I used to think that the route to success was a ladder you climbed, so did many of us.  Putting one’s ladder against the right wall was the ticket to success.  However, the world has changed.  The wall is moving and it will continue to move. Whether we are facing the next recession or not, the next blip on the radar screen of our work, our lives, our relationships, and our world…The next change is coming.  It is not time to get discouraged; it is time to get inspired.  What?  In every change there is a lesson we can learn to go forward, or ignore and stay stuck in stasis or slide backwards. 

Take it from me because I learned some pretty important life and leadership lessons the hard way when my wall moved and my ladder was broken.  Being a classic overachiever, I share many things in common with my kissing cousin the underachiever.  The intense desire to avoid the primal wound of a childhood gone wrong pushed me forward faster than a speeding bullet just the same way it keeps underachievers stuck in stasis. 

Most of us had childhoods that were far from perfect.  Some of the greatest overachievers and underachievers among us come from childhoods that were downright disfunctional and abusive. Childhoods where we were hurt, punished on a continual basis. Childhoods that were filled with a chaos that only another survivor can understand.  

Childhoods where we learned that we could either rise above what happened to us by overachieving, or find another way to escape the pain by underachieving. Yes, beneath every overachiever and underachiever remains the pain of what was.  The pain the clouds us from truly living on purpose with not only our true potential, but our true happiness.  And, yet getting rid of this pain, realizing our potential to love and accept ourselves from inside out is possible.  And, it can start anytime we choose.

The power of becoming a personal leader, of learning to be the CEO of one’s own life  by learning to inspire, engage and lead the best in our self from inside out is powerful, wonderful and life changing. It is something that can set us free in ways we never imagined. Ways that help us understand and tap into our joy factor, the happiness set point within.  I am a survivor of abuse who overcame by becoming an overachiever.  I am a thriver who has learned that the greatest power we have is never in what we command, control or acquire.