Last week, I was speaking with a client who told me he had, over the years, "given up his dream" for the kind of company he would create - but had he really? His firm, as it evolved, is small but successful and provides him and his family with a good income - and he will be able to sell it when he is ready. And he is happy, enjoying his work, his family and his life. But he never did the "Executive Suite" he had envisioned in his youth. I asked him why.

He told me that as he began to build his dream firm, the very act of building exposed aspects of the design, structure and facade that didn't resonate with the person he was becoming. He kept building from the original design for a time, but finally asked himself, "What am I doing? This isn't me!" So he changed design, structure and facade and built the firm that bears his name. I suggested that he had never really given up his dream, he just gave up some of the dream's early trappings. Trappings that probably came from other people's ideas and an institutional view of what success might look like. After all, when you are young, where do your ideas come from - a few informed (and many uninformed) inner desires, what people tell you constitutes success, what you read that talks about the "American Dream" and from conversations with those who went before and who did it "their way." As he developed "his way" he brought his dream along, changing it so it was all his, and his alone.

How many of us have embraced and follow dreams crafted in our youth that take us on quests far afield from our natural inclinations? What price do we pay for these lost journeys? I asked a friend recently over dinner about a job she had thought of applying for, a job that resonated with her values and her desires in life. She replied, "I would have loved it, but I never applied. I could never afford to live on the money they were paying." How many of us have crafted our lives around those early dreams and are now prisoners to them? Have enough of us adapted, as my client did, the dream to fit the kind of life we want to live?

Look in the mirror. Look around your world. Is your life, your career, feeding you or are you starving your inner self to support a life that reflects a dream no longer valued? Make a list of what feeds you and what doesn't and start changing your emotional diet as needed. As my friend, Bob Griffiths says, and it's the title of his book, "Do What You Love For The Rest Of Your Life." Learn more about Bob's book at www.dowhatyoulove.com

Thanks!