An Overthinker’s Audio Guide to Making Better Career Decisions

by

on this episode

  • A decision tree style set of questions to make great decisions in your career
  • What traps high performers into overthinking a small (or big) decision (and what to do about it) 
  • The tools we use with our clients to help banish overthinking and spend their time on their priorities. 

Success Stories

I think what helped me the most was focusing on my strengths and the connections that this process, the whole happened here, the career change bootcamp, those connections that basically you're prompted to go reconnect with people right? So, that helped me the most because the roller coaster that I was on with the role that I was in that I was trying to exit from, again, it realizing that people had a positive view of me and that they saw things that maybe I didn't see in myself really helped me articulate who I already was and who I wanted to be in my next role, if that makes sense.

Elizabeth , Digital Marketing Analytics Strategist, United States/Canada

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I wanted to thank you because you have helped me land a job that is more fulfilling in every way than a job I thought I could have had before I met you. The work you did and the techniques you taught me literally changed my life.

Eric Murphy, Science Teacher, United States/Canada

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Sometimes you just need someone who has done these things before to make it easier. Scott’s advice allowed me to get exactly what I wanted out of my new job!

Andrew Trujillo, Digital Marketing, United States/Canada

My brain always goes 'Well, what's the worst that could happen?' And that was another one of the exercises from Figure Out What Fits and once you realize what the worst that can happen is, it's not really that bad. In the big scheme of things, it might knock it back for a minute or two, but it's not not a biggie. They have not found it to happen yet. So I've just been pleasantly surprised every step of the way.

Mark Sinclair, Photograher, Australia

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Getting clear on what I wanted helped me to recognize how perfect this opportunity was when it came along and the choice to switch was a no-brainer. Thanks for doing the work you do!

Austin Marlar, Frontend Developer, United States/Canada

Nadia Career Change HTYC

If you're stuck, if you want to know what to do, go listen to this podcast, it will change your life. And I was thinking, "great, okay." And then of course, I go to the website, and everything that I read, it was like, "Yes, this is what I've been looking for."

Nadia , Support Team Coordinator, United Kingdom

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Sharissa Sebastian 00:01

One of my favorite quotes from one of our favorite people. That is actually really helped me a lot is when he says that, "change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." And that has been so true in my own experience.

Introduction 0:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:44

The biggest showstopper of career progression, isn't your circumstances. Nope. It's getting stuck in the trap of indecision and inaction. Only, it doesn't feel like that. Here's an audio guide to learn how to move beyond overthinking in your career.

Phillip Migyanko 01:02

Is this career change important to you? Is getting out of that job that is not fulfilling anymore actually important to you? Is finding work that fills you up are important to you? Then, how quickly are you looking to make that change?

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:17

That's Phillip Migyanko. He's our Director of Client Success here at HTYC. He's the one that talks to every single person who reaches out to schedule a conversation who needs help. He's one of the first people that you talk to. Every week, he talks with someone actually, let's be honest, multiple someone who begin to overthink their options. The hardest thing for us to see is people who are waiting too long, they end up staying in limbo, and don't make a decision to be able to move forward with their career and ultimately with their life. It's super hard for us because we know what's possible on the other side. But it is something that happens all the time. And then people will call us like, you know, one or two or three years later, sometimes even more than that, and say, "Hey, okay, I am finally ready to move forward." As it turns out, Phillip recently had a conversation with one of our coaches, Sharissa Sebastian, that we recorded about this very topic. So we've decided to share this conversation with you today. The biggest of which is we'd love to be able to spare you some pain by overthinking because it turns out that all of us on the team are recovering overthinkers.

Phillip Migyanko 02:36

That's exactly what I like to say like I'm a recovering overthinker because my coach helped me at the time kind of worked through she's like, "Phillip, you know what, we're actually... you're not, if you keep diagnosing and calling yourself an over thinker, you're more likely to keep overthinking." So I usually like to go alright, I'm a former overthinker we have moved past this and today, you know, one of the things that Sharissa and I are helping all of our listeners break down is if you find yourself kind of stuck in this overthinking mindset of, "what ifs" or "will this work out" or things like that, we've got some tools and systems and questions that you can go through to be able to take one step forward and move the process and take some action. So whether that's or just speaking directly to careers, but this can apply to lots of places, whether you're trying to decide what you're gonna watch on Netflix that night, what are you going to have for dinner that evening, or even in my cases last year, when kind of buying a new car, the same principle holds true and really, it's let's stop taking so much time, let's get right to the decisions and really move to that next stage. So it really becomes more of a question of how do we help people on our team break out of these overthinking states and really starting to decide what's the most important thing for you? And hint, it's not more thinking. So just in case if you thought that, it's not going to be more than that. So, Sharissa, I guess my question, or at least my first question for you is, how do we actually help people decide what's important enough to then make that decision? How do people if, someone's right now they're going through a stage of "Oh, I just don't know what to do, I know what it looks like," how do they know it's actually important enough to do something about it?

Sharissa Sebastian 04:29

Oh, that is a great question. And one of the things is just to basically take a quick imagery of where they are right now, as I speak from own experience when I say this as well, there times where I, you know, I had needed to make those bigger changes ways. It took a little bit more effort on my part because it was a significant change. I had to really be honest with myself, I had to take where I was and really understand, okay, what is you know, there's so many things that go into this, but basically, why is it important, right? So you can ask yourself, start off by asking the question like, why is it that I'm even contemplating? There's a reason why keeps coming up. There's a reason why you probably keep coming back to the same decision point over and over again, and being honest with yourself to say, okay, do I really wanted to stay where I am and need purpose? Or do I really want to lean in and explore this a little bit more? It doesn't mean that you have to make this giant me. And but even just, you know, making the decision to be open to experience can sometimes really help. And one of my favorite quotes from one of our favorite people talking about it, that is actually really helped me a lot is, when he says that, "change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." And that has been so true in my own experience. And that goes back to you know, just really being honest with yourself where you are, and saying, okay, is this decision really going to help me get unstuck and get away from something that you know, that I don't want, or because of something that I really do want. And when that's paying off things, even greater than the pain of change, that's when that decision needs to happen. And that's been good to them. That makes it in the process, which we'll be talking about.

Phillip Migyanko 06:00

I think that's so important, because it's for a lot of people that I see right now, and I talked to one of my jobs, here it Happen To Your Career, I got to talk to everybody who we earn the opportunity to work with, but everybody who we comes through the door. And what I often tell people is like, "Hey, you know, sometimes being in a really bad situation, we know that's not that great, we know we need to be leaving that job." We also know, on the other... on the flip side of that, we have a really, really great position. But sometimes I deal with those people who are right in the middle of that, who are not in a bad situation of but actually not in a in a good situation, either. And I think you hit the nail on the head of like, ultimately, when do you feel like you need to be making that decision when the pain becomes just as bad that you know that you have to leave? So I think that is a really interesting kind of next question I have for you of it's, how do we help people? Or how do you help our clients? Or when you think about people who are in this stage of really trying to decide when to make that decision you mentioned, you know, having more pain than the actual situation. So how quick... how do we help decide people how quickly they're looking to make that decision? And what happens if they're not ready?

Sharissa Sebastian 07:20

Yeah, so one of the things that I think is so important in this stage in the process, and is just thinking about, like, if this is something that's kind of nagging on you, like it's keep coming up over and over, and again, day after day, you have this little thing, the little voice in your head, they keep saying, well, what if you know, we make one of these, you know, what if I'm missing something? And this is constantly going, I thought, well, that causes a shift, right? If you're in this space here, you know, you're maybe you have a job, that's not bad, you know, not bad or anything like that. You're just kind of chugging along, day in and day out. But suddenly you hit the face, in your career, or even your job with like, this is not, you know, fulfilling me quite in the way that I want to and maybe even you know, maybe don't know why. And it's difficult to create, and that's fine. But it gets messy. And there's this constant like voice in your head saying, but what if, or should I explore this? And those questions keep coming up here and they don't go away? That is probably a good time to really look into, okay, what do I need to do with this? How do I even start that exploration so that I can get into a place where I can make the best decision for me?

Phillip Migyanko 08:19

I think that's so, so important. And it's almost like, if it's not that important to you right now, then it's, let's move to more, to other kind of more important things. And it's so funny, because even creating this podcast today, I was actually overthinking all the content here. I'm like, Okay, why don't we help people to how do we get people to that? And in so many times when I get to talk to people who are in these overthinking states, it's they've kind of almost driven, drove, whatever the English phrases is, so please email me back and let me know the correct English there, I have typos all the time. But more importantly, it's how do we help people to kind of move past that and move past all those thoughts into that decision? Because they drive themselves crazy. And they know it, that's why often times, over thinkers tend to know that they're overthinking. And then they've already thought that they know that they're overthinking. And it just goes always into those next stages.

Sharissa Sebastian 09:29

That's so true. I know you are really good at walking people through this and helping him to navigate the space. So I would love to know, like from your perspective, how do you help people figure out like, is this really important right now?

Phillip Migyanko 09:42

That's a really, really good question. You know, I think it's a lot of the points that you said have really, honestly, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're jumping on a call with me, if in some realm, you know that this change is really important. It is important to you. Because at the end of the day, what I tell people at Happen To Your Career, one of the biggest things that we do is we help people get really clear on what they want, both in their lives and their careers, and ultimately make the behavior changes for that. And if that's important if getting to the life and the career that you want, is actually important, awesome. We know that is let's actually make the change for it. Because we all have so much time on this earth. And we need and it's more important to keep moving towards that instead of staying stuck where you are. And if it's not at this time, that's okay, too. We're here when you're ready. But it's more important that progress comes from actions, the same we... there's a very intentional reason why Sharissa and I are talking on this podcast, because we both like Tony Robbins, and say what you will, whatever opinions you have about him, but there's a lot of good nuggets in there. And one of the biggest things that he says is, yep, "clarity comes from action." And he has another phrase that says, and you can let me know, if I got this right or wrong it's a, "stay it in your head, you're dead." Meaning that we have to take these specific actions, or we have to be able to wait to get out our heads and go into massive action, because that's where clarity is going to come from. And before we get to that point, we have to really decide, is this actually as important right now? And if so, what will you commit to doing differently, if we know that at the end, we're looking to get a different result, if you know that what you're doing right now is not working, then inherently we need a different result, which then creates a different behavior. So we have to be behaving differently. And to do that, before that, we have to have good mindsets, we have to be in a good, emotional state. But I know for me that if I'm not, didn't have good sleep the night before, if I didn't have lunch today, if for me, if I haven't exercised in a while, and I'm just feeling kind of pudgy. That happens for Phillip, that's a word that I use on myself pudgy sometimes, anyways, if I'm just not feeling good, then generally I'm not going to make good decisions. So I'm usually thinking about "alright, what creates a good situation for Phillip? But at the end of the day, how can I put myself in a good mental state of feeling prepared, feeling awesome, feeling joyful, and playful and awesome, and all those types of things." And usually, for me, that means I'm taking care of Phillip, I'm doing things like getting good sleep, eating good meals, getting exercise, having good conversations, going outside, all of those things. And that puts me in a mindset to ultimately, I can decide how I want to behave. So I'm going to get different results. Because most of the time when I'm talking to over thinkers, there's so often in the state of they just keep trying the same thing over and over again. I've looked for so many jobs on indeed and I just, I keep coming across the same things or man, I just keep trying to think about this over and over again, I hear them say and they go, I just, I can't get past it. So how we help people really decide and get to know what's the most important to then now is go... is this really enough that you need to change to have to... is this big enough change that you really would want to create the life that you're looking to have even if we don't exactly know what that is? And if not, that's okay. But if so, which usually it is? What will you commit to doing differently? So and I... a part of that comes with priorities, right? We have... there's whole bunch of things that we help people do. But at the end of the day, we only have so much time, there's only 24 hours in a day. So I guess that's an interesting question back to you, Sharissa. How do we help people determine their priorities? How do we help them like get to the point where it's okay, this is the first thing I'm going to do or this is actually what's most important to me once they've decided, yeah, it's actually is the most important.

Sharissa Sebastian 13:53

Absolutely. And then there is something that I mean, there's a number of different things that go into that. And one of the things I want to actually go back to me and that is something in terms of times, because I think that is so important, because a lot of times, you know, us, over thinkers can get into space and spiral because we don't have that character, we're not sure you know, that uncertainty of like, I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. And it's not clear to me. So therefore, you know, I'm gonna keep spiraling until, you know, some magical moment happens and then this time, and so being intentional about that, and knowing what those priorities are, and being able to say, okay, based on what I know about myself, what's important to me, and then also the other part of this is starting with the end in mind, which is so important and getting clarity on that. So in other words, what you know, based on what we know about ourselves and what's important to us and all of that, what is going to be ideal, always close to ideal as we can possibly get and getting clarity on that then it's so much easier to kind of work backwards from them to say, oh, what are the steps we need to take to get to us closer to that in a way that's going to, you know, fit, we are as people but also fit our lifestyle and the amount of time we have because there's so much that goes into this whole process and to you know, to help you get over that hump, of the overthinking, right? It's the clarity, it's all of these different things that were mentioned earlier as well. And that all comes together. And being able to pull those pieces together just makes it so much easier. But then it's all about the action at that point, right? They don't so much in time and before, it's like, okay, it's go time, but you've got to take the time to build the clarity. And then that's how you really get this momentum going.

Phillip Migyanko 15:23

And I, one, I think one thing to point out, too, I was reading a really, really interesting article in preparation for this. And it was the difference... it was from James Clear. And he wrote a wonderful, wonderful book called Atomic Habits. It's all about habit change. And it was my most recommended book for 2019. And the reason is, because he, pun intended, is that his actions are incredibly clear. And he wrote a very interesting article about the difference between motion versus action. Meaning that if you're really looking to get to this stage, if you're really looking to get a new career, there's a difference between applying for 20 jobs on indeed, versus actually having a conversation with somebody who's doing the work you're looking to do. The motion is we're just going through the motions of what job what we think job change looks like, or what we've been trained to do, or research things, because that's where overthinker is also get caught up to is going down the research rabbit holes, and just researching something in depth and going, alright, I've convinced myself that this being an astronaut is not going to work. So I'm not going to do it. Because I believe that, so I'm not going to instead, but Okay, I'm gonna go research another rabbit hole, and then do that again, When in all reality, the best thing to do is actually take an action, can you go and I'm just using astronaut as an example here. But can you go talk to an astronaut? Or you talk to somebody who's been in space? Or can we talk to somebody who's worked at NASA, whatever those things might be, because that's going to get you so much better information than all the motions and smart people, like over thinkers, trick themselves by doing a lot of these motion activities getting exhausted there. And then kind of having the just the cycle of stuck, keep going around and around. When in all reality, we just need one actual focus to... one focus to do, or sorry, one action to do to bring focus to go, "Hey, is this something that could work or not work?"

Sharissa Sebastian 17:24

Yeah. And it gets it comes down to like, knowing how to do that, right? Like how knowing how to take the right action, so that you're just not spiraling into the motion. I love that, that's so powerful, the motion versus the action. So I would love to know how you pull up in your conversations, how do you help people break down that decision?

Phillip Migyanko 17:43

Yeah. And I just add on what you said, too, because I think it dovetails into this, which is we have to work backwards. Right? We have to go alright, what's ultimately the most important to you? What's that ideal state that we're going to as much as that we know about that, essentially, what's our end goal, right? Just like building a house, buying a car I had that I was overthinking that this last year. But whatever that end state might be, how do we work backwards from there? And more often than not with everybody that we're working with, well, we often hear is that it's not it's always a lot of work, but it's ultimately the most fulfilling. And so we go, alright, what's the really the end goal that we're looking for? And how do we chunk those pieces out and basically, give yourself sprints. So the easiest way to think about it is if you've ever heard of Scrum, it's a different, it's a way of productivity. But one of the practices they do is they break things up into two week sprints. That's just an example. But you can maybe do one week sprints or things like that. But if we know we have a huge goal at the end, we essentially want to break that up into what's one thing you can do over these next two weeks, and making sure that action is clear on what exactly you're looking to do. So in the astronaut example, that might mean I'm looking to have one conversation or send five reach out emails to one astronaut, not research a whole bunch of other things over here, but actually what's one action that's going to take you closer to your goal, and then having that over two week chunk timeframe, and then doing that again and again and again, and what that does and makes things actionable, it makes things clear because you're also defining when those things will happen. But also, this is gonna allow you to basically test things out over time. Because I think Sharissa, you had a wonderful point of, I think people that the fears and the potholes that people get into your, okay, wait, what if I become an astronaut, but then I hate and I realized that the space suit doesn't fit that well. Then I'm stuck being an astronaut and I'm back again in the same spot again. And it's more about actually, it's not a zero or 100 kind of game. It's more about how do we take one step forward? And you... I might be beating this horse to death, but you can hear me keep saying it's more about just moving head and little bits. And we chunk these things out and make them as each of the chunks is clear and possible, because that helps a lot of different reasons and reason about research in psychology, and supports a lot of these points, but more about it is the motivating factor of having these small wins along the way. And for overthinkers, if you're stuck in the state, where it can just and if you've been here for such a long time, it can get exhausting, and depressing. And just, you just get apathetic because you're just like, I just exhausted myself. So we kind of give yourself permission to kind of put those things to the side. And let's chunk it out and do what's one thing we can do to move forward when we know we have a big goal. Because that's an all reality, when Sharissa and I are helping our clients and everybody Happen To Your Career and people we've helped in the past and even to the state, we help them do big things. And how you do big things is little bits at a time.

Sharissa Sebastian 21:06

That's right. Yeah. Sound good.

Phillip Migyanko 21:07

So it's funny because people you know, they get into the research rabbit holes, or they are afraid to commit and they get those, what if decisions. Where do you find, Sharissa, people get the most stuck? Or what are some like, at this point in the conversation, I bet a lot of our listeners like, okay, I'm here. I'm moving one step forward, I got you. But oh, wait, I've got all these fears popping up that bla bla bla bla, what are those that we generally see? What are some of the biggest ones that we see people out?

Sharissa Sebastian 21:43

Oh, yeah. So this is a good question. One of the biggest ones, I think is this, wanting to get it right, wanting to make sure that everything is perfect. And like, you know, you've done all the research. And so you want to you know, check all the boxes, and then go back into the research if you have any kind of doubt in. And so we get into again, that spiral, right, you keep going and kind of like, two steps forward and 10 steps back, because we keep second guessing and questioning and doubting. And so one of the things and going back to actually what you said earlier, which I think is so important to this entire process is mindset, like you have to go in to this whole process in the right mindset, because if you are trying to get it perfect, if you are waiting for some magical moments to take action, it's never going to happen, you're going to keep you know, staying in that spiral, and it's going to drive you crazy. And it's going to be so stressed. And it's going to have negative impacts on your health and so on and so forth. But one of the ways to kind of break that cycle is to realize that you have a choice, you have a choice off, you know, what you allow your mind to think and to believe. And so being in that growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset is so important. And what I mean by that is a growth mindset is where you, you know, as you're taking these baby steps, you know, at a time, first of all, you're celebrating progress along the way, which I think is so important, I always tell my clients, even spending five minutes on something in a day, you know, like you celebrate the heck out of that progress, because it really helps with a building momentum. But going back to the growth mindset, is realizing that every little step you take is one step closer, even if you know, take that step, you're like, nope, this is not the right thing like that astronaut suit that you're talking about, oh, okay, and that's fine. You have a learning and you've learned something that you didn't know, before you took that step. So now you know, you know, it's just as valuable to know what you don't want as it is to know what to do want. So through this whole process and taking one step at a time and celebrating those, you know, the baby steps along the way, you're going to learn and develop so much, which goes back to the growth mindset of being open to just learn and knowing that every opportunity that you have, every call that you have, conversation that you have, every bit of research, everything is leading you closer and closer to where you want to be, even if you feel like you're hitting a dead end, and then you have to backtrack, and you have to go another way, that's so important to you, you know, along the way. And so having that growth mindset of like, every single step that I'm taking is leading me closer versus being in the mindset of like, if I do this, and I fail, then that's a waste. It's not a waste. You're always gonna build on what you know. And I, we speak a lot about this, especially with our clients who are making transition in there, you know, it applies to that as well when they're transitioning from one type of career to another. And that's one of the things I always say to them is you building on it, you don't ever have to look at that and go, Oh, I just wasted the last 10 years of my life. So even if you're in this overthinking space, and you've been in this overthinking space for a while, you haven't viscerally wasted that time, but you also don't want to go like you know, a couple of weeks down the road a month or even longer than and look back and go, Oh, yeah, I just spent all this time overthinking when if I had taken the action would have been, you know that much closer. So being in that growth mindset of realizing that you're going to celebrate the progress no matter what it is, you're going to celebrate the progress but you have to commit to taking the actions. If you don't, you're just going to keep going backwards. It's like that analogy of like quicksand. Right? So the more you stay in overthinking and even if you, you know your mind could be telling you "Hey, you know we're doing the right thing, all of this" but the more you don't take the action, the quicker you're going to sink into that quicksand. And that actually brings me to my next point, which I think is also a big part of this. Is the support and accountability. So listen, you know, raising your hand when you need help, whether that's having a conversation with someone, whether you know, whatever support you need, or having somebody even hold you accountable to take action is so important. So going back to the quicksand analogy, if you stay in the overthinking mode, and you don't raise your hand, well, then you're going to keep sinking deeper and deeper, but you're not going to get into any further, closer to what you be. But if you raise your hand and you're like, you know, open to somebody helping you with, it's even just that, you know, conversation or saying, "Hey, you know what, I'm going to commit to this action" and I'm going to check in with you and make sure that I actually take them back, even if it's a tiny baby step, that's gonna get you quick out of quicksand. And much faster on the way towards what it is that you really want.

Phillip Migyanko 25:45

It's so interesting, because there's a tons of research, we have read a bunch of books, but you know, more of, I think about, just when I talk to the these folks, is, it's almost like they're driving themselves crazy. And it's, they know that they're doing it, and it's those resistance pieces that Steven Pressfield talks about this in the War of Art. And it's such an interesting point, because it can just come in here and can convince us of like, "hey, if you do this, you're gonna screw everything up." And really, at the end of the day, all these things are figure out-able. These types of choices you're going to make, it's not, at the end of the day, you can always reverse those or come back to that we're not making heart surgery type of decisions here with these commitment types of things. So to kind of... to recap a little bit. We have to go through these whole steps. It's one, deciding is this change, actually important to you? And specifically, if you're listening to this podcast, with careers, is this career change, important to you? Is getting out of that job that is not fulfilling anymore actually important to you? Is finding work that fills you up are important to you? If it's not, that's okay, come back when it is or go on to something else. If it is. And hint, if you've gotten this far on the podcast, it most likely is. If it is, then how quickly are you looking to make that change? Knowing that the sooner that you can get on it, and the sooner you can start, the better because we only have so much time. So is this actually important? How quickly are you looking to make that change? Cool. So and then going from that standpoint to, is it really... is it important to do that now? So making sure that if you are committing to doing that, if it's a great time, that you put yourself in good state that you're taking care of yourself, but really exciting to make the choice that it is important to you. From there going, alright, this finding fulfilling work is really the most important thing. I'm committed to doing that. It's defining, what are the biggest priorities when it comes to that. Like really what matters the most to you. Fulfilling work looks different for everybody. But what matters the most to you, and what's going to matter the most to you, your family, whoever you have in your life, or it's just you whatever that might be, find those biggest parties for you next. And then most likely, those are big things, especially in career change. So if we know that whatever those big parties are, in that end goal is we break those into chunks into timeframes. So how can you help make that big goal of the thing that's really important to you break those back up into chunks? And then making sure that you've got this plan, we call internally a plan for inevitable success. But how can you make sure that this plan is all sound and ready to go? And sometimes that might be bringing an accountability person, that might be bringing in a coach, that might be bringing in a friend? Or how do you know where the triggers are going to be for you. So you do not get stuck in those places? Sharissa, is there anything else to add to that? Did I cover everything or anything else to add for our over thinkers out there?

Sharissa Sebastian 29:13

No, you totally nailed that. I think you covered everything. But one of the things that I would love to add, if I have a couple seconds.

Phillip Migyanko 29:18

Go ahead.

Sharissa Sebastian 29:19

Is something I call like a future costing exercise with my mind. And this helps in so many ways. But basically what this is, is thinking about, you know, taking yourself out of the current, your current situation and the overthinking all of that and basically saying, "Okay, if I were to project myself in the future, whether that's six months down the road, one year down the road, or whatever, you know, whatever that timeframe is, what would I be proud of myself or doing right now in this moment that maybe I'm not doing right now or that you know, that I really want to do?" So basically, what I mean by that is looking to your future and your future self and looking back at where you are right now and saying, "What decision do I need to make now, that my future self is going to thank for?" So that helps to get us out of this current, you know, this zone of overthinking and saying, "Okay, if I could do that, what decision would I make today that one year down the road, I'm gonna look back and go, wow, I'm so glad that on this date, I made that decision. And then I, you know, I took action on it."

Phillip Migyanko 30:14

I love that. So going away from today, you might be thinking, "okay, Phillip and Sharissa, I've got everything I need to know, I know the steps. What's something I can do today?" Which is a great question overthinker. I very much appreciate that question. So the one thing that you can do today, and I've been saying this, a whole bunch is move one step forward. So right now, take out a pen and paper, write down one thing that you can do to move one step forward. And in the thing that you're looking to do. It might be career, it might be not related to career, but write down what's the one thing that you're looking to do. And if you're not sure what that is, then schedule a call with myself, our team, and we can help you do that. But set whatever that one thing might be to moving one step forward, and set a schedule for when you will do that. So again, that might come into the two week timeframe. But when will you be doing that, and the next week, and in the next two weeks, set a date for that. If it's helpful, share that with an accountability partner, share that with a coach, share that with somebody who you trust, that can hold you accountable to that, then be specific. So if we are clear about the action you're going to take, what will you do? What does done actually look like in this case? You're not just researching, you're not going to go look for companies that might be a good fit. No, no, we're gonna look for five companies that are in this Austin, Texas area that fit this space, we want you to be specific, because done is better than perfect. And then set the end date. So when will you have this accomplished by? So three steps, schedule done action, define what done action will be in specifics and then make sure you have an end date for that. So if it might be a whole bunch of steps in there, chunk those out. And when will you be looking to complete that by? So today, take an action, put a date on it. And if you have any questions or like Phillip, I'm still getting stuck. We have a whole team here to help you, myself, Sharissa. We have a whole bunch of other people here too. But as a self diagnosed, well now I think form over thinkers, we can help you through the process. So, Sharissa, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. I very, very much appreciate it.

Sharissa Sebastian 32:31

Oh, you're welcome. This is so much fun. And for all you overthinkers out there, you're not alone. And it is absolutely possible to get through this and to get to the other side, basically, and definitely speak with Phillip. He is an absolute genius at this. And so it's super easy to talk with him. So he can absolutely help you and of course, you know the whole team is behind you too. So if you need anything, like Phillip said, we are all here. And yeah, we're with you. We're here to support you in any way that you...

Phillip Migyanko 33:00

Perfect and we are committed to moving you one step forward. So thanks again Sharissa for coming on the podcast. And thanks for all of our listeners today. So we'll see you on the next episode and hand this back over to Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:14

In the very next episode, you're going to hear from Vicki Mang. Vicki also, as it turns out, has been an overthinker in the past. But on January 2nd 2020, Vicki sent an email that completely changed her life.

Vicki Mang 33:30

That email was literally the first thing on my mind when 2020 started. And that's why I was on January 2nd because Jennifer says it's a holiday. And I think I already drafted that email, maybe at the end of December.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:45

Exactly one year later to the day. We're releasing her story right here on the Happen To Your Career podcast to help her celebrate and share the details of exactly how she made her seemingly impossible career change. All that and more, right here next week on Happen To Your Career. By the way, if you want to send your own email and be able to and get your career change started, then just drop it directly to me, scott@happentoyourcareer.com and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And we'll go ahead and connect up with you and figure out the very best way that we can help support what you're trying to do with your career and help make it much, much more possible. All right, all that and more, right here on Happen To Your Career. We'll see you next week. Adios. I am out.

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5 Ways Author Jen Sincero Stays a Badass Every Day

by

IMAGINE IF THE FIRST THOUGHT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAD WHEN YOU INTRODUCED YOURSELF WAS, “DAMN, WHAT A BADASS.”

For my friend [and NYT Bestselling Author] Jen, that’s a reality. When she sends an email, speaks at a conference, or hops on a podcast interview, she leaves everyone KNOWING she’s a badass, and she has this insane ability to multiply badasses all around her. It’s awesome.

Jen and I spoke on the phone a few weeks ago and we had YOU in mind. If you’ve been headed toward success but somewhere along the way found yourself banging your head against a wall and wondering how to move past barriers, Jen’s secrets for achieving badassery may just rock your world.

HIT THE SPIRITUAL GYM

If you want to stay strong, you go to the gym. If you want to stay motivated, you go to the spiritual gym.

Instead of treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines, and free weights, the spiritual gym is made up of books, podcasts, mantras, and playlists. It’s the quintessential list of what you need to stay motivated and keep chasing after goals. If you don’t set up your support system to stay positive as you move toward your career happiness, you’ll lose steam and settle (which is what over 80% of humans end up doing when it comes to work!).

YOU MUST GO TO THE SPIRITUAL GYM EVERY DAY TO STAY IN THE HEADSPACE TO MAKE SHIT HAPPEN.

You’ve heard us talk about this concept a lot, which is what we at HTYC refer to as full immersion. Full immersion acknowledges that there will be moments when your motivation wavers, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Check out Jen’s full immersion techniques below.

HOW JEN WORKS OUT HER MIND MUSCLES

Everyone’s spiritual gym looks different. Only you can select the machines you need. To help you get started, we asked Jen to share what her personal spiritual gym looks like. Since she moved from making only $28K per year as a struggling writer to becoming a successful author with two NYT bestsellers, she has some credibility here.

Jen’s daily trip to the gym includes:

1. MEDITATION

Guided and personal meditation can keep you from beginning your day with a spinning ball of thoughts like: “I gotta reply to that email…Oh shoot—the grocery store pick-up! What if I don’t hit the project deadline next week? I really should post on Instagram more…Do I have time for breakfast? Mom is probably wondering why I haven’t called lately…Better check my email again before I get in my car.”

Instead, meditation helps you center yourself. You can use an app like Calm or Headspace with guided meditation created to help you rest, be present, and engage fully in your life. Or you can simply develop your own meditation practice where you repeat a motivational phrase and quiet your mind. Either approach should silence early morning negative thoughts.

2.  MUSIC

Have you ever been in the middle of a difficult strength training set when the beat drops and you suddenly get hit with this supernatural energy? Music is powerful for the body and the mind. Jen built herself a playlist that, in her words, “sends her on victory laps around her house every morning.”

If you’re a music person, find some time this week to make your Badass Beats playlist. When you feel your confidence starting to disappear, press play on that Kelly Clarkson song and remember, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

3. MASTERMINDING WITH FRIENDS

Everything’s better with buds. There’s no better accountability than a friend who will shame you into following through on your commitments.

Jen masterminds with her crew a couple times a week, updating on what she wants to do and how she’s accomplishing the steps it takes to find her personal happiness. These chats usually only last about 15 minutes, but the resulting encouragement lasts much longer.

4. HIKING

Pegging herself as a nature freak, Jen sets aside time to hike every week. The fresh air, bird calls, and feel of her boots on the dirt as she huffs it up a hill just do it for her. Every hike leaves her full of positive energy.

Your hobbies may look more like reading memoirs, painting sunsets, climbing rock walls, or mixing cocktails. Whatever leaves you with positive energy and a new excitement for life, make it a priority.

5. JOY CHECKS

For badasses, there’s no such thing as going through the motions. Jen makes sure to check in with her current state and future goals each day. She asks herself, “What is bringing me the most joy right now? What is restricting my joy?” and then changes her actions accordingly.

People change. Often. So these consistent check-ins allow her to alter plans and direction as early as possible.

PICK UP THE BADASS BATON

If there’s anything we’ve learned from Jen, it’s that badassery is hard work, but it’s much easier when you create a system that keeps it flowing. So what’s it going to look like for you? How will you create a positive feedback loop of motivation?

