580: Improving Your Well-Being by Aligning Your Career with Your True Self

Katja Trmcic 00:01

Work was work. Work was something to earn the money so you can have fun. So it never even crossed my mind that I could be happy or have fun with my work, which I am doing now.

Introduction 00:19

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 00:44

It's happened to most of us. You're cruising along in your career, doing what you think you should be doing, because it's what everyone always told you was right. You follow the directions, and you're on autopilot. You're keeping your head down, you're doing the work, and suddenly it hits you. A moment of clarity, almost like a pothole in the road, jars you awake, making you question everything, "How did I end up here? Where am I going? Who am I?" You realize you're not happy, not fulfilled, and you wonder if you can escape this hole you've dug into a career that you don't enjoy.

Katja Trmcic 01:18

Try to look back at your life as if you're 85-90 years old, and you're talking to younger generations, your kids, grandkids, grand nephews, whoever is around you, and they're asking you about your life, and what are the stories that you want to have to tell. So you could say, "I was a lawyer for, you know, like, 10 years, and then I got a little bit bored, and then I did this."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:42

That's Katja Trmcic. Katja is originally from Slovenia, and began her career as a lawyer. She chose that route because she'd always been told she should be a doctor or a lawyer due to her good grades in school. From the very beginning, there were signs that law was, shall we say, not for her. It took her eight years to finish law school, and when she began working, she felt completely disengaged, bored and like she had to keep the real her hidden at all times when she was at work. Fast forward, and Katya now lives in Canada, is a licensed mental health counselor and also a career coach. Actually, this is one of the best parts. She's one of the coaches on our team here at HTYC many years later. In this discussion, she talks about how she stopped living on autopilot and looking to others to tell her what her next steps should be, and finally looked internally and asked, "what is it that she really wanted", and now she gets to live that every day, and more importantly, on our team, be able to help others do the exact same thing. Pretty cool, right? Hey, one more thing before we jump into the discussion with Katja, you're not actually gonna hear from me today. Samantha, who's on our team, who usually works behind the scenes on the podcast and all things content is who got to talk to Katja about her journey, and so I'm going to let them take it from here. Here's Katja talking about her background.

Katja Trmcic 03:11

So I come all the way from Eastern Europe, or we like to call ourselves Central Europe Slovenia. So that's a former Republic of Yugoslavia. We're next to Italy, for everybody who doesn't know, because usually people confuse us with Slovakia, which is not the case. So I always had good grades in school, but lack of guidance about what I could do with good grades. So I always thought like most of my, not education, but education about the world came from TV. So I watched a lot of like legal TV shows– Ally McBeall and Matlock and all kinds of stuff like that, kind of, stupid stuff if I think about it now. But I was very excited about it, and it made sense, and I had good grades. And then I thought, I could be a doctor, I could be a lawyer, probably not the doctor, and my grades were not that good. And then I signed up, and I was accepted to law school, and it took me a really long time to finish. I was partying, I was doing everything else. I started working in a law office, like, after two years of studying, I think, and then it took me, like, eight years, I think, to finish school.

Samantha Martin 04:20

So you started actually working.

Katja Trmcic 04:22

Working. Yeah. So because I had to pay for some expenses, like, it was not... And in Slovenia is different, you know, you go to law school and it's paid by the government if you have good grades and stuff like that. But you have to finish in a certain amount of time. So I did finish, but I was bored at my work. I was reading all these forums about relationship problems and stuff. Like during my work, I was not interested. I was not like stimulated. I was not engaged. I had nice bosses to lawyers, and then I switched to junior lawyer after I finished. But it actually didn't really change what I was doing, but I did notice that I got in touch with the type of people a lot that, like now, I know that because I know about my values and I know what's important to me and how I want to be in the world. But I found myself in a situation when I had to kind of be good with or just kind of make people feel like I agree with them, although I didn't morally, and I couldn't really put a finger on it at the time, like it wasn't in my vocabulary, I guess. I just knew that I didn't like my work that much. I was bored. I was always excited about Friday. I was waiting for Friday. Monday was approaching, I was like, "here we go again." But most people around me existed in that way. You know, work was work. Work was something to earn the money so you can have fun. So it never even crossed my mind that I could be happy or have fun with my work, which I am doing now. Just want to say that just to skip to the end, but let's go back. And by the circumstances at the time, I had a partner and we moved to the US, he got a job at a big university, and I went with him, and it was like an adventure, a next step in our relationship. So we moved to New York state, to Ithaca. And first, I just started volunteering because, and that's something that I always recommend my clients when they're changing locations or maybe they're not able to work yet. I wasn't... because I was waiting for my work permit. So I started volunteering at SPCA. I was walking dogs, and I was helping with adoptions of cats, and I love that. And then they hired me based on... immediately when I got my work permit, they had a position for me, animal care technician, which is not where I stayed.

