755: The Messy Middle: What Career Change Actually Looks Like Before You Have the Answers

[00:00:00] Holly Dixon: I don't like to argue, and I don't take sides, so obviously law school was like the obvious choice for me, right?

[00:00:06] Scott Anthony Barlow: She went anyway, and then she spent two decades in the legal field.

[00:00:09] Holly Dixon: I would come home from work, and I would put my pajamas on and turn on Netflix, and that is all I wanted to do.

[00:00:14] Scott Anthony Barlow: This went on for years.

[00:00:16] Holly Dixon: I don't think I identified it as burnout until after I left and had some time to be like, "Oh, that's what was going on." Like, I just knew this didn't feel like me, and it felt awful, and it was getting worse.

[00:00:27] Scott Anthony Barlow: And when she finally took a hard look at what she was amazing at, she almost missed it.

[00:00:32] Holly Dixon: Everybody can talk to people. I really had to reframe, like, how is this a strength, and how valuable that actually is.

[00:00:40] Scott Anthony Barlow: Holly left without her next job lined up, and now she'd tell you she's never been more herself than right now.

[00:00:47] Introduction: This is Happen To Your Career. Most people let their career happen to them, falling into jobs by accident, staying longer than they should, and wondering if this is really all there is.

[00:00:58] 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.

[00:01:16] Scott Anthony Barlow: I want you to meet Holly Dixon. She got her law degree, and not once in her career did she ever want to argue a case. She actually decided not to get her law license, and then spent five years working at the Innocence Project, particularly with people who had been wrongfully convicted of something that they didn't do. Later, she worked in a federal defender's office in both Tennessee and then in North Carolina.

[00:01:39] Now, fast-forward 20 years, an entire career invested in law, but she knew now this wasn't where she wanted to spend any more of her time. So she decided to leave with no next job. And after giving four months' notice, which, by the way, Holly co-created an exit plan with her boss, which is an entire section of this episode just by itself, she went to...

[00:02:02] Actually, you know what? She still hasn't landed, which is the entire reason we're sharing her story. On this show, we typically will share a career change from start to finish. You know, entire episode that is built around the whole story. That said, what we hardly ever do is look at the snapshots in time that happen on the in-between, and that's exactly what this is.

[00:02:25] What Holly's going to walk you through is the messy middle, as some would call it. We call it experimentation, which is a critical part of designing a life and a career that you really want to build. And in Holly's case, this meant designing experiments to create rapid learning, volunteer work, a mediation certification, an organizational development project, and a few short-term jobs.

[00:02:49] Now, from the outside, this looks like trial and error, but it isn't. Every one of those experiments gave her useful and specific information. The experimenting isn't the detour on the way to clarity. The experimenting is how clarity gets built, iteration by iteration, and you can't get there by thinking harder or taking any single assessment.

[00:03:11] By the way, when Holly and I first started having our conversation, she was just in the middle of telling me that she's still happening to her career, which for a podcast called Happen To Your Career, is a pretty good first line.

[00:03:22] Holly Dixon: I'm exploring life, and I'm doing a lot of, like, volunteer work in areas that I had always been interested in, but sort of never allowed myself to get into. So still exploring. I'm a wanderer, as I say, a gypsy at heart.

[00:03:35] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think one of the things that is really sort of fascinating about your story is that you spent a couple of decades in the legal field, right? I think the twist here is that you went to law school, and then you didn't get your law license afterwards. So sort of walk me through why you chose to pursue law in the first place, and then, you know, what happened through that time period?

[00:03:59] Holly Dixon: My childhood really influenced what interested me or what I thought interested me as far as careers. So I grew up with a lot of unsafety and not being supported, and there was a period of time where we had a lot of contact with law enforcement because of someone that my mother was dating at the time, and it was a very unsafe situation.

[00:04:22] And so my first kind of inkling of what do I wanna do with my life was, "Oh, I want people to feel safe and supported. I'm gonna be that epitome of like safety for people." And that stuck with me for so long. But there was sort of this pull back to what I thought was the law. I loved the black and white nature of what I thought the law was, and I loved like being able to know what's right and wrong.