Maybe you need to set reminders on your phone to check your joy at 2 pm every day, schedule Facetime calls with your bff once a week, and log into Spotify to get a poppin’ playlist going. Whatever it is, the time is now.

To get you going on the right track, here’s some advice on getting started from Jen’s latest book, You Are a Badass Every Day:

“Start. Right. Now.

And here’s a tip: start small. Chunk your to-dos down into manageable bits of time or break your tasks up into friendly little baby steps instead of trying to get the entire thing one in one intimidating leap. Especially if what’s been dogging you is something you’ve been successfully putting off for a while. For example, if you’re struggling to commit to a meditation practice, sit in silence for seven little minutes a day, then after a while up it to eight minutes and then nine and then you’re on your way. If you’re writing a book, sit at your desk with your phone turned off, the internet disabled, armed guards at your door, and do not get up until you’ve written one brilliant paragraph. The next time you show up for work write two brilliant paragraphs, then up it to three, and then four, and then you’re on your way.

Motivation, commitment, focus—these are all muscles that, like any muscle, require strengthening. If you push yourself too hard right out of the gate, you’ll hurt yourself and walk in wide circles around that gym instead of going inside whenever you’re in the neighborhood. If you build slowly and steadily and chunk it down, not only do you save yourself some pain, but you’ll start noticing changes almost immediately. And there ain’t nothing that makes you show up, and keep showing up, like getting results.”

Find Jen’s book here and click the play button below to listen to our interview.

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Jen Sincero 00:01
So there's always something more screwed up about and there's always something that we can push ourselves to grow through and learn from, right? Earth is a big fat school.

Introduction 00:16
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:40
On today's episode we're not just talking about career happiness meeting, we're also talking about the art of badassery. My guest today is Jen Sincero. New York Times best selling author of "You Are a Badass". And Jen is sassy but also down to earth blunt approach to self help is both refreshing and hilarious. She's appeared on Comedy Central, the Dr. Oz show, New York Times, over a magazine. My own mother has demanded and suggested that she might disown me if we don't have her on the show. I'm pretty sure she was joking. But we still wanted to have her on for multiple other reasons anyways. And if you've never read any of her books, well buckle in for a good time.

Jen Sincero 01:27
There's all these morons out there making tons of money. Like, if they get to it, what's my problem? I mean, there's lots of very smart, wonderful people doing it. But seriously I was like, how hard could it be?

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:39
See what I mean? I'm so excited for you to listen to this episode. I'm sure it'll make you laugh, leave you feeling challenged and even get you to turn your radio dial to 80s rock. Does anybody turn a radio dial anymore? If you do, I know you'll be turning it. Keep listening. And then let's go kick some ass.

Jen Sincero 01:58
My whole journey into sort of self development started when I was living in a garage in my early 40s, super broke, super unamused that I was in my 40s and being such a loser. And I was a freelance writer at the time, and I decided that I really had to get my act together in the financial department. And so I started doing a lot of stuff that was very, out of the ordinary for me, I was super snarky about the whole self help world. But I forced myself to read every self help book I could get my hands on, go to money making seminars, hiring life coaches, like all stuff that I just rolled my eyes at previously. But when you're desperate, you do a lot of stuff that doesn't feel quite so natural to you. And lo and behold, it really worked. And I started working with a coach and started a new online business and basically tripled my income in a couple of months, which was like growing a third head for me, 'cause I have two, a second head. And yeah, it was so miraculous. And just I mean, because honestly, I had spent decades identifying as somebody who was really bad at making money. So for me, it literally was a miracle. And so in the process, I had read, as I said, every self help book under the sun. And because I'm a writer, I was like, "Man! I could write the crap out of a self help book, like where are the ones that are really funny and tell stories and use curse words" and all that stuff. So I decided to write my own. And for a couple of reasons, one, because I wanted, that was the sort of book I wanted to read that was a little bit more entertaining and a little bit more in your face. And I also really felt like there were so many people out there, like me, who wouldn't touch self development with a 10 foot pole. And as like, maybe if I make a kind of edgy, it will open this genre up to a lot more people who could really use the help.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:58
I couldn't find anything as I was reading through your books, necessarily. Was it actually desperation that caused you to pick up all those books? Because I get that you had said, "Hey, you know, I really didn't necessarily want to do this, but I did, anyways."

Jen Sincero 04:12
Oh, yeah. Total desperation. I just couldn't believe that I was like, come on, dude. There's all these morons out there making tons of money. Like, if they get to it, what's my problem? I mean, there's lots of very smart, wonderful people doing it. But seriously I was like, how hard could it be? I mean, I was in a one car garage, let's be clear here and not...

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:33
It was not a triple car garage.

Jen Sincero 04:36
It was not a triple car garage. It was not nicely renovated. Like it was a crap pole. And yet, I really realized that it wasn't going to happen doing it the way I was doing it. So I had to change some stuff around because I think that's what happens to a lot of us as we keep doing more of the same, we just work harder because that's what we've been taught, if you knew you got to work hard to make money. So I just kept working harder. So I was just more exhausted and making, like, you know, 10 bucks more a week.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:02
What do you think so many of us believe that to be true? I encounter that every single day in any forum everywhere, like, "all you gotta do is work harder, Jen. Like, just work hard." What do you think that is so pervasive?

Jen Sincero 05:16
I don't know. I think human beings get caught in loops of thought. And we don't question them. And this is the first nugget of transforming your life is becoming aware of your thought loops and being like, "Now I'm working my ass off, and I'm not getting richer." And also, if you think about that phrase for two seconds, you got to work hard to be rich, all rich people would be really tired. You know, it doesn't make any sense. And I will tell you, now that I am rich, I work about an eighth as hard as I used to when I was hustling my butt off to make money. So it's a lie people. I mean, you certainly do have to work hard sometimes. But that is not the recipe for changing your financial situation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:02
And certainly not that alone, by any means.

Jen Sincero 06:04
Oh, yeah. I mean, working smarter is the key.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:07
One of the things that you discuss in your latest book, is the concept of, well, first of all, the entire concept of the book is many pieces to help you get there, wherever there is for you. And one of the concepts that you mentioned in there is this idea of motivational and spiritual gem. And I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about that idea and that concept.

Jen Sincero 06:35
Yeah. So "You Are a Badass Every Day", which is the new book is more of like, it's this little this tiny, but mighty little...

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:43
Tiny but mighty, I like it.

Jen Sincero 06:44
Tiny but mighty. So my other books go much more in depth into the subconscious and how that works. And catching yourself on your thought loops, and really sort of dissecting on what's going on and how to turn it around and stuff like that. But "You Are a Badass Every Day" is more like going to this what I call the spiritual gym, which is, so you know what to do, you know that you have to watch your thoughts, words and beliefs, you know you have to be very diligent about training your focus on stuff that makes you strong instead of stuff that makes you feel like you want to jump out a window. You've got to be conscious of your energy, you got to be conscious of who you hang out with. You've got to listen to music that pumps you up, you gotta say, affirmations and meditate. And there's this all of these things that you can do to keep your muscle of motivation, and confidence and belief in awesomeness strong. So I think what happens a lot of times is people read a self help book, or go to a seminar, or take a course or hang out with really inspiring people and you know, you feel like you could go out and flip over a car and do anything. And then a couple days go by or a couple hours go by, and you start to slide back and you're like, "nah, go take my life next week."

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:02
I'll flip over that car later.

Jen Sincero 08:03
I'll flip over that car later.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:06
I love that concept as a whole the idea of a motivational or spiritual jam. And we call that the similar concept, full immersion where you're immersing yourself in an environment of success. And what I'm curious though is can you share with us a few different of those way? You've covered it, you've rattled off a few. But let's go into depth on a few different ways where people can create that environment or create that motivational and spiritual jam and make sure that is there on a much more consistent basis.

Jen Sincero 09:15
Okay, it all comes down to specifics. You can't just wing it, you have to know exactly what you're going to turn to stay strong. So that's the first little tidbit is what makes you feel mighty because for some people music doesn't do it. So for me music totally does it. So it's not just I'm gonna listen to the inspirational music. It's... I have a specific playlist that makes me feel like doing victory laps around my house.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:41
What's on that playlist? I must know.

Jen Sincero 09:43
Oh, you must know. I'm so old school. It's actually embarrassing. I was hanging out...

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:48
Oh no, it's even better.

Jen Sincero 09:49
Oh my god. So I listen to anything that happened past like 1986, I mean, huge Prince fan, huge Donna Summer fan, love AC DC, ZZ Top, Rolling Stones.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:04
Awesome.

Jen Sincero 10:04
You know, I'm in my 50s, Led Zeppelin.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:07
Love it.

Jen Sincero 10:07
Anyway. So music is a huge mood changer for me, it can completely take me out of one state and put me in another. I'm a big hiker, a big nature freak. So getting out in nature and, you know, hopping my way up a hill is a big one for me. I meditate as often as possible. When I was going through it, always every morning, I would read for at least 10 minutes some kind of self development book. And I think this one I feel like really, really is an important one, either reading or listening to something inspirational every morning because it reminds you of how powerful you truly are. And it also reminds you how easy transforming your life is, we've been taught that it's like this big, you know, you're going to be exhausted. And it's just adding more work to your already overwhelming life. And man, it really is about mind shift, you know, mindset and shifting your mindset So, and it's a hell of a lot easier than being in struggling, feeling hopeless and feeling stuck. So I really want to stress that point, it's not easy, you just got to do it. Listening to stuff, having a mastermind partner, meeting with somebody a couple times a week on the phone, where each of you talks for 15 minutes about what you're doing and staying accountable to each other, and anything else.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:30
The thing that struck, but I've got lots of them. However, I like the ones that you have mentioned here. And the thing that has struck me both in reading your books, and also at the same time just observing many people that have been successful in the areas that they want to be successful in, there isn't necessarily a perfect combination. It is more about what is the right combination for you. And even right now, too, as it can change and evolve as well.

Jen Sincero 11:58
Totally, that's such a good point. Totally.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:01
What is your current combination? Whatever you say. And if you're listening to this, you shouldn't run out there and immediately implement Jen's combination. But I'm super curious, about what combination, aside from the music and the amazingly awesome and pre 1986 play, what else is working for you right now?

Jen Sincero 12:19
I'm in such a good spot right now that I don't need the support of that so much anymore. So as you said, it changes as you go through phases. So I still meditate because I still, that is super important to me to stay in touch with my highest self and my intuition. I'm obsessed, and "You Are a Badass Every Day", I go much deeper into the fact that we are energetic creatures living in an energetic universe. And so I'm really diligent about walking that talk and being very in touch with the energy that I choose to connect within myself. So a lot of meditation, a lot of connecting with my fellow witches, as I like to call it, and masterminding with people who keep me in that zone help keep me strong that way. And then music and hiking, those are the two things. And being really conscious of what is bringing me joy and like what do I need to do with my life now that I'm at this new level that will bring me joy, and be of the biggest service to others, because that changes as we change. So just really keep checking in to see where I'm at now and what I feel supposed to be doing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:32
I love that concept of continually filtering in or filtering out those things that bring you joy or don't bring you joy. And I find that this can be the physical space, like, we literally in our garage, have a stacking deck of stuff to donate to a variety of places because we've decided those things, whatever they are, no longer bring us joy or meaning. Somehow came into our house and we don't really want them there because they don't bring us joy. So it can certainly be that way. But I think that there's other ways too and I'm curious if you can expand on that for everybody who's listening. What are some examples of things that or situations that might bring you joy versus not? What do you mean when you say that?

Jen Sincero 14:20
Again, it gets into specifics so people are just like, "I'm happy. I'm lonely. I don't have any energy." And you sort of leave it at that and that vagueness is gets you nowhere it's just like this squishy blurry place. So getting into specifics are the key to freedom. So I was like okay, so you know, the books are selling. I have this wonderful opportunity with the badass brand and what I'm doing, you know, what do I want to do next? Like what would really be fun? And that's okay. What brings me the most joy is hanging out with the people I love, laughing my butt off, and being creative and collaborating. So for me, I've been an entrepreneur for like 20 years and a writer. And those are very solitary endeavors. And so I got to start hanging out with the people I love more and making that my job. So I'm starting to write comedy with my friends, which is so much fun. So I'm still doing badass stuff. And I'm still speaking and writing the books, and I love, love, love all that. But for me, collaborating on comedy, I realized is something that is super fun. So I'm writing a TV show and a screenplay with two separate friends.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:34
That is amazing. And fun.

Jen Sincero 15:35
It's really fun. Yes, it is. You know, and then I picked some charities that are really important to me that I want to get even more involved with beyond just donating money. So I'm talking to the people who run those charities to see how I can further their causes. What else? Oh, I'm renovating a house, I just bought my first house and I have unleashed a design maniac that I did not know lived within me. So if you want to spend the rest of this time talking about bathroom tile, I'm totally in.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:05
Oh, we are in the same space. So that is very possible.

Jen Sincero 16:09
Oh, really?

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:09
Yes.

Jen Sincero 16:13
You know, but these are all very specific things. So I think you got to sit down and make a list of what brings me joy, is it travel? Is it creativity? Is it... would it be getting a new job? What is that new job look like? Do you need some new friends? What are their qualities? Fetting very clear, and then going out and making yourself create that because we are on this planet for a very short time and spending the four minutes that it takes to write down some specifics of what would better your life is time extremely well spent.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:43
You've mentioned becoming conscious of your energy and certainly paying attention to what brings you joy is one of the ways to do that. But I'm also curious, when you say being conscious of your energy, first of all, what do you really mean by that? And how can we do more of that?

Jen Sincero 17:00
Being conscious of your energy, for me really means getting, again, back to the joy, getting clear on what brings you joy. And especially if you're in the mode of transformation, which I'm sure everybody listening is, you know, what is it that you're trying to achieve? What is this next level that you're working to get to and embodying the energy of what that looks like? So walking around as if you already exist in that new space. So how do you carry yourself? What are the specifics of your new life look like? Who do you hang out with? How do you speak? What do you wear? What do you talk about? So getting into that energetic of the new reality that you are so excited to create so that then you raise your frequency to that new level. And you start to notice things that you were not previously noticing when you were at the lower level and accepting that environment as your reality. It's super unicorny what I'm talking about, but it totally works. And I'm obsessed with it, I really, if we can be diligent about that and play with it, you know, like, if that whole, sort of, water droplet in the ocean thing where we are the water droplet, we are in control of our little water droplet cells. But we are also part in the ocean. And so you are of yourself. And you're also have the entire universe. So when you shift your energy, just as when that water droplet drops in that ocean, you affect all of the energy in the universe, because you are part of that energy flow. So shifting your energy, shifts everything in the universe, and that is then how you manifest it on the physical plane.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:53
That is something that I have found to be true again, and again, I don't think I... 15 years ago or something.

Jen Sincero 18:59
Oh my god.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:00
I don't know if I would have said unicorny, but something similar. However, I have seen evidence of that again and again. And I'm curious, do you have a story of how that works? Or maybe an example of how that has worked? We witnessed it's with either somebody else or in your own life.

Jen Sincero 19:18
Oh my god, I see it over and over. But then someone's like, "do you have any good jokes?" I'm like, "yeah, I got a million." I can't think of a single one. Although I can think of one single one. I got one that I wrote about in my book of when I was working with my coach to make some damn money. And it's a long story. But basically, you know, she's like, you know, "You can double your rates. You can offer this new program, you can bla bla bla bla bla" so you're working on all of these things. And I was like, gosh, you know, I was coaching with this man, like a year ago, I was his coach. And we stopped working together and I hadn't heard from him in an entire year. I was like, "I wonder maybe I could reach out to him" because I was hell bent to make a certain amount of money that week, actually. And I was like, "I wonder if he'd be interested in working with me again. I don't even know where he is. I don't know how to contact him." I was still on the phone with my coach. And I was in a fever of intention, like I was making this happen, I was not screwing around anymore, I was stepping up into this whole other realm of possibility for myself. And I was really doing all the work all the time. So while I'm on the phone with her discussing, reaching out to him, I looked down at my email, and he has reached out to me. I have not heard from this man in one year, and he had reached out to me with an email that said, "Let's roll. I'm ready to work with you again. What do you charge in these days?

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:35
That was more than just a drop in the ocean.

Jen Sincero 20:40
So back into hot water. Yeah, it was... it made my hair stand up. It was amazing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:46
That's fantastic. We've seen some really very similar things too. You know, I'm thinking of one person that we worked with, his name was Ruchi. And he'd been in a situation where, you know, just not enjoying life, not enjoying his job, all kinds of different things. And fast forward after, he ended up getting to a place where he was very much enjoying work, enjoying life. He started really contributing to a charity in the Atlanta area, like a really, really great cause, that had to do with helping people in the local community. And he like, launched himself into that. And because he had all this newfound energy, then he was able to go and contribute and make all of these really great impacts in a really short period of time. And it was just interesting to see that because we're talking a period of like, five months. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I've observed, and I'm curious, your opinions on this. It seems like when people make big changes, big transformation in their lives, looking back, it always feels so short, or at least it has to me. And that's one of the comments that I've heard again, and again, but I'm curious, you know, how have you experienced that? And do you see some of the same things? What is that like in terms of reference of time that it takes for transformation? What have you found?

Jen Sincero 22:08
It's interesting, I've seen both. And I do believe that it has to do with we think we're in the energetic but deep down, we've still got a belief that it's not possible for us or we don't deserve it, or we're going to get in trouble. You know, so when you're in the mode of manifestation, and you're being really diligent about watching your energy, and it's just not happening, you've got to bust yourself. You know, that's why meditation is so good and guided meditations, especially that focus on whatever topic it is that you're, you know, presently obsessed with, because then you hear yourself, pull up that objection, you know what I mean? It's like, well, money flows to me easily and freely. If you're trying to change your finances, you're listening to some guided meditation about money. It's like, "No, it haven't. It never will." you know, like, it'll come up, it will come up. You will feel that energy. But if you are in the flow, oh, my gosh, I mean, that story I just told you, my goal was to make $10,000, I think it was a week. And I ended up making it in 24 hours, because, and I was making like, $28,000 a year. So that was, you know, a third of my annual income.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:27
We call it substantial.

Jen Sincero 23:29
Yes, thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:31
Very good. I don't know if you intended it this way. So I listened to your latest book on Audible. And parts of it felt very much like a guided meditation as I was listening. So I wasn't sure if part of that was the intention, or not necessarily, but I kept observing like, how much... it's like, oh, that's like a good two thirds of this feels like guided meditation in a good way.

Jen Sincero 23:55
Yeah, I told you I went more down unicorn late on this one. I've never done guided meditations in my other books, but because I'm so much more focused on the energy in this book, and so I got sticks some meditations for the people in here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:08
Well, that was very cool and very helpful too, as I was both reading and doing the research knowing we were going to chat here. Now, I also in the same book, learned about Scruffy.

Jen Sincero 24:22
Oh, Scruffy.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:23
Oh, Scruffy. Can you tell us about Scruffy?

Jen Sincero 24:25
Sure. Scruffy was a stuffed animal that I had when I was a kid that this dog, that sort of looked like roadkill, I think somebody would want them at a fairy, he was like full of hay and all crappy and it was messy, and I named him Scruffy after our neighbors' West Highland terrier because he looked just like that dog. And one day I was hanging out with Scruffy and sort of brushing him or something, and I realized that he had these pointy ears and this little pink nose and a really long tail and all of a sudden, this toy that I had had for years and years and years and had known as a dog, I realized that Scruffy was a cat, he wasn't a dog. And I mean, I'm telling this story and it like, I could still get this like, strike of fear in my chest. It was like, "oh my goood". And it was so shocking. And so I compare this in the book to this is how it can be in our lives. Like, we just accept things as truth, because that's what we see around us. So if our parents tell us that you got to work really hard to make money, or the you know, relationships are never fun, you know, men or women suck, or will cheat on you, you know, that everybody in our family has a slow metabolism, so you can't possibly lose weight, whatever the truths are, that you've just been walking around, like, this is the way it is, like not ever even questioning. Then when you wake up and start doing this work, and, you know, do the first step of really being aware of what your thoughts, beliefs, and words are and being like, "Wait a second, are there some people who have happy relationships in this world?" Then you snap out of it, you're like, "Oh, my god, I have been subscribing to a belief system that not only doesn't work for me, but really is not true." And so that it's such a liberating thing. And it's essential if you want to change your life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:25
I think one of my Scruffy as a cat moments, for me, one of those beliefs was around not being a finisher, is I think how I would describe. And part of the reason that I had made so many career changes over the years and on the outside looked very, very successful. Because each time I moved up, and you know, dollars paid, and all kinds of benefits and desirable jobs, and blah, blah, blah. But part of that was coming from a place of like starting things, and not believing that I can finish them. So instead jumping on to something else.

Jen Sincero 27:03
Interesting.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:04
And that it took me a good 10 plus years to really reconcile with that. There's a cat here, and I could actually finish something. So I appreciated that story on many multiple levels.

Jen Sincero 27:16
Interesting. And then the thing that happens also, as in you're like, I have 10 years of proof that I'm not a finisher. So you know, for me, I had the same thing, like I have 40 years of proof that I suck at making money. So really... is you have to have the audacity to go against the quote unquote, truth, and choose something else.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:34
Yeah, absolutely. What do you think for you, aside from discovering that your stuffed animal that you had journeyed with was now no longer the dog that you knew you had to be, what do you think one of those biggest moments was for you? I know you talk about a variety of them in all of your books. But what stands out to?

Jen Sincero 27:54
You know, one moment I had when I was forcing myself to go all of these financial seminars, read the books and coach and blah, blah, blah, was at a seminar, and this coach was on the stage talking about a new coaching program that he was offering. And it was $85,000 to work with him for a year privately. And that was like, you have to fly to the bone and back to work with me. I was like, "What does that even mean? That's like house money. Like, what is that?" There's no way like, there is no way that my $28,000 a year, even take in that information. But because I was on this journey, and I was like, okay, anything is possible, you have to step up. And so I was like, I'm gonna work with this guy, I am going to figure out how to pay him $85,000. So instead of going to my immediate need of response, which was, "I can't afford that" to... my mantra at the time was "money flows to me easily and freely." I said it all the time. Every time I wanted to say, "I can't afford it", I forced myself to say "money flows to me easily and freely." So that's what I said. And by opening myself up, just the act of opening myself up to that possibility, it brought up like from the bottom of the sea color covered in seaweed and slime, like my deepest, deepest reason that I had never noticed before and myself about why Jen Sincero cannot make money or get rich. I had this flash of visual vision of my dad standing there with his hands in his pockets looking at the ground really sad. It was so clear. And in that flash realize, I can't get rich because one of the ways my dad shows me love is to give me 20 bucks every once in a while. And if I don't need his money, I don't need his love and I am basically stabbing him in the heart. And it was so profound, and I really feel like a lot of people have that one where they don't want to outshine their parents or the people they love so they stay small. And that really was a life changer for me.

Jen Sincero 29:10
It's really, I find it fascinating like how quickly our brains can go to, my dad's not gonna be able to do that. And I'm going to be stabbing him in the heart, which, you know, said out loud, afterwards, of course it can make sense that that's not going to happen. But it's fascinating that we do that every day in many different cases, if we're not careful to ourselves, if we're not aware of what is going on behind the scenes or subconsciously, or those underlying beliefs, or those mental barriers that are left unaddressed. So one of the things that I have heard you say, again, and again and again, is by putting yourself in those situations, or by forcing yourself in one way or another, to bring in other beliefs or to say mantras, or any number of these things can bring those up or cause you to have this wrestle with those, when you don't even know that those were underneath the surface in that way. So, absolutely love that. Other ways?

Jen Sincero 31:04
Yeah, I mean, the other ways, it really, it's all about getting uncomfortable. So if you're not uncomfortable or scared to take, like, how uncomfortable was that to like, even consider $85,000. Like that was, like, throw up uncomfortable. So for everybody, it's different. But if you don't get out there and do stuff that really pushes against some kind of resistance for you, you're not going to have these epiphanies because you are staying in your known comfortable world and staying with what's familiar, you got to push yourself out to the unfamiliar, you've got to ask that person out that's quote, unquote, out of your league, or go to a seminar that you'd be horrified if your friends busted, you at or say affirmations that feel completely weird and out of reach for you, or, you know, hang out with people who are doing much better than you, whatever it is, there's so many things you can do. I call it, it's like, two sides of the same coin, excitement and terror. And that's what you're looking for that we're not looking for the kind of fear of like throwing yourself in front of a bus would bring up but it's that terror, and also that the flip side of it is "Oh my god, wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that be amazing if I had a coach that I paid $85,000 for that?" I found that kind of money for holy crap, like, who would I be in that moment? So as terrifying as it is exciting, that's the sweet spot that you're looking for.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:30
Absolutely love that. I also know that many of your books are about that mode of transformation, or about, shall we say, I don't know, getting what's on the other side of that mode of transformation. I'm not totally sure how you would describe that necessarily, overall. But I'm really, really curious for you, after you have gotten to the goal or after you have achieved the thing or after you have been envisioning whatever it might be for many, many years, what has happened for you after you have gotten there? And after you have achieved that? What does that look like for you individually? Do you immediately move on to the next thing? Do you have, I don't know, celebration effort? Help me understand. And here's the reason why I'm asking. This is even though many people are here, listening, because they're in that mode of transformation to this show, I'm curious for myself a little bit, because I found many, many times when I've reached like really big things that most people would consider impossible, then I personally will go through a period where it's like, this is awesome. And then sometimes it's a "Now what?" afterwards. It's over many years, I've reconciled with that part of it in different ways before this next thing, so I'm curious, what that's like for you?

Jen Sincero 33:46
Well, it's the same. And I think, you know, the process of being alive is the process of growing. Just look in nature, like everything keeps growing until it dies. So we're the same. So once you get to a new exciting level, I also by the way, totally believe in celebrating and I'm a very skilled celebrator, then it becomes your new normal, right? So it becomes your new normal. So it's not something that you're like high fiving about everyday because it's just who you are now and it's wonderful. And then you start to look around and be like "okay, now what?" and there's... have you ever heard that expression, "new level new devil"?

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:26
I have not. I feel like I should have, however, love it.

Jen Sincero 34:30
So there's always something more screwed up about and there's always something that we can push ourselves to grow through and learn from, right? Earth is a big fat school. So you conquer one demon and then you're like, alright, but I could really upgrade my situation in this sector of my life. So I think that absolutely, we look around and we have "now what" and the universe always provides an award for you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:59
Whether you want it or not...

Jen Sincero 35:00
Don't worry. Yes, exactly.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:02
It's the universal guarantee, I suppose. Well, I appreciate that on many different levels. And I appreciate you taking the time and making the time here. And this has been a ton of fun. And the new book, by the way, is "You Are a Badass Every Day: How to Keep Your Motivation Strong, Your Vibe High, and Your Quest for Transformation Unstoppable." Where can people get that? Where can people buy many, many copies of that? And where can they learn more about you?

Jen Sincero 35:30
Well, they can do it all at the same place. If you go to my website, you can actually get to my website by either going to youareabadass.com, or jensincero.com, they both lead to the same place. And it's jensincero.com. It's like the word sincere with an O on the end.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:51
Perfect. Well head on over there. And I have... I've read the book, enjoyed it immensely and even more enjoyed having you in person. So I really, really appreciate it. And thank you so much, Jen.

Jen Sincero 36:02
Thank you so much. This was excellent. I really appreciate it. And say hi to your mom for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:08
Hey, I hope you enjoyed listening to Jen, as much as I enjoyed chatting with her. She definitely seems to carry an aura of badassery around her. And I believe that the idea of the spiritual gym can get you headed in the right direction on achieving your goals, whatever they may be. And by the way, if you aren't sure where you're going with your career, but you know that you're dissatisfied with where you are, my team at Happen To Your Career would love to help. You can schedule a call with one of our team or one of our career coaches and we can start working together to help you discover your signature strengths and more importantly put them to use to acquire unique career happiness for you. Learn more about our signature coaching program at happentoyourcareer.com and click on signature coaching at the top of the page under resources for career changers. Thanks for listening, so much, today's episode on 5 Ways to Stay a Badass Every Day. Join us next week for an entirely different episode on career happiness. Here's what's coming up for you. Next week on the Happen To Your Career podcast.

Michelle Jones 37:10
I would hear them over and over and say how frustrated they were and angry, even, that no one had asked them that before. Now, they're like, well, now, I don't know we're at the end, we're about to graduate, we have a lot of debt. You know, maybe I would have actually majored in something else or gone to a different college or done something else along the way. I had someone ask me that earlier.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:30
That's right. It's a brand new idea, concept and way of education. One that I think is much more useful to many of the people in this world. But all that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. And by the way, too, if you haven't already joined our figure it out mini courses to get you started and get you clear on what you want in your new career, just text HAPPEN to 44222. Or visit figureitout.co that's figureitout.co it'll ask you for your email and name and then it will send you the very first day shortly afterwards. Very first lesson. You'll get a lesson each day for eight days to begin heading down the road of what you really want. We'll see you next week. Right here. As always. Adios. I am out!

Jen Sincero 38:31
I'm so good. How can your mom's not with us?

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:34
Oh my goodness. You know what? Actually, you're gonna get me out of trouble. See, this is gonna be an amazing, now, we just downgraded it slightly.

Jen Sincero 38:44
Oh no. What a way to start.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:46
Oh, no. This is the tone that we are starting out on. Mom, this one's for you either way, whether you're not here. Well, I am excited though. Regardless of the number of times my mom has said, "You should get Jen on the show."

Jen Sincero 39:00
Oh, I love her.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:03
Yeah. I absolutely will. I'm leaving that part in at the end.

Jen Sincero 39:08
Okay.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:09
Fantastic.

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A Private Conversation: Our Own Perfectionism On The HTYC Team And How We Handle It.

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How do you know when your perfectionism is getting in the way of your progress? Or is it what helps you to be successful. Or is it somewhere in between.

A short while back, we released a podcast episode on “perfectionism” and how you might not even know it’s holding you back.

We got great feedback on this episode from many of our listeners. Caroline Adams and I scheduled a follow-up conversation to debrief on the podcast and what we learned from creating a podcast on perfectionism. Ironically we discovered on creating a podcast on perfectionism that our own perfectionist tendencies had reared their ugly head.

This turned into a private conversation about where perfectionism becomes an issue for both of us. We go deep into where it’s caused challenges for our own lives and work… Even when we began this conversation we never intended it to become a podcast. We’re sharing it with you because we also discuss how we each individually handle the perfectionism when it pops up ready to hold us back!

If you haven’t already listened to episode 226, I would listen to that first and then dive into an internal conversation on our team about working with perfectionism rather than against it! Then listen and let us know what you think at hello@happentoyourcareer.com

Want to read the entire episode instead? Read the Transcript below or download it here!  

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT TO THE EPISODE NOW

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Caroline Adams 00:03

Is it about one email or is it every email that you're treating that way? And that's one way I see it showing up with people that we work with, you know, when they're still in that job, a lot of them are just working insane hours.

Introduction 00:20

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

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:38

Welcome to the Happen To Your Career podcast. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow. And this is the show where we share stories of how high achievers find career happiness and meaning. We thought we'd give you a little bit of insight into some of the conversations that we have on our team.

Caroline Adams 01:01

I think that's so interesting, because it's about standards, and especially when you have high standards, where do you draw the line between excellence, and you know, an unattainable sort of excellence.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:14

That's Caroline Adams. She's a coach on our team here at Happen To Your Career. Remember her? You heard her before on episode 223, and then later, on another episode talking about perfectionism. And this conversation that you're going to hear between her and I is actually a debrief after that conversation that we recorded for the podcast about perfectionism. And we found it really interesting that, and ironic, that creating content about perfectionism was difficult, quite frankly, in fact, it caused some of our most interesting perfectionistic tendencies to come out and play. So we actually break that apart. And in doing so, if you listen a little bit later on, you get to hear some of the ways that we work through perfectionism. And we didn't actually intend this to be a podcast episode, when we first started recording it, when we hit the record button, actually, it was just a debrief on the end, and we happened to be recording it. And we realize that, you know what, it could actually probably be pretty beneficial to everybody else. Because within it, we shared with each other some of the really best practices that we use to overcome perfectionism, and also where rares up for each of us. Alright, so hopefully, you can take away a few different things that you can put in your own life. Or try out, find out if you can hold back those perfectionistic tendencies, or rather lean into them and recognize that they're there and be able to do great work and move yourself closer to where and how you want to be living anyways.

