The Choice Of Balance

I got an email from a friend on Saturday. He told me he had been reading my blogs and he thought I should go back to corporate life. He said I seemed too centered and I needed the imbalance the corporate world provides.

It was the second time in one week I got a similar reaction. Another friend remarked how good I looked and that my outlook was so positive. She seemed surprised as if she was expecting me to have had enough with this reinvention thing and be ready to go back and look for a “real job.”

These things will happen if you choose reinvention. Especially when that reinvention is in the direction of your genius. People will wonder. They won’t understand that it is easy to be centered when you are doing what you love. That even with the stress of when that next check is coming, the worries about whether you shouldn’t just go and learn how to be a barrister at Starbucks, all those uncertainties that do throw you off balance, that you know are in the right place. You are on your path. And that is enough to keep you happy. That is what sustains the smile on your face.

The ones who have known you the longest tend to be the most perplexed. You have become one of those people who likes their job. You’re not commiserating when they start to complain about theirs. They know you as the stressed, pressed for time, corporate executive, running so fast forward that sometimes she forgot where she was going. They thought that was who you really were, not this new calm, balanced model. You did too. For a long time.

But now you know what they don’t really want to believe. That there are choices. And you’ve made yours.