Samantha Martin 06:40

That surprised you. Were you looking to work there? Or had you been thinking the whole time you were waiting on your visa, like, "Okay, when I get this, I'm gonna look into legal."

Katja Trmcic 06:49

I was still thinking about law at the time. I thought, I'll have to find a way to transition to North American systems and do law there. But because I had nothing going on, I was just trying to get out of the house. The process took quite a lot of time, I would say, four or five months after I came, I only got the work permit, but it was important just to be engaged with the community, because otherwise I would just be, like, rotting away, like in the basement suite we had, like, no people, I didn't know anybody. And just now I understand better also, you know, proximity of animals, how good that is for your nervous system as well. Because I was in a survival mode. I didn't know at the time. But when you're moving across continents like that without any real support from family or not knowing people, it's a big, giant restart you create, it's like a computer restart from the beginning. You have to build everything, and how you act in the world, and when you get your groceries and where, you know, like everything is new. So those animals, yeah, that was fun. I did not look for that job. It just popped up and I got my work permit, and I said, "Oh, I'm going to apply for this." And they hired me. But then the same month, I got another position at the University where my partner worked, and it was Student Services Coordinating and Admissions. And I did both jobs for a while because when you have none for a while, and then you have options, then you just take on. And that's one of my problems. I had to learn the hard way later that I take on a lot of things because I'm excited about opportunities. I had to quit the SPCA job and just focus on the Student Services one at Cornell University. I stayed there for three years, and I had absolute blast. It was amazing. It was such fun environment to work at. There was this one coworker, I don't know if I can drop names, but her name was Jennifer, and she taught me how you can just be personable, and you can be yourself, and you can just really inquire and try to be helpful, like for the students and how they appreciate that, and how they open up, and you build this wonderful connections. And me being an immigrant myself, but kind of a couple steps ahead of them, and they were coming, you know, I had to help them. It's really put me in this mama goose situation when I knew what they're supposed to do and where to go, and I was just helping. And I really found so much fulfillment in helping, but also in a way, like Jennifer, like she had so much sense of humor, and I have that too, but I didn't know you can bring that to your work as much as she did. She would prank everybody. And then I started doing that too, and it was really fun, fun environment. So, like, little light bulbs would be going on for me, like, "Ha! You can have fun, like this." But then I had to move again. After three years, we moved to Canada.

Samantha Martin 09:44

So you started realizing, "Oh, look, I can be myself at work, and now I'm enjoying it." What did that tell you about when you were working in legal?

Katja Trmcic 09:52

I think I just didn't know. I didn't know about... I didn't know enough about life, about myself. Like I didn't know myself very well. I thought I have to find information on how to be from the environment I was in. I thought these are the ways I'm supposed to be existing in a professional world. So, like, I could say, nobody taught me, no. I didn't make those connections with my brain cells, yet, you know. Like those connections were not made, and I was strictly looking outside to understand how I'm supposed to be. And that it's impossible to be genuine in that way. You know, like when you're not listening to anything that's happening inside of you and act accordingly. But so I think that was my problem at the time, and very low confidence. Because, you know, in imposter syndrome, that basically with me like it lasted when I moved abroad, it was a big hit of imposter syndrome again. But before in Slovenia, I think just always feeling that I shouldn't ask too many questions, or I shouldn't put myself out there and put myself on the map and be noticed by people because then they might ask me questions and I will be found as a fraud I was. This is all like things that these concepts, they're clear to me now, like I studied counseling recently so I understand things. I did not understand them back there. So I did the best. I was doing the best that I could. But I see this a lot with my clients, how like existing in a way that you think you're supposed to exist, but not tapping into what are you good at, and what do you like to do, and what do you do not want to do, and actually communicating that in appropriate ways, standing up for yourself, be assertive, and just kind of creating situation and environment that works for you, because you're individual and you are unique, right? If that makes sense.

Samantha Martin 11:54

So you just mentioned that you studied counseling. So how did you go from working at the university, and then moved to counseling?