Tracy 03:12

I was sort of scattered from a day to day and week to week perspective, like, I didn't look at my week, every week and say, "I know exactly when I'm going to do. This, this and this activity, or have this, this and this meeting."

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:23

This is Tracy. She wanted to build her own business, but found herself stuck.

Tracy 03:28

The business had reached a certain level, but I also had some family issues at a very extent.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:33

You get to hear Tracy's story later on in the episode to learn how she uses coaching to help her finally figure out how to make everything fit.

Tracy 03:40

What you allowed me to do was create the career that I wanted to facilitate the lifestyle that mattered the most to me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:48

In the creation and making of this episode, how much... I guess I went into it, and even some of the elements of perfectionism that reared, like, in progress, in some ways for both me and you. So okay, so what are you thinking about this year? And what took place going into this episode? What was interesting for observation for you, Caroline?

Caroline Adams 04:13

Yeah, it's a great question. Because I had mentioned how, you know, both in prepping for this podcast and in writing a blog post about perfection, those were two times in the recent past that I've been most anxious about anything. I think I have to process a little bit more but I think a lot of it is about getting in my head and then being super aware of what was going on in my head because I knew I was in front of an audience talking about it. And so the pixels we were even talking about in terms of not being in your head and not making it mean anything more, I fell straight away into those. And you know, part of that is the creative process. You want to get stuff right, you want to be very pretty precise. And so you're probably a little bit helpfully critical, if that's a thing, but, constructively, critical because you want to make sure that you're getting your points across. But in really trying to inhabit the space that people are feeling when they deal with perfectionism, going back to that place of the times that I, myself, have struggled with perfectionism, it really... it kind of starts to take hold. So I thought that was really interesting to observe is, like, how do I talk about perfectionism and not worry about getting the talk exactly perfect?

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:39

Oh, I so love the both irony and meta-ness of that.

Caroline Adams 05:46

I just inceptions you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:48

Yeah, you did. Interestingly enough, on this particular one... So here's what I was trying to evaluate. Do I think I was not perfectionistee? Is that it? Or was I really not perfectionistee? I'm making up words now.

Caroline Adams 06:10

Meaning what? Tell me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:11

Meaning, so, like, I've caught myself three times this morning already being perfectionistee, I'm just gonna keep going with this word, that's not really a word. I was writing an email, and it needed to be done at a certain time this morning before our conversation. Otherwise, the next thing wasn't going to get done. And the next thing wasn't going to get done. And honestly, I felt very vehemently that it wasn't good enough, if you will. So I did end up taking more time and weighing something else. And, going back to do that and looking at it, and even thinking about it now, it probably did help some areas, honestly, to get it to a new standard. But most of what I was worried about really just wasn't that big of a deal.

Caroline Adams 07:03

Yeah, I think that's so interesting, because it's about standards, and especially when you have high standards, like you and I do and a lot of our students do, where do you draw the line between excellence, and you know, an unattainable sort of excellence. And there was something you said that was so interesting that I wanted to comment on– oh, the time. And, you know, a lot of gurus recommend timeboxing things, you know, and just, you know, committing yourself to getting that thing done in two hours or an hour or not spending more than 15 minutes on, you know, an email or whatever it is. And it's interesting when I've done that out of necessity, or writing or whatever, usually something creative, at the same time that I value the fact that, "okay, I still did something, isn't it amazing where I could have spent eight hours on this, and I actually got it done in two." And so I can recognize the value and that I do sometimes struggle with well, I know, even if it's incrementally better, you know, maybe it's worth that extra time. And so it really becomes, I mean, you could really overthink it, which I love to do, but it really becomes an interesting concept of– for the amount of time you spend on something, how much better you actually making it and and looking at, you know, the value of time? And you know, is that 5% better than I might be able to get it to in six hours, what is that going to mean for the people that I'm writing for? Like, well, they value that? Well, I value that and now I've lost my six hours that I don't have to spend on writing perhaps another 75% okay blog posts. So it's a really interesting concept and where do you draw the line between something that is excellent, and meets a certain standard versus kind of tipping over into, well, it's never going to be completely done.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:09

Yeah. What is it... the theory of diminishing return? What was that called? Yeah, I think it's that. But...

Caroline Adams 09:18

Which I built a career on...

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:20

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Caroline Adams 09:22

It keeps tweaking around the edges, and I'm into something that's not going anywhere.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:31

But I think, you know, that's kind of a perfect illustration in some ways, because the theory of diminishing returns, I think, is useless without knowing what you're trying to accomplish. Like if you don't know that knowing what's important to you or knowing what what you're trying to accomplish, then you don't know whether you're getting diminishing returns because if it's more important to, I don't know what's..., well, even that email that I was talking about this morning, if it is more important to get that email because that satisfied a bigger goal, and to make that perfect, then really, I also believe, and I've seen lots and lots of evidence that, you know, when you're talking about things like mastery or whatever, then it is important to go that extra area to get it a tiny percent better in some ways. But not, if that doesn't really have the type of impact on the... if that doesn't really mean anything for the larger impact for whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, whether that be, you know, making the career change, or whether that be, I don't know, in our case, we're trying to reach more people to be able to teach them how this stuff really works. Right? And does that email do anything for that? And I think that becomes the question. So, I think that the theory of diminishing returns has to have the prerequisite of understanding what you really want to achieve, accomplish whatever.

Caroline Adams 11:02

I think that's totally right. And back to the idea of awareness and understand, you know, getting curious about why this is showing up and why you're feeling this way. And so, is it about one email? Or is it every email that you're treating that way? And that's one way I see it showing up with people that we work with, you know, when they're still in that job, a lot of them are just working insane hours, and just exhausted. And just even from my own corporate experience, you know, talk about diminishing returns, like, I remember sitting in front of my computer screen, at the end of a 14 hour day, and I literally could not collect my thoughts. I just might, my brain was just on overdrive. And I would sit there and stare at the blank screen, trying to, like, waiting it out to see if I...

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:48

It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. Maybe.

Caroline Adams 11:52

Yeah, and it really does. Usually I was like, alright, I'm gonna go home and start it, you know, 5:30 tomorrow morning. But I think a lot of people take that approach. And especially when that approach of diminishing returns kind of throwing their energy away, basically, into something that's not what they want, which is one of the biggest pitfalls, I think, when people are making that career change. They say they want the career change, they start taking steps, but they're still giving 50 plus hours a week to their current job to where they don't want to be, well, that's diminishing returns, you know, make it your job to focus on the thing that you want to get to. So it's interesting, I'm glad you brought up diminishing returns, it's huge.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:35

That'd be fun, what you're talking about in terms of energy, and thinking about energy as a currency in some way or as a resource, as a finite resource, that'd be a fun episode to do, by the way, at some point. And I almost think that in some ways, thinking, although time is, I think, possibly the most valuable resource as a sub component of that, again, depending on what you're trying to accomplish, for me, in a lot of ways, like energy and dividing that specific amount of time is one of the most valuable things I've had to really, really really pay attention to. That has been a massive learning curve over the last six years for me. Then there's like different levels of it, too. Like every time I think I've got, kind of got this nail, then there's a new brand new level and a new dimension to some degree, to get better at that one teeny tiny area.

Caroline Adams 13:38

Yeah, 90% of what I'm doing is thinking about,as I build the business and think about how I spend my time on the business is, where's my energy going? You and I even talked about this when we first started talking about working together, because I'm silly, because I've burned out. So I know what it's like to push that to the limit. And it's so interesting what you say about having time versus having energy. When I went part time in my corporate job, and I had, so I worked at corporate just three days a week. So I technically had two weekdays and two weekend days to start business. So I had anywhere between two and four days that, technically, I had plenty of time to work on my business. I was so exhausted from those three days that I just needed that time to just get back to whole to just to be able to kind of recover from what had happened in corporate. And so I think that's 100% about energy. I had plenty of free time. And I think a lot of people have this, a lot of people complain about not having time. You have the time. You can find 20 minutes a day to do some. But the point is that, if I gave you that 20 minutes right now, you might not be able to connect with it because you're just depleted from whatever else is happening in your life. So I think it would be a fascinating conversation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:59

Yeah. What is... okay, so I'm curious, what is the number one most challenging area for you around energy right now? And I'll tell you mine, too, here in a second.

Caroline Adams 15:15

Good question. I think it's that I, gosh, you make me choose just one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:22

I know. I know.

Caroline Adams 15:24

I'm a very passionate person. And I am passionate about certain things. But I can also be passionate about what's in front of me. And I think that's a lot of what was behind why I stayed in certain positions for such a long time in my corporate career, because I would almost like to trick myself, because I was like, oh, once I get into it, this is pretty interesting. But I wouldn't have chosen that thing if you had given me 10 other options. Do you know what I mean? So I think it's about recognizing that passion, recognizing the capability and the energy behind it, and making sure that I'm focusing it on the things that are most re-energizing and fun, you know, reminding myself to have fun, actually, you want to be doing this, we talked about this before. That's the most important thing is, channeling those huge stories of, like, just flow and inspiration and all these cool things that happening, but channeling it into things that I really enjoy. Because I, like you, I think you've said this a couple of places, you have intense focus and so you can focus on one thing, but then other stuff drops out. I'm very much like that. So especially if, you know, it'd be one thing if I were channeling my energy into something that was like so amazing that it you know, I could just live off of it for years, but especially when I'm not putting that passion and energy into the right place, the fact that I'm ignoring other things, it just kind of becomes all consuming.

Tracy 17:01

I had reached a point in my business that I had gotten to largely through sweat equity, just dragging it out, doing the research by myself, figuring it out on my own.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:15

Tracey's business had plateaued and was keeping her from what mattered most to her. When she signed up for coaching with HTYC, she identified who she needed help from.

Tracy 17:26

The business I've reached a certain level, but I also had some family issues– I have a very sick parent. So in my mind, I wanted to create workflows and efficiencies, and extra revenue that would allow me to take the time with that parent that was really meaningful to me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:43

Tracy was able to set up her business for success and give her time with her loved ones.

Tracy 17:49

And I had reached a point where I knew that I wanted some more professional help. And particularly I wanted help from somebody whose life I admired and whose business I admired. Our work together really helped me systematize, you took all the risk away, you took all the fear away. And from that point on, you know, I was really diligent in using our time really well and making sure that we got the most out of it, but so were you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:11

Congratulations to Tracy on creating a business and a life that works for her. If you want to find out how to do exactly the same thing, create a business and build it so that it suits your life and lifestyle, and it also lights you up and gives you purpose at the same time. Well, turns out, we can help. Find out how coaching can help you do that step by step. Go over to happentoyourcareer.com and click on career coaching to apply or you can text MYCOACH, that's MYCOACH to 44222. Pause right now, and we'll send over the application. Just text MYCOACH to 44222.

Tracy 18:49

The fact that I got to spend an incredible guilt free amount of time with a sick and dying parent who's no longer here is priceless.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:01

Okay, so here's mine. I was thinking about this a little bit as you were telling me about yours, too. And I think the biggest challenge for me right now is duplicating the pockets of energy consistently. And what has a tendency to happen, because I've realized that if, one, if I have different levels of energy at times that I don't anticipate, a lot of the times my schedule gets planned months in advance. So like right now we're planning stuff well into the end of 2018 and everything along those lines. So if my energy pockets, that for what I anticipate, are not aligned with getting different pieces done within timelines, then it throws everything else off in a huge, huge way. So the last two days, for example, have been batched recording episodes for many months in advance at this point. And if I come into those conversations not energized, or if I don't get something else done, and we have to reschedule some of those, because it's more important than those podcast episodes, then it has a tendency to have this massive snowball effect. And because we're so far scheduled out in a lot of ways, then it is... sometimes I'll feel it for over a month. So it dovetails back to, how do I... if I need to spend time, if I need to produce a particular result, and let's say for example, I need to write some content, and we need that content to be not just, I don't know, trailer content, but we need it to be very, very good and produce a particular result, or help people in this particular way or whatever else, and I cannot show up with the amount of energy during that time, then I will literally feel the impacts of that for weeks where things get shifted around. And then all of a sudden I'm doing things when it doesn't fit for those different levels of energy, and then that in itself creates a snowball effect, too. That is my biggest challenge is– really making sure that all of the elements, like, what food am I eating, you know, the day before? Am I getting to bed on time? Is there something that pops up, you know, at school that I need to have a conversation about with the kids? Or just all of those elements and then being able to plan for the unexpected, so that it doesn't get... so it doesn't derail everything. That's my biggest challenge right now in the impact of energy.

Caroline Adams 21:59

That's what I was... two follow up questions. So one is, do you schedule downtime now knowing that, you know, this is something you need to watch out for? And do you ever change, like, call an audible and change your schedule? Like when you realize, "oh, gosh, I just do not have the energy for this." Or, "it's too much" do you mix it up? Or do you just kind of let it run its course and then recover after that?

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:22

It depends. There have been times where, you know, I... So what I always try and do and it doesn't always work, sometimes I'm so in the thick of it, where I fail to pull myself out of it for a couple minutes to be able to look at the bigger picture. So there absolutely have been those types of times, which then ends up causing some of that snowball type effect, too, if I fail to do that for, you know, a particular time period. But when I do, then yeah, absolutely. I look at, "Okay, is it going to be more valuable to, I don't know, take a nap or go for a walk?" Or, like, a lot of times, I'll do like five or seven minute workouts, just to be able to get blood flowing or something along those lines, like, I have kettlebells in the next room over there. And we'll go do kettlebell swings or something, or a whole bunch of push ups or burpees or something like that for five minutes. But I don't always do that. Sometimes I convince myself, that's not a good idea. I just don't have time for it. And that's what it feels like in my head, even though it would have been better to call that audible as you said. So when I do, it usually ends up better and can usually avoid it. And sometimes I don't, but I like to be even more proactive and figure out how do I put together the right combination of the puzzle so that, as I show up, then it is the right thing for the right time and the right level of energy and the right type of energy too.

Caroline Adams 23:56

Yeah, I totally get that. I really try to do that too. I think what throws it off is creativity, during that creativity. You know, like the, I will get the inspirations and they usually comment, like, totally the point at which I can't do anything with them, and, or because I've scheduled stuff. Like sometimes I'll find myself making excuses like, "Well, no, this is not your writing time." You know, so, I think that's something I'm still trying to work through, but between the structure of writing at certain times of the day and certain days and just building that habit versus, you know, being open to when those pieces of inspiration comment. I think the other thing, too, that I find hard to do, it was interesting, you're talking about, you know, just doing something for a few minutes. I struggle with that concept. Like once when I would use to motivate myself to go to the gym, I would say, "Okay, just go for 50 minutes." And then, you know, it's an hour and a half or whatever. Never, always knowing that once I got there, I wouldn't leave after 50 minutes or whatever. And, you know, same thing with writing. And I think if I could, so I'm not very good at just doing the thing for 50 minutes, and I think I know that. So I think well, "Caroline, you're just lying to yourself. It's going to be an hour and a half, it's going to be all day." So I just don't start. Whereas especially with the writing, if I would just take the 50 minutes, write down the idea, get the nugget there that I could pick up later, I think it would serve me a lot better. But for some, I think it's that same thing that enables me to focus, kind of works against me in that respect, because I know that I'm going to focus on it if I sit down to do it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:49

I have to minimize a lot of barriers in order to make that stuff work. So like even for[ taking a few minutes, and everything like that, I built a lot of that into my life in really weird ways. Like I wear stretchy jeans, like, that is what I... I know that sounds weird. And I guess I don't really care if it does, because I love them. But you know, I buy the certain brand Express clothing they make, like really stretchy jeans for guys. So, like, it's no big deal. It's not like, well, I'm in my nice clothes, or whatever, and they don't bend that way. So I can just, like, go throw some kettlebells for a couple of minutes or whatever. But it's just weird things like that. I've realized mentally stop me that I've had to, one, recognize, which sometimes is the hardest part. And then two, like, actually do find weird solutions for them in a lot of ways.

Caroline Adams 26:43

Yeah, it's kind of like the opposite. I don't know if you've heard, I think it's Brendon Burchard. He talks about transitions. Have you heard him talk about this?

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:51

I haven't. I know a lot of people that are huge fans of Brendon, and I just... I don't know him. And I'm not really super familiar with his work.

Caroline Adams 26:58

I'm not either, but I've read like 15 pages of his book. So I feel that to be able to talk about it. But at the concept I liked, there's a twist. It's not exactly what you said. But he talks about kind of moving from one activity from another and making sure that you take the time to acknowledge the fact. So I think a really good examples, like, when you're moving from family time to work time or work time to family time. And if you don't kind of stop and tell yourself, "Okay, I'm finishing this and I'm moving into the family", you have the tendency to kind of take those... you take that same energy into what it is or whatever it is that you're doing. That's often, you know, to detrimental results. Yeah. And so what made me think of that was the fact that it's kind of you've ease those transitions, but in a way that works. It's not about, you've made them more fluid, I guess is what I'm trying to say is, like, you're prepared at any time to like, do some kettlebell exercises, or whatever. And so it's less about, you know, "Okay, now I'm doing this. Now, I'm doing this other thing." And it's more about, I can seamlessly kind of move between these different activities anyway. That's what my mind went.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:22

I never heard anybody put it this way. But in my mind, I always think about physics and minimizing friction, like, that's the way it works for me. It's like, how do I minimize the friction of what is causing me not to do something? And how do I remove that out so that, you know, inertia just doesn't get stopped? Or whatever else along those lines. And that's what it always makes me think of, and that's how I relate the concept. It's like, well, what's stopping me? What's producing the drag? What's the, I don't know, whatever analogy. And in a lot of ways, it's things that the small things that irritate me or small things that, I don't know, are causing me to rethink things like just getting rid of those in one capacity or another is I found the biggest challenge.

Caroline Adams 29:09

Yeah, I think about that a lot. Actually, I think at my core, I'm a very lazy person.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:14

Me too. Yeah.

Caroline Adams 29:19

And it's interesting, the word fun has started like, I never would have put fun at the top of my values even probably two years ago. And I think once I finally started stepping into fully embracing, you know, what I wanted to do in my career, and then getting at it and bringing that same like, grinding energy that drove me so much in my corporate career and saying, "I don't want to... you know I like this. This is the thing I want to protect. I don't want to bring that same energy. Like, how do I make this fun?" Is the question I asked myself all the time. And a lot of times, even if it's not fun, just even stopping to ask that question can kind of open some things up and just take a bit of the pressure. But I agree. It's so interesting how I can be derailed, like, how at 11 o'clock, one night, I can be so pumped and ready to get writing the next morning. And by the time the next morning rolls around, you know, five minutes after I get up, I'm already starting to talk myself out of it or losing that momentum. I just find that sort of thing. That we... hang on, you've been awake for five minutes in between. We really wanted to do something. And now when you're dreading it, like it's the worst thing in the world. What the heck happened?

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:38

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that. If you want more behind the scenes at Happen To Your Career, drop us an email and let us know. We've been experimenting with a lot of different types of content lately, because we want to continue to improve so that we can put the most useful and at best possible and even most entertaining things out there for you in the world. So drop us a note at hello@happentoyourcareer.com and let us know if that's something that you enjoyed or if you never want to hear it again. We would absolutely love the feedback. However, we've got so much more coming up for you next week, right here on Happen To Your Career. We have a guest who had an extraordinary journey and even an extraordinarily long journey, but found not only a new role that was an amazing fit for her, but also a brand new side business of her very own.

Michal Balass 31:34

I got to that point. And I didn't want to give it up. But the thing is, is that I didn't want that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:44

That's Michal. And next week, you get to hear her entire amazing story and transformation right here on Happen To Your Career. We'll see you then. Until then, I am out. Adios.

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I Want to Create a Life for Myself Not Just a Job

by

Think back to the day of your high school graduation.

Remember the heat. Remember the squirming. Remember the excitement to get out of that place, and move on to something better.

But, for a second think back to the speeches that day. Whether it was your Principal or your Valedictorian (or maybe you!), they all had one thing in common. Each person imparted a piece of wisdom (or warnings) to you and your fellow 18-year-old graduates.

They told you: ‘Remember, it’s about the journey, not the destination.’

If you’re anything like me, that phrase went in one ear and out the other. You just finished the longest journey of your life: high school. And now, you were jumping out of your seat, although a bit nervous about the unknown, for whatever was to come next.

But then…you got there.

You arrived at that place–any adult milestone really (college, first job, moving to a new city), and this fearful, uneasy thought might have crept into your mind. You try to push it away, but it always comes back: “There must be something else out there.”

So, you continue to search. New job, new city. New friends, new relationships.

But it somehow, each step you take still ends up feeling the same.

ARE YOU CONSTANTLY SEARCHING FOR FULFILLMENT?

If we are always looking for external milestones, like a new job title or pay increase, without first addressing the internal stuff, we’ll always be on the hunt.

We’ll constantly be looking for that feeling, and asking ourselves that question: “Is this it?”

During this week’s podcast episode, I dug deep with Kelly, a Career Change Bootcamp graduate and a woman who went through a radical mindset shift a couple of months ago.

She was in the same exact place. She had all of the external things: a great job at Linkedin, an awesome apartment in the Big Apple, a savings account that most of us could only imagine…but she still wasn’t happy. From the outside, it looked like she had everything.

But on the inside, she was struggling to answer those big life questions: What does it mean to lead a meaningful, purposeful life?

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A BURN OUT TO REALIZE YOU NEED A RADICAL MINDSET SHIFT

Kelly, didn’t begin looking for those answers until she changed her life completely.

After working at as a sales manager at Linkedin for about two years, she realized that her vision of success became skewed…and she wasn’t actually enjoying the journey.

I was in a role that wasn’t natural to me. I was doing tasks and activities that didn’t come naturally and I think that is where the burn out came. It’s because I was exhausted. When you force yourself it’s like fitting a square peg in a round hole. You can’t maintain that.

Even though She had worked in sales before her role at LinkedIn, and loved her clients she was constantly chasing these external validators of success. Her life at the time was determined by how many deals she could close, and what her bonus would be at the end of the year.

So, she pasted on that fake smile and kept pushing herself to reach her goals…until one day she just couldn’t.

She walked into work and told her boss she was quitting that day.

She didn’t have a plan, but she knew that she needed to do some soul-searching before she could begin to figure it out.

“I NEEDED TO CREATE A LIFE FOR MYSELF, NOT JUST FIND A JOB”

The perfectionism in my life drove me to success and to crumble. I lacked basic self love. That was a huge part of my life as crazy as it sounds that I never developed.

In the next phase of her life, she focused on understanding her life’s purpose.

But, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Because for a long time, she had this sense that her “purpose” would just “fall from the sky.”

…Ever feel that way?

Over time, she realized that finding your purpose in life really comes back to this idea of self-love. She needed respect herself enough to challenge those ideas of what she was “supposed” to be. Upon that assessment, she realized that she went into sales after college because that’s all she had known: her father was a successful salesman, and those surrounding her told her that she would be really good at it, too.

Once she began to challenge those ideas of “success” she was able to assess what was most important to her in life–relationships with family and friends, where she lived, what she was doing each day, the people she worked with–or all of the above?

Asking herself these tough questions, and working through the answers with her career coach, Lisa Lewis, ultimately landed her in a role, a company, and a city that enabled her to build a life.

THE 10 QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR PAST THAT WILL LEAD TO YOUR FUTURE

At certain points in our lives, it’s important to take stock of our past in order to inform our future.

During her “soul-searching” process, she assessed the major aspects of her life so that she could get insight into what she wanted in this next phase. We often think that “you can’t change the past,” but time and time again we’ve seen that looking backwards helps us make better decisions for our future.

If you’re at the beginning stages of assessing what it means to create a purposeful life, take some time to answer the following 10 questions. We’ve also created a handy worksheet so that you can always refer back to these answers.

HOW WILL YOU CREATE A PURPOSEFUL, MEANINGFUL LIFE?

Kelly’s journey was just that: a journey. And one that is still evolving, still growing, still shifting.

Because, through this soul searching process, Kelly, found meaning in that age-old phrase, “Enjoy the journey, not the destination.”

So, no matter where you are in life right now–whether you’re sitting in those high school graduation seats or sitting behind a desk at a job that you despise…just know that this is part of your journey, too.

Understanding your life’s purpose takes work, and a whole lot of self-love. And, maybe an extra eye or two. Coaches, friends and family are able to connect dots that sometimes you just can’t see in your own life.

So, like she says–don’t take yourself too seriously. And, begin to allow yourself to see life for what it is: a journey that changes and evolves with each passing day!

Don’t take yourself too seriously: “One thing I could have a conversation about is I think for a lot of people having a job and figuring out your life is very serious business that affects you day to day but one thing that helped me was I reframed and restructured what I thought about life. I think of it now as one big game. Everything was life and death to me and so pressure on myself. I’m sure listeners can relate. Make life a game. Few things are life and death. Have fun with it. If you have a crappy interview laugh about it and ask what could I have done. Stay in learning.

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Kelly 00:03
They really didn't have a lot of, you know, processes in place. And it was very, you know, just kind of shoot from the hip. I mean, here's we're continuing, they didn't have anything really defined, it was very difficult to do business. I didn't even have basic resources that I needed to do my job. We were constantly, you know, having management changes, and people are constantly leaving a lot of turnover. And that's completely normal for organization.

Introduction 00:30
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:54
This is Scott Anthony Barlow, and you are listening to Happen To Your Career. This is the show that helps you figure out what work fits you by exploring other stories, we get to bring on all kinds of experts like Mark Sieverkropp, who helps people stop waiting for permission, and allows them to move forward and take action. And other people that have pretty amazing stories like Ace Chapman, who buys and sells businesses so he can live the lifestyle that he wants to. But all of these people, they're just like you, but they've already gone from where they are to what they really want to be doing. Today's guest, it's Kelly.

Kelly 01:30
I've actually only been in the role for about 9 days now. Still very, very new but I do have a very strong sense of what I will be doing. And I've already actually, you know, kind of hit the ground running, you know, with some of my responsibilities. But I am a leadership recruiter at Indeed down in our Austin headquarters office. And so I'm essentially responsible for helping to source and bring on executive leadership internally for the organization.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:02
We really get deep into the whole professional development piece and it's not a negative, a selfish or a bad thing. But instead, to really make it a great thing in your life, you'll have to learn how to stand firm in your own growth process, so that you can get the results that you're seeking, we'll show you what we mean. And then learn what feel moments are, and how having more of them can lead to more life fulfillment along the way. And we talk about how to analyze your past jobs, your past positions to determine what you like and what you don't like, so that you can start crafting your new career path, and what specifically to look for, that you might not already know. Take a listen for that, it's subtle. And the funny thing about this whole career thing and thinking about the future is sometimes your vision for the future can be fuzzy based on a skewed sense of success. And that's absolutely what was going on, reevaluating how you define success can lead to some pretty huge breakthroughs.

Kelly 03:02
I'll really start you know, after graduating from college, this was back in 2010, I went to American University in Washington DC. And really, like most college graduates, had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated from college. But my father was a successful sales guy. And I kind of displayed a lot of, I think the attributes, you know, to be successful in sales, I, you know, was a, you know, college soccer player, I had gone through some military training. I was just, you know, very much I think in tune with like the type of person I am very A type personality, I love working with people, everything like that. So I was actually recruited out of college at a job fair for W.W Grainger, if you're familiar with that, industrial supply space, and they were having a new, you know, pilot program for new college graduates that they were running to get people out in field sales. So I was an outside sales rep for them, really only lasted three months, it was not a successful program, didn't care for it, but definitely learned a lot that was kind of my first step in recognizing what I didn't want in my career, which a was outside sales, I didn't enjoy being in a vehicle, driving around to different prospects, you know, throughout the day. I knew I wanted to kind of be in an office and I just felt like I was wasting a lot of time in that regard. So I left that job as many other people they actually close the program down. And I took a couple of months and then I went into technical recruiting. And I started to work for a small boutique, IT staffing, consulting firm in the DC area and started doing some you know, technical recruiting for them, kind of learning what recruiting was all about. I thought it was kind of a good next step and then I moved into more of an account manager role with them. So that was my first kind of my entry back into sales in terms of acquiring clients to help staff roles for and I worked there for a number of years, moved up in the company was very successful. It was small enough where I had great mentorship of just learning the ropes and having that very small, I wouldn't say startup, but small company, you know, experience. So I learned a lot through that. And then I kind of outgrew that role. There wasn't any other, you know, place for me to move up in that company. So during my time at the company, we had adopted LinkedIn, as use of, you know, recruiter tools. And I fell in love with LinkedIn, it changed the way I did business, it changed the way I recruited. So I called LinkedIn up and I said, or I think I sent emails via LinkedIn. I said...

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:31
That seems appropriate, doesn't it?

Kelly 05:34
It does, yeah, crazy, like strategic about how I did everything. But I was just, I was very passionate about the product. And I think that's kind of where my mind was. And I was like, I would love to share, you know, my experience working, you know, with LinkedIn and help other small businesses and clients do the same. So we ended call up, got the interview, got the job, ended up moving up to New York, for a sales role in which I work with small to medium sized businesses, and help them to build out their branding, utilize the network on a lot of back end solutions. So it was more of an account manager role there for three years. And this is kind of when everything came to head. That is... that propelled me to where I am now is, you know, that role was very, very fulfilling, for me, I think, and it was very difficult to be honest, to get into a role like that, because I was moving from a very unstructured, small organization into, you know, I know, LinkedIn was still very startup-y, but was a much broader, more well defined and structured place. And I think I had trouble adjusting.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:35
People understand what that's like, because we get a lot of questions about the differences between, well, those, I would say those are almost on two different ends of a spectrum in some ways. So what was one, like compared to the other?

Kelly 06:50
Yeah, I think, you know, the biggest glaring difference was the first organization that I worked for, and I don't want to make this sound like the negative connotation of the company, but it just wasn't a very professional environment. What I mean, by that is, you know, they really didn't have a lot of, you know, processes in place. And it was very, you know, just kind of shoot from the hip. I mean, here's we're continuing, they didn't have anything really defined, it was very difficult to do business, I didn't even have basic resources that I needed to do my job. We were constantly, you know, having management changes, and people were constantly leaving a lot of turnover. And that's completely normal for organization. Going to LinkedIn, it was much more sophisticated. Obviously, it was a much more reputable company, which helped a lot, you know, it always doesn't sales when people you call them up, and they actually know who you are.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:40
I think that I know you. I've heard of you. You're amazing! Yeah.

Kelly 07:46
And there's positives and negatives that too, you know, I got a lot of, you know, clients who didn't have positive experiences LinkedIn. But in that event, you know, then going into that environment and I think, you know, the people and the quality of people in an organization LinkedIn was top tier, I mean, I worked with some of the smartest, most talented, diverse, just fun and good human beings, like in that organization, I think, then, you know, anywhere else in my life that I met, and, you know, going in there, and having a very structured sales organization, it was difficult for me to adapt, because I never, you know, been in that before. And it really, in all honesty, my first year was a huge growing year for me, you know, I didn't do well in terms of meeting quotas, and I struggled a lot. And then, you know, basically, second year came around, I got a new manager, and I sat down with her, and I said, we really need to roadmap this out to make sure that I'm successful this year. Now, I kind of have the hang of things. So that, you know, adjustment in transition period was challenging, but I worked through that. And I think, you know, for anybody who goes through that, I think you need to just give yourself time and be patient and utilize resources, you know, in order to, you know, let yourself go through that process, because I don't think there's a magic answer for that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:56
I wish there was a magic answer for that. It would be an awful lot easier. But I think that there's a lot of growth that can come through that type of thing, too. And that would be... if you want to call that a silver lining. For some people, they thrive in those types of situations. Other people don't think either way is good nor bad, necessarily. But I completely understand what you mean. So what happened from there, then?

