The Work Awakening: Why It’s Time To Question Everything

I have an undergraduate degree in accounting, which—if you know me—is hilarious. I'm big, dynamic, strategic, creative. The idea of me hunched over spreadsheets paying attention to decimal points actually makes people laugh out loud.

But fifteen years ago, I was chasing something entirely different.

Raised by a teen mom, it was etched into my brain that I couldn't become "another statistic." I thought safety (and success) meant achievement—that if I outperformed everyone else, I’d be safe, good, worthy. So I aimed for hard jobs with big titles. Finance. Accounting. McKinsey. Deloitte. Gold stars that would prove my excellence.

Then I watched the color drain from my mom's face. A major medical crisis, that I now understand was driven by burnout, almost killed her. I started to put two and two together, and there, at the ripe age of 20, saw that the safe, ambitious path might just be a recipe for disaster.

So I took a sharp left.

Despite my fear of defying convention, I chose to build the career I wanted. I was lucky—I was young. No mortgage, no team depending on me, no golden handcuffs. I could take the risk, pivot, and forge my own path.

Most aren’t so lucky. Over the past 15 years, I've worked with dozens of VPs and senior leaders who wanted different but couldn’t just walk away. They were exactly where you might be now—successful, exhausted, and trapped by their own achievements.

Here’s today’s truth: people everywhere are having their own version of my 20-year-old revelation. The pandemic, AI, political discord, climate crisis—they’re cracking something open in our collective work consciousness. People are realizing that the gold stars and big titles they've been chasing might be leading them toward the lives they're desperate to escape.

As one client said, "What I thought was a dream is quickly becoming a nightmare."

The research backs this up. Workplace disengagement is on the rise, costing the global economy over $7 trillion annually.

That's not just numbers—that's human potential being crushed. It's creativity dying in conference rooms. It's people medicating themselves through jobs that feel like slow suffocation.

Here's the good news: we're witnessing the largest workplace awakening in human history. People aren't just “quiet quitting” anymore—they're loud questioning. They're asking why we built work this way. They're demanding that jobs add meaning to their lives instead of extracting their life force.

This isn't about finding your passion or any other Instagram-worthy platitude. This is about survival. If we’re lucky, it's about flourishing. The old promise—that if you kept your head down and climbed the ladder, everything would work out—is breaking. What's replacing it is both scarier and more exciting: the chance to build work that's actually aligned with how humans are wired.

The people thriving in this new landscape aren't necessarily the ones with the fanciest job titles. They're the ones who've done the deep work of figuring out who they are underneath all the achievement and expectation.

That might sound daunting, but most of my clients start small.

They learn to notice when their chest tightens in a meeting, when they're holding their breath during a difficult conversation, when they're checking email to avoid feeling. Then we build micro-tools: 30 seconds of breathing after hanging up from a difficult call, blocking 15 minutes for actual lunch, having one honest conversation with their partner about what's actually happening.

If you're questioning everything about your career, if you're wondering whether work can actually feel good—know this: that discomfort isn't weakness. It's wisdom. It's your system trying to course-correct before you end up somewhere you never intended to be.

I won't pretend it’s easy. If you're deep in burnout, you might need an actual break. Maybe even a sharp left turn. But most of my clients see their exhaustion ease within two or three months of doing this internal work, even while staying in their current role.

So the question isn't if you have “a good job”. The question is: what kind of career are you building? The kind that slowly hollows you out? Or the kind that comes from knowing exactly who you are and building a life that honors that truth?

Because here's what I know for sure: you don't have to sacrifice your health and humanity for someone else's definition of success. You don't have to blow up your life to save it. But you do need to start somewhere. And that somewhere is learning to be honest about what's actually happening inside you—right now.