One of my greatest fantasies when it comes to living the life we really want to live is that if we all were working in the jobs of our heart’s desire then we might end up in such a blissful state of being that we’d just bink on out of this life and Earth would end as we now know it.
That’s a good thing (because we’d all be in Nirvana) and that’s a bad thing (because I’m enjoying my time here right now and am not ready to leave just yet).
I suspect that it may take some time for all of us, all of humanity, to become so honest with ourselves that our every action is meted out with mindfulness and integrity.  In the meantime however, we can look around at our daily lives and notice what part we are playing in creating the world that we live in today.
One of the lessons I’ve learned so far in the business world is to be honest with myself about what my intentions are for where I am headed.  I suspect that part of the downfall for Ken Lay (Enron) was that he believed in his own B.S. so much that he made a suit out of it, drank it, ate it, quoted it and danced in it to such a point that he forgot it was B.S.  Ken’s demise is certainly a great reminder for CEO’s and Sales People to wake-up and pay attention and learn from.  I believe we all have the capacity within us to have the worst characteristics of any one person as well as the best.  We all are incased within the glass houses of our skins.
It was certainly a stomach twisting adventure for me to learn how to be a different kind of recruiter and account executive in the technological hay day of the early to mid nineties. Our ilk had the reputation of being the bottom scum feeders, the proverbial plaid wearing car salespeople, the talking heads of the shiny plastic logos reflecting on the front lawns of our buildings.  In the midst of all the excitement and scurrying to become the biggest and the best, my partner and I chose to take the road of learning how to be as “real” and honest as we were able AND grow our business at the same time.  It took time, but we did become very successful and earned a trusted reputation as the result.
A good friend and client has recently learned that she absolutely has everything she needs at her fingertips (intelligence, sociability, ambition, nurturance) to sell what she sells to zenith proportions.  She has also come to realize that she thrives on recognition and that recognition does not cross her immediate boss’ radar.  She has further realized that her immediate boss has great ambitions to further his career and so he is carving out whatever path he needs to carve to get there, often times cutting off her opportunities for recognition.  In our coaching session, she came to realize that for her to succeed and get recognized, she will come up with opportunities to help her boss achieve what he has set his sites on and not take his actions for success personally when they affect her. She has the intelligence, creativity and experience to figure out her own path to success now that she understands where he is coming from. She has also found other people to give her the recognition she needs so that she can keep doing what she loves to do. My friend has stopped playing the part of the victim.  She realizes now that she can out sell most (if not all) of the sales team and that she does not have to limit her ambitions to prove that her boss is not treating her right.
Whatever part we play, we all play a part.  Knowing and understanding what part we play gives us the awareness to choose how we will play.  We are all the directors and the actors of our own plays.  We might as well accept our individual brilliant parts and directorial debuts so that we can re-write the scripts as needed.