Kelly 09:19
Yeah, so going into my second sales here, which starts in January, this was 2015, I did get a new manager. And things were kind of shifting in the organization. We were doing some organizational changes in terms of how sales people were working with the customer success people. So I actually had a gentleman who I worked with, who helped me with a lot of the things that I you know, didn't necessarily want to spend the time doing with my clients and I just wanted to be able to work with my clients and he did a lot of the, you know, other stuff. And so I went through that and I was so determined that year to be successful, and I set benchmarks for myself and goals, and I just kind of got this, I don't know how do you explain it, but it was this newfound confidence. And I think, you know, a lot of it was because I made sure I let my manager know exactly what I want to accomplish. And I really utilized her, I utilized other people in the organization, and I just kind of like sprung for it and said, you know, I'm gonna do the very best I can do. And, you know, by, you know, the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, you know, I was the top salesperson in that office, I was winning awards, never thought I would win, I was, you know, selling products and deals that I never thought I would close. And it was like, the most successful year of my career I made, you know, more money than I ever thought I could make. I mean, just all the way across the board. It was like successful just working with my clients and finding new ways. And so, you know, I kind of came out of the end of that year, you know, very, very satisfied, but I will be honest with you, I think that, that success got, like, got to my head, and it almost became like my identity, like I almost turned into a workaholic that year because I wanted so badly to be successful in that role that it consumed me. And I realized by the end of that December, that although I had gotten where I wanted to go wise and within the company, and you know, financially, that was kind of when I had this aha moment when everything was gonna change for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:18
What did you... it sounds like, when you have that aha moment, first of all, I'm super curious about what that aha moment is. But even before we get to that, what was causing you to want all of those things in terms of how you were measuring success for that particular year for yourself? Looking back, what do you think that was?

Kelly 11:42
Yeah, that's a great question, Scott. And to be completely frank with you, I think my idea of success was completely skewed. And I think that this idea of what I always thought success should look like, really, down deep wasn't what was making me happy, I think I was looking a lot of external things like the financials and the accolades and the recognition. And, you know, kind of, I think, like what society places as like an overly successful person in business, as opposed to internally, I could not feel that like, couldn't have felt less successful in my own mind, despite all success that I had.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:16
Interesting. So then, what was that aha moment then, describe that for me? And what did you feel like was really missing out of that societal definition of success?

Kelly 12:27
Yeah. So I'll never forget it was late in December, it was after I had hit my annual quota at LinkedIn, I'll never forget coming back to my apartment, I was standing in my bedroom in my apartment in New York, it was the end of the year. And it was like, kind of like, "Okay, it's all over now. I like it." And then I remember receiving, like my final paycheck from LinkedIn. And, you know, I can't even tell you night and day, like the amount of money I was previously making to that, you know, that's kind of a big step in your career, when you kind of see the numbers affect it. And you know, at that time, I think, you know, I wanted to be very financially sound. So the money was very big for me. And I remember looking at that paycheck, and I remember, I said to myself out loud, like, "Is this it? Is that all there is?" And that was this moment where like, I knew that something wasn't right. And that was like, I should be happy, I should be fulfilled. But what I realized was that I was really going for the end result. And I didn't enjoy the process at all. And when I say don't enjoy the process, like yesterday, enjoy working with my clients. Yes, I did. But you know, really, I was all driven by what that end result was. And I was waiting for the end of the year. And that's what drove me, it was so hard. It's like, I couldn't wait to just get to the end of the year for it all to be over. As opposed to just enjoying the day to day and learning and growing and, you know, actually, like embracing the role, and it sounds very, you know, weird, and it's not to say I didn't, you know, enjoy the role but I just... I focused on the wrong things. And that's really when it like came to me, and I said, like, if this is all there is and I, you know, did this, this and this and said, something's missing, like I need to figure this out. This shouldn't be right, I should be feeling happy and joyous and kind of looking back on my achievements and, you know, feeling fulfilled. And that was not the case.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:09
So that is super interesting in breaking apart some of the pieces of what creates that fulfillment and the "enjoying the journey" because I think everybody's heard that saying in some fashion or another, and most of us, I found don't necessarily fully understand what it means. And to be totally completely fair, it's only in the last five years that I have really even started to feel comfortable in joining the journey, if you will. So, from your perspective, then what do you think that, that looks like for you to enjoy the journey? Either, you know, as you started to realize that and as you started to become aware of that, and then going forward, what do you anticipate that, that will be like? And help define that a little bit for us from your perspective, too, because it's hard to wrap your head around, I think.

Kelly 15:07
It is. It's a very difficult, you know, process. And I think especially in this day and age, everything is very results and performance boring, especially, you know, in a sales role, which is why I think I kind of got so lost. But, you know, as I've taken a step back, you know, from that and really, you know, evaluated everything in my life, I think, you know, one of the things I have realized is we do, we spend so much time in process. Most of life is very little of it, is the actual end result. So if you're not enjoying the process, like, you know, you're probably not going to be overly fulfilled, and you're going to struggle a lot. And that's what I realized. So what I recognized was moving forward, not just in a job, but really in every area of my life. Because I do this in other areas in relationships, and, you know, other tasks and, you know, goals that I have for myself, I realized, you know, take a step back, and like, what do you enjoy doing? And that's really what I extrapolated everything in terms of a job or, you know, where do I love to spend my time? Like, what do I start thinking about, you know, on a, you know, when I start daydreaming and, you know, if I started to kind of ask those questions, you know, what would I do if I didn't have to work another day in my life, and you start asking the questions that really hone in on purpose and fulfillment and the natural things that come to you, as opposed to, you know, kind of trying to force yourself and that's what I was doing. I was almost like, in a role that wasn't very natural to me, I was doing a lot of tasks and activities that, you know, just didn't come naturally to me. And that's where I think the burnout came out, the crash and burn that I eventually had in the next quarter. And, you know, it's because I was exhausted and when you, you know, force yourself it's like fitting a square peg into a round hole. I mean, you can't maintain that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:51
Yeah, yeah. So what were some of those things for you that were the small pieces that you mentioned, that you really did love that you started paying attention to? And realizing, hey, this is where I need to spend more of my time versus forcing myself into this slot, if you will.

Kelly 17:08
Right. Yeah, I think one of the key things for me is, I realized in that sales role at LinkedIn, that I loved working with people, and I will say I am naturally I'm an INFJ, if that means anything to anybody, I'm naturally very introverted, but when like I can turn it on, but it's got to be for small bouts of time. So I'm much more of a sprinter than a marathoner. So I can, you know, talk to somebody, have a great deep conversation, and then I need to kind of sit back and reflect on it. In a sales role at LinkedIn, I am constantly pounding phones all day long, you know, constantly giving client presentations, I realized that that was not the right type of role for me. So moving forward, what I discovered was, I would love to still be in a role where I am, you know, talking with people and meeting with people. And it's very people focus as opposed to product focused where, you know, I'm sitting there trying to solve business problems, I want to solve people problems. And that's kind of where, and that may sound a little bit funny, but that's kind of where the difference between sales and recruiting came in why I think I went back to recruiting because I was talking to people about real life things, as opposed to putting together proposals for, you know, for a product or a service that I was trying to sell.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:20
That's really interesting, particularly because of that people component. And when it comes to what creates meaningful work for each of us, there really, honestly, is a little bit different definition because we all want to help people in some way. But there can be completely different ways that you versus I versus the next person perceive that we are helping people. And it sounds like for you, it has to be much more direct than maybe the next person.

Kelly 18:54
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think also, you know, this element within me that I've got to have deep conversation, I was made up of 200 to 250 clients at LinkedIn. And I wasn't able to get really deep with them, if you can imagine because of that. So I enjoyed having deeper conversations with clients. And I realized that because I did develop a few. And that's something that I'm looking forward to having more in a recruitment role, because you're really diving into that person's life and their career, you know, on an individual basis. I'm not trying to manage all the accounts.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:28
Absolutely. I can completely empathize, sympathize, I suppose, with that because that's one of the reasons why I love having these types of conversations. I have to in my life, have ongoing, deeper, meaningful conversations. I'm not the person who's incredibly excited about small talk, honestly, I get bored really quickly. That may seem selfish to some people, but that's part of what's the way that I'm wired and the way that I think. And so I can absolutely identify with that. Now, you had this realization and you know, you went to that, you got that paycheck moment, like we're talking about process versus end result, there was a whole year of process and one paycheck moment. And so after you had that, you had this aha moment, and started started thinking about this in a little bit different way felt like something was missing. At what point did you start to take action on that? And how did that look for you?

Kelly 20:30
Yeah, I... pardon me, my phone's ringing here in the background. Well, I honestly could feel, you know, that this moment, you know, in all honesty, about, you know, half the year and even before I had this aha moment, I could kind of feel something coming on, because I knew in my heart that like, I just couldn't wait to get to the end of the year. But, you know, the first quarter went by, and it was about, probably, in April. So about four months later, I was sitting, I kind of had another moment... and I'm a pretty, I don't say, pretty rash person, but when I make up my mind to do something, I really do it. And I, you know, I don't play around with it. So I struggled, you know, in the first quarter of my results after, you know, kind of coming, staying on top, all the 2015, 2016 that first quarter was probably the worst quarter of my career, completely crashed, I was over it, I was burned out, couldn't do it. And I remember sitting in a client meeting in Boston, this was in like, late April, early May. And I remember just like looking out the window and I was like, "I'm done." Like, I didn't even care. And I said, "This isn't fair to my clients. This is apparent to me, like I should be, you know, really interested in, you know, solving problems for them." And I was just over it to be quite honest with you. And I just had this moment, I said, like, I can't, I was pretty dramatic. And I was like, I can't do this another day. And at that time, I was actually working with a performance coach, and you know, was telling him everything was going on. And this was a Thursday, and I flew back to New York from Boston on Thursday night, and I put some time on my managers calendar. And by noon that day, I told her, I was putting in my resignation, I said, "I'm done. I don't know where I'm going from here. You know, I don't really care. But I know that this isn't the place. And this isn't fair to anyone. And I wanted to do by the company by myself." So, you know, here, I was about to be jobless in New York City with, you know, high rent and, you know, didn't know where I was going in my life. But I think like, that's kind of a risk that you have to take in and my saying that, you know, "Everybody should go quit their job without anything else lined up?" No, I think I really just need to take a massive breather, I knew that financially, I was able to do what I was very fortunate for that. But I knew that I think the biggest step for me was just getting out of my current situation, so I could realign myself, if that makes sense. I couldn't do it. If I continued in this role, the role was just pulling way too much energy and time for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:49
Yeah, that completely makes sense. I've been working on, I don't know, let's call it a theory for the moment. Over the last period of time, just as we've encountered and worked with so many different types of personalities, it really seems there is a particular type that, how do I say it, and I fall into this group too, so maybe that is selfishly why I'm interested in it. But where once you reach that moment, whatever it is, and maybe not even associated with burnout, but where... you almost can't force yourself to do something, once you have that realization, you almost cannot force yourself to keep going. Otherwise, the work just drastically be grades, or all of these other things that are desirable to that type person, don't happen. And I'm curious, your thoughts on that? And if that is what you've really... have you seen that for yourself in other places, too? Or was it really just that particular time or that moment?

Kelly 23:50
I think in a lot of areas of my life that's, like how it's been for me. And so, you know, I actually agree, I think with, you know, with kind of your theory, you know, in terms of that, I think everybody just handles it very differently. And I think it is very dependent on the personality of the person. And I think there's so many other elements involved, like I was a single person, I didn't have any constraints, I think if you have family, or you're married, or you have to take in children, you could say, it's a very difficult thing to do, you don't necessarily have the freedom and a luxury to be able to do that. And I, you know, really recognize that and, you know, I'm blessed that I wasn't, you know, in that situation, but for people who, you know, are in that situation, I think they have to be a little bit, you know, more careful and really consider a lot more things which could make it a little more complicated, which, as you and I both know, I think why a lot of people stay in roles that they know that they aren't right for companies or whatever in their life, you know, because people involved. So, yeah, I absolutely kind of agree with that theory. And I just, I think it's, you know, dependent upon other factors in your life as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:54
Absolutely. So, okay, you had this realization, you started... you ended up leaving the role. And now you're jobless in New York City. And fortunately you have, from all that work and burnout and everything, you had some money to be able to show for it. Wasn't necessarily what you wanted but it enabled you to be able to take that type of step, which sounds like was right for you. And what happened from there?

Kelly 25:26
Yeah, so to be completely honest with you, it was a tough... I stayed in New York for six months later, my lease didn't end until November. So I was kind of stuck there. But I did not do a single thing really job related in that next six months, you know, I think the first couple of weeks after LinkedIn, I just kind of went out, had fun, you know, I started to date a new guys. So that was a great distraction. But I, you know, coming from that crash and burned, I don't want to make it sound like, you know like, "peace I'm out" like, I'm excited about my life. Dropped the mic, you know. It was a struggle for me. I mean, there was some depression that sit in and then a lot of doubt, and I think, you know, I basically self sabotage in that role. And I walked myself out of that role, I think, because I knew that if my performance continued to decrease as it was it, I was going to be let go and I think that scared me. And I think I was basically just giving myself an out there too. But I really struggled with, and I think all of these things built up is, I had a lot of inner work to do on myself. And I had a lot of self doubt. I beat myself up constantly. I mean, the perfectionism in my life is what drove me to success. But it also, you know, drove me to crumble where I was, I think I lacked basic self love, you know, I think, like, that was a huge part, as crazy as that sounds, you know, a part of my life that I never really developed, I was always still results and my results were basically... they basically determined my self worth and my value. And I think, you know, when you're in a high performing role like that, it's easy for that to happen. So basically, after leaving LinkedIn, I felt like I was nothing. And I, you know, you start to have these thoughts, like, you know, I'm a piece of crap, and you know, anybody ever hire me again, you know, I was gonna get fired anyways, all of that work in 2015, it was just a, you know, a fluke, I kind of had some imposter syndrome going on there. So, you know, you really start to doubt and, you know, I knew that as long as I was in that mindset, I wasn't going anywhere fast. And as quickly as it would be to run out and get another job, I knew that these problems, were just gonna follow me and it didn't matter. So I really, you know, spent the next six months trying to work through this stuff, I was still working with my peak performance coach talking everyday to him. And to be honest with you, like I was just still struggling. I mean, I struggled hard for six months. And then after my lease was up, I ended up just saying goodbye to New York, and I said, "Listen, I'm not going to pay another year of this rent. I'm moving back home to St. Louis, I'm going to just take some time and figure things out for a couple of months" which turned out to be a year, not a couple of months.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:04
You moved back to St. Louis, which the money why sounds amazing. But your family's there too, right? If I recall.

Kelly 28:11
Here, I actually ended up coming back and living in my parents house which was interesting, but it was... I was very blessed that they let me and I think originally it was only because I was going to be here for a couple of months. It didn't make sense to go out and, you know, get an apartment. But it turned out to be a year long that I was here. And that was you know, kind of crazy. I kind of felt like, you know, I was like that 30 year old living with mom and dad still. So it was like, kind of hard for me. But I mean, you coming back to St. Louis and you know, this whole year that I took, you know, it still took a lot of time it. And to be honest, in that year that I came back to St. Louis, it wasn't until the last maybe three months that I even started looking for a job. So majority of my time was not looking for a job. It was doing personal development stuff, and really working to get over these hurdles, that I knew would do me much better in the long term, you know. And I would constantly be getting from people, you know, do you have a job yet? You know, in my mind, I'm not even looking for a job, you know, I can go out and get a job tomorrow. That's not the problem. But all the work that I was doing was gonna propel me into finding the next right job for me, you know, I was looking at it very holistically in terms of creating a life plan. And Lisa and I, that's where I think she came in and was very helpful is, you know, when you talk about getting a job, that doesn't sound, you know, that fulfilling alone, but what about creating a life, right?That sounds a lot more compelling to people. So I needed to find a compelling enough reason to kind of create this life for myself, like that sounded fun to me and all of the different elements with, you know, location, relationship, the things I'd be doing on a daily basis, my personal goals, so it was really a much broader plan, then, you know, going on job boards and you know, selecting jobs on there and things like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:53
Yeah, in for a little bit of background context. You found us I think, for The Muse, if I were recall and then ended up joining our career change bootcamp program. And that's where you got to work with Lisa, who is one of the coaches on our team who back in Episode 147, you can go back and listen to Lisa's story as well. So then you started working with Lisa on this creating the life plan and ultimately creating the life that you were interested in. Now, it occurs to me that when you're getting all those questions about, "Hey, do you have your job yet? Do you have your next job?" Yeah, like, all the things that people ask, I'm curious what that was like. But also, it is seems to be interesting that thinking about it in terms of holistically and creating the life plan, it is abnormal enough that it seems like a lot of people don't understand. So I'm curious what that was like. Because when people are going through this, they often get similar questions, no matter where.

Kelly 29:53
Yeah. And I think there's a lot of pressure too, you know, your pressure from parents and family and people in your life who... they have good intentions, you know, they want us to do well. And they're, I think in the mindset, some of them I think are more old fashioned, it's all about, you know, making sure you're secure and you have a job. But for me, I mean, I was very lucky, I didn't actually get a lot of that, I got that from you know, a few people. And I think, you know, my parents were obviously, you know, concerned they wanted me to, you know, have employment and things like that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:23
I'm just curious what that was like, as you were interacting with different people during that time? And how you worked through that and how you handled that because of those pressures?

Kelly 31:34
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So you know, and having those people come to me, I really stood firm, I knew that what I was doing was the right path. And I didn't let that you know, interfere with what I was doing. I said, you know, what, I'm actually not looking for a job right now. I'm really doing a lot of personal development stuff. And then like, well, like, you know, what's personal development, right? That's a whole another conversation and doing inner work. Some people don't even know what that means. But I mean, essentially, what I was doing was, I was looking myself in the mirror, and I was really taking apart all of the elements of myself that, you know, that I didn't particularly like, and I was looking to improve them and change them, and restructuring, it's almost I like to, I kind of got into this whole element of Neuro Linguistic Programming to another thing, and I'm a huge Tony Robbins fan, Jim Rome fan. And when I was working with this previous coach, he taught me a lot about it. But I was basically trying to go in and rewire my operating system, so my brain and tried to restructure, you know, how I was thinking about everything and asking myself different questions. And, you know, I think it's the day to day, a lot of it is a very subconscious level. And that's, you know, something that most people, you know, don't necessarily pay attention to. So I was having a whole different level of awareness of like, no wonder why I'm walking around miserable and I think I'm no good. It's because I'm, you know, the thoughts that are running through my mind are so negative and I'm telling myself, I can't do anything, you know, what if I asked myself better questions and this and that, and that's something that Lisa and I worked towards. So to kind of get back to your question, I really didn't have too tough of a time I, you know, to be honest, kind of, I don't say shut people out of my life. But this was definitely a time for me to focus on myself. And being back in St. Louis, I didn't really, you know, have good connections here anymore, because I've been gone for so long. So I didn't really have to work on that too much. It was a good time of kind of solitude and doing my own thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:29
After you started working with Lisa, then what started making a difference for you as you were interacting with her through CCB? What was that like? And how did you start to move forward from there?

Kelly 33:46
Yeah, Lisa was really instrumental in helping me slow down the process, because I'm very impatient.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:54
I'd never guessed.

Kelly 33:57
You know, you have this type and you want everything and you want it now. And, you know, really, I was still I think, you know, although I was still going through personal development, I think that the back of the mind, I was still, like, in my mind, like, hoping for a miracle that like this thing that I was supposed, I really struggle with this whole idea of purpose. And this thing that I was supposed to do with my life was like this job in this calling, just as crazy as the dog, I just thought it was gonna, like, drop down from the sky one day, it was just going to come to me. And I was very wrong about that. It doesn't work like that. But Lisa, you know, helped me kind of take a step back and reframe everything, in terms of the day to day and as we go back to like the process, more living like in that moment. And really just being aware and you know, I was working through a lot of the... like the strengthsfinder test that you guys provided and a lot of the things in the first couple of modules, with Happen To Your Career, and those things were really helpful because it really let me break things down into pieces and recognize like, oh, I didn't realize I was like that. And I really started to discover things about myself that I really didn't know about before because I'd never taken the time to be aware and to like discover. And I think I always had this, as I talked about, you know, in college kind of propelling into a sales career, I think I always felt like I was supposed to be something, you know, I was supposed to be in sales or I was supposed to be this type of person because everybody thought of me as this. And that's very difficult. And I think a lot of people and hopefully, some of the listeners can relate to that is, you know, you have this idea of who your parents think you should be, or the people in your world should be, and they have expectations for you, and the type of life that you're supposed to live. And I realized, like, those rules that I had for myself, like, I could break those rules, it didn't have to be like that. I could be, you know, I could recreate myself, and I didn't have to stick to what other people wanted. And that's not to say that they didn't have good intentions for me, but I kind of like started to go in and say like, I do have a very soft sensitive side, you know, and I am a very loving, empathetic person. And those are things that I never allowed to come out in, you know, a very fast paced, rigorous hardcore sales career that I've had. So please, help me kind of go back and recognize those things. And I think one of the most key things that, and I think this was duly said and we kind of talked about this is, instead of thinking, I think all the time, right, we tend to think we think about this, we think about that. Instead of thinking, I would take time and I would feel, I would sit there on a daily basis. And whatever, like happened, whenever I'd be exploring something, or just kind of having a conversation with somebody, I didn't like think about what they were saying, I was really focusing on like, how does that make me feel? Does that strike a chord? You know, do I get goosebumps, and that I think is the key for really understanding where you're supposed to be, what you love. And if you could have more of those feel moments throughout the day, I think it will make your life a lot more fulfilling all the way about it. I think those are signals that you can't ignore, but you have to take time to feel instead of think your way to success, if that makes sense.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:59
That completely makes sense. It's also a skill, I would say, that takes a bit of practice. Honestly, it took me years of practice to really start, well, actually to stop paying attention to what was in my head, and start paying attention to what was in my heart or gut or however you want to look at it those feelings. And it is, I wish I could say that for anybody, we could just flip the switch. But really much like anything else, it takes a ton of practice and work to be able to really do that very, very well. Now, I think it's worth it. Most of the people that I have talked to, that have gone through and taken the time to begin paying attention to that, almost all of them have said, "Oh, yeah, it's totally worth it." Much like anything else that is incredibly difficult in life. But until you can start to untangle that the thinking versus the feeling, it really makes it difficult to be able to untangle some of the other pieces that you mentioned too, like, my parents perceptions of me versus how I want to perceive myself or how I want to show up in the world. So that's super interesting. And I love the way that you put that in terms of the thinking versus feeling. Very cool.

Kelly 38:20
Absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:22
Okay. This, at some point, turned into the role that now you've been in for nine days. How did you get from there to where we just described? Paying attention to what you wanted and how you were feeling about different things and beginning to break that down in a way to where you could identify what it was that you actually wanted. And then with some measure of confidence, go into the next role saying, "Hey, this is really truly what I actually want, not just a repeat of what I had prior."

Kelly 38:54
Right. Exactly. Yeah, in still, at this point, Scott, I just want to make note that I had no idea when I started, when I mentioned starting to reach out to people, this was like the last three months of my transition, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. So I just want to make that very clear. Because I think, you know, people tend to think that they need to have it all figured out in terms of the type of company and you know, everything. I had all these different puzzle pieces and I was having trouble connecting them. That was my biggest frustration at this point in the process. And so what I did was, I kind of took what I knew and you know, I looked back at my entire career, and really got a piece of paper and put you know, what I loved and I had to have, what I liked, and then what I couldn't tolerate, and I really broke this down for myself. And so one of the things that I didn't know was that I wanted to be part of a people centric and values driven organization. And I had worked at one, it was LinkedIn. LinkedIn was very much like that. I loved working within like the tech company scene for that reason. They are all very you know, progressive in that way. So that was one of the things. So I started to target companies that were similar to LinkedIn, in terms of the area that I was going after. I was still looking at a few business development roles. I think just for the heck of it, to be honest, I don't think I really would have taken one. But I started to go back and said, "Okay. Where can I go, like, work with people." I love to learn about people, like I could sit there and, you know, do research on people, I go on Wikipedia to look it. And I started to, like, have this people obsession and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:31
I love it.

Kelly 40:32
It sounds kind of weird.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:33
No, it's fantastic.

Kelly 40:36
Like, if I could just interview people all day, I think I would do that. But I started to just think about that. And I kind of went back to this whole like, recruiting element because of that reason and I thought my sales skills would be well versed in that as well. Because you know, recruitment, especially at an executive level is, you know, highly sales driven. I mean, you've got to sell that company and sell that person hard. So what I did, essentially was I reached out to a bunch of companies, one of them was, Indeed, I actually did this through LinkedIn. And I reached out to a few members of the talent attraction organization, which is their entire recruitment organization. And I said, "Hey, I would love to have an open conversation with you. I never looked at a specific role and I never really go about my searches like that. Anyway, I like to talk to people, I like to have open conversation. Hear about what's going on in the organization." And I actually got a reply within, I think 30 minutes from a girl over there. And she said, "Hey, you know, will you pass me your resume? I love your background, you know, what would you be looking for?" And I was honest, and said, "Listen, I really I don't know. But I would love to have a conversation with you guys." And so that kind of started the process from there. And to be honest, this position that I'm... oh, go ahead.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:41
No, I'm just gonna pause because that is a thing that I think a lot of people are afraid of, based on what you said earlier, like, I have to have it all figured out, I have to have all my ducks in a row, I have to have everything identified before I go out and begin looking. And the reality is, you're probably never gonna make a change, at least not a change that you want to if you pursue it that way. So what you said, I think is very, very key. And I just wanted to call that out separately where you went and did what a lot of people are afraid of. Anyway, so first of all, awesome, and way to have courage in that particularly sometimes scary situation for people. And you said, "Hey, I actually don't know what I'm looking for. But I'd love to have a conversation." So what happened from there, then?

Kelly 42:26
Yeah, and I will also say too, just on that note, I think it's, you know, important to know that this whole idea of having to have everything kind of figured out, I think, yeah, it's such a, is a farce. And that's like, where I was really struggling in the process. And I don't know how I overcome, I think I changed my entire thought process to this. And also one of the other things like in this process, as I was reaching out to people, and having these conversations is, I really worked on being vulnerable with them. And that might sound crazy, especially in the job process. But what I noticed is, you know, when I went into... I interviewed a lot here in St. Louis, I learned these interviews, and I was very open about my story. I mean, remember that I had a year and a half gap on my resume, right? I mean, that's scary, who's gonna hire someone with a year and a half gap, they haven't been working. And what I did was, I used that story to really craft a better story, to my advantage. And to show people this is much, much bigger than about a job, you know, I've done the work to come into an organization. So I think that's also key is, you know, if you have, if you do take this time and actually do that, like, don't be afraid to use that story to your advantage, and be vulnerable people. Because what I learned was when I went into these interviews, I felt like I came out. And as weird as this sounds, and I told Lisa this, that the people that I was interviewing with got more out of that process than I did, because I think when I shared my story, they kind of something went inside their head, and they said, "Man, I can totally relate to that. I know I'm, you know, 60 years old, and I never ever switched them, still in the same role. But man, I can totally agree." And I think when you get that level of kinship with somebody, I think that's what it's all about. And that in the process for me was so fulfilling. And I think that was probably like the turning point is just being vulnerable saying, "It's okay. You don't have to have it all figured out. Because who does?" And I think a lot of us and everybody else in the world has it figured out except for me, right? And that's what I constantly thought about in this process.

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:18
Yeah, we all have a tendency to have those shields up and ever, just like you said, everybody else thinks that everybody else has it figured out. But in reality, it's so relatable when somebody finally says that they don't, and shares that in a way that other people can identify with. And ultimately, it sounds like for you, it absolutely brought those... created those closer relationships and what would have been through those interviews.

Kelly 44:42
Right. I actually went into these interviews with and this is gonna, this is the psychology part of me, almost to break down that social shield and I knew that once I got that person talking on the other end about their own story in that interview, you know, it wasn't just about me, and I think you can be very, I don't use the term narcissistic but very self focused in a job search, because it is all about you and finding that job. But when you make it about other people, and you, you know, that's really what it's all about. And I learned that about myself. So it was great. And even going into Indeed, you know, as I said, I told them I didn't know what I wanted, but I wanted to learn about talent attraction. And so I ended up going in and having a conversation with an initial person over there and kind of told them, and so basically, the roles that they had open were a bunch of different recruiter roles. And I said, okay, you know, and I stayed very open in the process, I try not to cut things off too soon. And I think some people have a propensity to do that, you know, it's not the exact role, but I think you have to remain open in the process. So I basically interviewed with four different teams of recruiters that handled recruitment within different departments. So sales recruiting, like program management recruiting, engineering recruiting, so I went through all these, it's called a batch interview. So I basically on a Skype, or a Skype call for like, two and a half hours, if you're familiar with batch interviewing. With all these different hiring managers and managers, and after that first process, I'll be honest, nothing was really, you know, like, clicking with me, it just like, it just wasn't there. And I got feedback from them saying, "Oh, you know, So and so would love to have you on their team, this and that." And so I basically was, you know, honestly I said, "What else do you guys have? You guys have to have something else over there." And so the recruiter I was working with said, "Well, we have you know, this and this and this." And then they said, "Well, we have this sexual like this leadership recruitment role open, it's a newly created role, like, would you be interested in something?" I said, "Yes. I did."

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:45
Yes, please.

Kelly 46:46
Yeah, there's something about that. And I've been working with executives at LinkedIn, I like working in a very high level, you know, with higher level within the company, a little bit more sophisticated roles, very impactful roles, I think the impact of these executives coming into an organization is like, you know, key for me not to say that people just, you know, who are not executive arm. But so anyway, the whole point, by this time, I had spoken with like eight different, it had eight different interviews with them. It was a long, grueling process. But I ended up speaking with the manager of leadership, recruitment, who's now my boss, had a call, we completely hit it off. And she literally had this role open for months, and was so swamped because she was in charge of other responsibilities that she literally did not have time to recruit for this role. So basically, you know, me coming out there and saying that I was interested in this but basically, you know, she told me it was kind of like a gift on her lap, the fact that I reached out to her about this role, which is kind of funny.

Scott Anthony Barlow 47:42
Which is, I mean, that's everything that we have a tendency to teach, like putting yourself in that type of situation, where it is the right time and place. And essentially, what you did is you ended up walking through the back door, because nobody else is competing for that. They literally did not... she did not have time to be able to interview for and I think that it's worthwhile to point out here too, that had you not done some of the work on yourself to be able to understand what it was that you specifically wanted, or at least had a good idea of what you didn't want versus what you didn't want, then you wouldn't have been able to say no to some of those other roles. That's the first thing. And honestly, behind the scenes, when we work with people, that's one of the measures of success that we use behind the scenes like our people... do they have the ability to say no to stuff because they know enough about what they want. And that then led to the weird thing. The other psychological factor out of that is when you do that, and when you do that in a way that is enduring and building the relationship. Oddly enough, it makes organizations and people in organizations want you more a lot of the time and number of different ways. And I think that your story is absolutely evidence of that. But more importantly, it led you to a role where you could then say yes, I am actually very interested in that. Let's hear more about that. So that's super cool. Meant to be a very large compliment, and illustrate that what you did is a particularly effective way to go about it too. Awesome job, by the way.

Kelly 49:21
Thank you. Yeah, it feels good. And I'm so blessed that things worked out. And I think it's a lesson for me in terms of keeping an you know, an open mind and, you know, not cutting things off because I was kind of down, I want to say down in the process, but you know, after that, you know, initial interview and when I said, oh, you know, a lot of people I think would have shut the door and I normally probably would have too, but you know, decided to ask that bigger question like, what else do you guys have? Because I knew that I loved the organization and that's kind of where, you know, it all started, like starting off point was.

Scott Anthony Barlow 49:51
That is so cool. That is absolutely amazing. So you've gone through all of this and it's been not a short journey. And I think there's so much out there about careers in a variety of different ways. It's like, you know, get your perfect dream job in 37 days, or something else along those lines, right. And for a lot of people, especially when they're focused on doing work that really fits with the life that they want to create, it doesn't happen in that way. And it doesn't... it's more of a roller coaster and more of a couple steps forward, and a couple steps back and all kinds of things in between. So after going through all of that, I am super curious, what advice would you offer to other people that are thinking about making this change? Or maybe their way back on the side where they've had that paycheck moment and realize, this can't be all their areas. What advice would you give to the people in those situations?

