599: Giving Yourself Permission to Change Careers When a ‘Great Job’ No Longer Fits

Morgan Dunn 00:01

I love saying the motto, like, "sometimes you have to slow down to speed up." And that truly was what I was doing. I had to slow down for a second to be able to come in with a fresh perspective. Because I don't think if I did that, if I did not do that, I don't think I would have been able to think of some of the potential solutions or directions that I could have gone in.

Introduction 00:29

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does, and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:54

Sometimes, the hardest part of a career change isn't figuring out the next step. It's trusting yourself enough to take that next step.

Morgan Dunn 01:03

At some point, you have to give yourself the permission to let go and say it's okay, and no one else is going to do that, or no one else is going to say that except yourself. So if you're waiting for somebody to tell you, "it's okay to go ahead and let go", make a change, do something different that comes from you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:19

Morgan spent most of her career in HR following the path that she had started back in grad school while studying industrial organizational psychology. But even as early as her internships, she had this nagging sense that something about the path wasn't quite right. Fast forward to 2023. Morgan was in deep burnout, feeling stuck. She knew the role she was in was absolutely not working, but the fear of making the wrong move kept her from taking action. This is a place that many people have been before, and this is where we got to meet Morgan. She reached out to our team, and she worked up the courage to leave her misaligned role with our team support. Woohoo! But she quickly realized burnout had crept into every corner of her life. So instead of diving straight into the career change work, which she was really excited to do, we suggested that she take what she now calls reset and rejuvenation time. You'll get to hear all about Morgan's reset from burnout, rebuilding of her confidence, her new awesome role that she's super excited about. But here's what I want you to pay attention to. Pay attention to the big hurdle that Morgan had to overcome. Because we see this all the time, and it keeps so many people stuck in not so great situations. She realized that she has been searching for the perfect end all be all role, and what she really needed to focus on was taking intentional steps toward something that she identified as her ideal next step, not the perfect role, but a role that aligned with her strengths and fit her life. Okay, this is subtle, but this mindset shift finally helped her break free from that stuck feeling. Also last thing, I want to call out something fun. Our team actually got a chance to meet Morgan at our in-person meeting in St Louis last year. We don't get to meet all the people that we work with in person, but we make an effort to get to know folks and put a call out when we're nearby. So that was really exciting, and we had a great time. When we met her, she had just started working with us at that point in time to make her career change, so she was still in the thick of burnout, and early in that change, and that's where our conversation began. Here's Morgan reflecting on when she met our team and she knew it was time for a change.

Morgan Dunn 03:43

Yeah, just before that time. I mean, goodness. Now, if you want to talk about when I chatted with the team and we were hanging out, I was probably, you know, past the red zone that you hit when you should have left and made a change. Looking back, I would absolutely not recommend you wait as long as I did when, you know, you've realized, okay, a change needs to happen, and you ignore it. You ignore that signal for a very long time. Until you've gone past the point of, "Okay, I'm really drained. My energy is taking a hit. I'm snappy with my spouse. Now I've gained 15 pounds. What is going on? I can't even give myself motivation to go to the gym anymore", which is a huge part of my identity. If you talk to any of my family, my friends, like, I am always a go getter at the gym, I will always be there, staying on top of the fitness, like, my mom would joke with me if I haven't gone to the gym, she can tell because I am very like a type of way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:41

You're a different person. You act differently.

Morgan Dunn 04:44

Oh yeah. So once I felt that piece of apathy come in about not even feeling like you could have the motivation to even want to go to the gym, that was the biggest red flag to me, where I knew I had greatly overcast that boundary. But before, earlier in the process, it was these little, you know, maybe, like quiet, little whispers, maybe of, "Hmm, I don't know if I'm vibing with this or I'm not sure if the impact, the purpose of what I'm doing is really lighting me up", like, I can do it and I'm getting great reviews and lots of positive feedback, but I'm not feeling that energy from that, you know, that prideful feeling that you get when you go at it full force into a project. And you should, and, you know, at the end, like, "I should be really proud about this", but then you don't feel that thing, and you're like, "Uh-oh, this is not like... This is a sign."

