Congratulations! You have earned your Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification, and it feels great to have that behind you. It is certainly a milestone, and an accomplishment worth celebrating. But after a short time, the question often becomes “What’s next?“

What’s next?

Yes, high achievers especially experience this “What’s next?” urge. Just this morning, I was listening to a podcast on the way to work, and the author talked about the challenges and experiences that some of the astronauts who had walked on the moon. After years of preparation and intense focus and discipline, they reached their goals – only to return, in some cases, with a loss of purpose and direction. Some had deep troubles, largely because they had suddenly become “goal-less”. They in essence had “lost” a goal by achieving their primary goal, and by not replacing it with another worthy goal.