Great question. Those who settle know it. Those who follow their hearts know it too. Deep down, we all know when we are fooling ourselves. We know it when we are living a lie or telling ourselves half-truths. One of the keys to success in life and business is to follow our internal guidance system. In others words, we must develop and trust our intuition. This is not always easy. Many of us have to slow down enough to be able to listen. Often our lives are so intense and fast paced that we can’t hear what the inner voice is telling us. It is imperative that we learn to listen. We get off path in life when we ignore our intuition.

Last year, I worked with a client who spent nearly half his lifetime in a career he hated. When he first came to me, he was severely anxious and depressed. He felt that he had wasted his life. We started from the premise that it is never too late to change your life. Gradually, he realized that he couldn’t work one more day in a job he hated. It took courage on his part both to acknowledge his truth and then to do something about it. The alternative, however, was not good. His body was slowly dying from all the medications that he took to keep going as well as all the unhappiness that he experienced trying to hold on to what he knew. The day he quit, he came to see me with a sense of giddiness and joy that he hadn’t experienced in over thirty years.

Another client came to see me just once. He too was miserably unhappy and depressed. His situation was very similar and yet caused by the opposite situation. He enjoyed his job, though his unhappiness caused him to lose focus and perform less than stelar even though he was very good at it. His unhappiness came from a stuck marital situation that he was afraid to do anything about. After nearly twenty years of marriage, he couldn’t stand his wife. And yet, he didn’t believe divorce was an option. Instead, he suffered terribly. His oldest child asked him why he never smiled. When I asked him why he felt that he was so unhappy, initially he said next to nothing. I had to practically pull the truth out of him. I asked him to begin a journey of authenticity both with himself and his wife. This didn’t mean divorce though that might become a reality one day. It meant to live and speak his truth and let the chips fall where they may. Being in a marriage where he was afraid to speak his truth was killing him as well. He too was on and off psychotropic medications for decades. As I told him, no medication will make you happy if you are living a lie.

When we are on the right path, whether in our career or personal life, we can feel it. We feel alive. We are lit up by being with the person or doing the job. There is no faking this!