The Gap Between Where You Are and Where You Want To Be

In my role as an executive coach, I’ve seen more professionals stuck in their careers than I’ve seen growing.

For almost all of us, we toggle two realities: where we are now, and where we want to be.

You’ve worked hard, become great at what you do, and achieved some amazing professional victories. But there are probably a few more milestones it would be meaningful to achieve.

Not because of money or ego — but because you want to make a positive impact. To share what you’ve learned and what you do best with the world.

Millions of people in the corporate world find themselves repeatedly stuck in the same old rut. Too often, we hold ourselves back from pursuing our hopes, aspirations, dreams, or purpose despite many of our personal and professional accomplishments, experience, and knowledge.

I encourage you to think deeply about what’s holding you back from reaching where you want to be. Why is it that many people aren’t able to fulfill their dreams?

Recently I put out a poll on my LinkedIn about why….

The result was not surprising to me. Look at the poll results — most people feel they aren’t able to achieve their goals….. simply because they lack clarity and focus.

That’s not true.

Coaching senior leaders and CEOs, I can tell you from experience that people do not lack clarity and focus. The majority of people know what they want.

What they lack is self-awareness.

If you met my client, Sharon, the chief editor of a luxury lifestyle magazine, she has complete clarity of what she wants. Sharon dreams of starting her own publishing company. She is highly intellectual and loaded with charisma. She is known for her exceptional people skills. For 17 years, she’s been in this field of publishing. Yet, she isn’t even close to her dream of owning a publishing company. Why? Because in a couple of incidents, she messed up some huge client deals that cost the company substantial amounts. So whenever she thinks about her dream of opening her firm, her mind acts like her faithful servant and brings forth the memories of those failed deals and projects. And what follows is Sharon continuously telling herself, ‘I am still not mature enough to handle this.’ Her pattern of thoughts doesn’t generate new ways of thinking, new behaviors, or new possibilities. She only goes over the same information repeatedly without change and stays negative, adding on more self-destructive thoughts.

Sharon has clarity and focus but lacks self-awareness. For most of us, this gap in our career is more of an internal one. You can cross it only when you begin working on yourself- your behaviors and thinking.

It’s worth asking ourselves: are you where you want to be?