You once believed that you were living a regular life with healthy goals and that you were working to bring it all together in a way where your goals were accomplished.  

Maybe on the surface it appears that all your hard work is paying off…you have a great home, a great family, the kids are doing great at school, your career is progressing well and you are on track for your next promotion. Or maybe things are not there yet, but you know over time they will pan out OK.

Despite the fact that things seem to be on track, something just doesn’t feel right. Beneath the surface you feel unsatisfied and distracted. You feel as if something is missing or you are missing out on something. What could this be? It’s not something material, it’s almost like some sort of longing for more. It’s hard to talk about it with your significant other and friends, because you don’t even understand it yourself.

You might have been feeling like this for a while and a real sense of emptiness or even loneliness has crept in. Activities and things that used to have your full attention have lost their appeal.

Or unlike the scenario where things look good on the surface, maybe for you they don’t look that great on the surface at all. This dissatisfaction has resulted in a loss of confidence and passion for life in general. This may have meant that you are “stuck in a rut” in an unhappy job, or it has stopped you from re-entering the workforce even though your family could really do with the extra income.

Is this a mid-life crisis? It could be? How do you know what one looks like? For the purpose of this article, why don’t we agree that a mid-life crisis is a way to deal with the sense of emptiness. As humans, we often try to appease these strange feelings by distracting ourselves with external things such as a career change, a new car or motorbike, a new partner or even a recreation of our image.

Change is good. However, often internal change is more powerful than external change. Maybe the feelings that are churning inside is actually a “tap on the shoulder” from your inner self…wanting to be acknowledged.  

Abraham Maslow pointed out; “we have, all of us, an impulse to improve ourselves, an impulse towards actualizing more of our potentialities, towards self-actualisation, or full humanness, or human fulfilment…”

The way you feel is natural and it is not uncommon. You are not alone. You could describe it as transition from a job to a vocation. Often in the early stages of adult life we have situations that meet many of our needs. New careers, parenthood, relationships…all of these situations can provide a sense of achievement, new skills, growth, social esteem and independence. During this time, you also realised what you don’t like but quite possibly had to adapt your natural way of being to be able to fulfil certain roles.

A number of years later (this normally happens between the ages of 35 and 45 although it can happen sooner or later), your subconscious might start to question your life’s direction and purpose. That could be when you started to feel like something is missing.

Working with a number of clients over the years, we often see this situation. It happens to many people from all walks of life. Often a person may be in a great job with a great income and have all manner of material wealth, yet what is missing is a way for them to express themselves in fullness.

These feelings cannot be satisfied by working more hours, expanding a business or getting more things. We are dealing with internal matters here and need to work on achieving a sense of inner excitement and peace.

Can this be achieved? Be assured, it can be achieved. It is not something that normally happens overnight or via an intense one-day session…it is a gradual, “natural” process involving many aspects of a person.

One key step is becoming aware that you are “more than”. You are more than your job, your role, your profession. These things are what you do each day…they are not you.

This transitional phase of life asks a person to take some time to look inside and connect with untapped potential and allow this potential to be expressed. This expression will help the arrival at a place where one can say: “This is me…this is who I am and this is why I am here”.

Carl Jung a famous thought leader provided some insight into the process of discovering hidden potentials. He encouraged people to ask questions such as “What are the hidden inner drivers that truly motivate you?” and “What might be an internal obstacle that limits you?”

If you want to find out what your drivers and potentials are then we can assist. The journey is rewarding and it provides a safe and exciting way to navigate through the feelings of emptiness.

If you are ready to take a step forward to finding our more about yourself, discovering greater clarity and move away from the state of “somethings missing”, then get in touch to book an appointment.

Call Vaughan on 021 135 7778 or simply fill out the contact form by clicking here.

How do we determine who we are? When out at an event or social gathering…how often do you get asked “What do you for a living?” Social protocol dictates that we answer politely and engage in discussion about our primary role.

“I’m currently studying”, “I’m a stay at home Father”, “I work for a big four accounting firm” etc etc.

This is a typical way to get the ball rolling with somebody and learn a little bit more about each other, and also for some individuals it's a great chance to express their excitement about their job, their position, company or role. For others, it's a question that they would prefer not to respond to. For some people the last topic they want to chat about is their job. They may not be employed, or they might be working in a role where they are miserable or uninspired.

As a coach in Auckland, I also come across people who are high performers and have what others would view as a great job, yet they prefer not to discuss this either. They don’t do this out of politeness or discreteness, but often wave away a discussion about their role as if it’s a part of their life they really aren’t interested in.

There appears to be a trend here…it seems that some people with “amazing” roles seem to be just as unenthusiastic about their job as those who don’t have work or are “stuck” in dead-end work.

Often this feeling is brought about by a lack of feeling fulfilled. A lack of living out one’s true potential. Achievement alone can be very empty if the accomplishments are carried out due to outside expectations that come at the expense of deep personal fulfillment.