[00:04:46] Again, this is what I thought it was. And I ended up– I went from working with families to being promoted in that same nonprofit agency into HR, and while I was doing that, I had a set nine-to-five during the day, like Monday through Friday schedule, and so I decided, well, I'm gonna go to law school.

[00:05:03] So I started going to law school part-time in the evenings and ended up moving out to California to finish law school. I knew before I left that I was like, "Ooh, this is not for me," and the reason was because I got to see sort of the inner workings of the law. So I was obviously most interested in criminal law.

[00:05:22] That's really the reason I went to law school. So I thought I was gonna be a prosecutor, like I was gonna keep people safe. But then I got to see how our system actually runs, and I don't mean that to be a dig. I just mean, for me, it was not what I thought, and it was not what I wanted to be a part of. I knew that it wasn't me.

[00:05:41] Well, first of all, me arguing in court, I don't argue. I don't wanna argue with you. There's no reason for that. I knew I didn't want to be a lawyer, so I was like, "I'm not gonna get my license because what's the point?" But during law school I had found the Innocence Project, and I ended up working with them out in Northern California as a student assistant, and then they hired me to be a paralegal and investigator after I graduated.

[00:06:06] So I ended up spending five years total there, and I loved working with clients. Like, I loved hearing from them. I loved hearing their stories. I loved going to visit them in the prisons throughout California, and I really got to the point where it didn't feel like I was... I could do very much because the mission, while I loved the mission so much, it was very narrow.

[00:06:33] The mission is you're looking for innocent clients. That's it. Most people in prison are not innocent, but that wasn't the point for me. Like, there were a lot of needs I was seeing that just weren't being met.

[00:06:44] Scott Anthony Barlow: One of the things that you mentioned I'm curious about, aside from you couldn't see yourself arguing, which we'll talk about your strengths later on here, and I think that's a clear, obvious distinction in many different ways.

[00:06:58] Square peg, round hole type of situation. But aside from that, what else made it really clear to you that this was not going to be a thing in the way that you thought it was?

[00:07:08] Holly Dixon: A lot of it had to do with what I saw as my own integrity. So in criminal law, which is the only law I was ever interested in, trials and cases are built on...

[00:07:20] We want to call them facts, but not so much because there are so many rules that dictate what you can and can't say and what you can and can't present in a trial that I felt like if you've got a jury, you're asking 12 citizens to decide something, and they don't have all the facts, and that felt very out of integrity to me, and I just, I was like, "I can't do this."

[00:07:45] And I do wanna say I understand why the rules are in place. I know where they came from. I know what our goal was, and it did not feel in integrity to me to be like, "Well, but really there is all this other information, but because of these certain rules you can't let people know it, and that might actually change their decision," and we're talking about somebody's freedom, maybe somebody's life. And it was just, it did not square with who I knew myself to be.

[00:08:13] Scott Anthony Barlow: When you're talking about recognizing that the Innocence Project in particular was much more narrow than you wanted to focus on, what happened from there?

[00:08:23] Holly Dixon: At the same time, life sort of happened. One, I decided it was time for me to leave there, but two, my mother was getting older, her health was getting worse, and we did not have a great relationship growing up.

[00:08:36] So part of me was like, "This is the time when I really need to repair that relationship. I really need to be there for her." So I ended up leaving California and moving to Eastern Tennessee, which is where she was. And so the beginning of that journey was really about rebuilding our relationship, and so that I never had to look back and regret where we were, 'cause I knew she just wouldn't be around that many more years.

[00:09:01] And I really wanted to get out of legal. I was doing the thing we do. I was looking on LinkedIn, I was looking on Indeed, I was looking what's available, and I so wanted to do something different, but it was like I wasn't finding anything, I wasn't finding anything. And then a legal job popped up at the federal defender's office there, and I was like, "I can do this."

[00:09:18] And that's sort of how I ended up sort of staying in legal. It was a good experience, and it showed me again, like, how easy it was to fall back into what's natural for you, like where it's easy for people to see your skills 'cause you've done that before.

