In the midst of the busiest and most tumultuous period of his career, Lee made deliberate time for self-reflection in drafting his credo. It was in these letters to himself, written in his third language over the course of several months on a colourful variety of stationery, that he arrived at the concept of being an “artist of life.”
In them, he examines with great simplicity and wisdom some of the most elemental questions of existence. Decades before the Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert made his memorable assertion that “human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished,” Lee considers with acute self-awareness the mutability of what we experience as the “self.”
Echoing the poet Laura Riding’s conviction that “nothing is really important but being oneself,” he maintains through the various revisions that all knowledge is self-knowledge - the seedbed of his oft-cited assertion that “the greatest help is self-help” - and that personal authenticity is the object of life and the only real measure of success.
I suggest that personal authenticity be the yardstick you use to align your career, your values, principles and how you create and live your life. Career counselling, career change counselling and career coaching provide with the means to live a purposeful and genuine life aligned to your values.