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:41

Yeah, I remember you mentioning that too, when we got to meet you in St Louis. And for context for everybody else, we happened to do a team in-person meeting there, and that was super fun. So I'm curious though, you mentioned you felt you stayed way longer than what you should have. What do you think, in your case, and lots of us do this, I think it's a human tendency. But what do you think caused you to stay so long?

Morgan Dunn 06:10

Multiple things. The biggest thing truly was, I recognize that the role that I was in was such an amazing opportunity for somebody who had pursued an IO Psych master's degree. And I was very, very much wrapped up in that identity and trying to pursue the expected, traditional path that somebody for that degree should go out and get. And so in my role as a, I was an organizational development partner for a retail company here in St Louis, and I looked at this role, and I'm like, "this is an amazing opportunity for somebody who is absolutely a go-getter in organizational development practices and loving that." I mean, even just saying that right now, showed the disassociation from that identity now that I look back at it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:02

For somebody who should do it. Yeah

Morgan Dunn 07:06

Yes, for somebody who's into this, if you say that to yourself, you should probably take a step back and reevaluate. But you know, it's fine. There were such great opportunities in that role, and I am so, so very thankful for all of those experiences, it's going to make me into a better person as I continue down my career path. So I have absolutely no regrets at all whatsoever doing that, but had such amazing resume builders and ability to have visibility in the organization, working with senior leadership and the CEO even, which was super, super cool. Got to put my name on projects and initiatives across the company, be super creative in that. There was very... It was a very flat organization. So it was a wonderful sandbox, basically, where you didn't have many levels to reach up to that upper leadership level to partner with them. And yeah, it was just super fun. Lots of variety, but at the same time, I realized it was that wide variety that started to drain me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:08

Well, so, what do you mean when you say "it was the variety that started to drain you"? That sounds important.

Morgan Dunn 08:15

Yeah. So I was overseeing some different buckets, and I was looking over the performance management process, the talent assessment and succession planning process, the employee experience, listening, survey strategy, data analysis and insights, and also some career frameworking stuff as well. And there was such depth to all of these buckets, and we were in a place where we were still building these processes up. And so the amount of work that just went into each of these buckets, the level of detail needed for each to make them great things, was just I couldn't give it that kind of attention, which now if you want to go back to considering strengths, for me, was such a tough thing, because I cannot stop maximizing stuff. I cannot stop thinking of new ideas for things. I am super big in maximization ideation, and I just, I can't stop doing those things. So the fact that I couldn't, I think that that was a huge player in it, for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:19

So you had all of these categories in which you had responsibilities for and you were feeling compelled to, or couldn't stop yourself from generating ideas and not enough hours in the day to be able to really get any one of those significant progress, or at least what you wanted to. Is that right?

Morgan Dunn 09:38

Right. Yeah, correct. Because also to add a little spicy flavor to that, we had an implementation going on with a new HCM, human capital management system, that was brought in. So we were also integrating these processes with that as well, which there's such, you know, a level of depth to, you know, setting up the technical components, especially with the employee experience, listing surveys, all the embedded data fields and, oh my goodness, it was crazy. But yeah, there was a little spice there with that as well, just adding to some of it. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:10

Yeah. So you had this massive project that required depth going on, along with all of your normal responsibilities, duties, activities, and this is not adding up to something that is fulfilling any longer with all that variety. That makes total sense. And I can appreciate that too. You and I share some similar strengths in, I'm very much a maximizer. Very much want to get everything out of every minute, every section, every project, every conversation, whatever. So I can definitely appreciate that. And then the ideation side too, like, if that is a strength of yours, it's hard to stop that. Hard to stop. So what then caused you to say, "Nope, I'm doing this. I am making a change." At what point did you say, "No, this is... I've had enough. I've realized this. I've had enough of these small little tidbits, these clues", and you're like, "This is it. I'm going to do this."

