For both of us our careers were blessed with success, fulfilment and recognition. We had the good fortune and I guess skill to rise in the corporate world and do work that was valued. This meant we were able to travel, to be listened to, to accomplish "stuff". For me, the assignments I had allowed me a great deal of latitude, which meant supervision was at arms length or longer, as long as I delivered results. This was important, because I have an inate resistance to authority of any kind. In most jobs I had the general principal was simple: either increase profits greater than the plan I was committed to, or deliver value to a set of "customers" that exceeded their expectations.
The thing is that in order to get to a level of success over a long period of time, your goals and values have to dovetail with your business. We are not talking about morality here, just simple business values. You have to want to excel, first and foremost. You have to agree that money is a good way to keep score. You have to believe that on some level, what you sell is a value to customers. Beyond those things, there are peripheral elements of a healthy relationship with work. Are your ethics in sync regarding how to treat people- employees, colleagues, customers, competitors? Do you have to compromise your dignity in a way you can't accept? Are you required to work in such a way that your personal life suffers more than you can allow? All of these things are part of the balance that must be struck to assure an opportunty for a good career and life.
In my case, I subsumed much of my personal life for the benefit of professional life. This was a choice that was easy to rationalize, and never caused me undue issues. The benefits of career more than offset the loss of personal fulfilment for me. I am able to re-round out that part of life now. I guess. Of course this line of thinking could lead to asking oneself what IS the most important job we have? Provider, teacher, cog, what?
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