Have you ever watched the show “If You Really Knew Me” on MTV? Despite being on MTV, it is extremely insightful for everyone, not just teens. Personally, I am hooked on it. On the show, MTV films what are called “Challenge Days” in high schools across the country. During Challenge Day, students are encouraged and supported in taking off their masks and showing their real, true self to fellow students, teachers and facilitators. Instead of going to school as jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, loners, etc., they go to school for the day as real people with very real fear, pain, love – in short, feelings. During one very powerful day, emotions are shared, fears are put aside, connections are made, stereotypes are shattered and love and respect rule the day.

The teens that get to experience Challenge Day are truly lucky, for many of us go through our entire lives wearing our masks and sheltering ourselves from others out of fear. You might not be a cheerleader, football player or class clown anymore, but you are probably a mom, a manager, a girlfriend, a husband or any number of roles. All of these roles are fine unless you hide behind them and use them as a crutch to hindering your true potential, which many of us tend to do. We let the things we feel we “should” do or “have to” do hold us back from what we “want” to do with our lives.

In a way, The LifeWorks Experience is like a Challenge Day for adults, only it’s two days. During the Experience we are challenged to uncover and share the roles, masks, beliefs and “shoulds” that are holding us back from being who we really want to be and from spending our precious days and nights doing what we really want to do.

Upon walking into The LifeWorks Experience last fall, I was a 31 year old woman who was still living life like a scared little girl. I dated, had friends, and had progressed nicely in my career, but was completely miserable and had no idea why. It was quickly brought to light for me during the Experience that I was dating people I didn’t really want to date because I thought any respectable thirty-something should have a boyfriend, and that I had been diligently pursuing a career path for 10 years that I wasn’t really sure I even wanted to be on. No wonder I was depressed! Looking back just one year ago, it amazes me how much time and energy I was spending living a life that I didn’t really want to live.

Immediately after the Experience I began to make positive changes in my life, starting with ending my unsatisfying relationship and really starting to focus on what would make me happy in all facets of life – romantically, professionally and just day to day. I stopped worrying about what other people would think if I started showing up to events by myself or if I decided to change my career. After all, wasn’t my opinion on all of these matters the most important?

Based on the rapid transformation I began to make after The LifeWorks Experience weekend, I decided to go through LifeWorks’ nine month coaching school and I can honestly say it changed my entire life. I am currently pursuing coaching as a side career, but even if I never coached a day in my life the school would have been worth every minute and every penny.

Today I am very happy. I have successfully broken a 10 year bout of depression that never responded to therapy or anti-depressants. I have also veered from my previous career path to pursue my lifelong dream of being a freelance writer, while coaching on the side.

And after assuming that they didn’t exist for years, I now have an amazing boyfriend who worships the ground I walk on. And why? Because I worship the ground I walk on. The cliché is so true – you can’t expect someone else to love you if you don’t love yourself. And I think it goes even further than that. Without love, respect and trust for yourself, you can’t expect your life to work at all. And that is exactly what LifeWorks, beginning with The LifeWorks Experience, did for me. It taught me that I was number one, and until I realized that, the pieces of my life simply would not fall into place no matter how hard I tried to push them together.