[00:09:35] Scott Anthony Barlow: What you're talking about, it's so easy to fall back into either the current trajectory or the trajectory that you've been on, or the situation in which you already have skills developed or have a track record of.

[00:09:48] I think that's maybe one of the hardest things for building any kind of a life and a career that's thriving, is it is always stepping outside of that in one way or another that allows you to get to those other pieces. It looks different for every single person, but there's always some version of stepping outside of what is already known.

[00:10:08] So that's really interesting that you bring that up. I'm curious, for you, what did that part look like as you started having that realization?

[00:10:17] Holly Dixon: I mean, to be honest, it was sort of just something I carried in the back of my mind for then, what, 5 to 10 more years. It was like, I know there's more. I know I want to be doing something else.

[00:10:28] I hate to call it a trap, but it feels like it's not all bad. I ended up getting to do things, and after that I was recruited by the Federal Defender's Office in North Carolina, and to be part of the management team and to sort of build... it was a very odd situation where an office that was a nonprofit funded by the government became the first government employee, so the first government office, and that changed everything.

[00:10:52] That changed all their policies. That changed their structure. It didn't change the people, but they had to learn something new, and I got to learn something new. So my boss and I, we hadn't done that before, so we were building an office. So that was fun, and I got to do things that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

[00:11:09] So, you know, it's not all bad, so you can stay for longer than you probably should because little things will come up. And I felt like I was contributing even though it wasn't exactly the contribution that I knew in my heart that I wanted to make.

[00:11:23] Scott Anthony Barlow: What made you decide or recognize that you did need to do something about it and then actually start making movement towards that direction, whatever you consider that movement?

[00:11:33] Holly Dixon: Yeah. So a couple things sort of happened at once. I realized that I was in burnout. I was tired all the time. Literally, I would come home from work, and I would put my pajamas on and turn on Netflix, and that is all I wanted to do. I did not wanna have contact with people. I was getting more irritated. I'm generally a very patient person, but I could tell when people would come and ask me the same questions over and over, I was starting to get irritated. I'm like, "Okay. My body is no longer allowing me to just keep rolling with the punches. My body's telling me it's time to go." And then my mom passed, and much to my surprise, she ended up leaving me a small amount of money, and it was never anything I was gonna retire off of, but there were, like, two choices.

[00:12:18] Do I use this to maybe put a down payment on a house, or do I use this to take some time off and create some space to not be working and figure out what's next? And those things, along with the fact that I've been blessed to have some wonderful bosses throughout my career, and we had a three to four-month conversation, and I told him, "I am done. I need to go, and we will work out what happens with my position, how things get distributed. I'm not just gonna give you two weeks and go."

[00:12:47] So we, you know, planned out, and we had an exit plan for me. And so all those things sort of gave me the opportunity, and I was like, "I can't not do it," 'cause I knew my health wouldn't allow me to keep doing what I was doing.

[00:13:01] Scott Anthony Barlow: Yeah. So it sounds like you started recognizing that you're experiencing some burnout symptoms. What caused you to actually recognize those symptoms? I think that my experience, both having been in that situation as well as working with many, many, many, many, many people who are in that situation, is that sometimes there's a large chunk of time that'll pass before we recognize that's happening.

[00:13:27] Other people recognize it right away, and it's not always easy. So what caused you to say, "Oh, wow, I'm becoming aware of this and need to do something about it"?

[00:13:37] Holly Dixon: I would love to say I was one of the people who recognized it right away, but I did not. I mean, that was going on for years. I think a couple of things. So I gained a lot of weight. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which I've changed all that and I no longer have, so success story. And I was just... I was so unhappy that... I don't think I would've called it burnout in that moment. What I called it was, "I can't keep doing this." I am, like, almost on the verge of depression, which I have never been, and I'm like, "I just, I can't."

[00:14:05] So yeah, I don't think I identified it as burnout until after I left and had some time to be like, "Oh, that's what was going on." I just knew this didn't feel like me, and it felt awful, and it was getting worse to the point where my body was really telling me, "You cannot keep going down this road, period."

