The Corporate Artist: The Art of Working Beautifully

You’ve been living a lie. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But a lie all the same.

The lie is that you are just an employee. That work is an obligation. That creativity is something other people do in other places—people who sit in corners with art on the walls. That the workplace is where you trade your dreams for deadlines and grind but never grow.

This is where that lie begins to crack.

Because here’s the truth: You are a Corporate Artist. You always have been. Work hasn’t killed your creativity. It’s been your canvas all along.

Recognition feels like remembering something you once knew but forgot. Like waking up from a dream you didn’t realize you were having. Like seeing clearly for the first time in years.

Every role is creative. Every job bends reality in some way. You are not separate from creation. You are creation—expressed through quarterly reports, messy presentations, tense meetings, and moments where you almost lost your nerve but didn’t.

I remember sitting in a budget meeting years ago, watching a project get cut because the numbers didn’t add up. Everyone looked defeated. The story in the room was: Creativity ends here. Then one colleague spoke up. He sketched a scrappy work-around on the whiteboard—a way to shift resources without killing the idea. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t “creative” in the official sense. But it saved the project.

That’s when it hit me: Work isn’t where creativity dies. It’s where it hides in plain sight.

The costume will slip. The character you’ve been playing will reveal itself as just that—a character. And underneath, you will find the artist you never stopped being.

This is where the awakening begins. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. There is no going back.

But recognition is only the beginning. Awareness alone isn’t enough. You have to experience it. You have to live it.

Every day. Every decision. Every act of creation in the place you call work.

The lie about success

The lie is that success means hitting the goals handed to you. But if you’ve ever hit the target and still felt empty, you know the truth: It doesn’t work.

The exhaustion isn’t because you can’t reach goals. It’s because you’ve been chasing the wrong ones.

Energy is your fuel. Intention is your compass. Authentic goals are your destination.

Borrowed goals belong to the company, the industry, or someone else’s definition of success. They look impressive but drain you. Authentic goals belong to you. They energize you like one of your favorite songs you can listen to over and over, move through you, and make the work feel alive.

The practice of authentic goals is learning to quiet the world’s shout so you can hear your own whisper.

Field memory: The SUV that wasn’t about the SUV

At an off-site, I once heard a story about a leader whose team consistently outperformed every other group in a giant company.

His secret wasn’t pushing people harder to hit their numbers. It was digging deeper…always asking questions that tapped into the heart center.

One woman told him she wanted to hit her quota so she could buy a new SUV. On the surface, that looked like a standard corporate goal: Make your number; get the reward.

But when he kept digging, the truth came out. The SUV wasn’t really about the car. What she actually wanted was to spend more time with her kids before they graduated. She wanted to learn to ski with them, to drive safely through snowy winters, to create memories together. The authentic goal was family.

The leader went to the dealership, got the actual brochure for that SUV, and put it on her desk. Not as a gimmick, but as a daily reminder: You’re not working for a number. You’re working for what really matters.

When she hit her quota, she got the car. But the real achievement wasn’t the SUV. It was the time and memories she created with her family…her authentic goal, brought to life.

Field memory: My own borrowed goals

I fell into tech because of scarcity. As a kid, I wanted to be a teacher, a pilot, a talk show host, maybe a comedian. I wanted to teach, to tell stories, to make people laugh. But somewhere along the way, those goals felt unrealistic. So I traded them for safer ones: sales quotas, revenue targets, promotions, LinkedIn-worthy roles.

I was good at it. I was climbing ranks, managing larger and larger teams across the world. But it drained me. Beyond drained me.

The breakthrough came when I stopped asking, “What should I want?” and started asking, “What do I actually want?” When I admitted that storytelling, creativity, and shaping ideas energized

This selection ends mid-sentence. The story continues on page 141 in the book.