Morgan Dunn 11:15

Oh, my goodness. It took a bit to get there. I'm not gonna lie. I only got there when I started working with my coach, and I felt such a dedication to the projects that I was working on that I just, I literally did not feel like I could leave them, because I felt, you know, a sense of guilt of putting that on somebody else without having the deep technical knowledge that went into those projects. So there was a lot of guilt leading up to that decision of allowing yourself to let go. That was a huge learning for me in this process, was at some point, you have to give yourself the permission to let go and say "it's okay", and no one else is going to do that, or no one else is going to say that except yourself. So if you're waiting for somebody to tell you, "it's okay to go ahead and let go, make a change, do something different" that comes from you. So it took me a minute to get there, but I finally cracked open the possibility of doing that in my head, after visualizing what that would look like. I'm a highly visual person. That is something that I have to see what something's going to look like. I have to walk through the steps and feel how it's going to feel before I do the thing. So when I was working with my coach, we had talked about visualizing and mapping out what some of the options would look like if I decided to leave or if I decided to stay. So okay. Option A, you stay, here's what it looks like. Okay. Option B, you leave. Okay. Now, what dates could we look at to leave? What do those look like? How would that go, like, timing wise? How does that feel? So I started mapping out all of those different options, and it wasn't until I did that where, you know, one date in particular, kind of stood out to me, and I looked at it and was like, "You know what? I could make that work. I could do that." And that feels like, I definitely feel like I don't want to overstay my stay past that date. I just came to that conclusion, as well as some financial planning and analysis. Of course, that was super, super helpful to me to understand the minimum needs, the moderate needs, and then the maximum needs. Mapping all of that, having a conversation with my spouse was super, super helpful to keep them in the loop as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:30

Well, and let's add a little bit of context in here. When we first started working with you, if I remember correctly, you were pretty hot to trot excited, I don't know, insert your choice of words here about some form of career change, even if you weren't ready to fully commit, if you will. And at some point along the way, you were working with Ben as your lead coach on our team, and at some point, you had decided that, "No, I need..." what Ben had called a reset along the way. Tell me a little bit about that. How did that come about? What caused that realization?

Morgan Dunn 14:16

Yeah, so the reset you're referring to is in leaving the job and reset rejuvenation, right? Is that we're talking about?

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:25

Yeah.

Morgan Dunn 14:26

Yeah. So I left in July, and it's so phenomenal, like, you're blasting music on the way to your last day in the car, it's, "I'm quitting, I'm done" music, and you leave, you turn on your laptop, and you walk out of there, and you're like, "oh my gosh, the world is my oyster. I can do anything." And it's super funny, because I immediately came out thinking, "Okay, gonna get the resume together. I'm gonna talk to the people. I'm gonna do all the things. I'm gonna do the experiments. It's gonna be phenomenal." And Ben was like, "What if one of your action items for until the next time we talked was just to sleep really good, go do some workouts. And then also, like, what else would you like to do to take care of yourself?" And, you know, I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe, like, go swim at the pool in the middle of the day when the gym is like, not super busy, and things that you couldn't do if you were in your day job." And so I focused on these super basic things. And then I really realized that there is a period of time after you leave a job and you've kind of been wrapped up in an identity and kind of going, going, going and not really thinking about what you're doing, and then all of a sudden, all of that stops. And I was just like, "Oh my gosh." And I slept a ton. I literally spent a day where, I think, for 16 hours, I just read a book, and it was the most phenomenal thing ever. We took a trip to a national park, we went to Iceland, and there was this whole like reset rejuvenation period where... I love saying the motto, like, "sometimes you have to slow down to speed up." And that truly was what I was doing. I had to slow down for a second to be able to come in with a fresh perspective. Because I don't think if I did that, if I did not do that, I don't think I would have been able to think of some of the potential solutions or directions that I could have gone in. So, yeah, that was a little bit of the reset phase.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:29

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think that what we've seen, and if you would ask me 15 years ago, I don't think I would have recognized that this is prevalent when people are making a, not just a career change, but any big life change. It's almost very similar to people go through stages of... it's similar to, like the stages of grief. Let's call it that.