William Broyles, Jr. wrote an interesting piece in Esquire, In it he described how empty “success” can be…

“Each morning I struggled into my suit, picked up my briefcase, went to my glamorous job, and died a little. I was the editor in chief of Newsweek, a position that in the eyes of others had everything; only it had nothing to do with me. I took little pleasure in running a large institution. I wanted personal achievement, not power. For me, success was more dangerous than failure; failure would have forced me to decide what I really wanted.

The only way out was to quit, but I hadn’t quit anything since I abandoned the track team in high school. I had also been a Marine in Vietnam, and Marines are trained to keep on charging up the hill, no matter what. But I had got up the hill; I just hated being there. I had climbed the wrong mountain, and the only thing to do was go down and climb another one. It was not easy: my writing went more slowly than I had expected, and my marriage fell apart.

I needed something, but I wasn’t sure what. I knew I wanted to be tested, mentally and physically. I wanted to succeed, but by standards that were clear and concrete, and not dependent on the opinion of others. I wanted the intensity and camaraderie of a dangerous enterprise. In an earlier time, I might have gone west or to sea, but I had two children and a web of responsibilities”.

This man had power as well as reputation; things that often take a lifetime to achieve and which few will find. Yet all the success had little to do with who he really was. The expectations (or perceived expectations) from his outside world weren't aligned with his internal preferences.

Being personally fulfilled can be linked closely to feeling authentic. Feeling authentic calls for being totally free to establish characteristics and ways of being that are internal preferences. When we feel accepted and allowed to be genuine, authenticity and self-confidence blossom.

One way that authenticity develops is when we work in a role that bring us happiness. Yet this can be difficult because from a young age we are often told what is acceptable as a role and what is not. Parents, family, school, community and culture shape our perception.

When we have to conform in order to be accepted by those around us, we can often wind up living out an unfulfilling life, acting in ways that are not “truly” ourselves and working in roles that can feel empty.

So ask yourself: “Who am I?” and “What do I do?”

If you feel a conflict, then the above conversation might be relevant for you. How would you like to get some clear understandings regarding what your inherent preferences are? What opportunities could open up for you if you more aware of what your preferences are?

Part of our work here at Inner Compass is helping you to reconnect with those things in your life that fulfill you. We simply provide a safe and professional framework in which you can explore the questions such as “Who am I” and “What brings me fulfillment?”

By becoming more aware of the answers to these questions, you will be in a better position to make choices that can lead to experiencing a richer quality of life.

If you'd like to know more, simply give us a call or click here to fill in the contact form.

According to Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung, projections come from the ‘shadow’ side of our personality. He coined the term ‘shadow’ to describe the unconscious aspects of our psyche that harbour and express all the ‘negative’ parts of our personality that we have concealed so well for so long that we have become unaware of them.

From childhood, we begin to make decisions about how we believe the world wants us to be. If we think that aspects of our behaviour are unacceptable then we try our best to keep a lid on them to avoid unpleasant reactions from others. We learn to adapt, and we get really good at it. Over time we may have learnt to do this so effectively that others are unable to detect these aspects of our personality that we (now unconsciously) conceal.  We become so practiced at concealing these aspects that we even begin to fool ourselves, we become ‘out of relationship’ with our unwanted personality traits, psychologically keeping them pushed deep below our conscious awareness.

The trouble is we still have those aspects within our personality, lurking deep within our psyche like a dark and foreboding villain, concealed in the shadows. We just don’t notice them because we have distanced ourselves from them to the point that we truly believe we aren’t wired that way. Others notice our shadow behaviour when we are tired or stressed, trying to contain the shadow is a bit like trying to hold a ball underwater; when our arms get tired… WHOOSH! Up it comes to the surface finding its release, often with a lot of energy behind it.

Yet more often than not we remain blissfully unaware of our shadow behaviour, preferring to see it as a positive quality. If we are working late several nights in a row to complete a big assignment, we may see ourselves as persistent and focussed, whereas others may experience us as behaving in a stubborn, inflexible manner. We may think we are being responsible, while others may experience us as controlling, micro-managing, or authoritarian.

What we do notice is our shadow side in the behaviour of others. Because we’ve alienated ourselves from our own shadow nature, it’s easier and far less confronting to see these aspects in others, and we become very sensitive to seeing this behaviour. Someone else who shows a stubborn streak, or a controlling element can become the target of our own projections; we see a little of what we don’t want to acknowledge in ourselves and this person becomes a reflection of our own shadow side, evoking our irritation and intolerance (What is it about you I don’t like about myself?).

Shadow can be played out in a family dynamic too. If parents act in a overly proper manner, repressing their emotions, not showing intimacy, and having little tolerance for the expression of anger or boisterousness from children, this can provide all the ingredients for at least one sibling (or a spouse) to begin ‘acting out’ the shadow side of the family, and becoming the antithesis of family expectations.

We cannot ‘get rid of’ our shadow but we can become aware of it and embrace the purposeful qualities within shadow energy; developing the ability to direct it consciously and appropriately (sometimes we need to be stubborn or authoritarian).

Working with shadow is very much a part of how Inner Compass professionals can help deepen awareness and bring about sustainable change; such heightened self-awareness can enrich personal and professional relationships in ways that are difficult to replicate using superficial technique alone.