The day we announced that MyFitnessPal had been acquired by Under Armour was the day the headhunters started calling. “We’re looking for a CMO who loves dogs,” the first recruiter said, “and your name came up.” After expressing how impressed I was with her bizarrely specific (and accurate) database fields, I turned her away – and have politely declined the advances of dozens of her colleagues since.

Truth is, I was not then and am not now in the market for a new job. But I wasn’t in the market for a job when I took the role of VP of Marketing for MyFitnessPal, either. I somehow ended up with the Actual Best Job in the World anyway.

And last week was my last week in it.

About two weeks ago, I sent out a note to all hands announcing that I had decided to leave my job as the VP of Marketing for MyFitnessPal and Under Armour Connected Fitness. I’ve spent most of the time since processing the event with people, sharing some insights into my decision process when asked. Many were fascinated by my decision. I, in turn, was fascinated by the recurring themes I spotted in their reactions.

Early on, it became clear that these conversations would be a Rorschach test of sorts, surfacing how the other party thinks and feels about work and career. One person began celebrating what he called my “retirement.” Another said, “I was able to quit a job I hated once, and it was awesome.” (Fantastic, I said, but that wasn’t my situation.) Yet another person clapped me on the back and proclaimed my “freedom” from a bondage which was a part of her conception of work, but not mine.

The conception of work as bondage actually came up a lot Some of the wealthiest people I know, people who can never even spend all the money they have, confessed to being desperately jealous of my move and “wishing” they could do the same. They shared how trapped they felt by what it would look like if they made a move, or by old, outdated pinkie swears to stay in situations that no longer serve them. It was a little tragic.

But that was their story. Not mine.

The Actual Best Job Ever. My job was delightful and liberating, the vast majority of the time. I was able to build a marketing team and programs from scratch where none had existed before, hiring some of my best friends to create what I believe is one of the smartest, leanest, most creative and most productive marketing teams in tech. We were able to collaborate deeply across the company, with Product, Engineering, Biz Dev, International, even Operations, to do amazing feats like:

• growing from 45 million users to over 100 million in 18 months
• growing a blog from launch to over 10 million uniques a month, and
• driving a 22% increase in user engagement just from content marketing (with a heavy dollop of product and engineering).

In less than two years, we went from an $18 million first round of funding to being acquired for a smidge under half a billion dollars. Bringing 100% of myself to work was valued, requested and honored, from both above and below on the org chart. I evolved as a leader, as an executive, as a marketer and as a thinker. My job sent me to beautiful places to learn and contribute to deeply engaging projects: New York, Copenhagen, and the South of France – twice. We had a deep allowance for monthly fitness classes, which I still somehow exceeded every month. We had beautiful, beautiful catered lunches every day in a lovely San Francisco office nine miles from my home.

My team sent me pug gifs regularly. Pug gifs, ya’ll.

Exhibit A.

Post-MyFitnessPal, my belief in the goodness of people is deeper and more unshakable than before. I witnessed  an amazing team of people who could work anywhere in Silicon Valley coalesce around a singular mission to make it easier to live a healthy life. And I was able to participate at the earliest stages of forming executive team, designing a company culture, and scaling a business strategy that is both successful and transformational in its beneficial impact on humanity.

So what happened?

What happened was exactly what was supposed to happen. Seasons change. Startups exit. (If they’re doing it right.) The organization and its culture have continued to evolve. The brief – the problems the business exists to solve – is evolving.

As they do. As they should.

The Power of Purpose. When I took this job, I had my own business. I loved my business, and my clients – in fact, MyFitnessPal was one of them. I ultimately made the decision to shutter my business and take this job because I was crystal clear on my purpose in the world, which is to use business a force for healing, expanding and driving transformation in the lives of as many people as possible. This job allowed me to live and work “on purpose” in a big way, for a season, and taking it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

But as formative and definitive a role as this one was in my life, my career, my head and my heart, my career and work identity is tied to my purpose, not to any given job or project or company. Having a clear understanding of my purpose has given me a detection system that alerts me to when a given season of my career is complete, and a divining rod that points with clarity to what steps to take, what opportunities to explore, what projects to work on and what people to work with next. My original plan was to stay at MyFitnessPal until we had an exit – IPO or acquisition – and that has happened. My job here is done, and my purpose detection system is pointing me in a different direction. It might sound reductive, but it’s really as simple as that.