[00:14:23] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think that is what most people experience. It's actually really difficult, so kudos to you for eventually recognizing it in the first place. And then I guess the other question I would have is, having been there, what advice would you give to people that might hear some of those same types of similarities in their stories.

[00:14:43] Holly Dixon: So one thing, and some people are gonna think this sounds a little trite, but I firmly believe that we came here to be in joy. We're not supposed to be suffering throughout life. So the more suffering that I see, the more I'm like, "I'm probably not on the right path." But the other thing is, there's always this voice that was inside of me that the first time I thought about doing something different or getting out, it was like, "Well, you can't do that."

[00:15:10] And it's not even necessarily that there were reasons that came up with it; it's just, "Well, you can't. This is the way it is. You can't." And I think even if you just start to question that voice, you don't have to have all the answers, but when I can't just is your immediate response, well, "How do I know that? Is that true?"

[00:15:29] And things like HTYC, just having a conversation with somebody, maybe you'll realize that something else is possible. Even if that they don't need to give you answers, but just being able to feel like it's possible, I think that was the biggest piece for me, honestly.

[00:15:45] Scott Anthony Barlow: What you're talking about, that disparity between recognizing that the reaction that you're having is, "Ugh, I can't," and then the opposite side, being able to start to feel like things might be possible again, two very, very different emotional places.

[00:16:01] That's good. That's really interesting. It's actually one of the reasons why, I don't know that I have told you this in any of the conversations that, couple of conversations you and I got to have together, but that's part of the reason why we make this podcast in the way that we do, and even the way that we design post-production, is to really give what we call this path of possibility and make people be able to feel some lever of hope, because then that's what causes them to be able to take action where they might not have done so otherwise.

[00:16:30] So that's really interesting that you call that out, and totally co-sign in terms of what we see work. That's amazing. When you decided, "Okay, I need to do something about [00:16:40] this," it sounds like one of the things that occurred was you had this conversation or series of conversations with your boss, and you had a great relationship there.

[00:16:48] But I'd love to learn a little bit more about what did those conversations actually sound like, look like? How did you plan for them? Because I think that the world needs a whole lot more of those types of interactions where we're being transparent with our employers as opposed to giving two weeks' notice or something, like... two weeks' notice helps nobody, let's be honest. But if you get to actively be involved in the transition, and the people on your team, and your boss, and anybody else who's got a vested interest, that changes what becomes possible there too, and I think it takes care of the other people that are left behind.

[00:17:23] So that's super cool that you did that, and also much more difficult to do than putting in your two weeks' notice and peace. So take me through what that looked like from beginning to end.

[00:17:35] Holly Dixon: Yeah. So I will say first, I completely understand why some people cannot do that. That is not every culture. That is not every company.

[00:17:44] But it really started with going into my boss's office and being like, "Hey, I am ready to go. I'm ready to leave. I need some time away from legal completely." And the first 10 minutes of that conversation was, "Well, what job do you wanna do here? We can give you another job." Like, he wanted to keep me, which is amazing.

[00:18:05] That's how you know, like, you got an amazing relationship with your boss. He was trying to figure out, well, you can do something else. And I'm like, "Yeah, but I wanna go." And so we had that kind of back and forth, but then he was of the mindset that nobody should be where they don't wanna be. Like, he wanted a team that wanted to be doing federal criminal defense work, and if they didn't, he was willing to help you however he could to move on.

[00:18:28] So there were a series of conversations. So that first conversation was just sort of like getting it out on the table and him accepting it. This is going to happen. And then we had, maybe every other week, we would sit down, and he's like, "'Cause I'm ashamed to say I don't know everything you do. So I want you to piece out everything that you do."

[00:18:48] And we started having this conversation about, is this needed? If it is, who does it go to? 'Cause they probably weren't gonna be replacing that position. Because we got to do it that way, and then I sort of let him dictate when do you wanna start letting other people know, because I was fine with however he wanted to do it.

[00:19:06] Letting managers know and helping them kind of sort through how is that gonna change what they do, and then other staff. And so it was nice to have this three to four month, like, unfolding. There really wasn't disruption. There were, of course, we had meetings with people that were maybe gonna be taking over pieces of what I was doing, but the very cool thing was because I had been there so long and I knew these people and I knew what I did, I could be very firm with him.