Kelly 50:48
Right? I mean, I think again, it's like, so I want to, like, tell everybody, like, go take a year off. And like, really just, I don't know that everybody has the luxury and the capacity to do that. But no matter, you know, what it is, I think, you know, as cliche as it sounds, you know, if you have a moment like that, recognize that and I think it's sometimes takes longer for other people to actually take action after having that, you know, realization moment. But you know, recognize that and do something like, take as Tony Robbins always says, like, take massive action and really do something and take time again, I think going back to that feeling to really feel whether you're trying to decipher what it is, you know, in your career next, and be bold, be brave, I think a lot of fear and uncertainty comes in, during these times and it's so hard to overcome. And I think one thing that I, you know, I could probably have an entire conversation about that we didn't go into today was, you know, I think a lot of people having a job and you know, figuring out your life it's very serious business, right? It affects you day to day. But one of the things that really helped me get to that point was, I completely reframed and restructured the way that I thought about life, I think about it now as one big game, everything was life and death to me, especially during that year at LinkedIn, like, everything was just so pressured. Like, I put so much pressure on myself, I can't even tell you, and I'm sure a lot of these listeners can relate is, you know, make life a game like few things are really life and death. Have fun with it, you know, you go in, you have a crappy interview, laugh about it and say, "okay, like, you know, what could I've done" and just stay in learning as opposed to evaluating, if that makes sense, and continue to just learn and everything that happens to you, it's all a matter of how you look at it, and just keep moving forward in that way. So I think, you know, not being afraid to take action, if you don't know what that next action is, like, really take time and do something. And guess what, if that doesn't work, fine, do something else and do something else. But soon enough, you're going to get to that point, to getting closer to what you want to do. And I think the only thing that, you know, can ensure that nothing changes in your life is to do nothing. So even I think I was so paralyzed because I thought I was gonna continuously make the wrong move. And that's what held me back for so long. But make some type of move, even if it's the wrong one, guess what, you're going to learn from it and be that much closer to your goal. So I think that's my biggest piece of advice and don't take everything so seriously. Have fun with it, people love to have fun, and I even learned, you know, this doesn't have to be a daunting task to figure out your life in the next stage in your career, like, it can be a lot of fun, you know, going into interviews, I'm laughing with people and this and that. And I think it's what you bring to it, you know, if you bring a certain standard and level of enjoyment to this process, other people will really, you know, hop on and get on board with that as well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 53:35
Well, I really appreciate that. And I know that we'll hit with a number of people out there. And thank you so much for taking the time this morning, nine days into your new role and we're... this will actually air at a different time, but we're on the... approaching the holiday break here, when we're actually recording this to you a little bit behind the scenes info. But I really appreciate you taking the time and making the time and sharing this with so many people out there. This is amazing and nicely done.

Kelly 54:04
Oh, thank you, Scott, thank you for having me on. And I'm happy to share my experiences. And I don't know if you provide contact information. But if anybody you know wants to talk to me personally about anything else, I'd be more than happy to help them in any way I can. Be very passionate about personal transformation and living a compelling life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 54:21
Do you enjoy helping other people? Or maybe people keep coming to you for advice? Or do you find yourself ending up in conversations about people's career over and over again? If you just find that you can't stop helping other people in these areas that you're enjoying and want to do more of it, plus, maybe you want to add in more freedom or flexibility or travel or other ways to help others and you really want to take control of your own life and help other people do work that they love doing by making a huge impact. Well, then guess what? If even just one of these is true, it's probably a safe bet that you would enjoy coaching full time tremendously to receive more in depth help and get our 14 day series on How To Become A Career Coach and learn whether or not career coaching is viable for you and the right thing for you, and learn from other career coaches that have built businesses full time, part time, as a side business and everything in between. Then you head on over to howtobeacareercoach.com and sign up for that series. Take a listen to what we've got in store for you next week on the Happen To Your Career podcast.

55:37
Anytime you find yourself saying well, only if then, or only when this happens, then I can do X, Y, Z that I always stop and question it. It may end up to be true somehow but most of the time there are ways around it or there are ways to start a smaller version of that from right where you are.

Scott Anthony Barlow 55:58
Oh, I'm so excited. I can't wait until you tune in. I'll see you right back here on Happen To Your Career. Until then, I am out. Adios.

Scott Anthony Barlow 56:13
It helps so many people we need it. Blah.... I'm sorry for the editing in advance. Just giving you bloopers, I guess sort of.

Scott Anthony Barlow 56:24
And it means we get to have help either more. Yeah. Starting over.

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How Waiting On Permission From Others Is Holding You Back…And What To Do About It

by

MY LIFE CHANGED THE MOMENT I GAVE MYSELF PERMISSION TO ASK:

“HOW MUCH OF MY LIFE AM I GOING TO BE WASTING IF I STAY IN THIS JOB FOR ANOTHER MONTH?”

I had reached the point in my career where I was no longer growing, and I couldn’t tolerate heading into the office each day. And, that question–it changed my life.

Because, at a certain point I started viewing my stable job with a steady paycheck and benefits galore to be a risk.

That’s right, I said it–my comfortable job was a risk to my career–not an enhancement.

And once my mindset shifted, I was able to pick my head up and wonder, “How does the rest of the world who actually enjoys their job everyday get to that point?”

That mindset shift forced me to take action–and write my own permission slip that would allow me to take the reigns of my career.

Writing your own permission slip to do the things deep in your gut you know are right doesn’t just happen overnight. Since we were little kids, we’ve been trained to raise our hand and ask those with authority to tell us what to do (anyone remember that dang bathroom pass from elementary school?!).

None of us are alone in this type of behavior–actually, it’s one of the most frequent issues that we see as coaches. It’s up to us to give ourselves permission to move forward with our dreams.

But, how do we actually do that? How do we take that first step towards the right kind of fear?

Well, the good news is that we’ve come up with five simple steps to Write Your Permission Slip for anything in life.

In Podcast Episode 214, the gang’s back together (or Mark, Lisa and myself) to discuss our own experiences and struggles with this concept–and we landed on a couple of tricks that have lead to our success.

So, take a listen and read along below for the ways that you can build up the courage to take charge of your career…and write that dang permission slip.

STEP 1: ACKNOWLEDGE THAT CHANGE IS SCARY

Did you know there are two kinds of fear?

The first type of fear that we experience as human beings is the good kind of fear. It’s the kind of fear that tells you to run (quickly!) if you see a bear, or the fear that tells you to play dead if said bear is trying to eat you.

You should definitely listen to that fear–please, for all of our sakes!

But, the second type of fear while important, is not our friend. It’s the fear that comes immediately after you make a decision that deep in your gut you know is right.

It’s the feeling that accompanies the thought, “Oh no — did I really just do that?” after you decide to launch a side hustle, or quit your job. It’s the type of fear that makes us quit.

Because, the most difficult part of giving ourselves permission is having the courage to actually follow through. It’s fighting through that Fear No. 2 even though our intuition is telling us to surge ahead.

STEP 2: DEFINE YOUR FEARS

The only way that we can begin to give ourselves permission is to acknowledge the fear, and lean right into it.

One of the most successful exercises to practice this comes from the suggestion of our career coach, Lisa Lewis (and her good friend, Tim Ferriss…well, don’t we wish).

In Tim Ferriss’s Ted Talk, he outlines an exercise that nips fear in the butt. Essentially, the idea is that we should be defining our fears instead of our goals. Crazy right?

But actually, when you practice “fear-setting” you help yourself visualize the worst case scenario–and see that it isn’t as bad as you might have thought. And, even if it is–well, then you have a plan on how to get through it.

Say your worst fear is that you quit your office job and can’t find a client for 3 months. By planning out exactly what your contingency plan would be if this scenario actually happened in real life ahead of time, you shed a light on it instead of having cobwebs hiding in the closet.

So, in order to practice “fear-setting” effectively, create a list of your top 5 Worst Case Scenarios. Don’t hold back. Be as honest and transparent as possible.

After you’ve listed out your fears, come up with a list of exactly what you might do in case that would happen. If you and those who are supporting you feel comfortable about those risks, then move on to Step Two.

STEP 3: PHYSICALLY WRITE YOUR OWN PERMISSION SLIP (WE’RE BEING SERIOUS!)

Giving yourself permission for taking risks takes courage, because it’s a complete mindset shift. And sometimes, our minds are even more afraid about if things do work out…instead of if they don’t.

It seems backwards, but a lot of times it could be scary if that risky idea does work out. That unexpected success might mean that you need to hire a team, or gain so much wealth you can’t even relate to your old life.

Tough problems to have, I know.

But, we can’t discount the subconscious fear of reaching our fullest potential. This especially comes into play for women, who may feel like their identity is tied to others whom they care about.

How can I be a successful mother and businesswoman and be there for my community and get the Christmas cards out on time?

Your own potential could seem daunting.

So, get a piece of paper and write down all of your limiting beliefs. What thoughts or mindsets are holding you back from achieving your dreams?

Limiting beliefs aren’t just what you’re scared of on the surface, but they’re the ideas that have kept you in this comfortable space for as long as you’ve been there.

Maybe it’s that other people need you. Or maybe it’s this idea that you’ve create a name for yourself, a persona that you don’t think you can give up. Maybe a brand or a job title is how you define yourself to others – and you can’t understand who you’d be without it.

By writing down these limiting beliefs, you can start to understand what is holding you back without even realizing it.

This activity is one that you’ll have to come back to from time to time. Because, as your potential grows, so does your fear of risking it all. Giving yourself permission to move ahead doesn’t get easier as time goes on, you just get better at listening to that inner voice.

STEP 4: FIND YOUR TRIBE – THE PEOPLE WHO WILL SUPPORT YOU NO MATTER WHAT

Doing things alone–anything really–sucks.

Especially when you’re doing something risky, your mind can be your own worst enemy.

During this podcast episode, Mark talks about the importance of having a band of supporters when he made the jump from a stable job to working for himself.

Oftentimes, asking for permission is rooted in fear. It’s our way of protecting ourselves from getting skinned knees–from making mistakes that we might regret. If other people tell us to do it, then it’s not really our problem, is it?

And, while it’s important to be conscious of this mindset, it’s also extremely important to have people around you who will pick you up when times get rough. Because, trust me–they will.

So, make a list of your tribe, the people who will support you no matter what. Certain people might have specific roles–maybe your partner will always make you feel better no matter what, or a friend with an extremely critical mindset can help poke holes in your theory.

Making it clear who your tribe is will help you call on them when times get rough.  And, if you choose the right supporters, they will enable you to give yourself permission, instead of asking for it.

STEP 5: BEFORE YOU TAKE THE LEAP, EXPERIMENT WITH SMALL SCALE SCENARIOS THAT MUST HAPPEN

The last and final step in Writing Your Own Permission slip is practice, practice, practice.

As I said earlier, this mindset shift doesn’t just happen overnight. I remember when I first started public speaking, I would get extremely nervous. I was constantly asking if this was the right thing to do (it was). So, I set up a couple of practice scenarios that I couldn’t back out of, so I could practice giving myself permission in a low stakes environment.

For example, in the early days I had publicly told people that I would be leaning an online webinar. Although I had a few weeks to prepare, I realized that there was no way I could back out. I had to write that permission slip–people were counting on me.

The worst case scenario then was to not show up.

So, I did it. And, I realized that it wasn’t half as bad as I thought.

Setting up those little experiments was an extremely helpful way for me to prove to myself that it was more risky for me not to follow through, than to just do it. I realized that Fear No. 2 wasn’t something I should be afraid of.

SO, TO RECAP HERE ARE THE FOUR STEPS ON HOW TO WRITE YOUR OWN PERMISSION SLIP:
  1. Acknowledge the fear – write out every worst case scenario and how you might handle it
  2. Write your own permission slip – look all of your limiting factors in the eye (reputation, relationships, etc) and tune in to your inner voice
  3. Find a your tribe – this group will enable you to give yourself permission–not ask for it
  4. Practice, practice, practice – give yourself opportunities that have to take place in order to see that it’s more risky not to give yourself permission than it is.

Need help in getting to that next level, and taking action to Write That Permission Slip? Send us a note – we’re always happy to help!

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If you’re ready to create and live a life that is unapologetically you check out our Ultimate Guide to Using Your Strengths to Get Hired. Find your signature strengths to do what you love, do what you are good at, and bring value to your clients, customers, and/or organization. happentoyourcareer.com/strengthsguide

 

Scott: Welcome back to the Happen to Your Career podcast. We are breaking new ground here, because we have not just one but two of our past guests on the episode at the same time. We have two of my favorite people on the face of the earth as it turns out in one place, digitally, right here to talk about a topic I get excited about, taking permission. More on that to come. I’m so glad you both could be here. Welcome back Mr. Mark Sieverkropp, how are you? And Lisa Lewis back on the HTYC podcast.

 

Mark: I don’t want to jump to conclusions Lisa but he didn’t ask how you were. I’m just saying.

 

Lisa: He and I talk a bit more frequently than you do. I love putting the band back together of the original gangster HTYC podcast dynamic duo here.

 

Mark: That is right back in the saddle.

 

Scott: Back in the saddle and a little context before we hit the record button Mark was kind enough to pull out a cowboy hat and great me and we have a random HTYC fun fact, there is an episode something with western music and easter eggs and we will put it in the show notes.

Mark: It wasn’t even western music but I thought it sounded like it.

 

Scott: Yeah

 

Lisa: Speaking of the wild west.

 

Scott: Speaking of the wild west, yes what about it?

 

Lisa: The idea of putting the band back together for this episode was because Scott and I have been noticing in our email boxes we were seeing interesting trends pop up. We get tons of email every day asking all manner of questions but you started to notice a secret confession in some of the emails and trends in the questions. What were you noticing?

 

Scott: It was super interesting because we do get a lot of questions and we’ve been trying to answer them in different forms and bringing on guests and whatever else but as we put it together on a list we noticed an interesting trend. A lot of the questions when you go deeper are people asking permission to do things. Like how do I know if it's okay to quit my job, or okay to start a side hustle or business, when should I do this at what point is it okay and when can I make it happen. A lot of those questions. If we break them down and say what is the I should or when is it okay. Many of us have the tendency to wait on permission from someone else. It's an interesting phenomenon and as we’ve worked with a lot of people we’ve had to help a lot of people and ourselves get over that waiting on permission as it turns out, as you wait very little happens. Is that fair to say?

 

Mark: I think just to begin with I’m going to blanket give everyone permission. You have permission to make the change. Thank you and good night.

 

Scott: Right now you have permission, our work is done here.

 

Mark: But you are right it’s crazy. I think we will talk about why we think it is but i think it's a cultural thing.

 

Scott: In what way?

 

Mark: Let me give you an example, my daughter is 9 and she comes home from school and we have this conversation every day. I think I’ve vented to you before.  Dad can I take my shoes off, can I go to the bathroom, can I get something to eat? Brooklyn just do it. You don't need my permission for everything. If you want to go play in a busy street please ask me first but you don’t have to ask for these things. We are trained in school and society that there are authority figures and we have to let someone else tell us what to do. From this small age and I never noticed it, it's probably worse, I feel like my dad and everything is worse now than when I was a kid back in the day, but that is how our society is set up and our school system that you sit in your chair and wait to be called on and ask to go to the bathroom and ask if you can do this. I get it from an organizational standpoint. I don’t envy my daughters teacher if all the kids could do whatever they wanted. But when it comes to life that is not how things work. If you try to do it that way you will run into all sorts of frustrations and nothing will happen,. It's a cultural thing and the way we’ve been trained. Someone else is in charge of us. If you look at successful people they are the ones that decide that they are in charge of themselves and they are going to make the decision best for them. That is the interesting thing that people ask you and you can't tell them. You don't know their situation. They know it and can say now is the time I need to do this, I’m going to get a new job, or get something to eat, or take my shoes off.

 

Scott: That is interesting because you are right. We can create great outlines and good general advice but ultimately people have to decide for themselves. Lisa I’m curious your perspective. How did we get to where we are waiting for someone else without realizing we are for permission. How does this happen?

 

Lisa: Mark hit the nail on the head. There are some social norms and behaviors incredibly helpful and adapted to us at different moments of our career and lives. Especially through the school system and early in your career there are a lot of times when you are required to ask for permission and need someone to grant you authority. There comes a moment in our life when we realize we are the captains of our own ships and can make whatever decision we need to make. I think Mark you said something interesting in a flip way about if your daughter wanted to play in a busy street you’d want her to ask your permission. I think that underlies the challenge adults have when asking is it okay to start a business, is it the right time, can I even do this. In a lot of ways putting our way out there and exposing yourself to risk makes you feel like that little girl playing in the busy street. Seeking out helpful information from  mentors, coaching, resources from people who have done it before to learn from their mistakes and fasttrack yourself while then using that seeking of information as a procrastination device from going into the arena and stepping into the street and playing human frogger with the intent of successfully getting across to the other side and opening a new horizon of possibility to yourself.

 

I want to through the question back to you Scott. When people are considering a big, bold, exciting thing like this that they feel they need permission because there is a lot of risk and fear associated, how can you, what can you say to someone that feels like that little girl asking to play in the street because it feels questionable, dangerous, unsafe, might not turn out the way you want, might have scraped knees and stubbed toes? How do you think about the self empowerment of writing your own permission slip and see it assessing the risk appropriately?

 

Scott: This is interesting for me because as Mark was talking about his daughter I was thinking about my 3 kids and one thing we do that I’m not sure is helping. I’m getting parental advice on my podcast, a two for one. One of the things we do is will instead of having them ask for something have them let us know and communicate what it is and it gives us the dialogue to say can you not do that right now. Our son last night was like I’m going over to the neighbors house to play and we could say actually we are having dinner in 15 minutes so could you wait until after that. But on the other side they have iPods and they have become such a sore spot like the digital equivalent of playing in the street that we say no one can use the iPods unless you ask. I’m not sure that is the right way, doesn't matter right or wrong, but I’m not sure its the message I want to deliver to my kids as I’m thinking about it now. Here is the reason and what I was thinking, at some point in every one of these playing in the street situations you have to evolve from where you are at to go into that dangerous situation and like you said Mark nobody can tell you to do that. You have to be able to practice taking action of your own volition knowing that you are going to get skinned knees. Here is another example, two of my kids are in tae kwon do and like to spar.

 

Mark: Just practicing dad. Throw him down the stairs.

 

Scott: That is what we resorted to at first. No sparring unless you are at tae kwon do but decided that wasn't the right message it became when you do this we want you to understand you are going to get hurt. I promise it will happen. Just depending on how long you spar someone is going to get hurt. That is a different mentality but if we dig into some of the psychology or tendencies our minds are wired to avoid things we might regret or might hurt us. We might regret playing frogger in the street. We have a tendency to avoid those things. If we wait on permission it's a way of protecting ourselves. If we aren’t saying it or forcing ourselves it's not our fault and responsibility and won't regret it. We are protecting ourselves psychologically. The weird things for high achievers because we like to have a lot of control we are giving up control in exchange for protecting ourselves from what we might regret in the future. That causes us to ask for permission in the first place.

 

Mark: I wonder how much, and I don’t want to be the one that is its society and economies fault and President Trump is the reason I can’t do this but I wonder how much of it's because we have a misconstrued view of what risk is. I think many people when talking about switching jobs or going out on their own look at it as risky. I’m not going to have a consistent paycheck or benefits. I’ve had this argument with my grandpa five million times when I started to work for myself. I look back and the risky thing for me was being where I was. I didn't like what I was doing and there was no room for growth. That was the most risky thing I could do. We hear so many people say this. You think it's so safe working for someone but what if your boss has a bad day one day and fires you. That's a pretty risky situation to be in but for me working for myself, if I have a major client I work with and something happened I could find another client or do something else. I have room to adjust. When people are worried about that, what will help to give permission is to sit and say is it really that risky more so than what I’m doing now. Writing the pros and cons and being honest that everything has risk. Sitting there doing nothing has risk. A lot of times something that helps us realize it's okay to make the next step or decide is if we realize it is not as safe where you are as you think. We are comfortable and used to it but there is a big difference between that and being safe. Recognizing that distinction is important to give yourself permission.

 

Scott: Lisa?

 

Mark: Don’t raise your hand, we are talking about giving permission. Just jump in. Geesh.

 

Scott: We are on video and Lisa just raised her hand.

 

Lisa: There is something to be said about gender norms in respect to permission and we’ll get to that but one thing you are getting at Mark is risk is so much more holistic. People look at it through financial risk and what is my income trajectory. If I stay in this job I can predict that to the penny but if I change it becomes unclear. One Of the things to think about is the psychological and emotional risk. What if you stay in the same position for another year? Where is your fulfillment and sense of aliveness. The way we spend our days is how we spend our live. Would your future self thank you for staying where you are because its afforded you amazing highs, growths, and ability to expand to live into everything available to you? When you think about it that way it can be pretty motivational. Life is long and for so many of us blessed life is long but it's also short and if you are continually short changing yourself out of your dreams by not giving yourself permission and leaning into what excites and scares you where are you going to be in five years and what is the world going to miss out on because you aren’t allowing yourself to explore what gets you fired up or makes you so passionate and emotional engaged. Thinking of risk that way can be a game changer for some people.

 

Scott: That was heavy in a lot of different ways especially laying guilt into you. What are you denying the world.

 

Mark: The country can lose the war.

 

Scott: That is what prompted me initially way back when to start this company. That same line of thinking. I was in a job, I have a friend that still works with the company. He practically owns it a VP or president. I could still be there and probably not enjoying it, maybe had a heart attack, because it wasn’t the right fit for me even if it was for him. Not wanting to tolerate it and viewing it as a risk of how much of my life am I going to be wasting if I stay here another month. That prompted me to find out what does the rest of the world do that likes their job. The interesting thing about what both of you said is that even though we talked about how our minds tend to guide us a way from risk, regret, and potential injury, human frogger or otherwise, we have a ton of research that supports that actually anything you are looking at those big decisions, its the polar opposite. When you are on the other side of that decision that you stayed or not taken the action you regret it. If you have taken the action very few people regret it. Its polar opposite and counter intuitive from what we think.

 

Mark: I think part of it is, do you know Mastin Kipp, who that is? He is, I heard him speak at Jeff Walker's event about fulfilling your potential. One thing he said recently is there are two kinds of fear, good fear and bad fear. The fear the bear is going to kill you when you are in front of it camping is a good fear and you should run. We should embrace good fear. He said something important I think will help people, I’m paraphrasing, if something is an intuitive yes but it scares you that is what you should do. People get so caught up in the scare that comes afterward that they ignore the intuitive yes. There are so many times in my life where something felt right and I said that is what I need to do but immediately after it was what if, what if, what if. Someone needs to tell me it's okay, what if I do this, what if my family doesn't get supported. I knew immediately, and people miss this, in that moment we will know what is right and give ourselves permission but we back off and say but what if I need my boss to tell me it's okay and my family to tell me it's okay. I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to your family because I’m a big advocate of listening to my wife because nothing goes well if I don't. You can tell her I said that. It's important to realize that and to recognize that intuitive yes and realize that if there is an intuitive yes followed by fear it's a good fear,it's not a bad thing, just an I don’t know how this is going to work out and that is okay. We talked about that way back in the day that you don't always know what the next ten steps are going to be in your career but you do know the next two or one and if you are okay with that then it starts to fall into place. As long as you see the intuitive yes and recognize it. That is important and helps you give yourself permission. We miss that and don't recognize it for what it is.

 

Lisa: I think that when you are talking about the idea of permission we are talking about fear. The permission is the proxy we are using as a protection from dealing with deeper fears and what ifs. Some of those fears are in the good fear like I don’t want to send my family into financial ruin or my son has a health condition and needs great health insurance to take care of all his needs versus the ones that are more about bucking social norms or conventions or maybe the fear of identity you crafted to get where you are now and having to shift and change and abandon that identity to get where you want to go. One of my favorite exercises to wrestle with those fears and sort them into the inessential versus essential is with Tim Ferriss’ Ted Talk. He has a great fear mapping exercise to help people envision the worst case scenario and all the things I would do if it happened and the psychological safety that can give you that you have thought about it and the contingency plans in place if it happened. That is a helpful thing because the likelihood that it will go to the worst case scenario, that you will put your family in  financial ruin, and lose healthcare insurance is small, not zero, but pretty small. But if you’ve thought about it and talked it through with yourself, spouse, soul and feel comfortable and confident you can deal with it. It makes the permission piece easier.

 

Mark: I’ve done that too and found that I always think I know what the worst case is. But when you do the process you realize you were nowhere near the worst case scenario. That what I’m really worried about is not even close to the worst. I can handle this. It's a great suggestion. We forget and get tunnel vision about a bad outcome and so much of what we do as a bad outcome is informed by what we’ve had happen in our lives or seen happen to someone we know that we don’t realize it's really not that bad or the end of the world. Once you do that exercise you realize it could be way worse. The worse case scenario is really a small possibility when I see the thing I’m thinking about is such a small possibility. We were talking before about my friend Susie Moore’s new book, What If It Does Work Out. We worry so much about what happens  if it doesn't work out and I can’t support my family but we never ask what if it does work out or go well. What if it's amazing. What if I make more money or have more time for my family or love what I’m doing. You have to go to that side too. If you are only looking at what could happen on the bad side you are aren’t giving yourself a fair representation of what is going to happen and that makes it harder to give yourself permission when all you are looking at is what could go wrong. You have to look at what could go right. Realize there is just as much opportunity for it to go right as wrong. We never think about that.

 

Lisa: I would say some people think about what could go wrong and there could be a lot of scary shit over there too. What if things go right and you realize you need to hire a team and you make so much money and changes that the people you used to associate with don't feel like family, friends, and home anymore. There is a beautiful quote from Mary Ann Williamson, that is something like its not our darkness, weakness or insecurities that scare us but our light and possibility for greatness inside of us.

 

Mark: The part that we are powerful beyond belief, that is part of that quote too.

 

Scott: I love that everyone here can finish each other's quotes. That cracks me up. We’ve talked about what can you do about this situation. If you find there is an area of your life, career or anything where you are waiting for permission. And start looking at that and the verbiage you are using is it okay to do this, can I or should I do this. When those are the prereqs of the question that will follow its a good indication you are waiting on permission at least a little. We talked about the fear mapping exercise which is great but what else can people do to stop waiting on permission where they don't need to?

 

Mark: What has helped me is realizing there is one person in the world that has my best interest in mind which is me. You hear this with big companies all the time. People get mad because a company laid someone off but that companies responsibility is to their shareholders. It's not to you as an employee, I’m sorry I know that hurts a lot of people's feelings, but it's true. The same thing happens when you are getting this position of should I, can I or is it okay. You have to realize the only person looking out for you completely is you. That extends to if you are a parent the only one looking out for your family is you. Everyone has their own agenda. Your boss is looking out for himself and his position in the company. Your parents care about you but at some point as you get older are looking after themselves and the decisions they encourage you to make are based on how they think it will reflect on them or affect them. That is not a bad thing. Its an innate ability and feeling we have but once you realize you are the only person solely concerned with what is best for you you realize you are the only person giving yourself permission and unbiased permission. I think that is the most important part. People will give you permission informed on what is best for them. That is how we look at things. Everyone Isn't selfish and terrible but it's the way we are. That has helped me. Only I can make the decision best for me. My boss can’t make it my parents can't make it. Scott you can't make it as a career coach. Only I can make the decision best for me. Once you realize it you have to be the one to take responsibility. No one else can make you happy or tell you to do the things you want to do. You are the only one 100% invested in what is best for you and making you happy.

 

Scott: That is super interesting. I was thinking about the coaching perspective. I’ve spent a lot of money on coaches over the year and we have a business where a big portion of what we do is provide coaching and you are right. We cannot make that decision for anyone we help. We can only help make it easier to make their own decisions but that is a big distinction. Interesting and good point. What do you think Lisa? How else can we make this easier and enable ourselves to stop waiting on permission and give ourselves permission?

 

Lisa: I wanted to say a little thing about different gender social norms that people may not realize that are clouding their ability to see what they are asking for permission from or for. From what I’ve noticed from coaching work is especially with women there is some sort of heteronormative behaviors that women start to internalize from a young age about men often being the ones who are the aggressors, askers, and go get it. Women often are painted into this corner of waiting and have someone seek you out and come to you and you aren’t the initiator, if you have an awareness of that might be an operating assumption working inside your mind or heart as you are thinking of possibilities that might exist you might see lots of places where you’ve been sitting and waiting and wondering where you can grab the reins and take control and one baby step of initiation closer to seeing if whatever possibility or idea you’ve been thinking about for months or years could be a fun reality for you. Little things like that can be so pervasive in how we think of ourselves in society.

 

The other one challenging for women is in typical gender norms, heteronormative male female gender roles especially with family. Women think of themselves of having to be something for other people, a mom, a caregiver, a devoted spouse, xyz things and your identity is yoked to the roles you play for other people. Mark, the point you made that you are the only one looking out for your best interests and you have to step up to the plate can be painful and challenging for women to hear and figure out how to internalize in your own behavior, decisions, etc because there is so much of social norms about being a women and what it means to be a good woman putting liberal are quotes around “good”. That has to do with not honoring what you want and thinking about what other people want and need as being more important than your wants and needs. If your spidey senses are tingling thinking there can be even one percent of truth in that in the way you are thinking about yourself in your career, happiness, and other areas like your relationship, health, dynamic with your family and friends and you could try on that new belief of I’ve gotta be the one championing me. My happiness and fulfillment matter, I can be a better mother, sister, friend, if I’m fully stepping into my joy and truth in how I make decisions it can be revolutionary and exciting. Still scary but empowering and exciting. I'm curious to hear from you guys if you see the gender norms playing a role on the other side?

 

Scott: Yes. I was thinking about that as you were talking from two lenses. One, I was thinking, dredging up times in my life where I’ve perpetuated that accidently as a man and thinking about it from the otherside too as a father raising a young woman. I have a ten year old and Mark you have a daughter too. I think that are some tendencies that I have seen for myself as a man from different places to be more willing to take permission but I’m dissecting it in my head. What are your thoughts Mark?

 

Mark: I agree there is some, heteronormative, when you said that I blacked out, what does that mean. I think there are on both sides. One thing I wanted to say quick, this is the part of the show where a guy tells a woman what she is thinking, which always goes over well, I see that so many times I think the key element if you are feeling that way is the word and. You can be these things and. You can be a great mom, wife, and you can be successful professionally and do what you want to do and make yourself happy as well. One big part is remembering that. You can do both. The other thing is I see that it really is more difficult in that sense for my daughter. I think that asking for permission she is worried about making sure everyone is happy. Everyone is comfortable with what they are doing. I see it in her that she wants to make sure everyone is happy and okay and that is a good thing but the challenge is balancing the good parts and realizing when you can take it too far and that starts being a detriment to who you are. That is a unique challenge but there are norms on the other side too.

 

I think there are some challenges guys have that are different. Whether that is, I have a tendency of giving myself too much permission, but really running roughshod over my family's feelings as I give myself permission. I’m the master of my ship and in charge and this is what is best for me but my wife is thinking but what about the family and your kids. It can go far to the otherside. Which ties into the other challenges women have. They see taking permission as that. If I give myself permission I have to be a jerk and not care about anyone else's feelings and I’m going to do what I’m going to do and that's all that matters. That isn’t what we mean. You can be sweet and nice and still give yourself permission. You can take care of people and give yourself permission. On the other side, as a guy you can give yourself permission without being a jerk, still take care of your family and be a good person. We see those stereotypes of people who have given themselves permission and we say I don't want to be that way and it holds us back. You don't have to be that person and be a complete jerk. It doesn't mean, it's the guy that is 45 years old and ditches his family to chase his dreams. That is the dumbest thing and not what we are talking about. Society and movies show that that is what it means but it isn’t. Scott so much fo what you teach is you can have your cake and eat it too. You can be happy in more than one area and be successful without jeopardizing your relationships and do all these things. We are talking about solutions and gotten back into the solutions but you have to realize that giving permission for you might be different than me and different for Scott or Lisa. We are all different.

