Page 49 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR PERSONAL REQUIREMENTS 37

or online at Lifecoach.com. If you are looking for a new job, then
you must work on your personal requirements, because you may
be coming across in interviews as desperate (unmet emotional
needs always make us appear a bit needy, even if we don’t realize
it). Likewise, if you want to get promoted, get your needs met—if
you don’t need people, they are more likely to want you. We are
always more confident and attractive when our needs are fulfilled.
This is a critical element to finding the ideal career as well. You
won’t enjoy working for a controlling boss if one of your needs
is independence or freedom. Or you could find yourself going to
get an M.B.A. even though you really aren’t a numbers person in
order to get the approval of your parents. I had one client who
became an engineer despite the fact that she hated every minute
of it in order to get approval from her father, who was an engineer.
Once she realized her true motivations, she was able to ask for her
father’s approval directly, quit her engineering job, and became
a professional coach. She has never been happier. Once you have
your needs fulfilled, you can do what you want, rather than trying
to peg yourself into a career or life that you don’t really want in
order to get what you need.
One retired CEO in one of my phone classes commented, “I
used to get up at four a.m. every day so that I was the first in the
office, and I made a point of being the last one to leave as well. If
I had only known that my need to be the best was driving me, I
would have got a lot more sleep!” He also said that even though he
had achieved the highest levels of career and financial success, and
had a loving wife and children, underneath it all was this vague,
rankling discontent. He was just never fully satisfied and couldn’t
figure out why, since he had done everything that he had thought
would make him happy—until taking my phone class, when it all
became incredibly clear. You can skip the needs part, but you’ll do
so at the risk of continually enduring this underlying dissatisfac-
tion with life.
The central problem with our unmet needs is that they will
drive us to engage in all sorts of negative behaviors—overeating,
smoking, drinking, gambling, overspending—and we don’t even
know why we persist in doing it. In fact, you can consciously know