Last week I went to a funeral for a friend’s mom. I never met her, but that sure didn’t stop me from weeping like we shared our deepest, darkest together. Yes, after much self-reflection along my journey, I’ve come to an acceptance around being that girl at the stranger’s funeral. I’m sure there’s part of me that connects this moment to all of those important and traumatic funerals that came before.

But now more than ever, as someone who helps people create lives driven by all that’s meaningful to them, I’m moved, held and tightly gripped by the ritual telling of a human’s story.

Who was she to her people?

What did she fight like hell to overcome?

What were her quirks that simultaneously drove people crazy and drew them close?

How would she want to be remembered and is that how we will remember her?

As a committed soldier to the practice of life transformation, bearing witness to the authentic recounting of imperfect and beautiful lives drives me to ask the questions:

1. Am I living my truth?

2. How do I inspire others to commit to living theirs, no matter how hard or unpopular it may be to do so?

To address my own truth, I’m constantly tweaking and checking in on who I’m being and the impact I’m making. And then, by writing it all down to share with the people who care, I recognize that I am, in fact, living it.

I’m fighting for a more equitable world for my daughters and for women, and I truly believe we will see change in my lifetime. All that said, I often feel I can be doing more, and it all looks pretty messy in practice. I fear the impact I want to make comes at the cost of the people I love and the time I have to care for them.

That’s where my focus goes when I think about my legacy.

I want to be remembered as someone who fought for a more equitable world so that all humans have the opportunity to create lives according to what’s most important to them AND I want my people to know that they are/were loved by me. That our connections are what change me and fuel me and make me want to do the work I do. Alas, this is the hard part and the area I know I can do better. And will do better.

When it comes to the people in my sphere—the lives I have the honor to touch—we zero in on whether they’re living intentional, meaningful lives by creating what I call a Legacy Gap Analysis. Here’s how it works:

1. Write your eulogy, the story of your life as if it ended right now.

2. Now, write what you WANT the retelling of your life to sound like, for your people and for the world.

3. Where are the gaps in your two stories?

4. What steps can you take right now to fill in those gaps? Hint: it’s less about goals you can accomplish and more about who you are being in your life.

Once you’ve completed your analysis, approach it without judgment. This is where you are. There are many stories you can create about where you are. Choose those stories that spring from compassion for yourself and how far you’ve come. These are the narratives that will help you connect with all the work still to do within your gap. It is your work to do and you can let every breath be a reminder that there is still time to make that impact on the world you are driven to make and to love your people the way you know they need to be loved.

Often times when we get comfortable in a role, we put down roots—and well, get even more comfortable. We can make sense of a job that is known. It’s predictable. It’s safe. It’s autopilot amenable. Career autopilot can serve a purpose. It helps us shift priorities when life happens. When we have babies or losses. When we run marathons or tend to injuries from said marathons.

But something happens when we sleepwalk through our careers.

We wake up:

Writing the same deck for the umpteenth time with a new set of logos.

Falling down the same rabbit holes because a senior leader heard a buzzword.

Giving in to decisions that aren’t aligned with our values.

And we wonder, "How did I get here?" The answer is simple—you forgot or chose not to do these two things.

1. Focus on learning and growth
When we identify how we want to grow in our careers and then step onto the path to doing so, we boost our energy and our expertise—coming up with new clues for longer-term goals. Lucky for us, there are a multitude of ways to address our development areas that range from hundreds of dollars to free. Reignite your learning with workshops, classes, conferences, conversations, YouTube videos, Meetups, books, podcasts—and any other way you can think to possibly digest content in the coming year.

2. Network and connect without an agenda
One critical component to a thriving career is your network, otherwise known as the relationships you nurture over years. When we get comfortable in a job, we can disappear on our network. Then, when it comes time to either look for a new job or attempt to get unstuck, we must—yet again—start from zero with our people. What could have been ongoing watering and tending to the garden becomes a daunting and draining task. When you continue to make time for your contacts, colleagues and the people you meet doing weird and interesting things, you grow, you gain energy, you cultivate relationships, you help others and most importantly—you feel connected.

Exercise, clean eating and rest are essential for your physical health—just as continued learning and ongoing networking are key for your career health. When you are in the space of momentum, energy and self-awareness that flows from these two things, you can make ongoing subtle shifts in your focus, rather than waking up in a rut one day that will require a monumental shift. Make the time. Choose the things and the people that ignite you so that watering the garden feels nurturing to you, too! And then, reap the rewards of the spring bloom that shows up in the form of community, possibilities and opportunities you never expected to appear.