Katja Trmcic 12:05

So I moved to Vancouver, Canada. And first, because I had this new experience in post secondary institution, I said, "Okay, I guess I'm destined to work in post secondary institutions." That was my lead, right, for what comes next. And I just started applying for all the positions I found, and I got a job at a small boutique school for 3d animation in North Vancouver that had very much like a startup vibe. It was still growing rapidly when I was there and that experience, I just had to do everything there. So I was like the head of administration, my title was campus manager. Eventually, I did admission, student services, HR, payroll, scheduling, career support, events, like, everything. All the admin stuff, basically was on me, and I didn't know at the time, like, I got super burned out. It was a lot. But I learned so much. I learned so much. So at the time, when I was ready to leave that company, I seeked support of a career coach for the first time. And she was wonderful, like, for the first time, I started to kind of challenge the way I existed, or the way how I was thinking, because I always thought that's, like, that's firm, that's not to be changed.

Samantha Martin 13:23

Was it like, did you believe that that's how everyone thought?

Katja Trmcic 13:28

Oh yeah. This is universal way of existing, right? Like, I wasn't even challenging it. I wasn't even thinking that it might be different. It was just a fact. This is just. And, you know, and this is how we also people get judgmental of other people because other people are not acting according to how we think they're supposed to be acting. And we think like I thought for the longest time that we all have the same sets of rules provided to us somehow, like we are all on the same page, and some people decide not to follow the rules, but actually that's we're all so different, and we come from such different backgrounds and environments and how we are raised and families and oh, there's so much, so many factors to take into consideration. So yeah, I started... When I realized that the most of the work that the hard work that can be done on me that opened things up for me, because I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna challenge everything. I'm gonna rethink the ways I do things." And that's a very uncomfortable way to exist because what you are able to fall back on, like those constants that you have, suddenly you're kind of taking them away. But for me, it was very liberating. I felt like I've been waiting for that my whole life. I'm so dramatic. But in a way, you know, like it just opened things up what seemed very like walls closing in. I remember when I went to that career coach, my thought was, "Is that all that is out there for me I'm just going to be doing?" I was a campus manager, and I did a lot of things that were very rewarding, but I still felt that I'll be always doing, and in my mind, it was just admin work, and I'm not trying to this admin work for, you know, we are all different, and we all are meant for different things. But that was not it for me when I was doing that. I felt that it was not enough. Something didn't make sense. I wanted something different.

Samantha Martin 15:24

Well, you went from saying, "I can be a doctor or a lawyer to..." you thought a more limiting career after you moved to the US, and so you were probably left with that nagging feeling of, "but I should be a doctor or a lawyer", like so many of us are.

Katja Trmcic 15:43

Probably. Like, I should do something exceptional. Like I should do something important. But important for me, you know, like something that I feel it's important. That's also an important distinction because I always felt like I will do something great. I don't know if this is, probably we all have that feeling, but it's important to come to terms what is great for you and I feel like I got it, like I understand that my grade is so different than everybody else's great, and that's the point, and it's my individual experience, and it doesn't have to translate to anybody else, if that makes sense. But for me, it was like when you go to a career coach, which maybe a lot of listeners already know, or they're curious about, you tap, you have an opportunity to tap into everything you've done so far and kind of evaluate what were the parts that really worked for you. Like, what were the parts of your jobs, of your responsibilities that made you feel alive inside? And you just kind of got lost in those tasks. And you could do more, and you had so much, many ideas, but then you had to focus on the boring things as well. There was not enough time. Like, what was that? And for me, it was always having conversations, maybe because I talk so much like I need a lot of time. But having conversations with people, listening to them, trying to understand what it is that it's a struggle for them, and trying to be helpful or provide value in one way or another.

Samantha Martin 17:15

So before you go into where you transition to, I want to ask when you were in career coaching and you got past those limiting beliefs and shifted your mindset around all things really, what was the most impactful thing that you think that you learned that completely shifted your beliefs on you going from a fixed mindset, I guess, we can say to a growth mindset. And so what caused you to think differently? Do you remember?

