Who Sunk My Yacht?

By Tanya Stevenson and Raymond Aaron

Sailing in Unknown Waters, but Wearing a Life Jacket!

Changing the course of your career is a huge decision, especially if you’ve spent years learning, sacrificing, and investing your time in your current career. Often, the need for redirection creeps up slowly. We don’t realize how unhappy we are until we hit a wall and then, bam! How could we have missed the signs? Lethargy, depression, frustration, disinterest – these are telling indicators but when they occur slowly over time, they can be overlooked. When we do recognize the need for change, however, the question remains, how do we actually make a change now that we’ve spent so much time on a different life path? The reality can be overwhelming but in Who Sunk My Yacht?, Tanya Stevenson provides a clear method for re-charting your course. Utilizing her tools, you’ll find yourself, as Tanya says, “sailing in unknown waters but wearing a life jacket.” Success is just around the corner!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772770612

Book preview

Port

Chapter 1: Lost

When I decided to write this book, I began to think of the powerful comparison between my personal life and business life to the waters that naturally surround us. Whether it be the ocean, a river or stream, a lake or a pond. Waterways, like business, give and enhance life and, in both, when the moorings come undone and you are adrift, you may lose sight of the shore.

- Tanya Stevenson

You are standing on the shore and asking yourself, how did I get here? You are beginning to question your purpose and your career choices. You don’t know if you need to course correct to address the apathy, frustration, and discontent you are experiencing with your current career path. You are lost, but, not alone.

It may have unfolded gradually over the past few weeks, months or years, or you woke up one morning to the realization that you don’t love your work. You don’t even like it. Maybe you recognize you are in a dead-end job and you can’t ignore it any longer. Or perhaps you’ve experienced a loss of some kind, a failed relationship, a divorce, the loss of a parent. Maybe you are an executive who has hit your stride, but your personal life lacks meaning. It is an itch you just can’t scratch that keeps reminding you, you are meant to be doing something else.

So, you tamp down your dissatisfaction and you try to justify your thoughts or the way you are feeling. Why I am dissatisfied? I have my dream job. It took years of studying, growth and development to get here. Maybe I should just stick with it. After all I was raised to have a great work ethic and I’ve received recognition from my contemporaries, my boss and colleagues, is how you explain away your frustration and unhappiness.

Then another dreaded Monday morning comes along, and by the end of the day you feel too tired to meet up with friends you usually have fun with. You are tired and plan to spend much of your weekend trying to catch up on sleep.

You are in burnout and with it comes a long list of health and performance problems. You lack motivation and enthusiasm. You become increasingly pessimistic and down on yourself. And, your usually collaborative self is replaced by a stranger who is disagreeable and argues with friends, family and colleagues. Yup, you are experiencing the classic symptoms of burnout. And, the chronic stress of constantly being asked to deliver more than you can handle is getting to you.

The big, all-consuming questions become:

•   Why is this happening to me?

•   Is there something more I should be doing?

•   And, what are my next steps to change this?

Business magazines and career books offer loads of well-meaning advice on how to deal with lost feelings associated with burnout. They provide step-by-step processes to negotiate for more equality and fairer terms at work and a better package. They have loads of information on how to become more collaborative with difficult colleagues and what to do when your boss is a jerk.

My approach is somewhat different.

Many years ago, I adopted Meraki as my personal philosophy. In Greek it means doing things with soul, creativity, and love include the essence of yourself in the work you do. In my words, living and working with conscious purpose.

So you find yourself at this place and time in your career. And, whatever the causes, your perspective has irrevocably changed. You’ve heard the call and your once-comfortable world no longer seems to fit.

Coming from a place of conscious purpose, you are aware that the boat you are steering is adrift but before you paddle furiously for the shore, pause and think about the essence of who you are.

Use your dissatisfaction and frustration to launch new ideas and creativity. This self-discovery will restore and rejuvenate your energy, your commitment, and your alignment to a life lived with purpose.

Change takes courage and many of you may view it with great trepidation. But when you take the first step forward, change will lead you to an inspired future.

American poet, author, historian, activist, and storyteller Maya Angelou once said, There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Before we examine how you wish to proceed, let’s first look at the reasons why it’s time to take stock. It’s important not to skip