[00:19:33] There were some things that he was like, "We're gonna give all these to this person." I'm like, "Absolutely not. This person already has too much. This person might be able to do this thing. This person can't do all three of these things." And he would listen. And it was so collaborative the way we came up with how to gracefully exit me that I felt like it did not cause the disturbance in the office that it really could have.

[00:19:56] So I'll back up for a second. So I was his assistant, so I was involved in everything within the office and had my hands in all the pots. So it could have been extremely disruptive.

[00:20:06] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think a couple of really amazing things that I just heard out of what you described were, number one, you already had the preexisting relationship.

[00:20:15] You'd done the work to have a phenomenal relationship with your boss, with the other people that were there, and you had a great understanding of what the capabilities were of other people, like what they're great at, what they have room for, et cetera. And I think that created the space to be able to have this open dialogue because, to your point earlier, there's a prerequisite is you have to have that trust there.

[00:20:38] If that trust is nonexistent, then this type of conversation doesn't work. That said, since you had it, it really allowed you to be able to set everybody up for success because you were able to go in and, piece by piece, be able to say, "Okay, how are we gonna get this part taken care of? Okay, well, it's gonna be done by this person," or, "That person just is not gonna have the bandwidth to be able to do it."

[00:21:04] Either way, I'm gonna guess, you tell me if you feel the same way, but had that happened in, say, a one or two-week window, probably would not have had the same result. Is that a fair assumption?

[00:21:16] Holly Dixon: In a one or two-week window, we just would've been running around like rats in a maze, like trying to put out some fires, and not even really doing that. I understand the prerequisites, but two-week notice is really not about helping anybody prepare for what's next.

[00:21:29] Scott Anthony Barlow: It's about something, but it's not about setting people up for success.

[00:21:33] Holly Dixon: I honestly think it's one of those rules that we've done for so long that we're like, "Oh, that's the way it is."

[00:21:37] Scott Anthony Barlow: So glad that you did that, so glad that you had the relationship and the situation so that you could do that, and that's phenomenal. That's just one of the pieces that I love about you and your story.

[00:21:48] And I think that to shift gears a little bit back to the longer version here, I am curious, as you were making this transition, you'd spent a long time around the legal field, around law, around some of the ideas represented in law, and how did you feel about this idea of walking away from all of that? What was wonderful? What was difficult about that?

[00:22:11] Holly Dixon: So what was wonderful is I knew it was time for something different. I knew there was more that I wanted, so it was the first necessary step to get to something else, even though I had no idea what the something else was. I knew that was the first necessary step.

[00:22:25] Honestly, the hardest part was it had become my identity, and doing the work that I did for the clients that I did it for, that just got so tied in with who I was that there was this huge question of, "Well, who am I if I'm not actually doing that?" And then I sort of did what you talked about earlier. I'm like, "Well, I'm gonna move to Scotland and be a fisherman," or, "I'm gonna just really jump out there and do something completely opposite," throw the baby out with the bathwater kind of thing, because I did not realize how much I had tied my identity to the work that I was doing. And so honestly, that has been the biggest unraveling of this journey for me and something that has taken a lot of time, and I'm still seeing pieces of.

[00:23:12] Scott Anthony Barlow: How have you seen that show up? What does that look like on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis?

[00:23:17] Holly Dixon: It looked a lot like, "Okay, now I just need to try something completely different. I'm gonna go work in corporate." I was like, "Oh, maybe organizational development." I ended up, like, doing a project for a small agency that was going through some restructuring, and I did that, and I was like, "No." And then it turned into, "Well, I'm gonna go be a mediator." That's, like, sort of, like, adjacent to the law, and I thought, "Well, that'll be great. I get to talk with people all day."

[00:23:42] And I went, and I got trained as, like, a domestic mediator, and then I sat and talked with people about their divorces and parenting time, and I was like, "Nope. That's not it either." What I noticed was that strength I talked about at the beginning of providing safety and support to people, that was the piece that I loved in everything I did.

