Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [9]
With all of my entrepreneurial spirit, drive, and determination, I realized that I had become like MF. I spent all of my time away from home, away from my wife and our two sons. I had sworn I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes my father made, and yet there I was walking proudly in his shoes on the same path he had carved out. I gave so much of my life to help build the business, but I wasn’t happy.
This is when I began to take a good look at my life.
Was this what I really wanted?
Was I being fair to my family?
To be clear, I wasn’t feeling stuck so much as restless. I had a good life. I was earning seven figures, owned two homes, and had a beautiful wife, two amazing kids, and everything I thought I ever wanted.
So why was I feeling so dissatisfied?
Why was I growing fidgety and questioning my identity?
If I took away all of the material things that defined who I was, who would I really be?
For the first time since I was a teenager, I was really confused. I didn’t have the answer, and as uncomfortable as that was for me, I had to be okay with it.
I kept hearing about one of MF’s mentors, Mike Vance, who had worked with great leaders in business, from Steve Jobs to Jack Welch. The more I learned about him, the more I respected him. I had seen him speak a few times and fell in love with his message about creativity and thinking outside the box. I eventually connected with Mike and asked him if he would coach me in my business. I needed some outside counsel to ask me the tough questions I had been asking my clients and team members for years. I needed a coach. Mike agreed to take me on and immediately got me thinking about my life’s purpose and how I wanted to come across to others.
I began fantasizing about creating companies that helped people take on the challenges of life and become responsible for their destiny. None of that had a thing to do with how much money I was making. It had everything to do with quality of life, something I was missing in my own.
I will never forget the five huge questions Mike posed to me when I was thinking of making a change.
Why are you here and what’s your purpose?
How do you want to come across to others; what are your values?
What are your God-given talents?
Five years from now, how will the world experience you?
Who would you be if you were already there?
None of these questions was easy to answer, but they all got me thinking—hard. It was as if a door had been opened that I never even knew existed. I remember turning to Mike that day and asking him a sixth important question:
“What do I need to let go of so I can take the next step?” This question would become one of the most important tools in defining my future.
Working with Mike was the start of living a life that I would eventually coin “By Design.” Mike and I spent weeks mapping out my future, which required answering every one of his five questions in great detail. It took a lot of time, thought, and soul-searching to get to the core of each question. I wanted to be as authentic and honest as I could because there was so much riding on my answers.
Looking back, that coaching session and the weeks that followed pointed me toward wanting to leave my father’s company. The relationship with MF had become strained over the years. It was clear that, professionally speaking, we had come to the end of the road because I was moving in one direction while Dad continued to move in another. When I was named president, MF essentially retired and was rarely seen at the office, but he still wanted a hand in the day-to-day operations of the business.
Four years after he left, MF called to say he wanted to come back to work. There was no doubt in my mind that if he came back to the company, he would end up running it, which meant I would be pushed out.
I went home that night and talked it over