Embrace the burden, then shed it

Like the busy bee weighed down with pollen, you too are burdened.

You don't need anyone to list the challenges in your day-to-day existence. You are all too familiar with them.

If you don't experience daily burdens, congratulations (you need not keep reading).

Perhaps you lament, complain, and kvetch online, or you tell a few close souls, or you keep the burdens selfishly all to yourself, bottling up the rich and toxic sludge of immature or downright unethical boss behavior or crappy coworkers and meaningless projects and unrealistic deadlines and personal doubts and imposter syndrome and "achievement dysmorphia" (a term I borrowed from Jaime Ellis, ACC) or disrespectful clients and miserable leaders... oh, dang, I thought I was going to spare you the list.

How much of that extra weight is thrown upon you unfairly by external forces, but how much of it do you automatically (maybe absent-mindedly?) pick up and carry just to please others, or because you're a workaholic, or because you were never (ever) shown a healthy + viable alternative, or because you simply don't allow yourself some time to explore it?

It's impossible to avoid all burdens in life--that much we can agree on.

Some burdens make you stronger.
Some actually do make you weaker--at least physically.
Some shared burdens will allow you to connect with people and even inspire countless others, both loved ones close to home, and strangers many mountains and seas away.

"Shared sorrow is half sorrow, shared joy is double joy"--I discovered this phrase online years ago and it keeps coming back into my life at just the right moments.

When it comes to work, perhaps some of your burdens are educational and constructive for a time, a reason, a season. They propel and motivate you--to a point. Until they don't.

How many of your professional burdens have you carried now for far too long, to the point that it's become tragic... or comical?

Netflix recently released a show called Human Playground, taking some of these often self-induced burdens to their extreme (I didn't say it couldn't be beautiful). If you haven't seen it, Idris Elba's narration alone is worth experiencing.

What burdens are you carrying at work that no longer serve you?

Great news: You don't need to answer.

After all, a life examined can be scary, fraught with more questions than answers.

But, as some say, the unexamined life is not worth living...

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What is coaching, in a nutshell?
The world's best career coach is not the one who gives you the answers, but the one who helps you realize that the answers are already within you, hidden under layers of dust or rust.

The world's best executive coach is not the one who "trains" you on how to communicate or lead more effectively, but the one who unearths your existing leadership skills and strengths, helps you explore and experiment, and empowers you and you alone to leverage your innate resilience and resourcefulness to find creative solutions to some of the most challenging problems in the modern-day workplace.

Check out:
Why Working With a Career Coach May Not Be For You