Do you show up for work every day feeling like you’re living the wrong life? Are you pretending to care about what you do all day, only to come home exhausted from the charade? Does your work require you to always be on, without time to actually enjoy the life you’re funding?

Many of my clients come to me at these very moments. They’re stuck, lost and not sure how to move forward.

They have 15 (or more) years experience in a skill they no longer want to use.

They’re so depleted that they no longer know what they’re good at OR what they enjoy doing.

They’re hooked into a lifestyle tied to their current salary.

They’re worried that leaving this "good on paper" job or company will look like a failure.

It’s not exactly the set of circumstances that opens the door to new possibilities and creative ideas. These clients often appear in my office after a health issue has taken hold—pneumonia, a debilitating fall or injury, chronic pain or even panic attacks. After resisting their intuition and ignoring their discontent, their bodies spring into action to wake them from their paralysis. They finally see it. It’s time to make a change.

If this sounds like you, know that there is a way out. You have more options than you realize. Take the following first steps to get unstuck.

1. Identify the fear.
What are you afraid will happen if you make a change? And what will not happen? Make a list of your fears so you can take a closer look at what is preventing you from taking action. You can also begin speaking with friends, colleagues and professionals who can work with you to see if there’s truly any evidence to validate those fears. It’s both unsettling and liberating to discover that the worries that have been holding you back for years are not grounded in reality.

2. Create space.
In order to begin moving forward, I recommend setting new boundaries in your current role. For some this means committing to leave at 6 PM daily and for others it’s sealing the laptop shut over the weekend and on vacations. Still for others, if they have the financial means, it’s making a clean break to take some time off. In this newfound space you can move toward things you want to learn—take classes or workshops—or do the things that bring you joy. You can take time to reflect on the things that you do well or the moments throughout your career that ignited you. You can tend to your body with exercise, rest and simply being you without the expectations of figuring out who that is every minute and constantly making meaning.

3. Deploy your A-Team.
Who are the people in your circle transforming their lives, their companies and their industries? Who was it that pushed you out of the nest before you felt ready to deliver the presentation? Sure, you were bruised, but you practiced, you nailed it and you learned what was possible. Find those people. Let them know that you’re ready for a change and that even though you don’t know what it is yet, you will reach out to them for support from time to time. If you don’t have any of those people in your life, it might be a clue as to why you’re so stuck. Look for inspiration from books, podcasts and TED Talks, then slowly work your way into networking and connecting with bold-thinking people who will support your seemingly crazy ideas and provide feedback on how to make them seem less crazy to you.

When you acknowledge you’re in a mid-career crisis, I recommend you do not use it to add the pressure to find immediate answers. Answers rarely show up as soon as you realize you need them. It’s a process that, as with anything, you can choose to internally market as torture or see as fun and enlightening. During my career transition from digital marketing to coaching, I set up a minimum of one networking meeting a week with people who were working on interesting projects that could potentially never intersect with what I was doing, but the inspiration, connection and flurry of possibilities carried me through the rest of the week (and my multiyear transition) with energy to spare.

Writing on January 2nd is hard. The possibilities are endless—and yet so are the expectations. I want to jump into my year with a karate chop slicing through a cinder block, but I’m still processing my holiday break reflection, uncertainty about the new year to come and my exhaustion from entertaining two kids for nearly two weeks straight. That’s a lot of kid time for this working mom (Respect, stay at home parents.).

By far the most challenging part of starting fresh this week is starting fresh. Taking a step into a pure white canvas and bringing to it my inevitable mess. My optimistic, ambitious, well-meaning, out of practice, fearful, unrested mess. In my head there’s a dance party of perfect, pristine images that refuse to connect to words. So my goal right now: let them dance. Be where I am, which may be exactly where I need to be.

And where am I? 2018 was an exciting and successful year professionally, but an intense and exhausting year on the personal front. On top of living the busy life of a working mom of two, caregiving for my uncle with Parkinson’s kicked up a notch this year and moved into the foreground of my personal priorities. Heading into 2019 with even bigger goals for both business growth and writing projects while continuing to navigate my uncle’s care—leaves me with the worry that doing all I have planned may not be possible.

This is the fear that winks at my empty page, my blinking cursor, my new year, my blank slate.

But I don’t need to choose it as I often did in 2018. I fed that beast with stress and resentment and false helplessness. That is simply not who I am, but I was tired and angry. My work, my practice this year is to forgive myself for stewing and to excise that thought with surgical precision.

