The Glass Hammer
Publication: https://theglasshammer.com/
The Glass Hammer is Inspiring and Empowering Professional Women at Work
Career advice and executive coaching for experts, managers and leaders who work in financial and professional services, technology, big law and Fortune 1000 firms.
During a two decade career in executive search, it was my job to call the most successful people in the world and recruit them away on behalf of my clients. They were successful, which is why I was calling them. But despite all this success, they weren’t very happy, which is why they were calling me back. Over time, I became fascinated with the question, “Why doesn’t success equal happiness?”
One reason stood out: Most of us were handed a definition of success by someone else. In other words, when we were younger, someone – perhaps a parent, a teacher, a friend, even a celebrity – told us who we should be when we grew up, and we adopted it, either consciously or subconsciously, until it became our path.
For me, there was a fourth grade teacher who told me that I was argumentative and should become a lawyer. There was a grandmother who wanted me to marry a nice Jewish doctor. There was the boss who wanted me to maximize his profit margin. For each of these people, I jumped through hoops. And then one day, I woke up and asked myself, when all the boxes were so full, why did I still feel so empty?
