Are You Pursuing Your Vision of Career Success — or Someone Else’s?

Across each generation, the realization that success hasn’t brought with it the expected happiness has created a zeitgeist moment where conversations about purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction reign supreme. If you’ve determined that your dream job is not really all that dreamy, it may be that you have done all the right things along everyone else’s path to everyone else’s definition of success, only to realize when you’ve moved into a new age or life stage that the great life you built was meant for someone else. You don’t have consonance — the sense of frictionless belonging, of momentous stride, of core relevance. It is a guiding force that reveals how your work contributes to your overall life’s plan. It connects your daily activities to the success of those around you, and gives you clarity about why you — specifically you, in that seat, in that office, in that box on the organizational chart — matter. Consonance is not just purpose writ large (and lofty). It’s your purpose, freely and clearly defined by you, and put into action through awareness of and alignment with your life’s plan.