[00:24:00] So even during that project where I did organizational development, sitting and talking with employees, helping them voice their concerns to management, like helping them voice something that may change their environment and help them feel more safe and supported, that I liked. Writing up reports, making graphs for people, like doing the research stuff, that I wasn't so big on.

[00:24:24] And even with, I think the mediation piece was such a perfect example. Talking to people, allowing them to feel what they're feeling and say what they're feeling, because in this instance, a lot of people were referred from the court for mediation, but this was brand new to them. They were angry. They were angry because they're getting a divorce, and they didn't expect it, and somebody cheated, or like there were feelings that they wanted to feel.

[00:24:47] That stuff I loved. Let's get it out. Let's talk about that. You're not ready to talk about who gets the house. We're not going there right now. So I think the push to have an outcome before people feel safe and feel like they're supported was... I don't like that. That's the part that doesn't work for me. I get why it is what it is, but that's not me.

[00:25:08] Scott Anthony Barlow: That's interesting. What are some other things that you tried or experimented with? 'Cause I think that's a great part of your story, too, where you did a really good job, like trying to identify some pieces that appeared to line up and then investigate them. Like, still, that's a through line through all of this, in my opinion. Even when you were in legal, there's lots of evidence that's something that you did well.

[00:25:28] Holly Dixon: And even when I was in legal, I was realizing, the past couple years, you know what I love about this job? Everybody comes to me to talk about everything. They want to help them deal with a supervisor, to help them deal with a work issue, to help them deal with a personal issue.

[00:25:40] That's what I actually... Not actually my job description, but that's what I loved doing. So part of me trying things, like, throughout this time, I have to be very honest, I was still discovering how hardwired that survival instinct was in me, and meaning part of that burnout is your nervous system is just, you're in survival mode all the time.

[00:26:02] So there was a lot of, every couple months, my brain was like, "You just need to get back to work. It doesn't matter what it is. You just need to work." It felt like that was true, and that was, like, that was how I was gonna survive, was, I can't take any more time. I need to get back to work. So I did some short-term things for money, which I'm not saying that's bad, but I did...

[00:26:19] I went back to doing coordination of offices and cases, and I'm like, "Ugh." The amazing thing was doing those things, like letting my mind dictate what I was gonna do next, reinforced that you cannot go back. You will no longer allow yourself to go back to do what you used to do. So the experience was good in the sense that it reinforced I know I'm moving in the right direction.

[00:26:43] But I can't say strongly enough how often... It was almost like a panic. You just need to decide. You just need to decide on something and just do it. You can't just wander around forever. And that felt very real. It felt, I won't say life or death, but to my mind it was this life or death. You're not gonna survive if you keep doing it this way.

[00:27:03] Scott Anthony Barlow: It's weird how prominent those feelings are. Like, it shows up in that way where it's like, "Ah, I have to do something about this now, at all costs." And yeah, that makes it a struggle, particularly, I would say, even if, like, you had this intentional time period where you were, you know, leaving one situation that reasonably had been a good situation for you for work overall until you noticed that it was no longer a great situation.

[00:27:30] But you left that, did a great job, was intentional, and then you're intentionally investigating things, and then even then, even still then, it's showing up over and over again. I think that just showcases how easy it is to have that happen, even when every other thing had been right or intentional or on purpose or whatever we wanna call it.

[00:27:51] Holly Dixon: And I think this is just a human thing. But I've come real face to face with it over the past couple years, is we have a very hard time with the unknown, and when we don't know what the outcome's gonna be and there's this period of uncertainty, that is super uncomfortable for us as humans. And so I get it.

[00:28:10] Your mind, it tries to fill in things. We've gotta create some certainty 'cause we can't stay in this space of uncertainty 'cause that just feels like we're not going anywhere, or worse. And a big part of this journey has been really embracing things are just gonna be uncertain until they're not, and it's okay.

[00:28:26] You can be in uncertainty and still move forward. It doesn't dictate that you're not going anywhere. It doesn't dictate that you don't wait till everything lines up to start moving, but you may not know what's gonna be at the end of that movement.

