The most important work I do doesn’t happen in a search.

Some of the most important work I do doesn’t happen in a search. It happens in a conversation with someone who has forgotten who they are.

Think about the last time you came home from work with more energy than when you started. Not a short day. Not a day where you dodged something hard. A long day. The kind where the work asked something real of you. And you came home more alive than when you left.

Most people go quiet when I ask that. Then something shifts. They remember a specific day. A specific moment where who they are and what they were doing lined up perfectly. And they light up telling me about it.

Now think about the days that took from you. The ones where you came home withdrawn. Depleted. Where the weight of it followed you to the dinner table. Where the people who love you got a smaller version of you because work had taken the rest.

I ask people in transition to do this exercise. Really do it. Spend days if you need to. List both. The days that gave and the days that took. What emerges are themes. A consistent core of what meaningful work actually looks like for you. Not what sounds impressive. Not what you think you should want. What genuinely gives you energy.

Then use it. Because the question stops being will they like me, am I good enough, will I get picked. It becomes something different. Does this role let me do work that gives me energy. Does this organization align with what I actually need. Am I choosing this, or just hoping to be chosen.

I was on a call not long ago with someone who had been in transition for months. We were looking at their career together. I said: you have not only had continued upward mobility, but with each move you entered an organization of greater complexity. This tells me something. You are really good at what you do.

Pause.

Yes. I am.

Then stop letting yourself forget that. You’re in the storm right now, I get it. But don’t let the storm distract you from what has always been true. Say it back to me. I am excellent at what I do.

Quietly, at first.

Then I asked them to mean it.

They did.