Finding Fulfillment Beyond the Professional Laurels
As a Coach, I encountered a client who shared a common struggle faced by many successful professionals: “A sense of regret or misery in their personal life despite achieving great success in their professional career”. This problem often arises from dedicating oneself entirely to professional growth while neglecting emotional fulfillment and connection with family. In this blog, we will explore the factors contributing to this imbalance and discuss actionable steps to regain harmony in personal life.
Priorities have evolved with time. It was the age of scarcity providing as much for the families was the ultimate expression of love and care. Sacrificing personal desires for the betterment of their loved ones was deemed noble and honorable. However, as society progressed and shifted towards abundance, the definition of fulfillment evolved beyond materialistic provisions. In today’s landscape, especially after the experiences of the global pandemic, people have come to value emotional fulfillment and quality time spent with family more than ever.
To get to the root cause, it’s important to understand for how many years the person continued to move towards his career and moving away from the family. And find out that all through this period, was the family giving signals to the person about their growing displeasure or disconnect. And if yes, then why the person was not taking this into cognizance or processing it. What made the person to miss out that strong family bonding and the emotional fulfillment for so long, and why is he wanting it back now? Deep coaching conversations help us to get to the details and reveal the reasons for this shift.
Further, it would help to identify what was the self-image or the role the person was trying to fill, who was he trying to be. What was his identity in this journey, what was important for him in his life and why. This gives us the understanding of the persons Values and Belief systems. In some of the cases it is possible that the person’s life, right from young age, was fully focused on developing his professional ability leading to a good career but never on developing his emotional intelligence which led to missing out on relationships and fulfillment.
With all above understanding, seasoned coaches can support the person by aligning the values and beliefs and ‘Who he would like to be’ going forward. Usage of metaphors often drive home the point well and give immense clarity to the person. Once this is done, the person can then be encouraged to have honest conversation with his family members first individually and then collectively expressing his feelings and wanting to get their support to build the bridges. Negative memories of the past can be dissociated with simple processes, and they can be replaced with excitement of the new life ahead. Initiating meaningful activities with the family would help in fostering stronger bonds, healing emotional hurts, and improving his emotional intelligence.
For lasting change, the person must genuinely desire to reconnect with his family. Heartfelt efforts are more likely to be successful in rebuilding relationships. Shift in the identity and alignment of values and beliefs make this change quite sustainable over long periods of time.
