The voice at halftime
At Harvard Business School, they used to hold a workshop called Age of Options designed for people in halftime – halfway through career and life. The purpose of this workshop was to help leaders reassess their next career phase and ensure that it was imbued with meaning and purpose.
According to studies, it is extremely common for people between the ages of 35-55 to want to redefine the next half of life. The mistake most people make is to ignore the voice that is telling them to stop and listen.
Born to survive
Leisa’s story is one of survival.
Born 7 weeks premature in a Blue Mountain hospital in Australia, she overcame every health challenge to survive and even thrive.
By the time she connected with our team, Leisa was in her 40s heading up an R&D centre based in Singapore for the world’s largest food and beverage manufacturer. She had achieved success even beyond her expectations.
“When I started walking, I chose to run. I could run and run…” she recalls.
But something was telling her to stop running for the first time in her life. She felt that if she didn’t stop running she would not only burnout but miss something important.
Small in size but big in achievement
Leisa made the brave decision to embark on a PX™ journey which invites leaders to find the golden thread of purpose in their story.
Unsurprisingly, Leisa’s story is one of extraordinary achievement. She might have been one of the smallest in size in her school but from tennis to debating, she took out most of the academic, sporting, and Dux awards.
“I had academic and sporting success but I didn’t know when to stop raising the bar or what balance looked like,” she reflects. “I chose subjects I didn’t know to challenge myself. This led me to do Biomedical Science at University and eventually a PhD. There was a part of me that wanted to do the arts but it was so different from what I was studying. I couldn’t fit it in.”
As Leisa was sharing this story, she mentioned in passing that she had written a book of poems. She had managed to fit in the arts after all.
Finding purpose
For such a high achiever, it can be more challenging to define a single-minded purpose statement. However, we knew Leisa’s purpose had to be about people. Her passion is for people to embrace what makes them unique and distinctive in an environment of safety and enablement. This is at the core of her origin story.
When we redefined her values as Kindness, Hope, Expansiveness, Beauty, Safety & Enablement, her purpose to Inspire people to blossom in a hopeful future flowed from there.
These were the words she had to stop running to hear.
Making her mark
There are so many layers to this story.
Leisa’s always going to run but the opportunity for her moving forward is to stop running as hard, to strive less, and to inspire more. She’s not that premature baby fighting for her life anymore. She’s a strong and empowered woman who can make a bigger impact in her second half than her first.
Leisa also has a tattoo on her arm of a compass, a clock, and a bunch of colourful tulips. She had this done way before she started her purpose work. The voice inside her was always telling her to take time out to smell the blossoms on the road to a more hopeful future.
If you’d like to embark on your unique purpose journey, say hello@markdglobal.com.
If you’d like to connect with Leisa to learn about her evolving journey, link in with her here.
Read her poetry on Instagram, Poetic.timing.