Katja Trmcic 17:46

It was when you were saying it, I was like, "Yeah, It wasn't that simple. I wish it was." Like going to a career coach, that was first step, and I had six sessions with that career coach, and they were helpful, but I still had a lot of resistance. So it's just important to know that the change does not happen like this overnight. It just doesn't. I feel like it happened quickly for me, but it wasn't that fast. It was... I was... From the first career coach, I just, I recognized situation I was in that job. It wasn't healthy for me. I got really burned out. That was also a huge responsibility was on me, because I didn't know how to create boundaries, like, what kind of patterns do I have. When you keep finding yourself in certain situations again and again and again, at one point, it's not about the environment anymore, but it's about you. So it's about what am I contributing to this? So for me, I was a big people pleaser. It was hard for me to say no. I kind of got value from being useful, being helpful, being always there to help out with whatever people would need on my own expense. And later on, I recognized that that was also a way to distract myself from actually focusing on what I was supposed to focus on, which is my own personal growth. So sometimes everything is shinier, you know, other people's struggles, I'm going to help everybody. So that was my state of mind when I went to that first career coach, and she kind of helped me with changed jobs. So from that startup vibe, I went into another post secondary, partially government founded, very relaxed organization, and being there felt like vacation for me. So I changed a lot of jobs, which for career coaching is valuable, because I can understand the different energies this place have. But this one, at the same time, when I was at this new job, I got another coach. She wasn't a career coach. She was like a life coach. She saw that I could be a coach, so she mentored me for a year. And under her work, like with her, everything kind of changed for me. We met every two weeks, and she really... it's important that the coach knows how to challenge you in a kind way, but to show you those sides that you don't really want to look at, again, kindly nudging you like what's that all about. And I received a lot of that. And I had a lot of defenses, but I chose to listen and give the benefit of the doubt, and I'm very glad I did, because I learned so much about myself and how I self sabotage. And that time, at that institution, that's BCIT, here in Canada, I took all the professional development workshops they offered, like everything. They had leadership workshops, they had coaching workshops, they have crucial conversations, how to be assertive, how to minimize conflict. I took all of them because the work, I didn't find it very challenging. So I was just learning all the time. So it was a great place to do that in those two years. I was just inhaling information about personal development, self help, coaching. So, yeah, so it didn't happen overnight. There was a lot of... I was so hungry for it, I guess. Something appeared in front of me, and I was consuming it.

Samantha Martin 21:10

Were you enjoying everything you were doing at that time?

Katja Trmcic 21:13

Yes. It went hand in hand with, like, some changes in my personal life, you know, like, and then you just read books, and you learn about all kinds of stuff. And there are attachment styles, and there are love languages and communication styles and podcasts like I discovered podcasts, and I could not stop listening to podcasts because I would walk all the time just listening to podcasts. I would draw, I would listen to podcasts. Like it would be... Especially that's the time of the pandemic when I was at the cozy job. So it was also very boring. Nothing was happening. So I actually had to spend a lot of time by myself, with myself, and for me, all the time was focused on learning, but also exercising. Like I really got into, like, personal fitness. I discovered aerial arts, which was great. So that was my like two years. That was it. And then I started hopping around for jobs. I was trying to find a better job, something that would fit better. So I became an employment coach with a couple of nonprofit organizations, which I enjoyed. I worked with young Canadians, I worked with immigrants, I worked with refugees. I enjoyed a lot, but I don't know, I just always want to learn more. So I did end up going to counseling school. It took a one year intense counseling program, which now I'm a certified counselor in Canada.

Samantha Martin 22:36

Well, let me ask. If you now could go back and talk to yourself in that first law job, where you were feeling unsatisfied, I guess, unhappy, like you couldn't be yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

Katja Trmcic 22:52

I would say to myself, "What parts of this job do you actually like? Is there anything that you like?" Thinking back, I don't remember if I did, probably I would. But to encourage myself to have some, to take some initiative because those two bosses I had, they were very busy with their work, and I was there to kind of support them whatever they needed. But I think for me, it's so important to have ownership in a project or in the company. So it's mine as well. You know, I feel like this is a common cause, like I want to contribute to the success. What can I do? I believe at the time, I didn't even think I could do anything to contribute. But if somebody would tell me that this is normal to feel like that, but I'm supposed to ask questions, you know, it would be different. So for me, coaching changed that, and some very good managers I had later in life that asked me certain questions, or they modeled the way to be that was very relaxed, but still hard working. And for example, from that school in North Vancouver, the 3D animation school, the owner that I shared the office with, he would meet people anywhere he would go. He would have his card. He would start conversations. He would say, "You should come and see my school. I own a school. It's right there." People would actually come. He would show them the school. Would ask personal questions, you know, like, about their lives, and they would ask him stuff right back, and I would be typing away in that room, thinking, "This is so personal. Like, this is so weird." Like, that word is weird– it has so much judgment, right? Like, it didn't make sense to me at the time. But then I saw how, just from those interactions, these people would recommend this school to their neighbors, to co-workers, to kids that they know, and we would get clients like that. So this is actually how relationship building and networking is supposed to look like. You're just having conversations about your life, about the other person's life, what do they like, what did they struggling with, can we be helpful to each other in any way? And we remember that moving forward, going through life, and we want to refer or be helpful to the people who took the time to get to know us just a little bit when there was no agenda connected to it, if that makes sense.

