CHAPTER 2

Define Your Roots

At the end of time I want my art to stand up and my soul to bow down.

—Rob Ryser, author of Great Desires for Absent Things

It was seven thirty on a cold Long Island winter night when Amanda Wang arrived home from work.

She had been up since 4:30 A.M., practicing her training routine for the Golden Gloves boxing competition, which was two days away. She had run three miles first thing in the morning and then she took the commuter train into Manhattan to train for three hours at the boxing gym before heading to her job as a graphic designer. After working all day, she took the commuter train back home and collapsed on her bed.

“As I lay there, motionless, feeling my head and muscles throbbing, I began to cry; I still had to put in a three-mile run in the dead of winter, all before dinner. I didn’t want to move. I thought if I pushed myself anymore, I’d make myself sick. I’d crack. I struggled to even put my running pants on. If I couldn’t even put on my pants, how was I supposed to run three miles? I felt entitled to a little self-pity.”

But she made herself put on her running pants and stepped outside, moving sluggishly at first, then slowly picking up speed and feeling her head clear.

As she tells it:

It was one of those winter nights where you can smell fireplaces through the cool and crisp air and see the moon peek through the clouds. I had my favorite music playing in the background, the one that centers me and makes me realize why running is good for my soul.

Then, in a quick moment, a memory came flooding back. It was the movie reel of my previous life—the one that culminated with a stint at the psychiatric hospital. There I was, rocking back and forth, all curled up in the bathroom of the psychiatric floor, wailing and crying for thirty minutes straight. I was in so much pain and confusion, so much fear and suffering that I constantly looked at the ceiling to see which beam could hold my weight.

I hadn’t thought about that in some time, perhaps trying to block it out. It was the most painful, confusing, and lonely place I have ever been at, and I was both surprised and curious as to why the vivid memory had returned to me during my run. It seemed like such a long time ago. I can’t even believe that was me, thinking where I am now. Back then I met eight of the nine criteria for borderline personality disorder; now I meet none.

But then I remembered that there were other people in that same moment (and some much worse) who felt as I had five years ago. People, like me, who don’t know this diagnosis exists. People, like me, who don’t know we could be taught a different way to live. People, like me, who don’t know treatment could help put their lives back in order so that they could do the things they didn’t even know they wanted to do in the first place.

Two miles into my run, I said to myself, “As bad as today was, as painful and exhausted as I felt today, it will never be as bad as that day in the bathroom five years ago. Look how far I’ve come that I can even do this—being able to transform my suffering into meaning.” Pain cannot always be avoided. And in that moment, the physical pain lingered but the suffering went away.

In her recollection of this cold winter run, Amanda described the root of what motivates her to keep going: her mission as a mental health advocate for borderline personality disorder (BPD) patients, their families, and the physicians and therapists who serve them.

Amanda was diagnosed with BPD five years ago. Symptoms of BPD include self-doubt, self-injury, and frequent thoughts of suicide. Receiving appropriate treatment and medication has turned her life around. “My therapist told me that once you begin to get in recovery for BPD, you regain the will to live. But then you need to find a reason to keep living.”

So she decided to train for the Golden Gloves and make a documentary film about the experience, called The Fight Within Us. The title signifies both the daily battle in her head between peaceful and disturbing thoughts, as well as the strength and courage within all of us to keep moving through adversity and get to a better place in our lives.

While many of Amanda’s self-limiting beliefs come from her mental illness, everyone faces doubts and challenges while building a significant body of work.

Money, status, recognition, and fame are not enough.

We must tap into our deepest roots.

What are your roots?

Your roots are the purpose, beliefs, and convictions that provide the foundation for your body of work. They keep you strong and stable when you face challenges in your career and remind you why it is important to keep moving through adversity. They also provide depth and meaning to your creative process and remind you why it is important to chase the things you want to create.

Many people think their roots are in building a fortune. “I work for money. Money gives me the things that make me happy.”

In my experience coaching all kinds of people over twenty years, I will tell you that money is not enough of a driver to make it through the truly challenging times. You will eventually face difficulties in every job or business that lead you to question if you have the strength to stick with your chosen career path.

When these moments appear, I like to ask the following questions:

No matter your current job or position, each person will have different answers to these questions depending on their specific roots: who they are, what they value, and what drives them.

Kelly Fiori makes a good living teaching martial arts to small children, teens, and adults. He is skilled at teaching kicks and punches and knows how to quiet a roomful of squealing kids in an instant. But if you ask him what is at the root of his work, his passion becomes visible on his face and resonates in his voice. “I don’t want any child, anywhere, to suffer from bullying.”