 

Scott: You can give yourself permission to give yourself permission in a way that works for you.

 

Mark: We give you permission to do that.

 

Lisa: You joke here but I think it makes a lot of sense. Whatever gender identity you identify with we all exist on this spectrum and there are times when giving ourselves permission could actively harm people in our lives we don't realize and there are sometimes in our lives where it is so overdue or needed you want to do it immediatly right now but I think one thing it's important to think about as we wrap up the idea is that what you are joking about giving yourself permission to give yourself permission is actually not a bad idea. There is a tool we can link up in the blog post to write out your own permission slip and parse through the limiting beliefs and fears are for you to free yourself and ask yourself the question, like that book, What if it does work out. What could be possible for me?

 

Scott: I love that idea and there is something weird and cathartic that is helpful when you are taking the time to consider something like this and what is stopping you from doing that and taking the time to crystalize it tinto writing and some of the commitment that goes with it. Huge fan of that and I have a tendency to think about all of this as it isn’t a one and done. It's a continuous thing that you have to decide ongoing. Think of it in terms of how do you set up your life and environment to enable yourself on a regular time period to continuously give yourself permission. One great way is that permission slip exercise. You can go to happentoyourcareer.com/214 and we will have that linked up with other sources. You can build that environment of enabling by building a team of people that will support you in that. One thing that I think was interesting as we’ve talked to people who have gone through our programs is I literally had a whole team of people that could help me and give permission to move through challenges. You can do that for you and identify who you need. As you write the permission slip think of who you need in your life and intentionally set it up so they can help you continually give permission. One other thought that has worked for me is setting up smaller situations or experiments where you must go forward. You are forcing yourself to take permission if you will rather than give permission. For example, the first time I gave an online webinar format I was scared to death but I wasn’t going to do it unless we committed to the world several weeks in advance and chose a date and that enabled me by making the one commitment to give myself permission to do it. Anything else you want to add to this set of solutions or what can help people?

 

Mark: Two final thoughts for me, when you think about finding a team and people that is huge. When I was leaving my job there were so many people that thought I was crazy and it was so important and helpful to have you and your wife around. People who were happy and cheering me on. It's scary. People around you are saying why would you do, that you are going to work with someone you haven't met. Why would you leave this job it's great? What's wrong with you? It's so important and can’t be understated to have people that when you have a tough day to go with and they are as excited as you. That is so unbelievably important. The other thing is we get so caught up when we think of giving yourself permission that we have to make a decision tomorrow. But just being intentional doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to do it tomorrow. There are constraints, maybe medical issues that mean you can't make the decision right now and that's okay but it's being intentional. You aren't saying I can’t but you are saying I’m not going to because I chose not to. That is giving yourself permission to. We aren't saying if you don’t get a career change tomorrow you aren’t giving yourself permission or that if you do make a career change tomorrow you are giving yourself permission because it could go the other way and someone else could have pushed you into it. It really comes down to being intentional and making the decision and choosing to because it’s best for you regardless of what that decision is.

 

Scott: That is awesome. Lisa anything you want to add?

 

Lisa: I think if you are on the brink and were listening and curious about giving yourself permission you already know what you need to do. There is nothing better we could get out of this than do it and make it happen.

 

Scott: We are fans of making it happen as it turns out. If you want a whole team of people then write us and let us know what you are interested in taking permission on. We can absolutely figure out the best way to support you in doing that. Much like Mark talked about sometimes it is what makes or breaks it. Thank you both for making the time to be here and Lisa as you said in the beginning getting the gang back together. I so appreciate it.

 

Mark: It’s fun. Thank you.

 

Lisa: Always a pleasure. Thanks Scott.

 

If you’re ready to create and live a life that is unapologetically you check out our Ultimate Guide to Using Your Strengths to Get Hired. Find your signature strengths to do what you love, do what you are good at, and bring value to your clients, customers, and/or organization. happentoyourcareer.com/strengthsguide

 

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Is Your Fear of Other’s Expectations Holding You Back From Living Your Most Authentic Life?

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Why does the term “live authentically” seem like it’s been popping up everywhere these days?

In fact, if you just Google it,  only 2.47 Million results appear ( if you can’t tell, I’m dripping with sarcasm).

But, why do we all have this urge to “live an authentic life” in the first place?

Well first, let’s take a step back. What does “living authentically” actually mean? According to a quick Google search:

Even more simply put, living authentically:

“…IS ABOUT BEING WHO YOU ACTUALLY ARE”

While that sounds nice (and can make for a fancy facebook post–I know you’ve seen them) it’s actually a lot harder to achieve in real life than one might think. And, it turns out that if we thought it was difficult to be ourselves around our friends and family, it feels near impossible to do be our real, authentic selves in our careers.

Especially in the beginning. I mean, why do you think that a whole style of “behavioral style interviewing” has popped up so that companies feel like they need to extract the truth from us…just to find out if we’re a “fit” or not? Worse yet, why do we feel like we need to play the part of a different person just to get that job in the first place?

Then, when we finally get hired, we’re surprised–and now expected to be this person that we were during the interview process (hint: definitely not “living authentically”).

Talk about a recipe for unhappiness!

SO, WHY IS IT SO DAMN HARD TO BE OUR TRUE SELVES AT ALL TIMES?

Well ultimately, it comes down to fear.

Since most of us feel like we have to behave like one person when we’re at work, and a difference person when we’re, that in itself creates a social expectation. if you want to be yourself at all times, you’re bucking the trend.

Because, in our world today it’s  not “normal” to be get paid be who you are, using your true strengths instead of just the skills you’ve picked up in various roles along the way.

But, you want to know the weirdest part? By resisting being your most authentic self at all times because of fear, we are ensuring that we stay unhappy by default.

JENNY’S STORY: FINDING A ROLE THAT USES HER GIFTS–NOT JUST FULFILLS EXPECTATIONS

It’s been on my new year’s wish list for about three years to find a new job. It’s taken a while. I’ll be transitioning into a new role helping to develop a science and sustainability program at a university near where I live.

Jenny

Meet Jenny.

Jenny has had no shortage of accomplishments in her life. With a Stanford BA, a science PhD, and a successful track record in several different fields, Jenny is a highly intelligent, rapid learner (not to mention an amazing mother of 2 kids!) and basically, an all around a rockstar. But, three years ago Jenny came to the conclusion that her role as a research scientist wasn’t a great fit. She knew something had to change.

She started slowly (very slowly) on a journey that would ultimately completely change her life–and in the end align her career with who she was as a person.

There was only one problem: During the first 18 months of Jenny’s job search, she found that she was moving so slowly, she was actually stuck.

That’s because Jenny was making her decisions based on fear and what other people might think, instead of what she knew was right for her.

You can listen to Jenny’s entire story, and hear exactly how she began to believe she really could create a new career identity for herself based on the things she couldn’t stop doing.

I didn’t want to let down my family, which is full of scientists and academics, my advisor, my professors, my peers, other women in science, particularly I felt like I needed to live up to the expectations to fulfill the investment I and they have made in this research track.

It was in that exact moment of considering the many people involved in her current career path that Jenny realized she wasn’t going to make the change she need to make alone. In Jenny’s search, she stumbled upon the Happen to Your Career podcast, ultimately enrolling in our Career Change Bootcamp program.

When we first started to work with Jenny, we helped her to identify what her “gifts” were. Essentially, Jenny had to figure out what were the areas she naturally gravitated to, but maybe didn’t value or couldn’t use fully in her current role.

During that process, Jenny realized that the “people” side of the equation (i.e. how she related to others, built relationships with others or worked through the complexities that people bring) was where she flourished. But, this was the exact opposite side of the table from where she spent most of her time at work. Science roles really do often fit the stereotype of solitary data crunching, analyzing, and writing.

This was a huge insight for me, in my science role in my home agency I was not rewarded in the metrics of contributing to complex problem solving efforts. I’m rewarded for the number of scientific papers I publish in journals on scientific results. The more I got involved in the people side of the equation and the relationships and collaboration the less time I was investing in completing and writing up and publishing results.

This insight led Jenny to realize that her ideal role would be somewhere that allowed her to use her love of science and experience in the field, but at an organization that specifically valued and highlighted her ability to work with well with a wide variety of people and problems.

BUT, HOW COULD JENNY TRANSLATE HER GIFTS INTO A CAREER THAT FIT HER VALUES?

The good news: Since Jenny hadn’t been getting rewarded for her strengths in her day job, she had been searching for other ways to fulfill her passions.

So, Jenny began volunteering occasionally for organizations and events such as the local museums, schools, and universities’ children’s science programs. Through that process, she identified that places that had the intersection of people AND science could be a fit for her.

She began to strategically put herself out there in small but genuine ways, using her natural gifts – getting reinforcement and positive feedback.

This allowed Jenny to prove to herself that her strengths really could be useful in a different role –rather than somewhat of a liability as she had been led to believe in past roles. Also, her volunteering experience allowed her get to know people in key positions within several organizations she was interested in.

As she began having success connecting with people who had the authority to hire her (or even create a position for her!), Jenny ran into an issue. She began to worry about her supervisor and coworkers finding out from someone else that she was looking. And questioning or outright criticizing her desire to transition from an excellent research job that she “should” appreciate and perform well in.

Since Jenny was unwilling to allow this to happen, this new fear nearly brought her journey to a standstill once again.

WHAT IF YOUR BOSS COULD SUPPORT YOU DURING YOUR CAREER CHANGE?

The first time I pitched her the idea that her boss could help her through this process, instead of prevent it Jenny flat out told me, it wasn’t going to happen. She was terrified!

Eventually though, she warmed up to the idea–especially when a role opened up that she thought might be an amazing fit…and she felt like she had no other options than to be clear about her goals.

So, we coached her through the process of exactly how to have a conversation with her boss so that he would not just understand her situation, but actively be willing to support her in making this change.

This courageous and genuine discussion with her supervisor ultimately enabled her to get his endorsement on changing jobs outside the organization–even if it was almost 9 months before it actually happened.

With another barrier lifted, it became easier for her to put more energy and effort into finding a career that matched her gifts and values.

JUST WHEN YOU START TO GAIN MOMENTUM…THAT’S WHERE IT REALLY GETS HARD

Now that Jenny was much more confident in what she wanted for her career, she knew what she needed to do in order to pursue the role that she wanted. This ultimately made it possible to recognize a great opportunity for her when she saw it,…but she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Jenny did amazing work connecting with colleagues whose roles in science outreach and education intrigued her, at a University she was interested in. Eventually she secured an interview for a position that sounded like it would play to many of her strengths. But, Jenny decided that didn’t want to go through the entire interview process  only to accept  a job that still might not be a great fit.

This realization meant that Jenny had to get hired for who she was, not someone she thought she “should be” during the interview process.

She began working with Lisa Lewis, a coach on our team, to practice interviewing authentically. It was important for Jenny to show potential employers exactly who she really was as a person AND cause them to want her even more. With Lisa’s encouragement, Jenny finally gained the confidence that highlighting her true personality and values during interviews would be more effective than trying to present herself as an ideal, but not fully “real”, candidate.

Jenny ended up getting the job offer.

It wasn’t a perfect offer though.

HOW TO MODIFY YOUR JOB OFFER TO REFLECT WHAT  YOU REALLY WANT

Most people don’t realize that it’s not just about having the perfect negotiation conversation and “saying the right things” at the right time to get the offer you really want.

Instead, it was all of the work Jenny had done clarifying what she truly wanted, building authentic relationships, and preparing for the interview in an honest way that enabled her to be in a prime position to ask for something quite a bit different than what the initial offer.

By the way: I’ve had many people tell me that when you work at a University there’s no room for negotiation or it’s “impossible” to get exceptions made for you. We’ve found that’s not the case–instead those people just don’t know how to do it any differently and end up accepting that reality for themselves.

As you know, Jenny didn’t accept their offer at face value. Even though it was outside her comfort zone, she  pushed herself to have multiple conversations to ensure she was getting what was most important to her. Again, she was amazed at how right HTYC turned out to be: asking for what you want and need can lead to actually getting it!

In the end, Jenny happily accepted a revised offer with greater flexibility in the schedule,increased compensation, and a start date delayed by 2 months to allow a smooth transition from her previous job and also a very important family vacation overseas!

After what was nearly a 3 year journey, Jenny had some advice for you if you’re getting ready to make a career change:

Trust your own instincts on what feels like a good fit for you and try not to stay too attached to that investment and identity that doesn’t feel like a good fit any longer. People do change and evolve and I keep reminding myself that new phases of our identities is what keeps life interesting.We can make a bigger difference in the world for the better if we allow those changes to happen rather than fighting them.

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Jenny 00:02
Even as a graduate student, researcher, and teaching assistant I had a lot of challenges, sort of, prioritizing when do I grade papers and meet with students who are struggling versus when do I pursue my own research and write proposals and papers. And so, my conclusion after, sort of, testing it out as a graduate student was, I’m not sure I could do this full-time as a professor for the rest of my career.

Introduction 00:30
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:54
This is Scott Anthony Barlow, and you are listening to Happen To Your Career, the show that helps you figure out what work fits you by exploring other stories, we get to bring on experts like Lisa Lewis, who teaches people how to reframe their future, and set goals attainable, especially in this new year. And people who have pretty amazing stories, like Adarsh Pandit, who left academia, develop scientific approach to his career change and found a job that fits his lifestyle. Now, these are people that are just like you, they've gone from where they are, to what they really want to be doing. And today's guest is Jenny, who we got the opportunity to tag along for her journey over the last 18 months and help her actually make a change. And this is so much fun to have this conversation with her now.

Jenny 01:42
It's been on my New Year's wish list, I think, for about three years to find a new job. But it has taken a while. And I’ll be transitioning into a role, helping develop a science and sustainability program at a University near where I live. I have currently a science background, but I had been looking for opportunities to do more than science or other roles in addition to science. So this job sounds like an incredible blend of different things. And I'm really curious about it and excited to get started.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:23
In this conversation with Jenny, we get pretty deep into how to stop doing what you should do, I'm using air quotes. And you know, what I should want in my current job or what other people want me to have, so I should stick with it. You don't have to be bound by those shoulds. And also how to let go of your current identity. Because if it's completely wrapped up in what you do right now, that can stop you from finding something that is going to make your heart happy. And how to let go of other people's expectations on your life more of those shoulds. But this it really impacted Jenny and take a listen for how much this impacted her. Because she's somebody who's pretty talented, she's high achieving, she went to a really reputable school. She's done a lot in her life, but still, a lot of this identity was wrapped up. And she was allowing what other people think, impact her happiness.

Jenny 03:26
Well, I had a pretty typical past as a scientist with a few added extras on the side. I did a... and I’d love to talk more about the extras because I think it is significant but my, sort of basic biography as I did an undergraduate degree in Biology, then I took a few years and I actually taught a preschool Science program, but then went to graduate school for more Science, again, Biology, Ecology, Conservation. And I got a PhD in that field and did a lot of outdoor research on mountain forest ecosystems and fire with many of the aspects of those topics and the process of research I really love. After finishing my PhD, I worked both in the education realm for a while and as a field biologist. I had a series of part-time jobs teaching college Biology which, those were some great adventures and learning experiences. But I did always know... or I realized about half way through graduate school that I didn’t want the traditional career of an academic professor. My dad actually, is an academic professor and my grandfather was, and several family members. So I’d seen lots of examples of that career path and I had been intrigued and thinking, it’s sort of, in my genes and in my environment, but the more I learned and experienced from the inside, as a grad student, the more I thought, I'm not sure this would be the perfect fit for me.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:16
What caused you to think that? What are some of the elements or some of the events that, you realized, "hey, this isn’t for me for these reasons."?

Jenny 05:27
Well, I think it's an incredibly challenging and rewarding profession but it's sort of 24/7. I had seen this with my dad. He was doing his own research and writing, he was advising graduate students, he was teaching undergrads and our whole family life was filled with overflow and participation in his academic life. One of the thing my dad studied is Charles Darwin. And my sisters and I grew up just actually thinking of Charles Darwin as a really bad guy, who sort of, took my dad away from the family a lot. And we sort of visualized him as a, sort of, cartoon character villain.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:24
Charles Darwin the villain.

Jenny 06:25
In college I started realizing that actually he was the opposite of a villain, he's a... many scientists hero. I secretly took my own classes in evolutionary biology and history and philosophy of science and realized that Darwin is not a villain. That, any academic study can really take over someone's life and career. And so...

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:50
So he played the villain in your early movie.

Jenny 06:53
He was the reason dad could not, sometimes come to sports days or picnics, things like that. Some of the graduate students became, sort of, there were this, sort of, cast of characters, some of them were really funny and friendly and role models for us, but it was certainly a big deal to be a professor. When I was studying with my own advisor in the different field of biology, I realized he was working around the clock. His family sometimes would come out to the research sites with us and joke that that was how they got to see him. A lot of people juggle everything very successfully including my dad and my advisor but I felt like I wasn’t sure I had the energy or the commitment to a particular research field with the degree of passion that, at least, these two had. I’m, sort of, a generalist. I'm interested in lots of things but I didn’t want to single-mindedly pursue one research track. And I also found teaching to be really demanding. I felt this very strong sense of obligation to all the students in the classes that I taught. So I would... even as a graduate student, researcher, and teaching assistant I had a lot of challenges, sort of, prioritizing when do I grade papers and meet with students who are struggling versus when do I pursue my own research and write proposals and papers. And so, my conclusion after, sort of, testing it out as a graduate student was, I’m not sure I could do this full-time as a professor for the rest of my career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:40
I see. So this really didn’t line up with your lifestyle, at all. It sounds... oop, your lifestyle that you desire at all that... from the very beginning, and you had multiple examples of this over and over again. So I’m super curious then, what took place after that? After you tested that out and realized, "Not for me." Really great for some people that are very very much more into it but, as you said, you're much more of a generalist. And if I recall, you identify as what Emilie Wapnick back in episode 173 calls a multipotentialite, is that right?

Jenny 09:20
Yes. The problem also with my science studies was that I just could not help adding other topics and roles on the side. In the grand scheme of things, I think that type of approach is valuable to cover many disciplines or have a broader scope, but I think in the world of science, it's more typical to be a specialist and it's seen as more focused and more productive and contributes more to the individual field. My advisor was often questioning me, "why are you working on the campus writing center with all these English majors?" And I find...

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:09
What's your problem?

Jenny 10:10
And yeah, intriguing and enlightening. Why do you have so many side jobs? I think it's detracting from your forward progress. I’d say, well, it's sort of keeping me engaged and I love interacting across the whole campus and... so, we had a little back and forth. But I think, to answer your question, my next step was to say to myself, "alright. I’m going to try and find a more pure research job or pure teaching job and sort of see how those feel when I can separate the components of research and education." That worked out and I learned a lot through those comparisons. I learned that I didn’t love teaching a lot of content, a lot of information, again, maybe because of my generalist type of approach. I love teaching classes and the process of science, and I still do. Encouraging kids, or students of all ages to sort of come up with their own questions and hypotheses and investigations. I had several college teaching jobs that did this and those were really rewarding because I could see the spark of excitement and discovery in the students and how energized they were to figure out, "I can do science. I do science every day. Now I'm gonna learn to do it systematically and it'll let me find out new things and solve problems."

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:48
I’m curious, what do you think was the difference for you after all of this and making the transition and having lots of these experiments along the way? What do you think was the difference for you in terms of teaching focus on process versus teaching focus on specific information and what caused you to resonate so much with that? Because I’m guessing part of the reason that they would light up was because your involvement with that as well.

Jenny 12:24
I think I really do love, and I’ve learned this through listening to a lot of the HTYC podcast and other things. I do love guiding and mentoring, facilitating. That is always part of good teaching, I think, but definitely in science's course too, there is this emphasis on transferring information and facts. I feel like that involves a lot of memorizing and different skills than sort of the process skills. I’m not sure why, maybe I just don’t have as strong memory as some people do. But when I was teaching those classes I would sort of barely memorize all the different types of plant tissue or something, myself. I'd memorize them like, right before I got to teach the students and then I try to get the students to remember them using the same techniques that I had just learned. And I was sort of, I know it's really important to absorb the basic facts and information in any field but sometimes I would feel like we were overloading the facts and the memorizing and I would prefer the emphasis on the process of investigation and discovery and sort of went toward that side of the spectrum.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:51
That is so interesting. That even when you were teaching those types of information like, all the time on the podcast, we talked about what you can’t stop doing and what shows up everywhere. And even when you are doing those information type classes, you are still, "Hey, here's how I taught myself to remember this. Here's still the process." That is interesting.

Jenny 14:12
Yeah, I mean, I did... one of my most stressful experiences was teaching plant biology. I ended up trying to have the students do all these experiments like, let’s learn what plants need by growing a bunch of plants under different conditions rather than just telling them, "Here are the 39 things, nutrients and conditions, that plants need." We did all these experiments and now I’m thinking about it, a lot of this maybe goes back to this really fun interlude that I had in college, and after college when I was a preschool teacher and I realized that kids just want to investigate everything all the time. As we both know, we have little kids and they're just the world's best investigators and scientists and engineers. So that's how I had operated in preschool and that was encouraged in pre-school. It was a philosophy that I learned at that time called "Emergent Curriculum", it was about letting the kids sort of drive the agenda and learning process rather than having them put together, sort of, prepackaged arts and crafts activities led by the teacher. I hadn’t realized that but this has been kind of a theme through a lot of my work. Maybe I was lucky to have that formative job experience early on. And I really... it really clicked with me and I clicked with it. And I feel like there's the most genuine learning when the learner is sort of driving the pace and the process of the learning and it's not necessarily all about memorizing the facts.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:03
That is super interesting and I wanna actually come back to that and touch on that a little bit later too, because I’m curious, how much that helped you in this actual career change too. But before we get into that and before we dive into that part, I’m really interested in how you began to feel after you got into your most recent type of research and what was it there that caused you to start to think, "Hey, maybe I should be actively pursuing something else."

Jenny 16:38
Yeah, it's definitely connected to this theme and I thought about this a lot. I think I went into science and research for two reasons. One is I genuinely love this process of investigation and discovery and I really love the process of problem solving with science, both just in the simple cases of kids figuring out answers to their own questions or in my field, it's been tackling the problems of sustainable resource management like forest management, water management, wildlife management. Using science to help the resource managers identify the most effective strategies and least effective strategies. So I was, was and still am really enthusiastic about that part. I think the second reason why I stayed in Science and research was sort of to live up to the expectations of everybody who had guided me along the way and helped me pursue this track.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:48
What's an example of that?

Jenny 17:49
I didn’t want to let down my family, which is full of scientists and academics, my advisor, my professors, my peers, other women in science, particularly, I felt like I needed to sort of, yeah, live up to the expectations, sort of, fulfill the investment that I and they have made in this research track. But what began to shift for me was that, first I realized that when I was working with manager, partners who had problems to solve, it wasn't sort of purely this scientific data that they needed in doing their job. It was also connections with scientists, relationships with scientists, input from scientists that was more than just numbers. The whole situation was much more complicated than it seems from the outside, you know, I had sort of... before I took the job that I have now with a federal research agency, I had thought, oh there are these problems in the world of environmental resource management. And scientists will come to the table with the managers then will go off and design experiments to help address the problems and then, a couple years later, we'll bring the results back to that same table and hand them over and then we'll go away again, and the managers will be able to take the results and implement them and everything will get better and the problems will be solved.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:30
Whoa, it doesn’t work like that? You are killing my utopian bubble.

Jenny 19:39
It's still worth striving for that sort of effective, clean model of how the world works but I feel that I was naive looking back to think it would be that simple. The good news is that even though it's complicated and even though the relationships and the people dynamics and the politics are really highly involved, that's sort of part of the, I guess, positive side in one sense. I think... and I’ve seen that by developing these strong relationships, scientists and managers can solve or address even very tricky problems by working together. However, the huge insight for me was that, in my science role, at my home agency, I was definitely not rewarded in the metrics of contributing to complex problem solving efforts. I’m rewarded for the number of scientific papers I publish in scientific journals on scientific results. And so, the more I got involved in the people side of the equation and the relationships and collaboration, the less time I was investing in completing and writing up and publishing results. And of course, the more complex the problem, the harder it is to get clean publishable scientific papers out of it. I was kind of getting.... against the checklist of performance that I'm evaluated by, I was not doing the things that were expected from my position and I was finding meaning in what I was doing but I was also wishing that I could have a role in which part of the purpose or point was to invest in the relationships and collaborations and it wasn’t seen as a distraction or delay.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:53
So you're doing all these things that you are starting to get meaning out of and feel good about and you're getting small snippets of those as you realize, "Hey. I actually really enjoy these pieces of it." You also had the same sinking realization that sounds like that, the organization you are with doesn’t value those pieces. Now, even removing right or wrong, I mean every organization values different things and different elements, and it sounds like that didn't line up very clearly, and became painfully clear, with where you were at. What prompted you to do something about that? What took place? Do you decide, "Hey, I actually need to... I need to act on this."

Jenny 22:46
Well, there was kind of this dawning realization that every year during the annual performance review discussions, I was being questioned rightfully about the time that I was spending in meetings and collaborative workshops and the investment that I was making and the people's side of the scientific problem. That was a little awkward. But I think that as kind of silly or different, as it sounds, I had a more personal epiphany related to a book that somebody else mentioned on the podcast recently. Totally different. It was this, decluttering your life type of book by Marie Kondo called “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” I read this book and it's very... it's quite practical, and it's really insightful and philosophical in many ways. And I think I probably read it a few years ago, I think right after the holidays and with our young kids, our house was just full of toys and stuff and I was thinking, it's time to get organized, it's the New Year. But this author's approach is to guide people more broadly to really question everything in their life including, spouses, careers, any element and ask, “what about these different elements is meaningful to me and what isn’t.” And to try and focus on keeping the things that are meaningful and bring you joy and satisfaction and sort of let go, thankfully let go of the things that don’t fit or bring you meaning. And so this could be everything from the outgrown barbie dolls lying on our floor in our playroom to sort of bigger things. But the thing that really struck me was that, when I looked at all the books in our house, and in particular mind, I had this insight that if I was in charge, I would gratefully say goodbye to a lot of the science books that people have given me over the years. I’ve always accepted the books and been appreciative but I never felt compelled to read any of the science books. And I almost feel strange about admitting this. But my husband would read them, friends would read them, my dad would read them. And I just was never compelled to read them on the weekends and evenings because I did science 40+ hours a week. I always felt like that must... so I had this feeling, I don’t think I’m a proper scientist. What is wrong with me that I would want to give my science books away? And that really started me questioning the big picture of my future career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:04
Hold on. One thing you said though, I think is very much a human tendency and I think it is something that almost all of us, maybe not all of us, but a lot of us experience where we go through something like that and then we start to question, what is wrong with me? It’s nothing wrong with you, in your particular situation, then there's nothing wrong with the next person so much. But that is so interesting that, we as smart, capable human beings will... we will question what, well, I must be broken. And it's truly not the case and definitely wasn't in your situation too. So I just wanted to acknowledge that because I know that you haven’t stayed there. What happened next after the realization and you realized, "Hey. There's all these books that are sitting on my shelf. I don’t want these" and you started to feel, sounds like, awkward at a minimum about that and questioned even yourself. What was next?

Jenny 27:04
Well, a lot of... sort of, self questioning, I guess, and worrying and wondering what to do. I mean, around the same time, I had started volunteering at my kids school to lead science activities and I was finding that really really fun and rewarding. And it was taking me back to the days of working at the pre-school with these amazing little science investigators. I was starting to think I love this process of sharing science, fostering science even though I’m not, maybe, a specialist and a die-hard 24/7 scientist... or sort of more classic scientist, myself. Maybe I should look at roles that where I could go back to teaching or facilitating science in some way, not just with kids but with non-scientists or people who'd like to learn more about science or get a little flavor of science, I think... I really think I’m good at, sort of, bridging the gap not assuming that everybody wants or needs to understand science or love it. But I think I started looking more closely at institutions and agencies and organizations that are sort of in between the worlds of science and education and real life. A couple of job ads started to catch my eye in that arena of science education. And so I put out, I think Scott, the first time I contacted you I was responding to an ad for an informal science education position that I was really excited about.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:05
Oh, yeah. I remember that.

Jenny 29:10
At the same time I didn’t want to sort of blow my cover. I didn't want to do... I wasn’t ready to do what I would think of now as a full job search where I would tap into my big network of connections and do a lot of informational interviews and start getting a sense of what's out there that involves science but isn't pure science. So I still haven’t really done that. And I think one of the challenges that maybe will resonate with other people is that, I couldn't let go of the sense that I should want my pure science job. It's a great job, it's really secure and well respected. I’ve talked with many people over the years who would absolutely love to have the job that I have. And I kept thinking, people will think that I’m crazy if I start asking around widely about alternative career paths.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:18
So let's dig into that for just a second. Because I do think that that is a... that is something that we hear all the time behind the scenes and emails that we get, and people that we talk to, conversations that we have every day especially for professions like scientists, like academic professors in other cases, doctors, lawyers, yeah. And particularly, people that are high up in different organizations too, I am a Senior Director of this, or VP of that, or CEO of this. You know, we hear that again and again and again, because we've wrapped ourselves into that world, and we built that world around it. But I'm curious, let's go into that. So what was that like for you? And how did you start unraveling that?

Jenny 31:08
Well, I think one of the insights I had again was from something of a popular psychology type book, about how there are some people in the world, and I realized that I can acknowledge that I am one of them, who are unusually highly tuned into other people's expectations. I know a lot of podcast guests have alluded to this and it's helpful. I think that the particular book or sort of, I don't know, framework that I found helpful is by Gretchen Rubin, writer who studies happiness and habits and recently published a book called "The Four Tendencies" about how people respond to external and internal expectations. And I’ve always sort of envied people who are very tuned into their own internal compass and expectations and goals. My tendency has always been to try and do what other people expect or I think is reasonable and I think somehow I had to... was very comforting to me to read more about the fact that there are more people than me in the world that share this I guess, orientation. You don’t have to beat yourself up and think that you're weird or weak willed, etc. You can try to say, given that I now recognize I follow a lot of others' expectations to the point of having a lot of credentials and experience in an arena that maybe other people expected me to follow or to be a good fit. Given that, I can still take a step back and say, "Now I realize that isn’t the best long term fit and now I want to gently disentangle from some of those external expectations and start discovering what my own internal drive is telling me." I went through this self-questioning and self-analysis process and it was significantly helped by all the material that I absorbed from the HTYC podcast, and blog, and some of the courses and exercises that you, guys, provided, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:50
You’ve been through quite a few things with us, you’ve been through career change bootcamp, and you've done coaching, and you've been a listener for a long time on the podcast. You’ve been everywhere.

Jenny 33:59
Well I think that... one of my insights was, it's really okay to ask for help, get help and support and invest in help and support. It's a big deal to make a big transition. The thing I think was the hugest roadblock for me, mentally, and maybe for others was this feeling of lack of confidence. First of all, how could I have such... how could I have invested so many years in a career path that might not be a good fit? Why didn’t I realize this sooner? And then having a lack of confidence of not performing perfectly in my job that isn’t a good fit, and I think you or others said, "Well, it makes some sense that we wouldn’t performing at our best at a job that we recognized isn't a great fit." But something about that daily undermining of confidence like, I'm not doing what I’m supposed to be doing, I'm not good at the things I’m supposed to be good at, that sort of, drains confidence and so it was really hard... it was really hard for me to kind of get over that confidence barrier and have that energy and positive confidence to apply for better fit jobs. I think HTYC and other support people and resources were really essential for me to kind of build up confidence that had been draining away and kind of get that energy and positivity back to start making new applications. I certainly had a few ups and downs with that. Some interviews and applications that didn’t go very well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:55
Share how long you’ve been working on this. I think it'll be helpful to people. How long have you been working on this journey in order to make this transition?