[00:28:40] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think that's a really interesting thing that you bring up. I think that, to your point, by nature, we as humans, we run away from uncertainty. That's probably the easiest way to put it. It's not exactly what the research says, but pretty close. Like, we steer the opposite direction from uncertainty. We see that everywhere. We see it from when people speak with certainty or clarity, and we're more attracted to that.

[00:29:02] We're more likely to follow through on what it is that those people are saying. We see that the opposite way, where we're attracted to clarity and certainty. We see that all over the place. But the thing I think that doesn't get talked about that you're really starting to shed light on here is you can actually practice that.

[00:29:20] You can practice that, like, living in ambiguity or uncertainty, and it is very much a set of skills that gets developed and practiced just like any other set of skills overall, and can therefore be improved. And, I think some people think just like, I don't know, charisma or any other trait, in one way or another, that people either just have it or they don't.

[00:29:45] You're either, like, okay with uncertainty or you're not, and the reality is when you trace back those stories, people become okay with it based on what they've been exposed to and what they practice, and how, you know, how frequently that they've engaged in, you know, living in ambiguity or uncertainty.

[00:30:01] So really, really nice, like, really long way to give you a compliment because you've been practicing that. Do you find that it does start to get some level of easier, or is it continuously hard at the exact same level? What are your observations as you have shifted?

[00:30:19] Holly Dixon: Yeah, it is so much easier, and it is so much more peaceful. Like, when you can get to the point of really seeing that, yeah, I didn't know what was gonna happen this last year, and everything's good. Like, yeah, I'm not in my next career yet, but boy, like, look at what I've learned. And it creates this space for you to really experience life and experience possibility without all that mental chatter, without all of that, "I have to figure things out right now."

[00:30:55] Like, there is this sense, and it's almost like when they talk about being zen. Like, there is this sort of like the next opportunity keeps coming in. Like, it keeps coming to me, and my job is to walk forward and see what fits and what doesn't. You cannot sit down and figure it out.

[00:31:14] Like, there are plenty of exercises you can do and plenty of, like, analytical work that you do, and that is helpful. But for me, I have found that it's actually allowing myself to experience something new and to feel something new and just not think about it. Like, that is where I've learned the most and where I feel like I've grown the most and become just so much calmer.

[00:31:38] I mean, I cannot say enough. That "I can't" voice, that voice that was always right there, that was always ready when I thought of something new, "I can't, I can't, I can't," I don't have that anymore. Like, that doesn't mean I will do everything, but that's not my first thought anymore. Now my first thought is, "Oh, that's interesting. Maybe."

[00:31:56] Scott Anthony Barlow: When you look back overall where you're at now and how you've been investigating what creates a phenomenal situation for you as you're building out your life, your career, and what you want work to look like in the future, what have been some of those biggest learnings overall for you?

[00:32:15] Holly Dixon: So one big learning was I thought that I was just a very analytical person. I've been doing work for most of my life that is a lot of analysis, a lot of books, a lot of, like, research, that kind of thing. And when I really got to know me, I am much more heart-centered. Like, I will lead with my heart over my head when I'm being my authentic self. So that was one really big thing.

[00:32:41] I've become really aware of the things that I value. So for instance, when I started this journey, I really thought part of what I valued was my salary, and that I needed to break through that six-figure ceiling. I was so close. And so this next job, like that's one of my like big goals. And when I really sat with that, I was like, "Is that even a goal?"

[00:33:03] It's really not even my personal goal at all. As long as I'm comfortable, and I can live my life and pay bills, like I don't need that. There was this sense that because of my background, because I have a law degree, and I have an undergrad degree, and I've done all this legal work, and [00:33:20]I've been in leadership, and that my next job sort of needed to be even more impressive.

[00:33:25] And yeah, like what is any of that? What I've learned, I knew this on some level, the people I'm working with mean everything to me. They have to be a supportive, close-knit group. There has to be a mission. I'm a very mission-based person, so there has to be a mission that I believe in. I have to be able to have, even if I also do group things with people, I have to be able to have one-on-one time to be able to build those relationships with people and like build support.

