I made the leap from a draining career to a purpose-led life. Here’s how you can too.
I was fortunate to have had plenty of coveted career opportunities — from a young marketing trainee with a fast-tracked curriculum to becoming a business unit head in a C-suite position in a prime A-list market. I had a track record of being sent on special assignments abroad that stretched my bandwidth of business, brand, leadership, and cultural experiences. If there was something to fix, I was sent and expected to deliver results.
The Dark Night of My Soul
Despite having the money, the penthouse, and the car, my last two career assignments catapulted my life into the dark night of my soul. I experienced an emptiness within that was beyond any comprehension. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought nobody could possibly relate to what I was going through. I pleaded with the heavens to give me a fresh perspective so that I wouldn’t take life for granted.
Soon after, I had a near-death experience through a car accident on a seven-lane highway. Two years later, I had a blacking-out experience during a meeting, which I attributed to feeling exhausted and depleted after traveling five countries in two weeks for work. In between these frightening experiences, I remember flashing my bold slide in the boardroom that declared an objective of becoming No. 1 in the market and suddenly thinking, “Is this what my life is all about?” It no longer satisfied me. I wanted to throw up at this sudden realization. It was surreal. I didn’t know where to go, whom to talk to, or why I suddenly felt this way.
The whispers of my discontented soul grew louder over time. The black-out experience reduced me to nothingness — my mind felt completely blank like it had rebooted to zero. I didn’t know what to think, what to question, and where to go next. For a person who was highly paid to make decisions, I realized that without my mental and physical health, I would have no work. I surrendered and declared to someone up there, “You win. I’m listening.”
My Search for Meaning
This catapulted me to a deeper search for the meaning of my life journey — to get answers and find a way out of this seemingly bottomless pit. I tried many transformational courses, workshops, and detox programs. I frequented these places so often that even the alternative medicine practitioner determined that he couldn’t help me and that ultimately, I had to change my own life.
Eventually I quit work to force myself to find what was next — to isolate myself from the part of my life that didn’t fulfill me anymore. I traveled to different countries listening to spiritual teachers and authors and even staying in a monastery for weeks to find some peace.
Finding My Purpose
During my sabbatical, I reconnected with one of my spiritual mentors, Master Del Pe. He told me about the organization he founded — the Wisdom Institute for Leadership and Global Advancement (WILGA) — and its mission to awaken wisdom in leadership and conscience in entrepreneurship.
He challenged me to study energy medicine, universal philosophies, and esoteric psychologies at WILGA, which led me to their practical application as wisdom in leadership. I felt an inner calmness realizing that this is what is needed for today’s business leadership. I knew I had stepped into a higher meaning and purpose in life — the reason for the dark night of my soul.
I learned a few things through this journey. First, we need to heal our past to step forward into a re-defined, more meaningful future. We need to change the lens through which we see things to plan our lives around a new future. This process of illumination requires us to step out of the darkness by facing it and then healing it. Secondly, we need new scaffoldings of consciousness within which to define our North Star and create the new. If not, we will just return to old habits by default with little awareness of who we really are.
I took a big leap from the corporate world into the field of mentoring, which helped me know myself more deeply and transform how I would conduct business in the future. I thoroughly researched what it means to be the best leader possible. Learning to fill in the crevices of this lack of higher consciousness in business was my anecdote and my mission.
To make a lasting change in the business world, there must be a step-change in consciousness that dictates the choices, values, virtues, and philosophies with which we run our lives. I hope more business leaders explore how to develop their higher consciousness so we can change the face of business. As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Let’s change the narrative together.
Steps to Develop a Higher Consciousness
- Create a sustainable transformation. Get a high-value mentor to raise your awareness to any unperceived limitations and be willing to rise above them. Have an action plan for it and the humility to tackle 360-degree awareness with your mentor.
- Leave your negative baggage behind. Health concerns and blockages limit your highest potential. Address them on all five levels — physical, vitality, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Consider working with a reputable energy medicine practitioner to assess your health with precision. Self-care is the foundation of a robust self-development strategy.
- Study new concepts about life. Study universal philosophies, esoteric science, and psychology to gain higher truths about how the world works. This expansion of consciousness will equip your next steps in business and in handling people. With this continuous refinement and polishing of your character, you can evolve to the best leader of leaders that you can be. As you evolve, you will contribute to the development of those you lead. This is why you have to be the change you wish to see.
- Accept that it’s an ongoing process. You will constantly peel off the layers and perceive new levels of truth. Truth is important to human development and determining life purpose — which may be entirely different from your work purpose. Keep evolving because life is a moving target.
- Repeat these steps over and over again. Self-mastery takes time, but it is one of the best legacies you can leave behind.