Samantha Martin 25:19

It seems like so much of it goes back to trying your hardest to be genuine and vulnerable and just have conversations all the time. And I can say, like, and not have imposter syndrome, but that's a hard, you know, thing not to have, especially when you're in your first job out of law school, I'm sure. I also wanted to ask because a lot of the people that we work with have the sunk cost fallacy where they, you know, they are lawyers or doctors, or they did these things where they put in so much time and so much effort and now they're burnt out, or they've decided they just want to do something else, but they can't wrap their head around giving up all that work. So as someone who has done that, who has made the decision to not go back to law, what advice would you give them?

Katja Trmcic 26:11

I would say like, first, I have two things. One of the biggest ones is, I think I read statistics recently or this past year, that three quarters of people do not end up actually working in the field that they studied for, right? The major they chose, that is not the career they end up in, and when they find fulfillment and when they're happy. So this is all limiting way of thinking that you have to. It's, you've done what you've done, and it's a lot. You never start from scratch. It's impossible. Your life experiences, your work experiences, it amounts to something, you cannot just say zero, no, if you pivot. You worked with a lot of people. You have a lot of connections, professional connections, clients, people you work with, companies you worked for, co-workers you worked with, these are huge... these are numbers of people that know you, that you could tap into and have conversations with to figure out, to get an idea, to get ideas, conversations. So that's, probably I'm like, I'm jumping ahead, but I love to have these conversations with professionals who think that they have no options. I have a client right now who is a teacher, very close to retirement, thinking that this is what they need to focus on. That's not true at all. And it's very empowering when you recognize that. You're not supposed to know what you want to do right now, but just having conversations and exploring eventually things start to make sense, and you can connect those dots. And sometimes you have to take that leap of faith, but it completely depends on the individual, I guess, and what their financial and home situation is, but from somebody who has done it many times, it's worth it. I always say to my clients, "Try to look back at your life as if you're 85-90 years old, and you're talking to younger generations, your kids, grandkids, grand nephews, whoever is around you, and they're asking you about your life, and what are the stories that you want to have to tell. So you could say, I was a lawyer for, you know, like, 10 years, and then I got a little bit bored, and then I did this." And what is this "this"? You know, like we are creators of what chapter comes next, and we are the ones who usually stand in our way the most. To have that understanding, for me, I guess, like I said before, that was the most useful piece of knowledge to understand that things are possible, but I am the one blocking it. I don't want to say negative thinking, sometimes you have to think negatively, but yeah, with limiting beliefs like limiting possibilities, saying, "This is not possible. This cannot happen to me." No. Why not?

Samantha Martin 29:00

So now that you have settled into career coaching or just coaching, holistically, I guess holistic coaching, talk about your feelings, like when you're doing that work versus, I don't know, before when you were feeling misaligned, or when you were at that job or you were burned out, or any comparison you want to make.

Katja Trmcic 29:22

I remember when I had my first coaching call, when I started coaching, I went for a walk afterwards, and I had so much energy. Like it's just... When you find yourself doing what you're supposed to be doing. And I don't know if I'm going to be coaching for the rest of my life, but right now, it feels like it's the right thing for me to do, for sure. You don't feel tired, like, you feel energized, you feel excited for the clients and for the fact that you can be helpful in that way, because I know that it changes lives, and maybe that's a big thing to say. But I'm saying it because I felt it, I felt how... and sometimes it's just little changes that need to be made, like, little shifts. It's so hard to see our own, like, blind spots. That's why they're called blind spots, because it's a... And when somebody with compassion and empathy, like points things out for you, it just opens everything. Because a lot of us just feel stuck going in circles, like doing the same thing again and again. But to have opportunity for me to be able to shed light, because I see things than people who are in that circle don't see, and to be able to see it and communicate that and see how the client applies that knowledge moving forward, and how it opens things up for them. For me, that's just the biggest accomplishment I could wish for from my work. I would say it energizes me. I feel more alive now. Yeah, enthusiasm, excitement, energy. And before, I was self medicating, like I was still drinking. I was just bored. I was binge watching TV all the time, like just all those signs that, you know, when you just try to numb the voice that's saying, "This is not okay. This is all a pile..." you know, and you're trying to gaslight yourself that you're fine, that you're supposed to be happy because you have what you worked for so hard, you know you studied, the paycheck is good, what else do you want? But that's, yeah, it's gaslighting yourself. Like not allowing yourself to actually listen that maybe there's something else out there for you. And we, as far as we know, for sure, we only have this one life, and it's really a shame if we do not listen, and we don't take a couple of little chances here and there, and we decide how big the chances are going to be. But just to mix it up a little bit and see if something else fits better, I said, it's like a wearing a different hat, you know, like, try this bigger hat and see how it feels. Maybe it's going to be terrible, and then you go back to the small red one and have some fun.

