Are you a senior associate trying to decide between partnership and going in-house?

Or a lawyer facing another decision point in your career?

What if I told you that you have everything you need inside of you to make this decision?

This may be hard to believe if you–like many of us–have spent much of your life:

• accommodating others,
• following the rules,
• suppressing your impulses,
• doing what’s expected of you, and
• looking outside yourself for guidance.

I spent much of my 15 years as a lawyer living this way.

About five years ago, when I began working with my first coach and re-committed to the meditation practice I had started in 2005, I began getting back in touch with my inner guidance.

Over time, I learned to trust it.

I saw that when I acted in accordance with it, things worked out better than I could have imagined. Not instantly and not without work, but they worked out. And they continue to.

Learning to follow our “inner compass” to navigate our career is like learning any skill. It takes time and practice. But it’s not only possible–it’s your birthright. You were born with an internal guidance system for a reason.

Here are some of the ways our inner guidance can help us navigate our careers:

• We have an impulse to pursue an opportunity, though we might not know why or where it will lead.
• We have a gut feeling that something is not right for us.
• When we consider a certain career choice, we feel a sense of energy, enthusiasm, aliveness, lightness, freedom, expansiveness, or being in the flow of life.
• In contrast, when we consider a different career choice, we feel a sense of deadness, heaviness, lack of energy, depletion, numbness, being blocked, or having to push ourselves to make things happen.

I don’t know about you, but I experienced–and disregarded–a lot of inner guidance between the ages of 15-40.

Like many of us, I was raised in a family and culture that didn’t value intuition. As children, we looked to adults for guidance. As teenagers, we asked our friends for their opinions.

Many of us never really grew out of this habit. We seek the opinions of experts, colleagues, friends, family, anyone but ourselves.

While other people may have information relevant to our decisions, we must become the final authority, the leader of our careers and lives.

As palliative care nurse and author Bronnie Ware observed through sitting with many people at the end of life, the top regret of the dying is:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

This is the courage I help my clients tap into. This is the regret I help them avoid.

If you’d like to learn more about this process, download my free Career Alignment Map or book a free call to connect.

What might change if you knew you could trust your inner guidance?