Jenny 36:03
I think about three full... three and a half full years since my very first job application which was in a, I don't know if I even I’ve talked to you much about that one, but it was for a science focus role with a national nonprofit conservation organization, which I think does amazing work and I really respect and admire. But because it was sort of a blend of science and other roles, I did the interview for that job kind of wearing my science hat, and I was really thrown off because the interview and application process was a lot broader than I had realized. And I may not have... by this story before that there was this moment that I occasionally have nightmares about, during a big final interview with a big panel of people. They suddenly switched from asking science-ish questions to asking me what I was passionate about. And I completely froze up. Now I know that that's not such an unusual job interview question. But at that time, it was the first time I'd ever heard it. In the world of all the science interviews, I'd never done that. Had never never come up. And as you know, I’m also from England where people don’t tend to talk freely about passion very much. I started stammering and joking about how scientists really weren't supposed to talk about passion nor were English people typically. And I said that the only thing I could admit to being passionate about was good coffee. And maybe you can relate to that but the interview panel wasn’t very amused by that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 38:09
They weren't buying it.

Jenny 38:09
No. I just floundered horribly and finally said a few things that weren’t related to coffee and recovered a little but I realized after that interview, that I really needed to work more broadly on my skills and my presentation, and my applications. This wasn’t something that I would just be able to kind of wing it and succeed at in making a big transition. I’ve really benefited from all the resources and guidance that I’ve found with your team and others and feel like I should encourage people like you always have, to not try to go it alone. And try to reach out for help and resources, if needed. I realize that interviews can be handled much better with lots and lots of practice and I also really loved the episode long ago in the podcast where you interviewed a scientist with a PhD in biochemistry, Adarsh Pandit and he mentioned he had done like 30 interviews while trying to figure out his transition from a science and research role into another arena. And that made me feel a lot better, you know it really does take practice, it's not gonna happen spontaneously and organically.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:48
I think, I wasn’t around for that particular time frame when you went through that interview that now, still occasionally gives you nightmares but I think that had to happen in order to allow the other events that followed it. Otherwise, you may not have had all the realizations that you've had, and you may not have conducted all the experiments that you conducted in that took place after that and not in the way. So, I wouldn’t wish the nightmares on anybody but I would absolutely wish that type of event that caused you to think about some of these things differently. And I think many people need that type of wake up. You don’t have to but a lot of times, it does takes place before we begin to take different types of action and before we begin to reach out and ask for help and before we begin to realize that, "hey, this is the bigger deal and if I really want this, then, here's how I have to go." We’ve been in contact, I wanna say for a little over 18 months, give or take. And I just got to say that I’ve been so impressed with, particularly, how you have stepped through this. Because... first of all, let’s just think about what you've done here, you’ve been immersed every single day in a situation where essentially, some of the things that you are the best at and some of the things that really do make you happy, and some of the types of activities and the way you engaged with people aren’t rewarded for the most part in your environment. What, I think, most people don’t realize when they're in that, is the realization that you had, that it was chipping away at your confidence. When it does something that is continually chipping away at your confidence every single day, then taking and having the wherewithal to recognize that and reach out for help is, honestly, half the battle. Because, that is something most people will not do. And then, you went above and beyond that and even though it's been super uncomfortable for you, because you thought about yourself as a scientist and you have all of these other people expectations in mind, you've continually progressed closer and closer to the point where now you have this role, that is going to leverage the fun things or the things that you look at as fun and also some of the things that you have and be great about and at the same time, not so coincidentally, leverage those the experiences that you have. And I think that, that is so cool, it is not easy. And it's taken a long time for you to be able to make that journey but most people will never start or most people will stay on that same path and never get the help, never recognize that it's chipping away their confidence, never have the commitment to be able to do something about it. So I am super proud of you and I'm so appreciative that you've allowed us to be right there and help along the way.

Jenny 42:59
Thanks. Yeah, I really appreciate it and I think the experiences I’ve had hopefully are shared by others. It doesn’t have to be science that forms your identity. And I’ve taken, I would say, I've taken steps to kind of broaden that identity. I haven’t completely let it go. My new role will certainly... I realized it was important for me to find a role in which that training and experience will be an asset. But I’m thrilled that I'll be able to use my people skills, my relationship building skills, my guiding and mentoring and discovering and problem solving skills and I don’t think I would have clarified those as fully without all this great help along the way. So, thanks again. Yeah, it's been really a fun process of discovery.

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:02
Fun mixed in with some challenges along the way to say the least. I’m super curious, before we go, for other people that are in the shoes that you were in, 18 plus months ago, where they have the realization that it's not what I want to be doing forever. They are looking at the type of the change that they want to make or maybe even feel like they need to make, in order to get where they want to go and it's a big change because what you have done is a huge change, I would say. What advice would you give people that are in that place?

Jenny 44:46
Good question. I guess to try and sum it up it would be to trust your own instincts about what feels like a good fit for you and try not to stay too attached on that investment and identity that doesn’t feel like a good fit any longer. I think people do change and evolve and I keep to remind myself that, "new phases of our identities is what keeps life interesting and we can make a bigger difference in the world for the better if we allow those changes to happen rather than fighting them." It’s helped me to have a few sort of mantras about... or prepared answers to people's questions about why I might make this move. I think those will be different for everybody but it helps me to kind of practice them. Science is a great fit for many people and I love science but I think a better fit for me will be facilitating science with other partners, etc. I also think that it is daunting to look at one's whole life being sort of reorganized by a new career choice but I love how your process and others emphasize that it's kind of a holistic process of change and it shouldn’t be scary. It can definitely be positive and exciting. I also wanted to just quickly mention, it turned out that I had a friend in my neighborhood all along, who gave me great insights and confidence close to the end of my journey. And she sort of complimented your approach, Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:53
Very cool.

Jenny 46:55
She sort of had this perspective of telling me what she thought my strengths were, sort of in everyday life. And I know you emphasize that in the bootcamp like, have your friends and family to list your strengths. I found that really tough. It happened organically through some conversations with a friend who's starting a career coaching business called Career Five. She just was able to chat with me about strengths and say, "Yes. This is what I’ve seen you do in the neighborhood, school or birthday parties. This is what I think you're great at." I would say to others like, try and take those sources of information and confidence sort of wherever they show up and everything is relevant and keep the faith and keep your spirits up through adding everything into your week that you can, that helps boosts that confidence and reminds you of all the things outside your, not good fit job, that make you... that give you happiness, confidence, and rewards.

Scott Anthony Barlow 48:11
Very cool. I so appreciate you making the time. This has been a phenomenal conversation. There are actually so many other questions that I wanted to ask but we haven't even got to dive into. But some huge takeaways for me and how to think about yourself differently and how to move through a big change like this, particularly, when you’ve steep yourself in one type of perception about how you and your life looks and I think you’ve done such a phenomenal job with that. So I so appreciate you making the time, Jenny.

Jenny 48:52
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 48:55
Hey, if you're ready to create and begin to live a life that really truly is unapologetically you, I would absolutely urge you to check out our career change bootcamp program. We have, for the first time, just open career change bootcamp 2.0. And you can find that on our website happentoyourcareer.com click on career change bootcamp, or drop us an email support@happentoyourcareer.com. And we'll be able to point you in the right direction to learn more about how you can learn what you really want and be able to make it happen. Hey, I really appreciate all of you going over to Stitcher and iTunes and all kinds of places where podcasts are played and leaving us ratings and reviews. This helps so many other people find the show and we just... it means the world to us. And as it turns out, helps other people, not just find the show, but get to work that they love which is kind of what we do around here, anyhow, really appreciate. This one from Lauren PNDC, it says "This podcast is a lifeline as I tolerate a job that pays well believes me lackluster, and I found it by googling, should I quit or fear of taking risk, it's revitalizing my vision for meaningful work and finding the tribe I feel connected to. so grateful for this high quality content." Thanks so much, Lauren. Really appreciate you leaving that. We have much more in store for you coming up next week right here on Happen To Your Career. We have even another person and I think you're going to absolutely love this one, who allowed us to tag along for the ride. And she made such an amazing change, I think you'd be blown away. And so much of this next episode, I think you'd be able to incorporate into your life. So take a listen for what we've got coming in store.

Laura Morrison 50:48
And so for a while, that felt like a good fit, and it felt like something I could be passionate about. And then over time, it just wasn't anymore. But again, I was in the same position that I had had kind of in college and beyond where I didn't know what else to do. And so I just kind of stuck with it, kind of only half thinking about what else I could be doing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 51:10
Alright, all that and plenty more right here on Happen To Your Career, next week. Until then, I am out. Adios.

Scott Anthony Barlow 51:23
Cue the bloopers. That means record just in case you hadn't figured it out. This is Scott Anthony Barlow (so unprofessional) uh, yeah, I got this. Deep breath. Like I'm at the yoga class or something. Sorry, Josh. I'm like really mixed up here. Okay.

Joshua Rivers 51:45
Not a problem. It's called a blooper reel.

Scott Anthony Barlow 51:49
Yeah. Oh, my goodness. That's ridiculous. Like I've never done this before. Oh, my goodness. My voice sounds so flat.

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Is Staying at a Job You Hate Holding You Back from Happiness?

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Is staying at a job you hate holding you back from happiness? What if you’ve changed careers…and the new work wasn’t quite the fit you thought it would be?

That’s what happened to Audrey Romagnoulo. She was a talented Operations Manager working in the Events and Hospitality industry in New York City. She’d given much of herself to the job and had been rewarded with increasing responsibility, perpetual “thank yous” …and an increasing distaste for her work because what she valued most didn’t align with what the company valued.

When she came to us for help, it became apparent that the genuine, highly caring, no-holds-barred person that she was (and wanted to be more often) was being hampered because of the job she was working in.

This inability to be herself for 70 hours a week became so frustrating for her that it sparked an 11-month long journey to figure out what she really wanted and fight off the mental barriers that were keeping her stuck!

So how did she go from teary days staying at a job she hated to getting paid $20,000 more with a career that allowed her to be who she is?

Take a listen to Audrey’s story and find out!

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST YOUR CAREER CHANGE

After helping a couple thousand people make career changes, you notice a few commonalities.

We’ve realized that EVERYONE has barriers to making their change. Especially the busy, high achieving peeps that we’ve worked with. Audrey was no exception!

Audrey had 3 major barriers keeping her from making this change:

End-of-Day Energy Drain: She was working an absurd amount of hours and was drained by the time she was getting home from work and the hour commute each way.

Less Opportunities: She wanted to move to a smaller city many hours away that had less companies and less jobs.

No Job Title Experience: She had 10 years of professional experience but she had never worked in any of the professions that she was most interested in.

To get around these barriers we realized that we would have to do a few things.

  1. We set Audrey up on a schedule that allowed for her to do the work slowly with continuous effort every single week. This schedule allowed her to focus on doing the “work” for herself first thing in the day so that some of her best energy was going to herself.
  2. We realized that to be most effective she would have to avoid the “front door” (online applications) and go in the “back door” (relationships and connections) because she didn’t have the job title experience to be competitive AND because there were less opportunities in the area she want to relocate to.

We also knew that it would be critically important to make sure that Audrey’s next role was one that enabled her to be happy rather than detracted from her happiness.

This meant that she was going to have to do some experimenting to make sure that she got it right.

HOW AUDREY LEARNED THAT WORKING FOR GOOGLE ISN’T FOR EVERYBODY

Audrey began by identifying what would make an ideal opportunity for her. Next, she created a list of companies that she thought might have the types of jobs and culture that she wanted. Then, she began test driving these companies to determine whether or not these were actually a fit.

What happened next is exactly why we always have our students test out their theories of who they actually want to work for and what environment will make them happy.

One of the companies on her short list was Google, partially because she wanted a more progressive environment than where she was already working and partially because they had office locations nearby where she wanted to live.

She worked to get introductions to people inside the company through a friend of her significant other (the weak ties are always there, most people just don’t realize it). She next scheduled some informal “no agenda” conversations to begin building relationships and learning more about the organizations.

These conversations led her to take a total 180 degree turn that may have saved her several years of another job and company that was the wrong fit!

She learned that she actually valued a much more traditional office environment rather than the open concept culture of places like Google.

There were a variety of reasons but Audrey put it this way.

“I learned that if I ever had to wait for someone to finish a game of ping pong so I could get what I needed for a project, I would probably go crazy”

Not at all what she expected! But boy was she glad she did the research as she could have easily ended up in one of those environments!

She also knew that she wanted to make more money in her next role but had no idea how much money she was losing by staying where she was!

HOW STAYING AT A JOB YOU HATE COULD BE BE COSTING YOU MONEY: THE EARNINGS FORMULA

I don’t think Audrey actually believed that she could make significantly more money while at the same time changing careers AND moving to a place with much lower cost of living (and lower pay).

…At least until we showed her the data for the types of roles she was exploring. I personally spent 10 minutes pulling together data from some of our favorite resources like Glassdoor.com, Salary.com, and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and we found that it was very likely Audrey could easily increase her salary by $10,000 – $30,000 annually!

This meant that for every month she was staying in her job she was losing $833 – $2500.

Here’s an example of how that works.

It doesn’t take a PhD in Applied Mathematics to figure out that not only is this amount what you’re losing every single month you’re in your current job, but that when when this begins to add up over years it adds to significant money for most people (especially if you are staying at a job you hate!).

For Audrey it meant $100,000 difference over the next 5 years. $300,000 over the next 30 years if Audrey never got another salary increase (highly unlikely).

So, in other words, changing jobs meant losing the equivalent of a large house where Audrey lives! (Or a reasonably nice apartment in Paris.)

What most people don’t take into account is that when you’re earning more in a job that you’re much more excited about, it gives you additional momentum because you’re more likely to get additional increases in the form of higher raises or promotions.

More important than all of the money, though, is that Audrey was able to get a job that allowed her to be herself and do what she was great at.

BUT WHAT DOES IT REALLY TAKE TO MAKE A CAREER CHANGE?

You know how you always hear those success stories of what other people have done? If you’re like me (or you’re human), sometimes they can make you a little jealous or depressed.

How come it always works out so well for those other people?

Well, here’s the hidden reality behind every single one of the success stories we’ve published:

Zero of them were easy, AND none of them went perfectly.

In fact, we find that much of the time we are helping our students make it easier to change to work they love by focusing on the right things, but focusing on the right things alone doesn’t automatically make you successful.

What happens when you get rejected from a company that you thought was going to give you an offer? Or when everybody is on vacation all at the same time and you feel like throwing in the towel on your career change because you don’t feel like you’re making progress? Or when things blow up at your current job and it sucks up all your time for 2 weeks straight?

All of these happened to Audrey.

It was hard to manage those things while working so much and working crazy hours commuting from state to state. I was crying on the bus ride to work and home sometimes. On those days my most fulfilling days were the days I finished a task. Rarely was it something I was doing on my own behalf.

The imbalance become more obvious as time went on. I was having hopeful conversations and I’d get really excited. I remember talking to this one company for three months and it was all positive but all of a sudden they closed the job because they acquired another office and had two people that could do the job. It was a huge slap in the face.

Even after all of this, she would still do it over again. When you make this type of change, it’s not just about making the change for more money, you end up taking back your life and your right to be yourself and live the life you want along the way.

It doesn’t happen all at once. For Audrey, it took over 11 months. It happens in small steps day after day.

Let me know what you’re going to do today to move yourself forward in the comments below (or congratulate Audrey on her recent change). Don’t let fear force you into staying at a job you hate!

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Audrey Romagnuolo 00:04
I got this job in New York marketing in a timeshare industry and hated it because it was boring. The work wasn't very engaging. And although I got to interact with traveling people and transient guests all the time, I kind of felt stupid and underutilized doing the job.

Introduction 00:30
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:54
Hey, welcome back to the Happen To Your Career podcast. I am beyond excited to be here. I know I say that all the time. But I'm especially excited for this episode. It's... quite honestly, one I've been waiting for. I think that's fair to say. I've been waiting for it for a little while ever since I met our guest today. I have had in the back of my mind that I want her on the Happen To Your Career podcast. So without further ado, welcome Audrey to Happen To Your Career. How are you feeling?

Audrey Romagnuolo 01:29
Hey, Scott, I'm feeling great.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:31
Good. Because this is going to be fun. I don't even know all the details yet. But you and I worked together, you found us. I don't even actually know if I remember the story of how you found us. And we'll get into all that. But I got the pleasure of being able to tag along for the ride as you were making your career change. And you allowed us the honor of being able to help out with that. And you've done some rather amazing things I would say. So I'm super excited to dig into all of that. We're going to get to all the things in due time here. Tell people what you do now and you're just getting ready to start your new role here.

Audrey Romagnuolo 02:14
Sure, so I am a benefits coordinator for a law firm in Boston.

Mike Bigelow 02:24
I'm an engineer who was living in Portland, Oregon, and was moving up to Seattle, Washington to support my wife's career change.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:30
This is Michael, he's made career changes before but this one was different.

Mike Bigelow 02:34
A lot of the folks I talked to using sort of my normal candles were often saying, "Hey, we'd love to have somebody like you on the team. Unfortunately, we just let three or four people just like you go because there's not enough work to go around anymore."

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:47
Listen to Michael's story later in the episode to learn how we use coaching to help them figure out what fits him and make the change to work he loves.

Mike Bigelow 02:54
You have somebody in your corner who's looking out for your best interest, they're pushing you to be the best version of yourself and to stretch and grow yourself consistently towards that best self.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:06
You have not always worked as a benefits coordinator though, and you have not always worked in HR, necessarily in any capacity. You've done a lot of different things over your career. And I want to go way back here a bit and dive into how you got to the point where you saw the need to change in the first place. So where did, first of all, where did your professional career begin? Let's give people a little bit of color here.

Audrey Romagnuolo 03:38
So I would say where it becomes relevant. I had, you know, a lot of experience in sales roles and marketing positions. I got a job in New York, which is kind of like a, just the mark on the to-do list that I had to do for no more reason than the fact that that's what my mom did. And that's what people from New Jersey did. I got this job in New York marketing in a timeshare industry and hated it. It was boring. The work wasn't very engaging. And although I got to interact with traveling people and a transient guests all the time, I kind of felt stupid and underutilized doing the job, then went back into the beauty and wellness industry where I had kind of began working straight out of college and thought, "I missed the serenity in the aroma therapy of that environment." So jumped back in and I was an entry level, guest service manager, moved, got promoted after hosting a huge event became an events manager. And then we lost three out of five people on our management team and I was afforded the opportunity to dive into payroll and employee relations and some investigations and a lot of benefits and open enrollment and just all of that world of mess, and I absolutely loved it. I fell in love with it because I was able to deal with things that mattered most to the employees. And so it was really difficult once those roles were then filled again, to let go of the tasks that now we're so much more fulfilling than, you know, event budgets and catering management and things of that nature.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:32
So, from working with you a bit, I know that there were elements that you just... were absolutely enamored with, and had a ton of fun with. But overall, eventually something changed. At some point, you stopped having as much fun. So how did that happen? What took place there? What were some of the timeline events?

Audrey Romagnuolo 05:56
You know, in hindsight, I think that this is probably a very common coming of age for a lot of professionals, where as a young person involved in any industry, you feel like, I need to take on as many new things and as many learning opportunities as possible, so that I can then apply those skills later. And kind of, you know, you're adding tools to your tool belt, for lack of better terms. And you finally get to a point where, taking on all that extra stuff, it's wonderful, but you're not getting paid any more for having volunteered yourself into your grave, and you start to feel a little bit undervalued. And it's hard to develop the courage to have those conversations with your superiors, especially when you taking on those kinds of projects. You're torn because you enjoy them. And at the same time, it's now an expectation. And if you're an overachiever, like I imagine many of your clients are, saying 'no' is really difficult, almost as difficult as saying, "Hey, I've increased my value since I started here. And I need that to be reflected."

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:09
Yeah. And I know you had some of those challenging conversations too, along the way. And some of them were particularly hard for you. And but I'm curious, what caused you to be able to get to the point where you were struggling with, even thinking about those conversations and thinking that they could be a reality, and then beginning to have some of those types of conversations, what changed during that period of time?

Audrey Romagnuolo 07:39
So I think that there were so many elements, I think one of the strongest ones was burnout. I was pushing, I was averaging 70 to 80 hour work weeks. I was, I think the breaking point for me was being offered a promotion, and not being offered a raise to go with it. It was essentially like, "Hey, you've been so awesome with this portion of your job, we'd love for you to do it for this new department we've just acquired" but, they showed me the salary, and it was pretty much exactly what I was making. And it was just like, "Okay, this is not working." On top of that, after declining the offer, which I think was one of the harder conversations.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:28
Yeah.

Audrey Romagnuolo 08:28
I'm still being asked to assist with the project and not being compensated for it, which I said 'yes' to, because I was like, I've had enough of awkward conversations. I don't want any more awkward conversations. At this point, I had already known that I'd be relocating. And I was fortunate enough to have this awesome coach who was like, "Hey, take advantage of learning these new systems. And we'll work on getting you out of there." And that's kind of what we did.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:58
Yeah. And I remember a lot of those conversations that you and I had about that exact thing, because at some point along the way, even before you brought us on board to be able to help out. Then you had made the decision you were going to leave. Right? What was kind of the sticking point for you there where you had... what was the final straw, if you will? Because there were certainly some fun elements and some things that you'd really did enjoy. Do you remember what the last straw was before you said, "Look, I gotta get some help here. I made the decision to go."

Audrey Romagnuolo 09:41
Well, actually, I had worked with another counselor on three appointments prior to contacting HTYC. And, she was in the city and she was a huge advocate of the Myers Briggs Assessment, which assessments are a wonderful tool. But I think there are people of a certain mindset who are susceptible to using them, as opposed to deep sea diving into their own desires and wants. And so you're kind of allowing yourself to be placed into a box as opposed to making your own decisions. It felt very box like, and I think it was my third session with this counselor where I questioned that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:26
And I can't imagine you questioning anything after getting to know you, certainly not.

Audrey Romagnuolo 10:33
But I questioned that. And she was almost defensive. And I was like, "Wait, this is... I'm paying for this service to help me get clear. This is the Audrey show. This is not, I love Myers Briggs," you know, so I just stopped going. And then I found HTYC. I heard you speaking on somebody else's podcast. And I reached out. And none of that answered your question. So to say what my breaking point was, I was also in a relationship, a long distance relationship. And it had been a long time dealing with a long distance commute. And I was just the type of woman who was unwilling to move for love. And then finally, the conversation, another uncomfortable conversation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:29
I'm noticing a pattern here.

Audrey Romagnuolo 11:30
Was having someone who meant so much to me, he asked me, "Why are you choosing something that makes you so unhappy over something that we could create together? That would make us both really happy?" And I didn't have an answer for that. And so I said, "Look, I'm not comfortable moving without a job. I'm gonna work with this guy, Scott, he's awesome. And he looks like you a little bit. I think it's gonna be great." And that's what we did. And then ultimately, I wound up moving anyway.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:00
Yeah. The twists and turns that happened in there. And I totally want to come back to that too. You did end up moving anyways. But it wasn't a small road to be able to get to that point. And that's super interesting that you were on this track, where you were running this as fast as you possibly can. And because you were running down that track, and because it was what was going on in your life, it was almost accidentally forcing you to say no to some other things that were really, really important. Like considering the move in that way.

Audrey Romagnuolo 12:42
Yep, absolutely. I think that was the hardest thing to come to terms with was finally coming to the decision to move without something lined up in advance. But if you know, and for anybody who's contemplating a move, if you have the means to do it, just go, I can't stress that enough, like it is the most rewarding risk you will take, you will be happier in your job search, you will enjoy the process more, and you will be able to commit to it with so much more confidence.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:19
That's super interesting. I've been, not to take us too far off track here, but I've been reading literally every single book that I can find that has a good set of research behind what makes us happy as humans. And so I'm like, I don't know, 10 or 15 books into this. And one of the things that is overwhelming within the research is that, when we make decisions, and then when we take actions on those decisions, we rarely as human beings regret it afterwards. But if we don't take that action, like in this case, it could have been, you know, choosing to never make that move or choosing to wait until you have the job or something else along those lines. You know, that's the situation where it causes regret in the end versus the other way around, versus if I'm actually taking that action. It's absurd because our brains tell us the opposite thing, actually. The other way around is much more intuitive to us. So you took this, clearly, you don't regret it. Clearly it turned out for the best, but I'm curious why you advise people to do that. Push this research aside and say like, what was your personal experience? Because you were going through a lot of questioning about whether or not that was the right decision for you.

Audrey Romagnuolo 14:48
Right. So if I may throw myself under the bus, you know, until HTYC, I never once considered lifestyle in terms of selecting a career path or a job.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:02
What do you mean by that?

Audrey Romagnuolo 15:06
How much free time I had in a day was not something that I included in my search, you know, the breakdown in that eight day course it makes you look at, you know, your health and wellness, your relationships, if you, you know, if you have spiritual elements that you wanted to include in your lifestyle, none of those things ever even came into my awareness as things to consider when looking for a job, which, you know, you learn in time is utterly ridiculous, because the truth is, your job is not what matters most. Generally speaking, it's everything else that matters more, the job is just a means to support you living the life that you'll enjoy. And, you know, share with the people that you love. So that was a huge mindset twist for me, was, I'm looking for a much bigger picture than just a vocation that I'm going to do during the week.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:06
Interesting. So then, how did that impact later then that decision? Because it wasn't just one, from what I recall, it wasn't just one and done type conversation, it was back and forth. And you made a go of it, trying to find a new job while you were at this job, your previous job, right?

Audrey Romagnuolo 16:33
Yes, I did. So during my search, and you know, doing all the cold calling, which, if you hate cold calling, don't judge yourself, just don't think about it, just get it done. But it was really hard to manage those things. While, you know, working so much and working these crazy hours and then commuting from state to state. You know, I was crying on the bus ride to work, and then sometimes crying on the way home and, at that point, my most fulfilling days were the days where I completed a task. And rarely was it something that I was doing on my own behalf. So the imbalance just became more and more obvious as time went on. And I was having some really hopeful conversations, and I was, you know, I would get really excited about... I had this conversation with this company, and then, you know, I remember speaking with one company for a span of three months, and everything was positive, positive, positive, positive, and then all of a sudden, they were like, "Oh, sorry, we closed the position, because we acquired another office, and they have two people who can do the job." It was like, just such a huge slap in the face. And I was like, I hate those people. But I moved here and wound up getting an interview with the same company for another position. So, what I would say, why I would suggest just taking the risk sooner than later is, I spent, and this is not suggesting everybody's going to fall in the same timeline. But I spent six months in New Jersey, looking for work in Massachusetts. And then I moved to Massachusetts, and finally made the decision to take the risk and come here and meet the people and be able to go to interviews and see people and things like that. And it took me the same amount of time. So imagine if I would have came here six months earlier.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:41
Potentially could have saved some of those months.

Audrey Romagnuolo 18:44
Correct.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:46
So back in, if you want a good outline for whether or not it's a good idea to quit, and when it's okay to quit, go back to Episode 203 with Mike Goodman, our community success manager, who has also quit jobs along with myself too. And we give you a really good set, a really good set of questions and outlines to be able to decide whether or not it is right for you, because it's not necessarily right for everybody. But if I remember, Audrey, we talked extensively about whether or not that would be a good decision in your case, and from what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong, you had done a really good job saving some money. So you had given yourself some runway, and that's one of the things that put you in a good position to be able to make that possible. And then also you have done a good job eliminating, you didn't have really, really, really significant amounts of debt or living expenses or anything along those lines. So that made it possible too. And ultimately for the type person you are, I think the other thing that seemed to be really good for you is not having all of this stuff that was bringing you down and draining you that was deterring your focus from being able to make the transition. How did you feel about that after, well, I guess before and after that decision?

Audrey Romagnuolo 20:16
Actually I remember the day that I made the decision to move and it was during one of our Tuesday sessions, and I just remember kind of being like, "I can't do this anymore." like, I need to move. And I just remember divulging like, Scott, this is how much money I have in the bank. Like, this is what I've got to work with, I need to buy a car. I'm gonna anticipate and we actually just wrote a budget and just doing that math, I think you were like, "You have 13 months, like you're losing money, staying where you are." And that was it. That was all I needed was just to budget myself and realize this is totally real. And then, you know, I think that very afternoon, one of my friends reached out to me and was like, "I just quit my job, I'm going to tour across the US for three months." And I'm like, if this girl can quit her job and take a road trip, I can quit my job and look for a job. And that was that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:24
So that was a really big mindset switch, then. So tell HTYCers a little bit more about the losing money in state because I think that was a big mindset switch for you.

Audrey Romagnuolo 21:37
Yeah, so I'm a saver, I like putting money away in the bank, it feels good to look at that number increase. And one of the things I was really afraid of, one, I just didn't want to move here and be dependent on anybody. That was something that I just wasn't willing to do. So I wanted to make sure when I moved in, that I was contributing 50/50 on everything. And the thing is, I'm a crazy person. So my, you know, my partner would have been happy to support me, he would have, you know, relish in the opportunity, but I'm a psychopath. So I'm not having it. I am woman, I need to, you know, be 50/50 on everything. So that was one thing. The other piece was, I was scared of how I would feel watching my bank account just dwindle every month, as I paid my bills. I wound up finding a really awesome deal on a used car. And soon as I got the car, it was in my driveway every day, and I was just like, yep, I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna quit now, because I just wanted to pack my car and leave.

Rebecca Maddox 22:56
There was something missing in my career that I have some skills I want to sharpen, that I wanted a different connection to the work that I was doing. And I was feeling very stuck in my search.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:09
Remember Rebecca from earlier? Well, not only did you feel stuck in her career, but she had some personal struggles, too.

Rebecca Maddox 23:16
I was dealing with a long term relationship and trying to bridge the gap there. But also, I felt like I needed to be in a different setting to really hone my skills in a certain way to get experience and to have a different interaction with my work.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:30
When she signed up for coaching with HTYC she gained accountability and direction.

Rebecca Maddox 23:35
Getting the support, getting helping to focus on your goals, and what are some tangible results you can pull out of your goals is helpful. I think preparing in practicing to walk into an interview and having someone there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:48
It help her to get clarity and take action on the career change.

Rebecca Maddox 23:53
And better clarity on what maybe what your weaknesses and strengths are, that are going into your interview so that you're holistically prepared. And to help you see the moving pieces in your search.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:07
Hey! Congratulations, Rebecca, on figuring out what you really wanted and making the change to it. If you also want to figure out what work fits you and make it happen, well, guess what? We can absolutely help. All you have to do is go to happentoyourcareer.com and click on Coaching to be able to apply. Send in your application right now. Or here's the other thing you can do, you just press pause and text MYCOACH, that's MYCOACH to 44222. Pause right now and we'll send over the application right to your phone.

Rebecca Maddox 24:40
Having someone there to could hear what you're saying but then also can see what's in between the lines to pull that out and to get your job search a boost is invaluable.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:53
If I remember, one of the exercises that we did is we went through and step by step figured out, okay, so here's how much you're earning at your current job, which at that time, we felt that you were significantly underpaid for your experience level and what you could bring to the table and essentially the rest of the market. So we said, "Okay, look, we came up with that, you will probably be making around 20-ish thousand dollars moreso if you're changing to a new company, new job, etc, etc. So what is the payback? Or what is the time period in which you can go, one, without running out of savings, and we figured out, hey, it's well over a year. But then the second thing that we figured out, too, is look for every single month that you're staying in here, you are actually losing that new potential salary. By staying in role. Versus, if in we wrote it out on digital paper, I think it was at the time might have been real paper, and we figured out, hey, that, look, if it takes you six months to be able to get a new role, then actually, that's a really good payback, cuz you're gonna make that up in X number of months too and I don't think most people are looking at it in that particular way too. And if I recall, what you said is now that you've made that change too, I think you got what, like a $20,000 increase or something, right?

Audrey Romagnuolo 26:30
Yes it is.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:32
Weird. Yeah, good for you. That's awesome.

Audrey Romagnuolo 26:35
And I did it in six months. So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:37
Well, look at that.

Audrey Romagnuolo 26:39
Yeah, we basically forecasted it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:43
It's almost like we've done this before.

Audrey Romagnuolo 26:45
Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:46
Yeah. So what do you think the hardest part was? For you in particular, both throughout the, well, let's start with the entire journey.

