Work Wiser #11 – Leave Your Westview

Hello, my name is Wan How. I’m a career and project management coach. I’d like to start with a spoiler alert. Stop now if you haven’t watched all the episodes of Wanda Vision.

As you can tell I’m an Avengers fan and I’ve been following, with my family, the Disney TV series Wanda Vision. It’s been a family ritual every Friday night after dinner for the past few months. And we’re continuing to watch the next TV series, Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Wanda is a very powerful Avenger. She could have single handedly destroyed Thanos in Endgame if Thanos had not rained down fire onto the battlefield. Wanda’s psychic power is connected to her emotions and so she was so powerful fighting Thanos because she Thanos had taken everything from her and she felt this great loss of Vision.

After endgame, Wanda had bottled up all her grief over the loss of Vision. But when she visited the site that Vision had planned to build their family home together, her bottled up emotional energy was poured out and unleashed, and she channeled it into creative energy to recreate this town of Westview into her ideal version her own envisioned future for her family. However, that didn’t turn out so great for the residents of Westview who were trapped and lost their freedom and so the story goes.

But how is this connected to real life? Well our emotional energy is connected to our creative energy and if we have negative emotions and that traps us, we’re not able to channel our energy into a creative outlet. So it’s hard for us to do great work If you’re down and out and if you’re not doing good work, it’s hard for us to advance our careers so.

If you find yourself down and out and your emotional energy is negative, what can you do? First off make a plan to advance your career and then take concrete steps. Take concrete actions towards your envisioned future. Do you feel trapped in your own version of Westview? If so recognize there is no Wanda who’s keeping you there. You can channel your emotional energy towards a creative outlet, and you can take steps to walk out of your own Westview.