What is Live Your Opus?
Live Your Opus is a a transformation method that cultivates healthy high achievement in individuals and teams. Musicians and artists refer to their significant pieces of work as their Opus—and what more significant piece of work is there than your life? This is about treating you and your one life as a masterpiece and stepping into all that you can or want to bring to our world.
Live Your Opus is about taking a long view of everything in your life.
Adopting new mindsets and approaches to life that sustain you across uncertainty and change.
Learning to be a healthy high achiever.
Knowing how to heal yourself not just from minor setbacks but everything from chronic change fatigue to deeper trauma.
Gaining clarity about who you are today, what your dreams are and how you’d really like to be spending your time if it weren’t for other people’s opinions or expectations of you, and how to become the person that goes after and achieves those dreams.
And recovering and taking agency back from ‘the system’, letting go of the expectations and judgment that you’ve been fed since you were a child so that you can make new choices that truly align with your unique needs and preferences—learning to truly live and work on our own terms.
I’m Janine Mathó, a Transformation Guide, writer, former education and learning exec, and creator of Live Your Opus and this Substack space.
Live Your Opus is born out of my experiences transforming my life over time:
From a destitute college student with $11 in the bank who was estranged from her family to serving as a well-respected administrator at Harvard.
From a divorced mom of two to a loving, vibrant second marriage where I also gained a stepchild.
From a career in higher education to the C-Suite in two nonprofits, followed by a big pivot to a VP senior leadership role in corporate.
From being a rising star in corporate to launching my own business.
From a life in Salem, Massachusetts, to a life in Provence, by way of London.
And the incredible journey of personal growth I’ve taken over the past four years as I recovered from corporate burnout, bereavement and childhood trauma and shifted from the traditional workplace to starting my own businesses.
Today I am healed from trauma, thriving personally and professionally with joy, ease and flow, and living a life here in Provence that I always secretly imagined but didn’t have the courage or wherewithal to create.
It’s also born out of my expertise and the research and work I’ve done across my career and recently as I’ve guided high-achievers–leaders, founders, serial entrepreneurs, and others–through personal and professional transformations.
Over the past nine months, I’ve spoken with 150+ high-achieving individuals–top performers–through research conversations, coaching sessions and group learning experiences. If you’re reading and you were among those–thank you for sharing your story with me!
I also created and welcomed the first cohort of Project Opus, a 10-week intensive guided learning experience in which I supported early-stage female entrepreneurs in composing and further developing their lives, careers, and businesses. This was an incredible experience for them and for me–I just loved working with this group of women.
What I’ve learned is that most people today, including extraordinary high achievers like you and me, feel more uncertain about their lives and careers than ever before.
Of course, this feeling of uncertainty largely comes from the world we live in today.
It is demanding to manage and keep up with what’s happening in our world and navigate all of its effects on our lives and work.
The fast-paced, busy, short-term nature of life adds yet another layer.
The strain of trying to succeed in our modern world is real, as data on a spectrum of mental health issues, loneliness, and burnout–including among the highest-performing individuals–can confirm.
We’ve all felt this strain more since the pandemic. The contract between us and our employers has changed. Most of us–across generations–are no longer interested in trading all of who we are or might become and all of our lives for work—or at least not for just any kind of work.
So, we find ourselves asking:
‘Is this it? These experiences that make up my life?’
‘These work experiences that, together, become my career?’
‘What does it all add up to? '
We’ve all been raised within ‘the system’ in some way or another since we were babies.
A system that told us that if we worked hard we would succeed. And so we got the grades, the credentials, the jobs, the pay increases, the promotions, and
we acquired the things in life that we’ve been taught accompany achievement: houses, cars, the right tech gadgets, vacations, handbags and more.
But, those things are no longer attainable for some who have done their part to achieve success in the system–think Gen Z and millennials and people graduating from university this spring.
And, for others, like me, they’re simply no longer the right rewards.
Studies show that we all crave meaning. Connection. Stability. Independence. We crave certainty.
To get that–and more–it’s time to radically change the paradigm. To adopt a new perspective on our lives.
We must grab our agency and raise the bar on our dreams, our lives, and our work to achieve better, more meaningful, sustainable outcomes.
It’s time for you, for me, and for everyone—it’s time to Live Your Opus!
You see, at any given time we could be living a multitude of lives; there truly are endless possibilities.
But most of us tend to think we’re limited to the life we were raised with or the one we’re currently living, or the path we randomly or strategically chose a long time ago, even if it isn’t serving us well or leading us somewhere we want to end up.
That simply isn’t true.
Most of us have an incomplete understanding of achievement. Because the system we’ve been raised in focused our attention on certain things, and we’ve done our part: we’ve stayed the course.
But in reality, there are whole different sets of mindsets, habits, strategies, and ways of being, doing, and acting that are available to you and which support true high achievement–healthy high achievement—the kind where you have the confidence and stamina to live and work in any way you choose.
The kind where you wake up and pinch yourself daily at how blessed and fulfilled you are and how much meaning your life and work hold for you.
I know because I’ve transformed my life many times, but the journey of discovery I’ve gone through in the past four years has taught me more about who I am, what’s truly possible, and how to get there.
I’ve worked with therapists and coaches and read nearly every book in the ‘personal development’ category as I continued to grow my career and expertise in learning, leadership, and the future of life and work.
I am grateful to be healed from trauma and to be living my dream life and thriving personally and professionally.
The road to here was a long one but I am grateful for the experience as I now have the opportunity to share what I’ve learned with you and others.
So, if you’re looking for more from your life or work, I invite you to Live Your Opus with me.
Although there’s no set blueprint for living the life and career you dream of, I have developed a transformation process that high-achievers tell me puts them in the driver’s seat of their lives like never before.
Rather than reserving these tools for my clients, my goal is to share widely so that high achievers everywhere can begin to live their opus NOW from wherever they are today.
That’s why I am activating these ideas here on Substack and social media channels, and writing my book, Live Your Opus: Raise the Bar on Your Dreams, Life and Work and Achieve Better, More Meaningful, Sustainable Outcomes Faster
I’m on a mission to empower and inspire high achievers like you everywhere by providing you with the expert tools, resources and guidance they need to raise the bar on your dreams, lives, and work and achieve more meaningful, sustainable outcomes faster.
I hope you’ll subscribe to Live Your Opus, share my work with people you love, and consider getting involved in the growing community to take advantage of the other benefits of a paid subscription.
Thank you for your support as I live my Opus by supporting you and others to live theirs.
