719: (Introduction) How to Find Career Fit in 8 Days: A Step-by-Step Process | What Fits You

Scott Anthony Barlow: [00:00:00] Most people find us after thinking about a change for years. It's after taking the assessments, reading all the books, talking to coworkers, friends, your significant other, quite a bit, let's say. And by the way, if this is you, I bet that you can describe exactly what you don't want with remarkable clarity.

But what you can't answer, what nobody has ever helped you answer, is this, "What kind of work actually fits you?" That's the question this podcast series digs into. And after more than a decade and nearly 100,000 people working through this question, we know one thing with certainty. The answer is there.

It's just far different than you think it is, and you just need the right process to surface it. That process starts today. This is Happen To Your Career. Most people let their career happen to them, falling into jobs by accident, stay longer than they should, and wondering if this is really all there is.

But a few people decide to stop settling and do something different. This podcast is for you to take control, get intentional, and design your career to fit the life that you want to build. Real stories and real research so you can stop waiting and start making it happen. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is an introduction to our eight-day mini course, the What Fits You eight-day mini course.

This is not a normal episode. We're doing something special. We're airing this course, which we first created in 2013, right here on the podcast, so you can start figuring out what makes a career actually fit for you and how do you begin designing a work life and regular life that fits what you want, what you actually need, and your desires.

Before we go any further, if you haven't registered for the complete course experience, including the emails, workbook, guided exercises, and some of the prompts and questions, then you can do that for free, completely free, at happentoyourcareer.com/8day. And for ease, you can just look in the show notes or description, and you'll find that link right there. Make it super easy on you.

When you register, you'll get one email per day for eight days, each one with a focused exercise that pairs directly with that day's episode. The two work together. You'll definitely want both. And as a bonus, you'll get subscribed to all of our resources coming forward in the future via email.

If you're already registered though, that's great. Let's spend a moment talking about what's coming through this course, because most people who find this course, they're not here because they're failing. They're here because in many ways they're succeeding, at least by every external measure, and it still doesn't feel right.

Every person's situation is different, but whether you have, you know, already tried quite a bit by changing companies or taking internal pivots or told yourself that it would get better after going up and down on the emotional roller coaster, then guess what? You're in the right place to start figuring this out. Without doing this work, it doesn't get better after the next promotion.

What does help is to get incredibly specific on what you need in your life and your work. There's really two things that help you get to work that fits. One, getting incredibly specific on what you want, and then two, once you have that information, figuring out what to do with that information in the real world.

To be incredibly clear, this mini course is going to help with the first. It's going to help you get much clearer definition about what you want, what you need, and what that means for you. What it's not going to do is it's not going to help you understand how do you do something with that information in the real world.

We can help with that, but that's not what this specific course is about. We're trying to answer the question of what actually fits first. Now we're to the part that might be one of the most important things in this entire mini course. It's the point that nobody ever teaches you how to do this, not your parents, not your university, which was designed to help you select a major, not figure out what you're actually meant to be doing, not the performance review process, and honestly, not even most career coaches.

Part of the reason we have a company built around designing career and work that fits the life that you wanna build is, I know this firsthand. When I first started my career, I took a job because everybody told me that I should. It was a good opportunity, and people told me I should be grateful, and that's what work is."

So I convinced myself that was true, and for about 12 months I tried to believe that the goal of a career was to tolerate it well enough to enjoy your weekends. Then one morning on my two-hour daily commute, one way, I had a full-on panic attack on the way to the office. I was working so much at the time, 70, 80, 90-hour weeks, that this led to very serious pondering about whether or not I should jump out the second story window so that I could break my leg and potentially get a day off.

Okay, wouldn't recommend that, but what I did end up doing is then talk to my boss and told him that I thought I made a mistake taking the job, and he apparently felt the same way because three weeks later he fired me. Now, don't feel bad for me. This was the beginning. I spent the next seven years figuring out what I'd been too busy to give attention to, what kind of work actually fits me and what I want, and we built an entire company around this.

But let me ask you this, what does it mean to build a career around what fits you, or your signature strengths, or the specific intersection of what you're genuinely great at, but also what energizes you and what you're interested in. Well, that led much later to starting Happen To Your Career in 2013 to give other people a process and practices that are research-based that I had to build this from scratch.

This course, the What Fits You eight-day mini course, it is a sampling of some of the things that we specifically do with our clients that we've pulled out that we thought that you could benefit from. So you can get started with some of the questions, tools, and best practices that we've found to be very effective working with smart, talented, kind people all over the world.

So here's exactly what to expect. Each episode is gonna cover one focused piece of the career fit puzzle, and it gives you one concrete exercise to complete before the next day. Now, again, if you've already gone and registered at happentoyourcareer.com/8day, then you're gonna get a daily email that accompanies this with the exercise and any supporting materials for that day.

The email and the episode are designed to work together. The episode gives you some of the context and the why and some of the fun stories along the way, and then the email gives you the exercise in a format that you can work through on your own time. Again, what this course won't do is it won't necessarily help you apply all of this knowledge to the real world, but what it will do is absolutely help you get started answering the question, what fits you, and look at it in a very different way than what you have before.

Best case scenario is it actually pushes you over the edge to make a decision that you needed to make anyways and helps you to clarify what creates a phenomenal fit for you. Worst case scenario is it gets you a little further along and a solid start to answering the much bigger question of what is the life that you're trying to build, and how does work fit into that for you?

In all cases, it's eight days, eight simple exercises, and every single one that you choose to do moves you a tiny step closer. Oh, by the way, at the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that almost 100,000 people had gone through a process just like this, one iteration or another of this same eight-day mini course.

Some people come through the course and get exactly what they need in eight days, and that's amazing. They finish with a concrete direction to be able to move forward. Others start to work through it, or they finish and they realize that they need much more help to be able to clarify, you know, a real partner to help them translate that clarity into specific strategic next steps at their level.

Both outcomes are great. Both are valid. Both happen on the regular. And just 'cause you get one outcome versus another doesn't necessarily mean anything good or bad. What I ask you to do is this, just get started. And if at any point during this process you decide you wanna find out what additional support would look like or having our entire team's help to be able to help you make a transition and decide what a phenomenal fit looks like for you, we make it super easy.

Just email me, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put conversation in the subject line, and then I'll connect you with a member of my team who will help you figure out your specific next move, even build a plan along the way. No pitch, no pressure, just a conversation about where you are currently and where it is that you wanna go, and begin helping you define how to get there.

You can start day one immediately, by the way, by just going to the next episode. It actually begins with a foundation that everything else in this course is built on, your signature strengths. Hey, two things to do right now really quickly before you close this episode. If you're not already following or subscribed to this podcast, wherever it is that you're listening to this right now, I would say do this right now.

Really simple step. It'll make everything else that comes afterwards so much easier. Click the follow button, click the subscribe button, and then that way you don't have to go looking for our podcast later on. Number two, if you haven't registered for the email version, then go to happentoyourcareer.com/8day and do that now, or you can just click into the link in the show notes and description, and then you'll want the daily exercises in your inbox alongside these episodes. This work is hard, but is very worth doing. Let's get you to work that fits you. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and I'm out. Adios.