Morgan Dunn 16:52

Oh, 100%.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:53

And I think that really is derived from your making a transition and reassociating your identity, and so many of us tend to cling to pieces of our identity that are wrapped up in our work and in untangling that, it causes us to be going through those stages that are really similar to what we called grief earlier. So what I'm really interested in is what you said about how had you not done some form of a reset, you don't believe that you would have been able to make the same type of decisions, or have the perspective, if you will, going into that. When you're thinking about that now, obviously, we're quite a bit in the future, and this is all in the past, so it's easy to see, but when you think about that now, what do you think would have been different? What do you think might have changed the outcome?

Morgan Dunn 17:49

Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, I do have experience where I was trying to make a change before I left, and I did have a couple offers lined up the year before I left. One of them being a life coach position for a university, the other being a career coach position for a different university here in St Louis, and I truly was making a decision based on fear, what we've talked about here in the HTYC podcast, I was definitely trying to run from something versus run towards something. And I think if I hadn't given myself some perspective, I still would have done that same thing, running away from something or running out of fear from something, "Oh, I need money right away, so let's go ahead and get something with a really high salary, or anything different at this point sounds good, like anything and everything, I'll take it." Those are kind of the ideas I would probably run down if I had not allowed myself to just slow down, take a beat, evaluate, be super strategic in what went well in the past, what didn't go so well, what gave me energy, what drained me, all of that good stuff was very good to keep in mind. And of course, the ICP, the ideal career profile, of course, taking a moment to really structure that outline that it sounds so basic like, "oh, let's think about what we want", but it's really so important. And we talk about it in IO Psychology too, define your criteria. You can't measure success unless you define your criteria, that's exactly what you're doing. So really taking the moment to define that criteria allows you to move in the direction towards something, like move towards something versus away from something. And I don't think I would have done that had I not taken a beat and taken a moment. Yeah, probably now I'd be working as a career coach for a university where they were about to have an org change. I don't know who my boss would have been. That's what I was about to walk into when I was in the model of getting away.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:55

Dangerously close to that. What caused you to say, "No, I can't accept these." Because I think it would have been easy to accept the opportunities that are right there, right in front of you, but something calls you. Yeah. There's definitely. There were things going there.

Morgan Dunn 20:12

Yeah. Oh well, there was the possibility to go travel for a week in Spain, all the glittery things that was calling my name. Yeah, absolutely. But I really did some deep questions with the hiring manager, and she was so great to do a couple, you know, follow up questions with me and or a couple sessions of that. And I think she could tell I was really trying to pick apart, you know, if it was going to be a better fit than where it was at. And I wasn't so sure. I think she kind of had an idea, but I really got clear on, you know, because your boss makes it or breaks it. And the moment that I knew that they hadn't even hired for who that position would be reporting to, that an org change was coming down the line, and there was essentially no guarantee of what the role would look like six months down the line, I was like, "Those are two big things." So, yeah. That's kind of the moment when I evaluated and said, "I might just need to stick it out a little bit longer and re-evaluate in a bit."

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:22

Well, kudos to you for digging in and trying to find some of that, even if it was driven from a place of fear, you still you dug in, and we're trying to decide and learn enough to be able to, I guess, enough to make that decision. You said something earlier that I want to come back to for a moment. It sounded like, as you were going through and identifying like what could create a great fit, it sounded like you were looking for external sources to give you permission. Is what I heard you say earlier. Tell me a little bit about that, because I know from chatting with Ben that this was a pivotal part of your process. So I want to do it a little bit more justice here. You mentioned it, but it sounded like there's so much else that went on here that caused you to recognize that you're seeking permission, and then also move beyond that.

