Are You Living the Dream? Or Are You Living Your Dream?
The difference is more than just a word.
Welcome to Reimagining Life & Work: Lessons from Provence, by me, Janine Mathó, a future of work expert living in Provence. I write weekly short essays to inspire people–especially women, senior leaders and entrepreneurs–to live and work on their terms. I’ve also just kicked off my serialised memoir, Lost in Princeton, Found in Provence. Upgrade to a paid subscription to access my memoir and all future posts and to support my writing.
This weekend marked four years since my mother died in a car crash; it is a bittersweet milestone because the anniversary of her death is also my annual reminder of how much time has passed since the person I’d been until her death died as well.
Like every high achiever, I have a secret origin story which explains why I seek to achieve. Even if you don’t yet know yours, I assure you, you have one too.
Perhaps, like me, you were raised in a culture of achievement at school or are the child or grandchild of immigrants who worked hard to earn success in their new country.
Or, maybe you (secretly) care about the opinion of a former coach, teacher, professor, friend, or parent and still have an underlying need to impress them.
Our reasons are typically buried well within, and we’re often unaware of them.
Some might argue that the origins behind your need to achieve don’t matter.
On the other hand, when you find yourself at a crossroads and no longer know why you’re climbing a particular ladder or image of success, sometimes that deeper understanding offers a critical discovery that can help you uncover and subsequently better achieve and live the life you truly desire.
That’s what happened to me four years ago.
Crash & Learn
Four years ago this month, I lived in London and worked in a senior corporate leadership role. I had just returned from an intimate retreat in Switzerland with other education leaders, where I’d had my first epiphany about my job and state of mind.
In that short break, I’d gained enough space and perspective to begin to feel again, and what I felt most was exhaustion. Exhaustion from extensive career and life moves. Exhaustion from overwork. Exhaustion from work travel. These are quality problems, I know.
Like many leaders, I loved my job. I was good at it, and I identified with the job. So, I was ‘all in’ on the company mission and supporting the team. Somewhere along the way, I became the job–which is to say, my job had become my primary identity.
Sure, I was also a mother and a wife, but I was ‘all-in’ on my job–in a way that I now realize was very unhealthy.
A coach friend recently shared a story with me the other day about one of her corporate leader clients; as part of their engagement, she interviewed his team and his family:
When she shared with him the intense bond that his team felt with him,
her client began to tear up: ‘They trust him, look up to him and respect his judgement; they said he is kind, and they would essentially jump off a bridge for him,’ she recalled. He was in awe of the positive feedback and felt very grateful because he worked hard to earn their respect.
She then shared with him what she learned about him from her conversations with his family. This time, he also began to tear up and, eventually, cry. This is because, unlike his team, his family did not express the same trust towards him; they do not look to him for kindness or reliability and would never jump off a bridge for him, let alone go out of their way for him the way his team would.
I’m not saying I was the same as my friend’s client, but if I’m honest, I was (sometimes) probably a close second.
Returning from that retreat, I knew I needed to make some changes, but I didn’t yet know exactly what or how. The universe didn’t give me much time to think about it because, just two weeks later, my mother died in a car crash.
In the following weeks, I went through the motions of living: waking up, organizing the funeral, traveling to the United States to pay my last respects, returning to London to work, and welcoming my children and their friends home for Christmas a few weeks later.
I eventually collapsed in early January. In hindsight, her death–my wake-up call–was one of the most critical moments in my life.
You see, I had never fully realized that my drive to achieve was linked to my mother–to my parents, actually–and my childhood in high-achieving educational institutions–and to a desperate time in my life when my father walked out and left me financially destitute and homeless at university.
Even though thirty years had passed between those university years and my mother’s death, I was still programmed to ‘survive’ to show them (and me) that I could.
So, despite feeling like I was ‘living the dream’, I was not necessarily ‘living my dreams.’
Since then, I have embraced my role as the sole composer of my life, and today, I AM living the dream, MY dream, a life in Provence, and a career as a founder, coach, consultant and advisor. Sometimes it’s an easier life than the ones I’ve lived before; sometimes, it’s harder, but, in any case, it is MY dream life and that makes all the difference.
Although the details differ, nearly all of my clients–high-performing executives, leaders, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs–have built their lives in response to their origin story.
When I meet them, they are almost all ‘living the dream’ but not usually ‘living their dreams.’
So, on this four-year anniversary of beginning to ‘live my dreams,’ I share my story to inspire you to check in with yourself:
worded it best in her post earlier this week: The only version of ‘living the dream’ that matters’ is ‘living your dream.’Are you living the dream? Or are you living your dream?