My career-long commitment to staying clear on my purpose and staying committed to doing work that is “on purpose” has helped me navigate with confidence and flow through a series of career moves that seemed bizarre to other people, but felt like the just-right thing to do at the time. And each of the moves I’ve made since getting and staying on purpose has proved to be consistently onward and upward in terms of impact, prosperity and success – by nearly all reasonable objective and personal metrics.

(Don’t take my word for it – take a look at my story in this Huffington Post piece, and see for yourself.)

Making Myself Available for More Miracles. If you clicked through, you know what I know, which is that my career – my whole life, really – has been a series of miracles. I’ve built businesses and brands and teams with and for the best of them. The actual best. For that journey, for those blessed, miraculous opportunities and for the internal and external resources that came together for me to be able to live them out, I am deeply grateful.

But I’m also reminded of the Bible story where Jesus turned water into wine. The very first thing he did was demand that someone bring him empty vessels, because the miraculous can’t be done where there’s no room for it.

My personal career pattern has been to start working to build out my own vision, then  consistently get distracted and derailed by these beautiful, blessed opportunities to work on other people’s dreams. Now that my “brief” at MyFitnessPal is complete, my purpose navigation system has alerted me that it’s time to build out my own vision – my own dream. It’s time to become an available vessel. So that’s what I’m doing.

As always happens, making myself available has already opened up literally dozens of “on purpose” possibilities. I’m writing a book. I’m developing a think tank and consortium of businesses, entrepreneurs and marketers who serve The Transformational Consumer, across verticals and industries, so we can innovate and collaborate more powerfully and more profitably. I’m producing a series of transformational workshops, conferences, retreats and experiences. More to come – on all of that.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the one theme almost every person I discussed this move with brought up: fear. “Aren’t you afraid of – fill in the blank with [leaving money on the table] [missing out on the next phase] [not taking another job while the offers are flooding in], etc. and so forth?” Money is an important instrument for making things happen in this world. But money is one of those things that is a fantastic servant, and a terrible master. It’s dangerous to climb into the bottomless pit of “never enough”. Using money as the primary driver for your career moves, vs. purpose or impact or even team, is a path down which many unfulfilled folks have walked. I reject that path.

There’s always some fear and some nervousness that comes with taking a bold new path or “daring greatly,” as Brene Brown might call it. But I’ve had a lot of experiences, at this point in my life where I stepped out there, took a very well-calculated risk, and it worked out exceedingly beyond what I might ever have imagined.  My experience has been that the more I’ve closed the gap between my work and my purpose, the more successful my endeavors have been – financially and in every other way.

In Liz Gilbert’s latest book, Big Magic, she recalls having the realization that fear and creativity tend to show up hand in hand. Gilbert shares a note she wrote to fear, informing the emotion that it is allowed to come on this adventure of a creative life journey that she’s embarking upon. But then she quickly puts fear on notice that it never gets to read the roadmap, never gets to navigate, never gets to make a decision about where to go or what to do – it just gets to come along for the ride.

For me, purpose is the driving force behind the courage to step out and do what I believe I’m here for, and the force that sweetly, but firmly, sets fear in the way back seat on my life’s adventure. Steven Covey said it well: “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically—to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.”

NOTE: Want to stay up on what I’m working on? Join my mailing list at www.taranicholle.com – just enter your name and email into the signup form at the top of this page!

NOTE #2: My next adventure is the Strategic Sabbatical, November 3rd through 7th in Napa Valley. I regularly follow this week-long retreat strategy to ground myself and create flow when I’m in transition or kicking off new business or creative projects.

lt will de-chaos your nervous system, induce clarity as as to your purpose and plan, and trigger breakthroughs, action and momentum on the career transitions or business projects you care about the most. Interested? Come with: http://strategicsabbatical.com/