Morgan Dunn 22:20

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I was definitely kind of just waiting around for somebody to tell me, "You know, it's fine to go, like, change your job, get out of there." But again, no one is going to give you the permission to do that than yourself. And I just didn't realize that. And I don't think I had the confidence, or the, oh gosh, what would you call it? At the time, I didn't have the confidence to give myself permission to do that until I visualized those options. Really understood what leaving would look like when would make the most sense, and then just, you know, have faith that after that, things would be okay. I'm an adaptable person. That's one of my strengths. So I was like, "You know what? I'm very adaptable. I can do this." So that was also very validating to think about. But when it comes to giving yourself permission to just move on, and not waiting for your spouse to say, "yeah, it's okay", I mean, that does help, I think, when we did the financial analysis and really looked at things, he's a very numerical kind of a person. So speaking that language was extremely beneficial, of like, "All right, here's what it looks like six months out. This is what it would look like if I took that amount of time" and we realized, "yeah, it's gonna be fine." So that helped me give myself permission to leave. And then from there, you know when you're in that process of a limbo, there's a lot of self guilt comes when you're unemployed for sure, which is a whole other topic we could dive into. But there is a component there when you're considering your next move, you are, and you're going through that identity shift, again, there comes a time when you need to give yourself permission to do something different to change, and I think doing the strengths exercises with friends and talking with them about what I personally do well that they might, you know, it doesn't come as easy to them. That was very validating to be like, "Yeah, I am awesome at disarming people in a way where they can be totally honest with me and give me a ton of information. I should use that strength. That's awesome." Or, "Yeah, I am great at rolling with the punches, or super creative, you know, when something totally changes, bringing a ton of ideas to the table and selecting out the best path forward." Like, I should use that strength in whatever way that looks like. And so that was also very validating that did play a pivotal role in slowly building up that confidence to let myself make my decisions. And additionally, like intuition, Ben really talked with me and told me to kind of just take a moment to write down when I started questioning some of my gut feelings, and made me start recognizing those moments that I was questioning that, or putting the mute button on them, and I recognized that it was quite a bit. So once I was a little bit more self aware about that, I was like, "Okay, let's listen to this." And that did help me give myself permission to do something different, like, "oh, I would like to do something in coaching, something in empowering people and motivating people, because my strengths look like this, and I have all this data to back it up, and looking at qualitative data from my past work experiences, and seeing that as a thread throughout different roles, that is something I should follow." So yeah, it was a multi faceted approach, I guess I could say, in things that give you little pieces of confidence to do what you need to do, but sometimes you also just need time. Time to just sit, time to just chill, and sometimes you just gotta do the thing, even though you're not ready to do it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:01

I think what's really fascinating. I'm listening to you talk about, one, how you began to recognize this. Part of this was writing down when you were feeling less confident, and then you started to observe as you were doing that, "Wow, this is actually happening a lot more than I think." But then it sounds like what was happening is that was pulling your awareness to when you were experiencing that and searching for it. I'm just gonna call it validation elsewhere, externally. And then the other thing I was taking from listening to you is that you mentioned earlier about the visualization, like, visualizing what could this look like, fleshing out what would the future look like, how would this work, all the way from a financial side to everything else in between, and then that allowed you to start to disconnect and be able to move forward in a way that was good for you, without waiting for everybody else to say, "oh yeah. Like, yeah, you should totally go this direction, Morgan."

Morgan Dunn 27:04

Oh, yeah. It's a great way to keep yourself accountable when you're like, "I can't do this", and then you actually map it out and take the time to detail out what something would look like and be objective about it in that way, it keeps you very accountable. Like, "No. It can work."

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:20

So one of the other things I wanted to ask you about that I think is really interesting in your story is that your work, and even how you're doing work, or in combination of work, right now, looks so different than it did back in 2023. Can you tell me a little bit about, just share with us, like, what is different, first of all, for context? And then I've got a couple of questions for you.

