This isn't his first career change, and it may not be his last. His previous vocational hats also include sales, marketing, human resources and business management.
He also preaches what he practices. One of the most liberating career moments for Mackey's son came with his father's recommendation that he "stop trying to choose for life and start thinking in five-year increments." From that day forward, the younger Mackey felt free to pursue careers on the stock exchange, in business management and in real estate.
You may not feel you can afford the luxury of experimenting with a variety of vocations - especially when change involves shedding hard-earned credentials and roles. But, as Heisler says, "You can't put a price tag on loving your work." If you're approaching midlife, don't be surprised to discover that your values and needs may be changing. To help you get in touch with some of those deeper yearnings, do what Englewood, Colorado, career counselor Linda Bougie calls the "epitaph exercise." Ask yourself what, at the end of your life, you'd want to be remembered for.
Don't be surprised if your answer is at odds with how you've been living. Most people who do this exercise talk less about achievements and more about connections with others. "The question is a wake-up call that helps people get in touch with basic or forgotten values," Bougie says. Another way to determine your values is to try the game my colleague Rick Ehlers likes to play with participants in his job placement workshops.
"Pretend you won the lottery," he tells them. "You can do anything you want with the money. The one stipulation is that you have to work. What would you choose to do?"
If you're like many of Ehlers's workshop participants, you may discover a latent desire to paint or write or act. You may want to build something beautiful, make a different contribution to our world, perhaps leave an inspirational legacy. Let your imagination roam wild. You might be surprised at what you discover.
Many participants find they want to add something of value to the world. One wanted to build a golf course in the inner city. Another wanted to create a foundation to promote good works. Others go for adventure and travel. In their imaginations, they became tour guides to the Orient, Middle East or Africa. Or, combining adventure and service, they consider becoming a missionary in Peru, a public-health nurse in West Africa or a teacher in Bosnia.
Freedom ranked high on the list of desires. Very few people expressed a desire to work for someone else, although many were interested in public service. Almost no one continued in the same line of work. Muriel and John James, the mother-son team who wrote A Passion For Life (1991, New York: Penguin Books) call these desires "a hunger of the soul searching for more." However liberating it would be, most of us will never clean up in the lottery. Still, I wonder if it's really necessary, financial considerations notwithstanding, to live so far from the heart of your desires. To put money-making above all other needs and goals. To abandon the things you love and care about to make a living.
Hearkening back to Cheryl Heisler's story, her experimentation with a variety of work roles and her willingness to learn from each experience enabled her to make a unique and meaningful career choice. To do the same, you may have to move be yond the things your parents wanted for you (and needed from you).
Self-knowledge can be elusive. But more than any objective inventory of skills and interests, the ability to learn from experience is the key to self-knowledge. Putting a modern-day spin on Plato's famous statement, "The unexamined life is not worth living," management theorist Warren Bennis says, "The unexamined life is impossible to live successfully." Perhaps it's time to stop measuring success by external standards of performance and start measuring it in more qualitative terms - specifically, by your level of satisfaction and fulfillment. Time's a-wastin'. So why not use it wisely? Take some chances on your own happiness. It might almost make you feel like a kid again.