[00:33:54] There are even things like you could even look at my Gallup strengths and be like, "Well, these are obvious," but they weren't obvious, like doing the things that I've done throughout my career. Being willing to be uncomfortable and try something new is probably the only way you're gonna find something different.

[00:34:11] Because if it didn't feel different, it wouldn't be different. If you've never done it before, of course it's gonna feel different and uncomfortable, and the tendency is to be like, "Ooh, if it's too uncomfortable, that means it's wrong for me." Maybe. But if you haven't tried it, you don't actually know.

[00:34:28] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think something I wanted to ask you about too is my understanding, you've said that there's been a bit of a grieving process tied to this transition. And then also some navigation through perceived family expectations. And I wanted to just ask you about that and talk about that for a few minutes. What was that like from your perspective, and how did you move through it?

[00:34:51] Holly Dixon: So there was a lot of grieving over identity and what, who I thought I was, and what I thought success was, and who I was as a successful person. And it's interesting the way that the grief snuck up on me, because what I was learning, they were all good things.

[00:35:11] Like, learning more about myself and being who I authentically am, those are all wonderful. So I sometimes felt this sort of like, why would I be grieving these other things? Or I shouldn't be, or that's just nonsense. And to really allow myself to feel everything that was coming up, to be like, "You know what? I really am saying goodbye to an old Holly."

[00:35:36] A lot of me is the same. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you, so a lot of me couldn't help but be me wherever I was. But the things that I saw as strengths and were actually really just skills, like letting those go and being like, "That's really not my identity."

[00:35:55] I think there's this idea that, well, you've wasted time. Like, you could've been being your authentic self the whole time, and that is part of the grief, is letting that go. Like, you don't get to the point you need to be at until you're there. Like, you'll get there when you're supposed to be there. So having so much of those experiences where a big part of me was not acting in my authenticity helps me feel so much more centered now where I am.

[00:36:22] Like, actually being happy going into any room, just because I'm the one showing up. Like, all of me is showing up, no matter what happens next. It didn't feel like performance, but absolutely part of me was performing, like performing a role, and that is gone. I do not perform anymore. I show up as me, and I still have many strengths, and there's many things I can offer, but they will come as me, not as the paralegal Holly or the investigator Holly.

[00:36:49] Scott Anthony Barlow: That's phenomenal. Also easy to say, easy to talk about here, you know, after you've done a whole bunch of work on that. Easy to say, really difficult to do in reality. So fully recognize that. I think you've done some really phenomenal work here. What else do you feel like is different for you, if anything, now and this work that you've done versus, I don't know, say, when you and I got to chat way back when?

[00:37:14] Holly Dixon: So life feels more open. Like, my life just feels open to anything, and I don't just mean career. I mean, I have the space, I have the openness, I have the knowing that there really are so many possibilities for everything, like from career to where I live next to relationships. So it is all that internal work.

[00:37:40] That has been the biggest struggle, the hardest part of this journey, and the most rewarding and fulfilling part because it's sort of like I've peeled back so much of the onion now that I don't have to do that stuff anymore. There's nothing, like, clogging up the works now. There's not all these old beliefs or identities.

[00:38:00] It's just space. So it really allows me to be open to whatever's next and to really just keep following the breadcrumbs. Like, I tell myself that a lot. Like, I feel like that's most of life is just follow what breadcrumbs, like, you're actually interested in. Leave the coconut behind, if you're me, who hates it, and go after the focaccia breadcrumbs or whatever.

[00:38:21] But it's that I'm not afraid to keep moving forward. I don't need to know what's gonna happen with every step I take because I know that every step is leading me to where I'm supposed to be next.

[00:38:33] Scott Anthony Barlow: If you're in the messy middle right now and you wanna take a much more systematic approach to figure out where you want to get to go and create your own clarity, then I would say send me an email, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put 'Conversation' in the subject line, and I'll introduce you to the right member of my team, and they'll have a conversation with you, understand your goals, where you're trying to go, and customize the right type of support to help you. Until next time, I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is Happen To Your Career. Adios.