Burning out while chasing a dream

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A while back, I decided that law wasn’t going to make me happy. So I thought long and hard about what I would do instead.

I came up with three options.

I decided that if I could do it all over again, I would be a therapist, or a writer, or I would own a retail store.

I remember saying to my coach, “Which one do I pick?”

And she said, “Does it matter?”

And in that instant, I realized that it didn’t matter which one I picked.

I was stuck.

All that mattered is that I start moving.

Great, but I still didn’t know what direction to start moving in.

So I turned to Clayton Christensen in How Will You Measure Your Life and realized I needed to test my assumptions.

My assumption was not that I would succeed. I believed I would succeed. It’s probably the same for you - we’ve got a history of setting goals and achieving them.

My assumption was that I would like it.

That doing these things would make me happy.

So I tested them. I picked one I love. And I started to build the life that would make me happy.

And then I burnt out. Hard.

What went wrong?

We discuss this and more on this week’s episode.

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Paul KarvanisComment