Samantha Martin 32:09

Yeah, decisions aren't concrete, like...

Katja Trmcic 32:12

They're not.

Samantha Martin 32:15

I like that example. So what made you decide to actually get a counseling license?

Katja Trmcic 32:22

I did a lot of counseling myself. I went to therapy, and I loved it. Like, I don't know, for me, I'm like, "Ah!" I was learning new things. It was very empowering, also very hard, but I was processing things, and I was, I felt I'm more and more in control. It's, I'm just collecting all the ducks, and I'm just putting them here. And I see more and more ducks, and I'm, you know, and they're in a row. And, yeah, and I wanted to be the person who is able to help other people with their own self liberation, or whatever it is, you know, like that is keeping them down and keeping them stuck. I do that as a career coach, I do that as a counselor, like, people come with different challenges, but yeah.

Samantha Martin 33:06

Okay, so we've covered a lot. If there's anything else about your journey or about you as a career coach that you felt like you wanted to cover that we didn't get to, is there anything that you'd want to say or talk about?

Katja Trmcic 33:19

I want to just mention that, like, this last year was kind of difficult for me, and I got reintroduced to the concept of survival mode, which I find with my clients a lot. So I want people to know that it's really hard sometimes to make, like, good and creative decisions about different future when they are stuck in a survival mode, which means when they are burnout, when they are working too much, when they have been moving, when they have been going through some health stuff, like whatever it is, you know, like, if your nervous system is all out of whack and you are, and a lot of times, this is when people make decisions that they need a change, right? So to really understand that the priority should be to calm the nervous system first down, which means allowing themselves enough rest, limiting... They say the best thing is to go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, like making sure that they move their body, they hydrate enough. A lot of times, people are anxious, but they're just not drinking enough water, which is, it blew my mind, but it's true, like those simple things.

Samantha Martin 34:26

Like my mind right now.

Katja Trmcic 34:29

I just learned, like in a program I was in, that we have to treat ourselves as a plant, like we are a big plant. So what do we need? Like we need exposure to the sunlight. Like we need to, I guess, plants don't exercise, but we do need to move our body, like we need to go for that walk. Whatever makes sense to us, smartphones, like, how dissociation just kind of escaping the reality and just kind of, I know because I've been doing it myself, and I still do it from time to time, but it's so important to know that this is affecting us in all kinds of ways that are not even researched yet. You know, like this cannot be healthy for us. So for us to become, I say, to re-parent ourselves, we become a parent, and we make decisions for ourselves that maybe are not the favorite decisions, they're not the most popular ones, but they're good for us. So how can we make those decisions and create a system or routine that takes place, and then from that place we go and we try new things? Because we will fail. And when we fall back on the established systems, they're meant to nourish us and and hold us in a gentle, caring way, it will be much easier to just pick yourself up again and try another thing that might work a little bit better than the other one, because this is time to experiment, this is time to be creative. It's really hard to tap into that creative part of us if we are struggling in a survival mode. So I think that's a big one that is very helpful for a lot of people, and I'm still struggling with it myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:09

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 37:01

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

Speaker 4 37:07

I was quite disillusioned very quickly, and felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life by becoming a nurse. Even though this is something I had worked for, it took me years to do the prerequisite courses and get prepared.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:22

All right, here's one that we see all the time. What happens when you have the realization that the career or industry you've been working towards for years isn't the right fit for you? Many people have this epiphany when they're well into their careers or after years of schooling, and some have it the first day they walk in the door and realize this is not at all what I was expecting. It can be a really hard pill to swallow because our identities are often closely tied to what we say we do for a living. So how do you untangle your identity from a career that you once felt passionate about in order to start working towards the right fit for you?

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:59

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.