In the face of my new year with endless possibilities, I vow to:

1. Actively choose to believe what I want is possible.

2. See the beauty in the mess.

The mess means I’m bringing all that I am, including my fear to the work. This is what it looks like when you forge forward despite all the reasons not to do so. There will always be excuses to stand in one place. You need not look far to find them. When you ignore them, step into the uncertainty and challenge the naysaying with your action, you can find new confidence in course correcting back to your unique path. My path includes uncovering my fears and my solace in writing and inspiring and being inspired by my incredible clients—all while triaging multiple calls a day from and about my uncle. It is both beauty and mess and also fraught with lessons that are mine for the learning.

One evening last week, I was wrapping up my day of coaching sessions and writing some emails to clients while sitting on my bed. My puppy, Taco, who is now six months old, was lying across my feet, and I was working away to the tunes of my daughter’s piano and voice lesson in the living room. I snapped a photo of Taco and sent it to my husband.

“You have the best job,” He said

“By design,” I responded

I welled up with pride. I created this. I had a vision. I wasn’t sure it was possible, and I made it happen.

Now, as I close out my year and begin anew, I move through a process that helps me acknowledge the seemingly small (but truly big) successes like this one, find compassion for the moments I went off course and set intentions for the year to come.

Here’s how it works:

1. Celebrate your wins.
Whether it’s closing a new client, getting a new job or promotion, defending your dissertation, starting your own business, getting married, getting divorced, surviving cancer—you are all out there doing incredible things. Make a list of all of the big things along with the smaller moments that somehow felt transformational. Honor them. Celebrate them. Notice the ways you brought your unique gifts to those accomplishments and how what others may see as failures could show up on your wins list.

2. Be grateful.
Who in your life has shown up for you this year, without even a request? What are the moments that felt like luck or some divine intervention? Spend time on an accounting of all the things you have that bring you joy. It may not be all you want in life, but take time to focus on what you may be taking for granted—like for some it could be good health. Think about all that your health affords you to do in your life and notice how that can minimize the want or the hunger for what you do not yet have.

3. Forgive yourself.
No, not everything went as planned. You lost your cool. You yelled. You fumbled in your moment to shine. But you’re also human, and humans are flawed (sorry to break this news). In order to forgive yourself for what did and didn’t happen in this past year, I recommend writing yourself a forgiveness letter. And go deep. What compassionate words would you use to calm yourself for saying that cruel thing to your friend out of jealousy or for not listening to your partner because you had to finish an email or for knowing a relationship was over, but letting it go on too long? How would you talk to a close friend about those things? When you feel like it’s complete, read it out loud. Feel the emotions. Let the tears flow. With acknowledgment and forgiveness (and frequent reminders of both), you can work to leave these things in your past and not use them as the foundation for your new year.

4. Choose a theme for the new year.
You may still be in holiday mode and not yet ready to plan out your 2019. That’s OK. Or maybe you’ve made New Year’s resolutions in the past that you gave up on somewhere between January 5th and 12th. Instead of that approach—I like to start my year off by choosing a word that will be my theme for the year. It can give you direction and help you choose how to move forward in your role or your business. It can also serve as your mantra in moments when you’re working towards a big change. I asked my daughters what they would choose as words to guide their 2019, and my seven year old jumped up and shouted, “Oh, I know mine! Except for food—ADVENTUROUS!” I can’t wait to see how this comes to be in her life, and I more than sort of hope that it does spill over into food.

As I do this reflection in my own life and then multiply it in my work with clients, the turning over of years has become one of the most simple and powerful rituals I use to gain clarity and momentum. It helps me to define what success looks like for me—knowing that my wins may sound either lofty or mundane to others—and that truly, none of that matters. In the spirit of my 2019 word, LISTEN, it prompts me to get quiet, observe, gather the clues and then alternate baby steps and giant leaps on my own unique path.

The mid-career and senior women leaders I work with have busy lives. Many of them are mothers, so in addition to their demanding full-time jobs, they’re also responsible for the lion’s share of the household management duties—what I like to call "the third job." They’re the primary communicators with the school and childcare professionals in their lives. They make sure dogs are walked, that everyone is dressed in clothing approaching the right size, and they figure out how to minimize the impact of the family tornado in their living quarters (although this is typically the first area to go in over-scheduled times).

When we dig into their values and priorities, one of the conflicts we uncover is that they are deeply committed to advancing women leaders and supporting the more junior women at their organizations, and yet they have no clue how they can add commitments into their lives without teetering into overwhelm.

There’s already no room in my life. How will I fit this in?