Morgan Dunn 27:48

Oh, 100%. Yeah. Well, I mean, first things first, the team is very different. I, you know, previously was on an HR department team, and you know, you've got your total rewards team, your HR BPs, you've got your training experts, and then the org development team, comms, all that, whereas now it's a lot more specialized in like just psychology stuff and career assessment and coaching, so it's a lot more focused into one specific area, which I kind of love, because I really, really love to deep dive and go into all the nooks and crannies. So I was really, really hyped to be working with a team of experts focused on career change, motivating, empowering others who came from a psychology background, because I love the psychology stuff, and I didn't want to leave that behind. I just wanted to apply it and use it in a different way. So the team's different. The working model is 100% remote. So we've got... Our team is... we've got Washington, New York, Mexico City, and like, we cover all the regions. So it's funny because I am an extroverted person. I really enjoy working with a team that really is an aspect that makes or breaks it for me, so it's hugely important. And a lot of times people told me, "Oh, well, if you're extroverted, like, you've got to work in an office, then, like, you have to do that." And I don't know, I was just like, well, I really do enjoy the perks and flexibility of working remotely, and I feel like if I just find a place where the team is pretty tight and they're collaborative and all that good stuff, there shouldn't be any reason why I couldn't feel like I belong on a team and communicating, sharing ideas and all of that. And that's what I found. So it's 100% remote, which is phenomenal. I love my little commute from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen to office. It's wonderful, but I still get all the perks of meeting a ton of cool people. All of our clients that we meet with are from all over the states and everything, so from different countries. So I love that as well. Yeah. I mean, I am working with clients who are looking for change. Instead of leaders or stakeholders across a business trying to improve organizational effectiveness. The end goal and purpose of my work, I really wanted a client, instead of being an organization, to be a person. I wanted to shift my work to make it much more individual impact focused, because I always loved opportunities where I was able to sit down with leaders and really decompress data and insights and visualizations with them and chat about, you know, what we could now do with this data to improve situations or team culture and all of that. And so now I feel like I've shifted in a way where I am still doing what I love in terms of decompressing assessment data and insights, qualitative data from work experience history, and then strategically ideating some creative solutions for clients to make a change, and it's just in a different way with an end impact and who I'm working with that is a lot more aligned with what my ideal was for me. So, yeah, those are, like, the biggest things that are coming to mind right now in terms of, like, environmental differences, team differences and content. Oh, and I, like, had the most random thing I'd put on my ICP, where I was like, "it'd be really awesome to work with people who love travel and adventure?" And the head of assessment, who I talked with, she is such a national parks geek, and that is the thing we absolutely connected on. And it was so great. Yeah, so there's a lot of great things we were hitting on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:30

That is so funny. It goes back to, I mean, just another piece of evidence for what you talked about earlier that had you not done that, what we would call identification work, to say, "No, this is what I want. It's on paper. It's on purpose. Here's where I'm going, here's where I'm running to" then it may not have happened in that way, right down to the point where you get to work with other people that care about travel and national parks.

Morgan Dunn 31:57

Absolutely. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:58

That's fantastic. So how has the way that you think about work changed through this experience or set of experiences? Because clearly, the work that you're doing and how you're doing work has changed. It's very different in all the ways that you just articulated. But what do you think has been the biggest changes for how you think about work?

Morgan Dunn 32:21

Oh yeah, gosh, they're significant. I mean, even just waking up, I thought it was so cliche when people were like, "Oh, I wake up looking forward to work." Not a thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:31

No, nobody does that. That's not... It's fake news.

Morgan Dunn 32:33

Yeah, no one does that. No, I wake up and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I can't wait to work on this client today, or dive into some insights today." And, yeah, I just get super revved up to do that. And even when I end the day, even if it's a hard day of work, work is tough at sometimes, regardless of where you go, but how it makes you feel at the end of the day, like how quickly you feel energized, again, at the end of the day is a huge difference. So yeah, earlier I used to just be so drained. And like, you've got the zombie person who was me on the couch scrolling through Netflix, I'm not going to the gym. I can't even care to get into my car. And now it's like, okay, yeah, I'll take a beat. I'll, you know, 30 minutes, maybe a little brain break, and then boom, I'm revved up. We're going. We're getting to the gym, and, yeah, it's just a totally different experience when you're done with work for the day and you just feel excited and you're, you know, I noticed I'm a lot more energetic now when I'm hanging out with friends or with family, going to holidays, for example, I just got drained so so quick in the past, but now I feel like I am a lot more revved up and engaged in conversations, and my relationships are better. My husband is probably most thankful that I'm not as, like, short and snappy with him. I'm a lot, yeah, a lot more tolerant of things, which is like...

