Note: This is the second part of a two-part entry. If you’d like to read part one, please click on the link below:

When I climbed that ladder, getting away from the script that my family, society, and I had written for myself that I tried to follow dutifully for more than three decades, and got to the top of that wall, I was shocked what I saw on the other side.

It wasn’t another script. It wasn’t a clearly laid-out future. It wasn’t happiness or sadness. It wasn’t riches or poverty. It was a blank canvas, like the kind that great artists such as Picasso or Van Gogh once stood in front of, or like the piece of drafting paper before architects like I.M. Pei or Frank Lloyd Wright worked their magic.

Deciding you’re going to change your life is major. Climbing that ladder to get to the top of the wall so you can leave your life as it once dictated behind is even more difficult, but when you see there is no ladder on the other side and you have to take a leap of faith, that’s the scariest part of this entire process.

The bad news is when you take that leap, you won’t land on a bed of cotton. Restructuring your life isn’t a cakewalk. It’s very hard work and it involves some trial and error. The good news is that you won’t land on a bed of nails. I’ve found that when I’ve been scared of things in my life, whether it was monsters in my closet or a troubling diagnosis for one of my young sons, that 99% of the time, it’s not going to be as bad as I fear.

A blank canvas shouldn’t scare you and it shouldn’t be a reason to not make the leap into the great unknown. Even if all you know is that you’re unhappy in your current position, that’s enough to begin to plan changes. When I sit with a client, I don’t expect them to have quit their job – especially if it’s a good paying one they worked long and hard for – in the medical field. 

When somebody sits down with me and says, “I’m making $22 an hour but I’m miserable” we look at it pragmatically. Can you put a price on happiness? Because clearly it’s not $22 per hour for that person. The reality is, even if they were making $44 an hour, they’d be just as miserable. Money can help us solve money problems, but it doesn’t do much else.

I don’t fill my clients full of one-liners I picked up from Instagram memes. Those aren’t going to help anybody and belong on the wall of a mental health professional’s office. While I do help with problems of stress, feeling overwhelmed and unhappiness among others, I’m not a therapist. I’m a guy who is on your team and wants to see you be happy with the one-third to one-half of your life that you spend working.

Sometimes people sit down with me and think I’m going to bring out crystals or start burning sage. That’s not what I do. I have to quickly dispel those myths. Others sit down with me and and have no idea what the first, second or third thing I’m going to say will be… and it scares them. That’s when I tell them about the blank script, and that’s when we pick up a pen and start writing the professionally and personally satisfying future they – and you – deserve.