Erik Proulx is a filmmaker who is inspired by the city of Detroit. He made a documentary called Lemonade: Detroit about the rebirth of a city plagued by poverty. The city is a giant metaphor for the rebirth of anything we have written off, ignored, or feared. One of Erik’s roots is that he understands the power of using creativity to comprehend and work through difficult, even impossible, situations.

Carlos Aceituno was a Guatemalan immigrant to San Francisco who loved Brazilian culture. He was a skilled music and martial arts teacher. He could really dance. But his root was using music to uplift, to heal, to strengthen, and to inspire communities. Kids who learned from him felt like family through the love that permeated his teaching, and adults felt their life force surge and spirits awaken by learning to play and dance Afro-Brazilian music. Carlos died unexpectedly at the age of forty-six, but the roots of his work continue to flourish in the community he taught and nourished.

To create a great body of work, you must first identify your roots. To make a strong and lasting impact, you must rely on them.

How do you identify your roots?

When you name your roots, just like Amanda did on that night when she felt like she could not muster the strength to put on her shoes, you remind yourself why your struggle is worth it in the long run if you want to create a significant body of work.

You discover your roots by reflecting on six primary questions:

1. What do you value?

Your values describe what is most important to you. They help guide you to make decisions and set boundaries around what you will accept in your life and career.

When you know your values, you can answer questions like:

When you make decisions in harmony with your values, you feel grounded and at ease.

When you make decisions in conflict with your values, you feel uneasy and ineffective.

Values can also be called character strengths.

Example: You value critical thinking (thinking things through), honesty (authenticity, integrity), kindness (generosity, compassion), prudence (being careful about choices), and fairness (treating all people the same). You work for a financial institution that you know is engaged in unethical lending practices that prey on vulnerable communities. In this situation, no matter how much you try to make your job work, because the environment is in direct conflict with your values, you would be better served to look for an organization that is more aligned with your values.

2. What do you believe?

Your beliefs are unique to you and form the foundation for how you interpret and act in the world. They are shaped by your childhood, your life experiences, your education, advice you have received from teachers and mentors, and your philosophical or spiritual orientation. A simple way to understand what you believe is to answer the question “What do you know to be true?”

Example: One of your beliefs is that everyone, regardless of his or her background, has the capability to do great things.

3. Why do you believe it?

Which experiences have shaped your values and your beliefs?

What has made you secure and certain in your values and beliefs?

Example: You believe that everyone, regardless of background, has the capability to do great things. You believe this because you watched your father, who came to this country as an immigrant in his early twenties, build a successful business with next to no money, even though he was not fluent in English.

4. Whom do you care deeply about serving?

Of all the people who you could impact during your time on earth, whom do you want to work with? Which type of person “gets” you and really needs what you have to offer?

Example: You are a training and development manager with a humanities background, but you love to work with highly technical people. You appreciate their intelligence, curiosity, and critical perspective. You notice that when you teach them, you are pushed to deliver the highest quality, tested training classes. When you are able to earn their trust, you make a huge difference in their lives because they take what you teach and apply it methodically in their lives.

5. Which problems do you want to solve?

Which challenges get you really fired up?

What impact do you want to have in the world?

What specific knowledge do you have that you think can make a difference in the world?

Example: You are passionate about childhood nutrition. You notice that parents, especially moms, are so busy that they don’t have time to plan and cook healthy meals. So you really want to help solve the childhood nutrition problem by discovering ways to support busy moms.

6. What drives you to act?

Most of us have long to-do lists. Very few of us can check off every item at the end of the day. What motivated you to accomplish great things in the past? What motivated you to finish? Pay special attention to thoughts, conditions, or techniques that cause you to take action.

Example: You always wanted to run a marathon but constantly found excuses for not going through with it. Then your mother got breast cancer, and you suddenly felt inspired to run in a fund-raising marathon on her behalf. From this experience, you learn that you are inspired to take action when you see a direct benefit for someone you care about.

Don’t sweat it if you can’t answer all six of these questions yet. Simply plant the questions in your head and pay attention to the answers as they come to you.

As a career counselor, I have seen scores of people make themselves completely paralyzed looking for the “right answer” to their perfect vocation, or the meaning of their life. They believe that until they have the answer, they cannot move forward with anything else.

Viktor Frankl, in his stark and powerful book Man’s Search for Meaning, provides the best antidote to this affliction:

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

In April 2013, Amanda Wang showed her documentary about living with BPD, The Fight Within Us, at a mental health film festival in Washington, DC. “When people were watching my film, they were laughing, cheering, and screaming. It was a really wonderful experience to have them come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for doing this because you’ve put a voice to what I’ve always experienced but never had the ability to share myself.’ Hearing those words was very life affirming. They reminded me that what I’m doing on my mission is genuine and helpful to people.”