That’s when we look at the challenge in a new way. Pulling other women up doesn’t have to mean attending weekly networking events, taking on a mentor, creating your own Feminist Fight Club group (though that’s just plain fun) or securing a board position at a nonprofit. There are many new choices we can make WITHIN our existing work hours that will do more to support and advance women’s careers.

Here are 5 ways to get started:

1. Be generous with feedback.
It can be tough to give feedback, but it is a critical method of learning for adults—so it’s worth it. When you can offer both praise and critique for specific behaviors and actions, your employees and colleagues are given an opportunity to improve in their roles and also become less resistant to accepting feedback when it comes from other members of the team. Sometimes as women we fear not being "nice" when we give feedback. I turn that around to say: "You’re not being nice by withholding feedback that could be useful and advance someone’s career!"

2. Spread the love of office housework equitably.
How many meetings have you walked into where one of your male colleagues asks a woman at his level to put the bagels out on the tray? What’s so hard about dumping said bagels onto a flat surface? When you notice that the women on the team are always the ones who take notes at meetings, plan team outings or organize the giveaway tchotchke closet—speak up and let your male colleagues know they can/should also bear responsibility for these tasks. If you see women constantly volunteering for things like this, go back to step one and give them feedback. When women spend their extra time on these activities, they can miss an opportunity to step into more strategic work that could get them promoted, in turn thwarting our goal of getting more women into positions of power.

3. Call out bias when you see it.
Where there are humans, there is bias. We look at life through the lens of our own unique set of experiences, and with that our propensity is to create our future experiences based on what we know. That’s why it’s critical to have a diverse set of voices speaking at the same volume in the room—so we have a variety of lenses and data sets feeding into the greater whole. Too often, organizations don’t exhibit that level of diversity, and a culture of bias takes root that is tough to challenge and expose. But if you are a woman with a respected voice in an organization, and you see another woman being overlooked for a role or promotion because of some kind of bias, do the right thing—speak up. Share your POV with trusted male colleagues who will support you and stand with you to untangle these institutional biases.

4. Courageously be the model of work-life balance you want to create.
If you need to leave work at 5 to pick up your child at 6, if you’re managing a chronic health concern or you’ve set a goal to get your butt to the gym in the evening because it refuels you for the next day—honor your commitments. Those boundaries DO NOT make you less valuable. Have the hard conversations with your superiors about exactly what you need to perform at your best, and don’t feel you have to explain why. When you step into this courageous space of advocating for yourself and acknowledging your non-negotiables, you are clearing the path for other women to do the same. When the fear comes up in the asking, know that this is not only about you and your life—you’re taking a stand against the rigidity and face-time you’ve faced in your career while also paving the way for others to feel like it’s possible to succeed in both career and motherhood.

5. Participate in women’s networks when possible.
Some of the most rewarding moments of my digital marketing career came through my participation with the Women’s Network, WIN, at American Express. I connected with many more senior women than I ever would have in my role. Seeing them and learning from them helped me to see what was possible. If you are mid-career or a senior leader in an organization that has a women’s network, find some way to participate that resonates for you. You don’t need to volunteer to take on a second full-time job or plan the group’s largest event. You can speak on a panel, take part in speed mentoring or do your part to show that although we’re not there yet, it is possible to make strides toward equity and a meaningful career.

In order to make changes in our organizations, it’s critical to participate in a way that works for each of us individually. If you jump in up to your ears and raise your hand to run every powerful committee, you will burn out and resent the work. Choose a way to engage that will bring you energy and momentum—and also inspire you to sprinkle these same behaviors into other areas of your life. For me, this means listening to a room full of women who were flattened by their organization’s town hall featuring a panel of all white men and acknowledging "You’re right. Representation matters. Keep exposing what should be obvious by now. Continue to share your voices and find allies who will help you amplify them. This is possible. Let’s do it together." Because it is, and we will.

Annual reviews bring up a mix of complicated feelings.

Doubt, guilt, fear, frustration, indignation.

Hope, pride, appreciation, gratitude, compassion.

The emotions rise to the surface one by one or all at once—and then we must put on a brave face and push through our feelings so we can string sentences together and advocate for ourselves during the dreaded conversation. No matter whether the overall tone of the exchange is deflating or empowering—it is typically one of the tougher dialogues we experience in our careers.

While I haven’t had one of these reviews in a few years, I remember the internal conflict I would feel when it came time to hand my self-assessment (the part I could control), over to my supervisor who had the final say on my performance, compensation and professional development. In essence, I was relinquishing ownership of my own learning and growth.

