Chapter 3: Build Your Own Stage

How do we decide what we are passionate about in life? Many of us spend our entire lives searching for our calling. It is the big existential question of our time. We are looking for one thing to complete us, be the answer to all of our problems and be the guiding beacon in a dark confusing world. We may ask ourselves, what is it that we are searching for? Or, what is my destiny?

Here’s something I’ve learned over the years: we don’t have one true calling. In fact we have hundreds of…

Office Therapist | I hate corporate life. Can I just quit my job?

Q: I was a freelancer who is now working in a more corporate environment and I’m really struggling with the culture and pace of work. Decisions take forever, nothing tangible ever gets accomplished and I’m having a hard time managing the office politics. Do you have any advice on how to handle it or should I just quit and go back to freelance?

A: You can absolutely quit your job at any time you want, but first I would recommend you work on managing your work life…

Office Therapist | With the Covid-19 Pandemic, should I make a permanent move and work remotely indefinitely?

Q: I’m currently based in New York City and given everything with the Covid lockdowns and the possibility for remote office work, I’m considering relocating to someplace that has a better cost of living and quality of life. I know a lot of people are moving, but do you really think it’s safe to assume you can permanently move away from an urban working center and still have reliable employment in the future?

A: Everyday I see more and more global companies selling…

Office Therapist | What if I hate the career I’ve been building for the past decade?

Q: After getting my MFA in creative writing, I started working in the creative agency world as a copywriter. I landed at some great digital shops and boutique brands where I got to work on big ad campaigns with great clients. But each time, I could never really find ways to bring my cultural interests together with my professional writing, and something would inevitably happen within the organization that would leave me looking for new work.

Now I’m working on a freelance magazine story…

Overview

This story is about failure as much as it is about success. It’s a story of life’s ups and downs, its twists and turns, its ebbs and flows. This is a story about how I got rejected from college, started a band, and then found myself sitting across from the world’s top CEOs. I didn’t grow up rich, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school or get an inheritance, and either despite or because of that, I became an executive at a multinational corporation by 35 anyway.

I’m not supposed to be here. My story is about how…