Because Amanda defined her roots and remembered them at a point of great difficulty, she was able to create a deeply meaningful piece of her body of work and share it with those she cares about serving the most.

When I was in the middle of writing this book, I had a conversation with my kids, eight-year-old Josh and five-year-old Angela Rose (Rosie), on the way to school.

Josh: You should write your book at the office, Mom, not at home.

Me: I actually do write at the office too, but I also have to work with my clients to keep my business going. This will not last forever; I will be done with the writing in six weeks. Oh yeah, and then I will do two trips, to Portland and San Francisco.

Josh: Why do you have to go there?

Me: Because I need to spend time with my clients in person sometimes. Some moms choose to just spend their time with their kids, and that is their work. That is a great choice. Some moms, like me, want to spend time with their kids, and work outside the home. I want to leave something useful and important in the world with my work, which is why I am writing the book.

Rosie: I wish you were like the other kind of mom.

Me: I know that it really sucks sometimes. I know you have to sacrifice so much for this to happen. I hope that as you get older you might see things a little differently and think that it was worth it for me to spend time working.

Rosie: By the time you finish your book, we will be all grown up and we won’t want to play with you anymore.

Me: I hope not!

As you can imagine, I felt like a deadbeat mom when I heard my kids say this. And at the same time, it was a chance to get very clear about my own roots.

What do I value?

I value love. And I value contribution, especially being able to be of assistance and counsel to others.

What do I believe?

I believe that it is vitally important to do things with my life that impact others in a positive way.

I believe that when people make great career choices that align their strengths and gifts with a deeper purpose, we all win. When we love what we do, we are more open and compassionate and better able to solve our biggest problems and challenges.

I believe that we are all equal, and each person on earth has something valuable to contribute, when given a good opportunity.

I believe that being a good parent is both spending time with my kids and perfecting my craft so that they see me engaged in work I love.

I believe that my kids are a huge priority in my life.

Why do I believe it?

I believe in making an impact on others because I have seen many of my clients’ lives changed by the work we have done together. I have seen the joy on the face of a client who leaves a soul-sucking job and starts a successful business. I have beamed with pride, seeing clients grow their business or get great jobs or make inspiring films.

I believe people become more open and compassionate when they align their career goals with their strengths, because I have seen it happen hundreds of times. No longer gripped by negativity and creative angst, happily employed people become more interested in the world around them, are more willing to help others, and participate in activities that contribute to the greater good.

I believe that we are all equal and have something valuable to contribute, because I have worked with people from diverse economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds my entire life. I have learned valuable things from all of them.

I believe that being a good parent is both spending time with my kids and perfecting my craft, because I watched my dad be totally engaged and passionate about his work, and it had a massive influence on my own career choices.

I believe my kids are a huge priority in my life, because I watched my mom spend quality time and care shaping her children into responsible, kind, caring, and independent adults.

Whom do I care deeply about serving?

I care deeply about serving leaders in business who have huge potential and who may lack access to bigger stages and opportunities. I want to see them realize their potential and take their place in positions of leadership.

Why do I care about serving them?

I see the tremendous creativity and great results in work environments with diverse perspectives and experiences. I see the connection and joy that comes from watching people see leaders from all backgrounds.

What drives me to act?

I act when I see that I am at risk of not living according to my values. When my kids told me that they were tired of my spending all of my family time writing my book, I realized that I had better hurry up and finish.

Reflecting on my own roots reminds me that I must carefully choose the projects for my body of work that directly correlate to the problems I want to solve and affect those I want to help. I must constantly evaluate my priorities and choose only the projects that will have the biggest impact. If I don’t, I am choosing to spend time away from my children for frivolous reasons.

Exercise: Identify Your Roots

Now it’s your turn. Get to a place free of distraction. Take a deep breath, and answer these questions from the perspective of what you know to be true, not what you think you should say. There is no right answer, and your answers may change at different points in your career.

What do you value?

Brainstorm a list of values. Review the list, choose your top five values, and create a definition for each.

What do you believe?

List the top five things you know for sure about your life, yourself, your career, etc.

Why do you believe them?

Describe the key life experiences that have shaped your values and beliefs.

Whom do you care deeply about serving?

Who are the people who you want to impact?

Why are they important to you?

What will happen in their lives as a result of your support?

Which problems do you want to solve?

What do you want to fix?

What could be made better in the world with your help?

What drives you to act?

Which thoughts, feelings, circumstances, or beliefs drive you to act?

When you get distracted, frustrated, stalled, or stuck while creating your body of work, revisit this section to remind yourself why it is important to keep going. Never forget your roots.