Now, with distance from the experience and a boatload of new leadership tools, I know the way to avoid this uncomfortable scenario: Get ahead of it.

I work with clients to complete their own super secret annual reviews and professional development plans for the year to come. Here’s how we do it:

1. Start with an organizing principle—your values
In order to evaluate yourself, you need to know what you’re shooting for in your career. If your life and career are driven by a certain set of values—this would be a great place start. My personal values are courage, connection, inspiration, peace and fun, and to stay on track I make a list of all of the ways I’ve been in action around each of these values and the results that have come from these actions.

2. What did you learn and where can you improve?
This is my favorite part of the secret review. If you’re a human being, there are always things you can do better. Where in your career are you not living your values? Where are you not getting the results you want? Because nobody will ever see this document and it will not impact your compensation, you can feel free to be 100% honest. Plus, you’re evaluating yourself based on what’s important to you and not what’s critical to your company. Of course, if you’re in the right role these two sets of criteria would likely align. If they’re vastly different, that is data that can inform how you move forward.

3. How will you follow your curiosity in the coming year?
Start by asking yourself: What are the things that energize you, that bring you into flow? The things that when you’re doing them make you feel most like you? How can you add another dimension to that expertise? What are the things you want to learn that are disconnected from your current role, although your intuition is driving you there anyway? When generating this list of learning opportunities, note which items on the list feel like a "should" and which give you butterflies just imagining the possibilities. Next, map out the months of the year and note your curiosity focus for each month being sure to strike a balance between aspirational and practical. January will be storytelling while February could be sharpening public speaking skills. With a loose map, you can set your targets and allow yourself to flesh out the details at a later date.

When it comes to timing, I highly recommend doing your Super Secret Annual Review before you complete the self-assessment for your role. This way, you can allow your own review to inform the document for your company. Know that for your own review, you can throw around sentence fragments and simple language. There’s no need to spend extra time dressing it up. It’s for you, and only you know what you mean, at least most of the time. If it seems like an unnecessary step that you don’t have time for, remember that the one person responsible for driving your career forward (in the direction you choose) is you. Your boss and your company and your mentors may provide guidance and valuable input, but you are the only one who can put that data through the filter of what’s meaningful to you and decide on your best next move.

After graduating college and jumping into my first job as a Publicity Assistant at a local television station, I nurtured a blooming fantasy about one thing that was going to make or break my career. I dreamt up a mentor and together we moved mountains, broke glass ceilings and built up my confidence to a point where I was simply unstoppable.

She was the model of success I wanted to create for myself.

We met once a month to discuss my career evolution.

She weighed in on colossal decisions, providing counsel on how best to move forward.

She nudged me, pushed me farther than I thought I could go, and always kept my career path and my success top of mind.

The first ten years of my career exploded, and I rode the wave of my growing abilities and a changing industry. While I had inspiring bosses who cheered me on for a period of time and conversations with colleagues who saw something special in me and were candid about their own stories to help me learn from their experiences, I never found that one person I hoped would save me from whatever stuckness I stepped into along my path.

And I did get stuck for several years. I knew I needed a change but could not see a way forward. I blamed my mentor for not showing up to perform her duties and myself for not being able to find her.

Then, through a confluence of life events like a milestone birthday, a close friend imparting wisdom as he died of ALS and my growing bandwidth as my daughters moved out of baby neediness, I grew a visceral understanding that…

The only person responsible for my life and my career is me. Nobody is going to save me from the unhappiness, the missed opportunities, the stuckness. My Fairy Mentor Mother may not come.

Or perhaps she already has, but she looks different than expected…

We might just meet once a year or every two years, or maybe we only ever met once, but the conversation had a tremendous impact on me.

She may have been ten years younger than me, but offered me the right brilliance at the right time.

She may be a friend who is sometimes one chapter ahead and sometimes needing my support.

She may be a writer, a podcaster or Oprah.

She may be a he.

What I know now and wish I knew then is that I can find inspiration from anyone and anything. It’s up to me to be open to receiving these messages, taking them to heart and putting them into action. I can break out of the rigid mentor lore I painted in my mind so that I can have mentoring conversations when I least expect them or several times a week instead of only once a month. What a better deal for me and less pressure and time for all of my people. And I have so many people who step up to be there for me in the moments I need them. They don’t need titles to help me move mountains, break glass ceilings or build up my confidence to make me unstoppable. Love, gratitude, respect and taking a turn on the upside of the mentoring see-saw make us feel whole.