Dear Alan,

I read your article about how this is the time of year to look forward. But as I start 2010, I cannot get over this feeling that I'm carrying around unwanted and unhealthy baggage. What do you sense? Is there anything that I need to release to maximise the potential of this New Year?

Amanda

Dear Amanda,

As I connect with your energy, my first impression is that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Your energy comes through with a kind of clarity that I usually only sense in people who have done quite a bit of self-work. So, I feel as though you've already been through your dark night of the soul, if you will. It feels as though you've done your time on the therapist's couch, even if only metaphorically.

Where your energy feels to be especially authentic and congruent is in your relationships. I get this image of you being a very balancing and harmonising force to just about any situation you find yourself in. And from that, I feel that you don't need to work on how or who you are in relationships. That area feels very good to me. It feels true.

I get this impression that you know what it means to be partner in every sense of the word. And that's great because I'm sensing a very deep and long-term relationship for you. It's got a quality of reunion or homecoming so I feel that it's one you're in or one to which you will soon return. But, from what I sense, it's going to happen without you doing anything consciously. So, just sit back and enjoy that ride.

The area I do, however, feel there's more work to be done is your job or how you approach your career. You see, it's not so much what you do that I feel needs tweaking – and it's only tweaking that I sense is required – it's how you do it.

In your personal life, I feel as though you have reinvented yourself. It's like you turned yourself inside out – you took yourself apart to put yourself back together. And in so doing, you revolutionised that part of yourself, of your life. And now, it's as if you are trying to do the same to your career.

But it's interesting when I sense your career because I get an image of an anchor. Now, I don't take this literally as a representation of what you do for a living. It's rather a symbol that your work is like an anchor. It's as if your work grounds you and prevents you from moving too far off in any direction or going too far off course. It's like it's holds you down but in a good way as it prevents you from floating off, if you will.

And I feel that you need to understand that, because of this role that work plays in your life, you need to appreciate the role of order and even hierarchy in it. It's like your professional life serves as a foil or a contrast to how your personal life has unfolded or developed.

When it comes to work, you need tradition. You need the establishment. It's like there's a part of you that really needs to be a part of the corporate community. Whereas your home life might be unorthodox, your career really needs to be steeped in convention.

I sense that you felt this. In fact, I feel that you had this kind of career at one point. But it's like you rejected it because you felt that to be true to yourself you would have to remove all restrictions or anything that could confine you. In so doing, however, I feel that you got rid of that in your life which grounds you and connects you to the earth. It's like you inadvertently became too much of a free spirit.

You've done all the hard work from what I sense. You don't have to identify the career that's right for you. You've done that. What you need to do is to consider whether returning to it would make your life more complete – even if on the face of it, such a move might seem to contradict what you've done in your personal life. Remember, your professional life doesn't have to reflect your personal life. You are the kind of person who can have, if you will, two separate identities in that aspect.

So, with you, I sense that you have really released your baggage. But in the process, you perhaps released a bit too much. I feel that it's time for you to return to the corporate career that was jettisoned somewhere along the way. Pick up and reclaim that piece of yourself and I feel that you will have a much more fulfilled 2010.

Good luck and please stay in touch!