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:58

Finally, Morgan, finally.

Morgan Dunn 33:59

Yes. Oh my goodness, yeah. That's great, yeah, lots of benefits everywhere, really. But yeah, work, it's funny, like I realized, oh, you can feel like you're having such a meaningful impact, and it revs you up. Like that's not something I was really feeling as much. I saw how somebody, again, somebody who is really into the business effectiveness, you know, development stuff could feel like they're impacting and there are totally people out there who that's going to feel super meaningful for them and rev them up, and that's great. But for me, like I am feeling so revved up and like I'm making a huge difference in the role that I'm currently doing, just more so than I was.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:40

Well, so let me ask you about that, because I think what you're talking about right now is not just important, I would say it is critical. And specifically when we're experiencing the, I'm going to call it like the great opportunity syndrome, where it's like, "yeah, that's a great opportunity for someone", and we feel compelled to continue going because it's a great opportunity, whether we feel guilt, whether we feel, you know, whatever else that tends to keep us there and keep us focused on that, because it's got that great opportunity, which does not, as we know, mean it's a great opportunity for you. So what I'm curious about is, what advice would you give to that person who is in that great opportunity, but they're not feeling all of these other wonderful byproducts, like, "Hey, I'm actually excited to wake up in the morning and thinking about, you know, the things that I get to do, as opposed to have to do." You know, what advice would you give that person that is maybe stuck in that place that you were several years back?

Morgan Dunn 35:47

Yeah. I mean, that's a tough place to be. I think it, and this is hard to come to this realization, but it's okay to say no to things. I think, especially with high achievers, which, hello, that's me. Especially with high achievers, hello, I'm high achieving. What's your name? Especially with high achievers, it's so easy to be a 'yes' person, because we have this assumption that if we say no, it means we're not driven, we're not motivated. But really, I mean, you just kind of have to shift the mindset of, it's okay to say 'no', because it just means that you're looking to further align yourself with being able to use your strengths in a more meaningful way, show up authentically, those are all super important things. And yeah, it's just it's okay to say no. So if you're stuck in an area that you don't want to be in, and you know that you've got this inkling of a feeling it's not the right fit, and you get a promotion, I think it might be a really great idea to say, "Hey, I really appreciate this. I'd love to think about it for a little bit", and then deep dive into what do you want your life to look like, how do you want to show up at work, and just check that criteria out and see if it's gonna align well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:13

Most of the episodes you've heard on Happen To Your Career showcase stories of people that have taken the steps to identify and land careers that they are absolutely enamored with, that match their strengths, and are really what they want in their lives. If that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that's awesome. And we want to figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest. Take the next five seconds to open up your email app and email me directly. I'm gonna give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And when you do that, I'll introduce you to someone on our team who can have a super informal conversation with and we'll figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like. And the very best way that we can support you to make it happen. So send me an email right now with 'Conversation' in the subject line.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:06

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 38:11

I think I opened myself up, finally, to the possibility of something else in my future. And I let go of trying to control, or not even let go of control, but I finally started to put more into myself, learning about myself, discovering myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:33

Everyone's heard the whole proverb about "The best time to plant a tree is, you know, 20 years ago. And next best time to plant a tree right now." Okay. Well, here's the thing, what if you could start planting a tree in the form of doing the work now, just little tiny bit by little tiny bit, to decide what it is that you want to spend your time doing? What you want to spend your time doing in the form of a career, what you want to spend your time doing in the other areas of your life too? Well, I'll tell you that, if you do that, it can make a massive, massive change for you when something unexpected happens.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:18

All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it, and if you haven't already, click subscribe on your podcast player, so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week, until next week. Adios, I'm out.