Here’s what happened when I popped my “deeply satisfying work” cherry...(and how to find your career Superpowers)
The day it happened…
It was a normal Tuesday, seven-ish years ago.
I had just finished my final session with a funny, self-deprecating, engaging and more-than-slightly silvered Managing Director of a technology firm.
My reaction was so physical, it took me by surprise.
I put the phone down and fancied a coffee. Whilst walking from my office to the kitchen, I couldn’t help but notice the rising sensation of a whoppingly huge smile, spreading like wildfire, across my face.
I felt an odd tingling in the deep depths of my stomach. This rose to meet, and bond with, the giant smile before smearing the sensation throughout my entire body in a weird, never-before-experienced, way.
The whole process culminated in…and I kid you not…a whole body air-jump!
What the..?!
What exactly had occurred on that call?
Something marvellous.
My client was delighted that he’d been released from the fog of uncertainty about his future work.
A fog that had been holding him back. And he told me so.
I was delighted that he was in a much better place than when we first met.
But that’s what I had promised. It should have been no surprise.
Job done.
Job done…well.
But, when I sat back to consider the impact of that weird whole-body air-jump, I felt simultaneously gutted and overjoyed.
GUTTED:
Hand on heart, I can tell you that I never once air-jumped with satisfied pleasure during my 20-year corporate career.
Not once!
Maybe you have? But not me.
Two long decades of work hard, play hard, some really enjoyable work but zero air-jumps.
I hadn’t realised during those 20 years that it was possible to do work that had this air-lifting impact.
This is me air-jumping in life at a gorgeous lake near Kelowna in Canada. I’d never air-jumped in the 20 years of my first career.
Sure, on occasions, I’d slightly self-consciously high-fived colleagues when I or they closed a big deal.
But mostly, I recall releasing gargantuan sighs of…tired-eyed, shoulder-slumped relief from the energy it took to close the deal.
Followed by another huge inhale to recharge for the next goal. Almost immediately.
Perhaps I could have been whole body air-jumping for the last 20 years if I had chosen a different sort of work?
OVERJOYED:
Whole body smiling, and uninhibited air-jumping, appear to be my version of how it feels to be paid to do deeply satisfying work with people who appreciate me.
I’m delighted that I popped that cherry in my mid-forties rather than my mid-sixties.
Better late than never.
Deeply satisfying work vs draining work (even if you’re great at it).
This somewhat silly, but memorable moment, highlights the difference between doing energising work that is deeply satisfying, and doing work that feels draining - even if you’ve become good at it.
When I sprinted away from my old career with no clear plan, I just knew in my heart that some people in this world really love their work.
I didn’t know any of them…then.
But, I knew that I wanted to be one of them.
I knew that I could be one of them, if I could just decipher their secrets.
So, I tracked down individuals who professed to love their work. I specifically sought out individuals who had stayed in one career for a long time, and then prioritised doing more satisfying work.
After 100 interviews with midlife career changers, I now know their secrets. I even wrote a book about them.
Their secrets inspired me to design my business in a particular way.
The most important secret is that they have redesigned their work around their “Superpowers”.
A superpower is not an extraordinary magical power. It is a very unique, very specific activity that you perform in a certain way - better than most people around you - and you can’t stop using using it. When you use your superpower, you feel satisfied, fulfilled and energised.
Of course, they didn’t use that term!
“Superpowers” is a term I use. It indicates the specific actions that are powered by your unique, ultra- strengths.
Superpowers include:
The activities that you love doing and could do with your eyes closed,
The activities that you always gravitate towards,
The activities that you cannot stop doing both in work and in life,
The activities that you would do for free if you didn’t need to pay the bills…because they feel satisfying to your core.
You might notice that these Superpowers are actions, not passive traits.
This is crucial.
When these 100 career changers use their Superpowers in their work, they feel deeply, deeply satisfied.
Instead of feeling drained to the point of exhaustion after a day of using their Superpowers, they feel recharged and rebooted. They could use these Superpowers for 8 hours a day, and never feel drained.
Could you use your Superpowers all day, every day?
Sadly, in the real world of business, very few have been able to make a living, exclusively using their superpowers.
But the happiest career changers I’ve interviewed, use their superpowers multiple times a day.
Occasionally, they designed a whole day using their Superpowers - these days were utterly fantastic.
So, the fundamental secret to doing fulfilling, satisfying and happier work, is using your Superpowers as often as possible, each day.
When I use my own Superpowers, it feels as though all of my pleasure sensors have fired up at once.
It feels like nothing else in this world. As you now know, in my case, it brings around instinctive bodily reactions like gigantic, entire face-filling, shiny-eyed smiles and involuntary whole-body air-jumps.
Not quite orgasmic but something close.
Not a bad way to earn a living…eh?
Want to make a start on discovering your own Superpowers? [Download this starter guide now]
If you liked this, you might enjoy these:
The forgotten middle child of career unhappiness family - and the dangers of not noticing.
The one thing I lacked that could have shaved £120 off my career change costs
Are our careers central to the modern day midlife crisis?
If you’re interested in the starter secrets behind doing work that you could find deeply satisfying - grab copy of my book X Change: How to torch your work treadmill. You’ll also get 19 short stories of other professionals like you, who re-designed their careers and are happier for it.
