to guide your life.
#34:The Lifelong Process of Coming Alive
Coming alive is a lifelong process. It’s not just a reaction to a sense of disillusionment or frustration in your life. It requires ongoing reflection and choice...about your version of the good life and your priorities.
When you commit to coming alive, you’re willing to proactively ask and examine, “What’s brought me here? Am I still making life-giving choices? Or am I feeling weighed down like that entire drawer of jeans that no longer fit?”
#33: The Most Important Question
If you Google the Japanese term “Ikigai,” you’ll see a popular Venn diagram. The diagram features four prompts: what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs.
This image, while useful, doesn’t actually reflect the true meaning of ikigai. It’s a Westernized adaptation of ikigai that’s better referred to as the Purpose Venn diagram...NOT ikigai. Ikigai is simply your reason for being...the thing that gets you up in the morning, which may or may not have anything to do with your economic status or career. The concept of ikigai is both personal and social, and a bit closer to self-actualization with an understanding that the sum of small joys in everyday life results in a more fulfilling life as a whole.
#32: What to Do About “I’m Too Old”
Nearly 1 in 2 respondents to a recent survey I issued said one of the barriers to pursuing their purpose was the belief that “I'm too old to make a change toward what I want.” Roughly 2 in 5 said, “No one will want to hire me at my age.”
Let me say here at the outset: just because you think these thoughts, it doesn’t mean they’re true.
#31: Bullshifting the 3 Biggest Blocks to Your Fulfillment
Each day, you have ~60,000 thoughts, and 95% of them are based in your subconscious...and are basically on repeat day after day...after day. Basic subtraction skills show us that just 5% of your daily thoughts are new and creative.
#30: 5 Key Perspectives to Pursue a More Fulfilling Career
When we’re honest with ourselves about the thought that we want to change our career, it can be an anxiety-inducing realization. For many of us, we assume this translates into some hard-to-stomach material changes: a big drop in salary, moving back home, not having much to offer in terms of professional achievements at social events, and having to start over again.
#29: On Your Potential Legacy
Let’s talk about your legacy...about the trace you leave. Every life leaves a trace, a trace that may exist for generations...especially if you don’t recycle or carry out everything you bring when camping. (You know, the whole “take only memories, leave only footprints” bit). Shout out to the beautiful Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Your legacy is the sum total of the impact your life made on the lives of others – and, in many ways, the trace that their life makes on others. It’s epigenetics, after all!
#28: How to Know What You Want
How can you know what you really want? This is the burning question of today...of entire decades of midlife, frankly.
And the knowing, or not knowing, exists on many levels and scales. It’s not always the existential questions...it can be about smaller things like “What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” Which definitely got harder to answer during the span of lockdown, am I right?
#27: The Myth About Your Personality
“I am someone who…” Ever catch yourself saying this? “I am someone who...loves animals...needs to have coffee first thing...needs to have my desk completely clean before I work...loves to manage the details of an event...freaks out at the thought of public speaking…”
Do you do this consciously? Or do you use it as a way of explaining your behaviors?
#26: How to Know When It’s Time to Leave a Job
Like that first bite of your favorite dinner, life will start returning to your extremities, eventually reaching the place where your passion, interests, and regenerative curiosity lie (sounds dramatic, but it's a real sensation of feeling EXCITED about what is coming next).
#25: The 5 Biggest Obstacles You’ll Face in Living Your Purpose
Often, people will seem desperate to discover the one thing that lights them up. They’ll search for it in books, in courses, in meditation, maybe church.
All the while, their purpose seems elusive. As though it’s some sort of game or hunt to find a treasure. And their brains are hell-bent on figuring it out. And because they’re not quite saving the world--maybe because they’re exhausted from raising kids and teaching at home during a pandemic--they’re just going to continue searching for that perfect flavor of purpose that’ll make it all seem effortless. And then they’ll keep searching and searching, without ever finding the answer.
#24: How My Career-to-Calling Pivot Changed My Life
You’ll experience many different types of transitions in life: personal, physical, professional, and more. The average adult faces 30-40 disruptors in their life, which is basically a pace of 1 disruptor every 12-18 months. For every 10 of them, 1 will be a major lifequake. We typically have 3 to 5 life quakes during our life. Buckle up, baby!
#23: How to Change Careers When You Don’t Know What You Want to Do
When you reach this impasse--when you know you’re not happy where you are, yet you don’t quite know what to do next–-remember that you’re not alone. And even more important, know that this is a necessary part of your evolution and growth. This is true for your career and any other area of life. Because these experiences force us to eradicate our old models for understanding ourselves and our world.
#22: Future-Proofing Our Decisions
Throughout our lives, we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we're going to become. This takes on a bit more urgency as we enter into midlife, which--these days--is anywhere from 35 to 65 or 75 years old, depending on whom you ask.
#21: The Power of Self-Regulation and Calling in Our Loved Ones
How often do you look at someone else’s behavior and think: “Well if I were them, I’d do that differently”?
#20: What To Do About Women Leaving The Workforce
Like music, the experience we have as employees is about a series of interactions, it conjures different emotions, and it creates an overarching feeling of how we relate to our work.