Desire

Posted on August 28, 2015 under Leadership

Desire can be fickle and elusive.

Viewing a glimpse of what you want and deliberately saying YES to it can be frightening and disorienting.

Maybe you've waited 20 years for the kids to leave the house so you can start your small business.

Maybe you're moving your family across the country or the globe so you can take a dream job.

Maybe you catch a familiar glimmer in the eye of your high school sweetheart so you can ask him/her to dance at your class reunion.

The higher you hold dear the desire, the higher the probability you will slip over into emotional response or irrationality.

But is that necessarily a bad thing or is the symptom of being emotional actually valuable information in need of further examination?

Posing it another way – what's the difference between perhaps losing your sanity and answering the true call of your heart?

Here's my litmus test.

If you were to be hit by a bus tomorrow (heaven forbid), would you lie dying in the street in regret about something your spirit demanded you to do but you refused?

I distinctly remember the day I decided to go to graduate school for my MBA. It was like a lightening bolt had struck me. I was crystal clear that there was absolutely no more time to waste; not a single second.

The reality was that it didn't make sense. At all. No ROI calculator justified spending four years at night and almost $100K on expenses because I was already very far into my successful career in my mid 30's.

I was told that I was too old, I wouldn't make the money back, it would kill my weekends and social life, I was an untraditional student whom recruiters wouldn't want, all MBA's are jerks, and that it was a meaningless piece of paper that no one really cares about in business.

The naysayers also told me “you don't really want to do that do you?”, “why would you want to do that?”, and authoritatively “that's not what you want!”

In the end, I chose to attend Fordham University Gabelli School of Business and loved every minute of the experience – including the crap parts like paying trimester tuition, weekends full of homework, and yes sometimes sacrificing my personal needs to meet client expectations.

All the warnings showed up, but the rewards I desired were there tenfold too.

I have ZERO regrets about my want to earn my higher education.

This is was true desire looks like.

What do you truly want but you find yourself in a whirlwind of fear, uncertainty, and doubt? If the desire didn't matter to you, you wouldn't be spending precious time and energy on it would you?

Then ask yourself, what if I never went after it? It being that idea, role, achievement, or relationship in your life? Would you regret it?

You deserve to go after what you want.

Listen to others' advice in gratitude, but ultimately only your heart can say YES.

Let me know how it goes!

-Kelley A. Joyce, MBA, CPC

Kelley is a career development coach who is dedicated to helping people discover their career path and land their dream jobs. Kelley and her partner Josh live in New York City from which she has served hundreds of professionals across the U.S., U.K., and Australia since 2012 to radically change their relationship with work.

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