Audrey Romagnuolo 27:00
I think just coming to the point where I was ready to make the decision, making the decision was actually relatively easy. And I think putting, you know, putting the numbers down on paper actually really helped with that. But making the decision to transition out of the wellness industry, with the understanding that I could continue growing on this ladder, and probably do so pretty rapidly. But I had no interest in it whatsoever. And so making the decision to say, "Hey, I'm gonna go entry level, in a totally different direction." I think, part of the, you know, a lot of the rewiring that was required, I had to in terms of a resume, which I know, resumes aren't so huge, but I'm taking things out of the context of your current role, and putting them in transferable context is way more valuable, especially if you're doing applications online. Nobody cares about the specifics. And so you're the only person who knows the context of what you were doing where you were, if you're not taking the effort to translate that to the industry you want to be in, you're not doing yourself any favors. So that was one thing, because I found myself removing accomplishments on my resume that weren't relevant. And you feel like, oh, but that was awesome. Like, I kicked butt on that or that was great. But it doesn't matter if it's not relevant. So get it off. Another part of the rewiring that was like, really interesting. I had a super huge, I was so embarrassed to say to an interviewer, you know, when they would say, "Why'd you move to Massachusetts?" Like to say, "Well, I moved for love" I was so embarrassed. And I wound up doing it on a phone interview with someone who was interviewing me for something I really didn't care about. And I had other conversations going on. And I just figured let me experiment and just say it, and she was like, "Oh, my God, me too. Blah, blah, blah, blah." And I was like, it's a story. So I started saying it more and more, and I will, I can guarantee that every conversation I've had since both on the phone and in person, in groups, somebody could relate to that story.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:32
Because it's human, right?

Audrey Romagnuolo 29:34
Because it's human. Yep.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:36
If I remember you were, we had many conversations about that specific thing and even other details too, where you were afraid or unsure or very uncomfortable with sharing those pieces of you essentially, which was authentically you. And I would say you are, by far, one of the most authentic people that I know in general, but for, no, very, very true, and I've told you that several times, but it was hard, it was hard one, it was put into the context of, "Hey, I'm going to go and I'm going to change my world. And I'm going to talk to all these new people. And I want it to translate into something that's going to be really good for my career. And what should I share? What shouldn't I share?" So that's so interesting, then that you found that when you were sharing more of yourself, you got a better response from that.

Audrey Romagnuolo 30:34
Yes. Huge insight there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 30:40
Were there any other areas where you became more comfortable sharing more of yourself in the job search, or interview, or other part of the process?

Audrey Romagnuolo 30:51
Yeah, so it took a long time to get to this point. And it took a lot of conversations, to finally realize that if I didn't like something about a role, like when you get further along in an interview process, and what I've noticed, most of the conversations I've had have been with teams. So it hasn't been just the standard one interview, and then a callback. It's been six people, one day in two hours, or like, whatever. And somebody always winds up asking you, you know, "Is there anything about the job that you're concerned about? Is there anything about the description that you're not interested in?" Like, answer those questions, honestly, I literally had a woman at a company in Boston bring me in, and say, "I brought you in today, because I liked you so much during our phone call, but I really don't think you're gonna like this job. And I just need to know that you're jazzed about it." And she was like, "I want you to go home and really think about this." I'm thinking to myself, well, one, I've never been called to an interview for someone to be like, I don't think you're gonna like this at all.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:59
On the interview.

Audrey Romagnuolo 32:00
Maybe she's, you know, you never know what somebody on the other end of the phone intends for you. So who knows, that person could have you in mind for a totally different role. And if you're not being receptive to the opportunities that are coming in front of you, you could miss out on quite a bit. So don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Even if you feel under qualified, even if you feel like you're not a right fit, because you may sit down. And they might say, "We really... I know you applied for this, but what do you think about this?" and it could be something you totally love.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:34
That is amazing advice right there. And totally counterintuitive, but we've seen that with literally hundreds of people that we've worked with, where when you just as you described will go into an interview, and be frank with them about, "Hey, I'm absolutely loving these parts. Here's the parts I am less excited about" especially as you get further along into the interview where you've already built a relationship. If you walk in, you know, like, hey, this, you know, your job sucks, that's totally, like, don't do that, that's not gonna be helpful to anybody. But as you get further along into that interview, and you're completely transparent with them, then that, more often than not, we've seen has created other opportunities, because so few people out there are willing to be transparent in the way that you were. And I think people connect with that.

Audrey Romagnuolo 33:26
I would also say like, if I can just, you know, bullet this one thing, the more interviews that you do that are outside of what you want, the more exposure you get to other avenues where your skills may be applicable. So I interviewed for, like, an implementation specialist role. In my role in New York, I was doing a lot of training of a lot of older generations on how to use certain tech platforms. And I wound up applying for a position that was called onboarding specialist and in my mind, I was anticipating this to be more of a human resources onboarding function. But when I had the phone interview, they were like, you know, this is more implementation. So you'll be teaching people how to use this tech of one I was like, "Whoa, I never thought in a million years I get an interview with a tech company. This is so cool." I wound up applying for like two other positions like that with different tech companies. So it's just you know, just being a little bit more receptive. I think something I really struggled with during the process was I had such a defined limited view of what my ideal was. And so I wasn't seeing the other, kind of, avenues and opportunities that were out there. And so I was missing the mark a little bit. Like, I picked this one company and I was like, that's the dream company where I wanna be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:00
That's the goal standard, yeah.

Audrey Romagnuolo 35:03
And I wouldn't, like, see anything else. So the hardest part was sometimes just finding companies I was actually interested in based on this crazy standard that I just put on the blackboard, you know? So yeah, just being open. And, you know, by the time I moved here, I feel like working with you gave me more confidence to you know, I was volunteering for events, I was working with the Chamber of Commerce, I was giving my resume to all my friends like, just utterly and shamelessly sharing my story and I can't tell you just how many tips and little tricks and leads I got just by making fun of myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:46
In what way? Now I'm super curious. What's an example of that?

Audrey Romagnuolo 35:51
Oh, my God. I don't know. I'm like when we went to... I volunteered for this event called chowderfest, which is basically just like a really fun contest where a bunch of, so I'm in the New England area chowder is, like, a big deal. But I would make fun of, like, I would start talking in my New York accent and, like, really embellishing it, and I was making the judges laugh so hard. And then it's like, "Oh, my God, she was great." Like, "We know this person." "Who's that?" Like, you just... I was at the Chamber of Commerce. And those events, it's kind of like a lot of people getting together to exchange leads. And here I am this girl with no leads just looking for like, connection. And, you know, yeah, it's a blow to the pride, you feel stupid. It's okay to feel stupid, going to networking events with nothing to offer anybody is hard. It's uncomfortable. Do it anyway, because that's when you meet people who are also from New York. And they say, you know, I know somebody at this company, or I know somebody at this company, or my friends, a headhunter, and this happened over and over again. And I'm still in touch with these people. So you know, it just... it really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:11
That is super cool. So what finally happened then to; One, I know that you had set some standards for yourself, you weren't going to take just anything out there. And as he went through these interview processes, you were looking at a completely differently than the average person, you're really trying to figure out, "Hey, is this role a fit?" And... but what finally happened at that role and company that you accepted, where you said, "Hey, this could be a good thing." How did that happen?

Audrey Romagnuolo 37:47
So I had quite a few conversations where I'll say, and maybe you can help me out here with the right verbiage, but I had, like three different companies that I interviewed with a very young sprightly type of culture with, you know, like, ping pong tables, or, yeah, like that Google inspired office space. And, I think, for whatever reason, in my head, I just thought that that's where someone like me should be pursuing work. But the truth of it is, if I were ever not knowing myself, if I were ever in a position where I had a question about a task that I needed to complete, and I had to wait for somebody to finish a ping pong game, I would lose my mind. It wasn't until walking into the office at this law firm. And, you know, the formal, respectful kind of curt way of communicating that is very straightforward. And just clear and concise. You know, that is way more my kind of style, as opposed to like, I'm not getting anything done in an office with a dog. Like, that's just, this is... you learn yourself, but none of that really made sense to me, until I went to this interview in a more formal environment and actually felt relieved that there was no googly type stuff going on. So I think a part of me felt like because I was young, that should be what I wanted.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:25
That's so interesting, even how you're talking about it in terms of "Hey, because I'm in this category, then this should be" I think, anytime you find yourself inserting the 'this should be' or this is what you know, is some other people's definition or version of what good looks like, then that's more than likely the wrong place for you, whatever it is, and yeah, I know many people that that do enjoy that environment, but that's not for everybody. I wouldn't get anything done in that. Like if you... I know, we can't see, and everything like that. But in the back of me, I've got nothing here. There's, like, floor space and a workspace. And that's it. Because I have ADD, and I get way distracted unless I can focus on the thing at hand. So ping pong. Yeah. But I know many people that just absolutely love that environment. So you learned that that clearly wasn't for you by paying attention to what felt right. And I think kudos to you, because so many people ignore that in the first place.

Audrey Romagnuolo 40:29
Well, the other thing, I mean, I caught myself being disingenuous in interviews, where, you know, somebody would say to me, and the thing is, you know, I am, one of my signature strengths would be adaptability, so I can make pretty much anything work. But in terms of how I like to operate, there were, you know, several conversations where someone would say to me, you know, "How do you feel in the realm of ambiguity?" And I mean, you've had enough conversations with me to know that I am very clear, there's no guesswork with what I'm saying. And I prefer that kind of environment. But I would tell people, you know, that's nothing strange to me. I'm totally accustomed to it, which was true. But that's not what I wanted. So then I would leave, and I would be like, Oh, I hope they, you know, call me back. And then I would think about it a little more and be like, Oh, my God, I'm going to get sick of that in like two months if I go through with this, you know.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:29
That's so interesting, because that is polar opposite of what you described in some of the other later interviews and later interactions, where you were saying, "Yeah, all these areas really fit really well. But there's this one area I'm less sure of, and here's what I'm really looking for." And that is, one, it takes courage to be able to put yourself out there in that way. So that's awesome that you did that. And what most people will not do throughout their entire lives. And instead of the way that we think that we have to interview, which is what you just described just a moment ago, where it's like, yeah, I'm totally comfortable with the ambiguity. Which is true, but not what you actually want. So asking for, for what you want is what I'm taking away from that. Like, when you ask for what you want, you're more, strangely, more likely to get what you want versus let somebody else.

Audrey Romagnuolo 42:23
And just also, you know, adversely being willing to say, "No, that's not something I enjoy. No, that's not something I'm interested in." Because I think ambiguity has become the new hot word. And a lot of companies and, especially, this is just my assessment based on my interviews. I have no backing for this whatsoever, except my opinion. But ambiguity is like a word that I've seen used quite frequently. And to me, that's just like a red flag of, "Wait. So do you know what you're doing? Like..."

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:56
Do you not have your...

Audrey Romagnuolo 42:58
So. I like things. I love flexibility. And I love innovation. But in terms of working, I like to know what it is I'm supposed to produce, who I'm working with on that project, how are we going to get there? Because I'm a point B person, once I know what point B is, I don't care about point A, I don't care about the past. I don't care about anything in my peripheral. I just want to get to be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:23
Yeah. So what advice would you give for people that are back, you know, six, eight months ago, where you were at the time, and in the role that they're not excited about, know that they want to make a change, and they're just on the cusp of wanting to move forward and find themselves and be able to do work that allows them to be much more of themselves?

Audrey Romagnuolo 43:53
I think we kind of all start at the same place, which is I don't like this. I don't want this, you know, it's not like, "Oh, I've been dreaming about this, like you're not getting there by being really happy where you are. So I think a lot of us start in the, "I don't like this place." And I think what HTYC really helps to do is... and it forces you to ask yourself questions that didn't occur to you to ask. And you're working with professionals who have not only been in your shoes, but are really good at helping other people get out of this place. So just intuitively, they know more than you do about this process, especially if it's your first go around. And why not tap into that insight? I think that what kind of made that really clear to me from the very beginning was the eight day program, the email program.

Scott Anthony Barlow 44:48
Yeah, we still have around. We've had about 15,000 people through that over at figureitout.co.

Audrey Romagnuolo 44:54
Okay, so that was like more content than I have seen offered anywhere else. And it was just so easy. And it was... but it was so much value added that, like, it was crazy. And that's just the tip of the iceberg compared to what's available.

Scott Anthony Barlow 45:18
Well, that is super kind of you to say, and it makes me happy that we get to chat after you've come full circle on this journey. And I'm so excited for you to get into your next role and have fun. And I'm so proud of you for paying attention and putting what you thought that you should be doing or what you thought you had to be doing in any given moment. And putting that aside, because it's not an easy thing to do. And then to start paying attention to yourself, which you are... I cannot wait to talk again, and another year. Just how much progress that you have made just in that one area alone. I'm just... I am just ecstatic for you. And super, super happy. So congratulations again, by the way.

Audrey Romagnuolo 46:07
Thank you, thank you so much for everything and the whole team too.

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:12
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the Happen To Your Career podcast. I really, really appreciate it. And I appreciate you. And guess what? We've got plenty more coming up next week, right here on Happen To Your Career. So take a listen to what we've got in store for you. Next week on the Happen To Your Career podcast

Dan Pink 46:32
What prompts me to go through is probably just a sense of bad reasoning saying, "oh my god, I've already sunk this much time into it. I might as well finish" or probably at another level, "wow, I really looked like an idiot if I started and didn't finish."

Scott Anthony Barlow 46:50
All that plenty more. See y'all next week. Adios. I'm out.

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The 4 Keys to a Meaningful Career

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I admit it: I listened to what everyone else that I “should” do for a “good” job, at least at the beginning.

Want to know where that got me? Into work I dragged myself through every day for over a year in a job that had no meaning…where I ultimately got fired!  

It was my first professional job right out of college. Everybody told me I should take it. After all, most people didn’t even have job offers before they graduated. Plus it paid well and provided benefits…

But my deepest truth is that I took the job because it was “available”. Just right there in front of me. And everybody and their mother congratulated me on how “lucky” I was to have a job.

So, in my infinite 22 year old wisdom, I made what I thought was the smart move and said, “Well, I don’t have any other job offers yet, and finding other jobs sounds hard, so I should probably take this one.”

I was definitely not setting myself up for long-term success and fulfillment in my work.

Looking back, I wish I’d had someone like Dan Cumberland to help me find a path to a meaningful career.

Dan is a former youth pastor whose story is similar to mine: the power of suggestion took him down a career path that never quite fit him (being a pastor), but seemed right at the time.

In his journey to get on a path that matched his personality and values and desired impact, Dan did tons of research and developed his philosophy behind fulfilling career pathing. He founded The Meaning Movement, a business and podcast where he helps folks with this kind of stuff every day.

Through his work, he created a framework that he’s dubbed The 4 Ps of Meaningful Work.

If you’re seeking work with more depth and purpose for you, let me take you deeper into his 4 “Ps”: Product, Profit, Process, and People.

1. Product

On the podcast, as he was waxing philosophical on meaning in your work, Dan said:

When we talk about work and meaning we are talking about impact, agency, and identity.

Dan Cumberland

Impact in particular is tied to the Product you’re creating, or the output you’re responsible for.

When he talks about Product, Dan referred to it both on the micro level — meaning, what are the daily deliverables you’re responsible for — and the macro level.

The macro level of Product could be the good or service that you contribute to, or Product could expand out to the purpose of that good or service in society. For example, working at a plastic bag company might not feel like it has a ton of meaning at the “goods and services” level, but might feel more meaningful if you think about how you’re creating a product that helps people hygienically and safely transport their food home to their families, keeping cross-contamination and spread of bacteria and foodborne illness at a minimum. It suddenly re-frames the Product of your work as a unique contribution to public health and safety.

We’ve had coaching clients come through our doors with certain predispositions about companies like pharmaceuticals or insurance companies and how their Product doesn’t feel like it’s in alignment with their own personal quest for meaning. However, when you look at the good actors in these industries and the companies that are making huge, longitudinal improvements in health and quality of life, it can be easy to see how your Product could be far greater than your own daily contribution.

2. Profit

Sometimes the word Profit gets a bad rap and is positioned as the opposite of meaning, as if in order to have a meaningful career, you can’t make money or turn a profit.

Yet when you think about Profit in a personally meaningful way, it becomes a way more nuanced — and far more interesting — conversation.

Profit can be defined as an advantage or benefit when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity.

In personal terms, this could mean that what you’re getting back from the company is greater (and more valuable to you) than what you’re giving them — you’re turning a profit because you’re not running on empty and feeling like you’re getting something in exchange for your work that’s of greater value to you than the time and energy you’re putting in.

To better understand your own definition of Profit, ask yourself: what are the advantages and benefits of work for me? What do I get out of it? What would make a job feel “profitable” for me, beyond the money? What can I get back from my employer that would feel well worth the time and energy I’m putting in?

Some measures of personal non-monetary Profit could be:

  • Learning a new skillset
  • Joy from fun relationships with colleagues
  • Unique access to industry or company leaders
  • Flexibility to allow me to enjoy the rest of my life
  • Great benefits (tuition benefits, fully paid insurance, healthy lunches served onsite)
  • Constant opportunities to grow and try new projects
  • Changing a market/industry/problem that’s important to me

Additionally, a great way to think about how you define Profit in terms of your monetary paycheck is an exercise from Jenny Blake, author of Pivot. Instead of tying your self esteem and worth to one specific number, give yourself a range:

  • What’s my “minimum” number, or the number I’d accept as a minimum to do work that filled me up with joy and light? Remember that sometimes the things in our lives that we consume and see as “needs” are often coping mechanisms, retail therapy, or purchases that help us numb out the pain of not living the life we feel called to by our hearts.  
  • What’s my “ideal” number, or the secret digits in the back of your head that you’re always passively scanning job ads looking for?
  • What’s my “jump for joy” number, or the one where I’d be so thrilled and overwhelmed that someone valued my contributions that much, I’d be jumping out of bed every morning ready to dive into my work?

Defining what your bottom line is can be incredibly helpful in finding and achieving it.

3. Process

Dan explains Process as the “doing” of the work.

To start exploring what kind of Processes are most meaningful for you, ask yourself: what kind of tasks or activities do you love and get lost in doing?

You can tell when you’re enjoying a Process when you find yourself in a “flow” state: you’ve been working with such focus and intensity that you look up at the clock, and two hours have gone by in the blink of an eye.  

Sometimes you can also see the tasks you love based on what you volunteer for. When you’re doing projects or activities outside of work — like a passion project, a side hustle, or a volunteer program in your church or community — what kinds of roles do you naturally gravitate towards?

In other cases, seeing yourself how others view you can be helpful in seeing your natural gifting in Processes. What kinds of things do people come to you for help with? What problems do you always jump up to help other people solve? Those answers can be great affirmation if you love having long conversations about English class homework with your niece, or if you enjoy troubleshooting issues with software system compatibility on your mom’s computer. Each of those natural gifts would point to different work (and styles of work) that would be personally meaningful to you.

4. People

To round out the 4 Ps of a meaningful career, Dan recommends getting clear on who you work with — and for.

What kind of People do you want your work to serve? Individuals, groups, communities, countries? Challenge yourself to describe a single individual you’d like to help. What is that person’s backstory? What are they like? Why do they need this kind of help?

People also refers to the people you work with: your boss, your direct coworkers, and your colleagues across the organization. What qualities would you want the leaders of your organization to embody? How would you be able to tell through their behavior if they are successfully living out their (and your) values?

Sometimes, organizations can espouse certain values, but act in ways that aren’t aligned.

For Lisa Lewis, one of the career coaches on our team, she had a particularly painful experience seeing a leader give lip service to values while acting out of alignment:

“My last consulting job was at a company that talked a lot about creating positive work-life balance. However, one particular leader on the team actively undermined that policy in pressing employees to take on projects even after they’d said they couldn’t.

“I found out that my grandfather had just died. She called me into our 1-on-1 meeting, and when I sat down with her, my eyes were already full of tears. I told her I’d just learned of a loss in the family, and she immediately responded by telling me to “take all the bereavement time I needed”.

“And then, as if she’d been possessed, she immediately switched into corporate mode discussing her project and told me that she would need my decision about whether I could start on a new project by the end of the day. I was flabbergasted and felt like my legs had been kicked out from under me. I could feel a permanent rage blackout coming on. Something inside of me said, “there has got to be a better way,” so I committed to searching for a new job that same day.”

Reflecting on the best and worst team dynamics you’ve experienced can be a helpful way to clarify what’s most important to you in terms of People. When do you feel alive and safe and thrive in a work environment? What are the times you’ve felt shut down or deflated or hamstrung in your ability and desire to contribute to the greater goals at work? Writing down the commonalities between each set of experiences reveals what your core values around culture, personalities, and individual contributions are.

WRAP UP: WHAT DOES A MEANINGFUL CAREER MEAN TO YOU?

Now that you’ve reflected on the Product, Profit, Process, and People that create a personally meaningful career experience for you, comment below and share with us: What are some of the traits of the 4 Ps for you? What came up that you weren’t expecting? What came up that validated your hunches about what you need?  

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Setting Boundaries in Your Career: When and How to say NO

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I HAD OUTSOURCED MY SELF-ESTEEM, VALIDATION, AND SELF-WORTH AS TO WHAT I ACCOMPLISHED, DID PEOPLE APPROVE OF ME, DID I DO A GREAT JOB.

MELODY WILDING

Do you know anybody who’s running on the vicious hamster wheel of career dissatisfaction?

It usually looks something like this: you’ve just accepted an offer for a really cool sounding job at an amazing company.

You’re getting paid more, and the work sounds pretty exciting. In short, you’re totally pumped.

You start out, full of hope, dreams, unicorns and puppy dogs that never pee on the carpet. You really want to make a good impression and set yourself up for future success and opportunities, so you work really hard.

It starts with you putting in a couple extra hours — you want to impress the boss, and definitely don’t want to arrive at work after she does (or leave before she does, either). So you make a habit of showing up early.

Or maybe the boss asked if you had the bandwidth to take on one more teeny project on your plate. It really doesn’t seem like it should take more than about 3-4 hours a week, so you figure you can squeeze out those hours somehow, so you say Yes and start the next project.

Or perhaps you were in a big meeting with a person who leads the department, and he called you “kid” or “honey” in front of the team. Or in private. Or in an email. And while the hair on the back of your neck stood up, you stayed silent. Because he’s the boss. Right?

And then, as weeks go by, you start to notice that what you thought was your Dream Come True job is actually starting to feel like your nightmare.

You’re tired. You’re not thrilled to get out of bed in the morning anymore. You’ve stopped setting boundaries. You’re resigned to complaining to all your friends, and mentally decide that this job must be like all the others. Until you start looking at job ads, that is, and start seeing some seductive or tantalizing new job postings. “This sounds kind of like what I’ve done, but with a twist. This could be the jolt of adrenaline that my career needs to feel revved up again…”

And then you’re on the hamster wheel of job dissatisfaction, where all jobs end up being terrible and you give up on hope, dreams, unicorns and house trained puppy dogs.

Sounds pretty terrible, doesn’t it?

Before you head down the toilet bowl of despair, I want to tell you the first thing I know to be true: it doesn’t have to be this way.   

But the most important thing that I know to be true is: the difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction in career is often as simple as setting better boundaries to protect yourself.

Boundaries in work can be confusing — because sometimes the idea of setting boundaries sounds like something your parents would lecture you about before you’d go out on a date in high school.

“Remember: no means no, Scottie! Don’t do anything you don’t want to do! Make good choices!!!”

But setting boundaries are a fancy word to say: I have rules I use to teach others how to treat me.

When you have “flexible” boundaries (which usually means boundaries that you don’t enforce…so not real boundaries), there are some clear emotional warning signs that will let you know when they’ve been violated.

Have you noticed any of these in your work life?

(1) RESENTMENT: DEFINED AS TO FEEL BITTER OR INDIGNANT BECAUSE YOU FEEL YOU HAVE BEEN FORCED TO ACCEPT SOMEONE OR SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT LIKE.

If you’re wondering if you’re experiencing resentment, read this story to see if any parts of it resonate with you:

Amy was pumped to get the chance to try something new and start writing marketing materials for her boss. She was excited about being offered the experience that without stopping to talk about the effect that adding another project to her plate would have on her stress and time management, she raised her hand and said Yes to write weekly blog posts for her company.

Only a few weeks in, she was feeling overwhelmed by how much she was learning, and started feeling exhausted by completing all her prior job tasks as well as expending 10 hours a week to do the new blog posts. Because she didn’t want to let anyone down, she started compromising on her other values to get it done, canceling after-work plans with friends and missing workouts. She hadn’t realized that by agreeing to take on something new (and wanting to show her enthusiasm), she ended up overstepping her boundary on the total number of hours she was willing to work, and soon started to become bitter about the project.

Despite being annoyed that the work was taking so much time, instead of talking to her boss to re-negotiate her workload, she started directing that anger at herself, being frustrated that she didn’t pick up the new skill fast enough and wasn’t good enough at writing strong copy quickly. But she reached a breaking point, and Amy talked to her boss about the issue. Rather than helping her change her projects around to solve it, her boss held her to her original commitment to complete the work, wasn’t flexible, and asked her how she could get more creative to make it all work.

If any of Amy’s story feels familiar to you, you’ve experienced workplace resentment.

Resentment is tricky because it often shows up when you’ve ceded away your personal power by agreeing to (or not agreeing to) something that you wanted. This can often happen when you accidentally traded what you wanted in the short term for what matters most in the long term.

However, that often means that resentment is something that you can partially or fully reverse with setting stronger boundaries with your boss or coworkers upfront.

(2) GUILT: DEFINED AS A FEELING OF WORRY OR UNHAPPINESS CAUSED BY KNOWING OR THINKING THAT YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING BAD OR WRONG.

Guilt can show up in your work life when you’ve overcommitted yourself, under-delivered on a project, or perceiving that through your contribution (or lack of contribution), you’ve let someone down.

Note that guilt isn’t the same as shame. As Dr. Brene Brown aptly points out in her most recent TED Talk discussing her research on shame:

“Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior.

Shame is, ‘I am bad.’

Guilt is, ‘I did something bad.’”

“Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake.

Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.”

“Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders…Guilt is inversely correlated with those things. The ability to hold something we’ve done, or failed to do, up against who we want to be is incredibly adaptive. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s adaptive.”

That idea — holding up your behavior against who you wanted to be in that moment — is exactly where you can see where a boundary was missing or broken or needed to help you be at your best. From seeing how you wish things had played out instead, you can visualize new opportunities to say “no” to the extra task, or negotiate for a longer deadline, or request help.   

(3) ANGER: DEFINED AS A STRONG FEELING OF ANNOYANCE, DISPLEASURE, OR HOSTILITY THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO HURT SOMEONE OR BE UNPLEASANT BECAUSE OF SOMETHING UNFAIR OR UNKIND THAT HAS HAPPENED

Anger will often manifest itself in this way: Rebecca was working at a job that would look like anybody else’s dream job fighting to protect minority rights on Capitol Hill. She was in a meeting with her supervisor and most of her colleagues when the tone of the meeting’s conversation started to shift to be a bit more informal. Her supervisor might have thought he was making jokes and breaking the ice, but he attempted to do it by making repeated comments about her appearance in front of the whole team, including referring to her as a “girl” and as “sweetheart.” She was trapped in a public venue with this person who wielded a lot of power, and felt she had no recourse to protect or defend herself from his sexist, inappropriate comments. Despite trying to redirect the conversation unsuccessfully, he continued with his misogynistic comments and she started fuming, shut down her contributions in the meeting, and had a firey rage burning inside of her by the end of the meeting.  

If you’re angry, the chances are good that you’re sensing or experiencing an injustice. It could be something like having been looked over for a promotion or new project, or seeing people (including yourself) being treated in a way that’s out of alignment with your values.

Anger can be an incredibly motivational emotion to use as momentum to make a change, so it’s a great place to start with setting a new boundary, whether directly and explicitly with your boss or colleagues, or indirectly through your behavior.

Tell us in the comments: have you noticed any of these “red flag” emotions in your work that are a signal it’s time to draw new or different boundaries in your life? What kind of tools and techniques did you learn from the podcast episode? How do you need to teach people to treat you?

WANT TO FIGURE OUT WHAT WORK FITS YOU BEST AND SEE THE TOOLS THAT 15,000 OTHER PEOPLE HAVE USED TO START FINDING WORK THAT FITS? SIGN UP FOR OUR 8-DAY MINI COURSE BELOW!

Learn more about Melody at MelodyWilding.com

Follow Melody on Twitter here.

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Decluttering your Life with Angela Wagner

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When you think of yoga, you might think of something relaxing, gentle, and filled with ease. Yet, as I learned from today’s podcast guest Angela Wagner, founder of Dallas YogaSport, the Power Yoga practice of the Baptiste school is the kind of intense sweat session that Type A motivated and ambitious professionals are attracted to.

(People just like our clients here at HTYC!)

They’re attracted to the Baptiste Power Yoga style of practice because it causes you to be so intensely engaged in the movement and the flow that you can lose track of time — and at the end of it, you feel completely exhausted and also energized. You surrender to the movement. Through that commitment, you experience both a workout and self-care.

Doesn’t that level of engagement sound rad? That same deep engagement can create deep, rich satisfaction with your work.

In order to get to that level of depth in your yoga practice (or in your life), you have to be willing to surrender the baggage that you brought into the yoga studio with you: the stress from your day, the worries about what’s for dinner, the questions about whether you’re getting a promotion. All of it has to melt away to allow you to get to the depth of presence and exertion that’s possible.

And it’s true in life, too: to become true masters of our craft, we have to let go of the buzzing of thought baggage and find work that allows us to settle in. It’s hard to do — but for the people who are willing to try it, the rewards of a de-cluttered mind and path are incredibly worth it.

If the idea of Marie Kondo-ing your brain sounds intriguing to you, keep reading.

This is a great place where the “how you do anything is how you do everything” principle can apply, and you can see how tendencies that show up in one part of your life will often bleed over into other arenas.

Pick a topic you’re feeling a lot of anxiety or discomfort around when you think about it. Whatever tends to send your brain spinning into a panic or stress is a great place to start.

What kinds of things drive you up the wall crazy?

For perfectionists, it can be having something out of order, not serving its purpose, or not fully being able to master a skill. (Maybe you’re striving to be a PivotTables master, but not there yet.)

For people who love to serve others, it can be someone in your life who isn’t asking for help but you can see needs it.

For individuals who value peace and harmony in their lives, it can be disagreements, relationship friction, or others’ feuds that weigh on your mind.

If you are the kind of person who tends to be overly accommodating and compromising, it could be resentment about having surrendered your personal power to help make someone else’s life easier. (The “I don’t know what possessed me to help pitch in on that deadline and cancel my sister’s birthday party” kind of nagging mental clutter thought.)

Or if you tend to be a people pleaser, your frustration probably has the word “should” in it, like “I should call my mom more often,” or “I should bring my lunch to work every day.”

Now take a moment to ask yourself: what items drive you nuts? What thoughts, beliefs or stories are distracting you, adding stress, or not increasing the joy in your life right now?  

If we treat these irritations and frustrations the same way we’d treat clutter at home, Angela (or Marie Kondo, for that matter) wouldn’t want you to have this mess laying out in the open in your living room, walking past it and feeling irritated about it every single day.

Instead of blindly walking past it or pretending it isn’t there, if it was a pile of trash in your home, you’d take care of it and throw it out!

You can apply the same principle to a mental cleaning: it’s time to take care of the thing that’s bugging you, rather than letting it sit and fester and take up precious mental energy.

So question number one to ask yourself is why is that pile of mental junk there? Why do you care? What makes that important to you? What’s keeping that thought at the forefront of your brain, rather than being something you’ve already taken care of?

Writing down your ideas and reflections about this can reveal potential hidden conflicts between your values, and help you see why you’ve been stuck in mental clutter.

For example, if you’ve been struggling with feeling like you can’t master Excel and spreadsheets, ask yourself why you care and what makes that so important to you. Is it because you actually want to, and you’re not creating the time? Or is it because you feel like it’s a skill that would help advance your career, but not something you actually have any internal drive or interest in learning?

Now, ask yourself: what’s most important right now? And, what do I need to stop so I can focus on what’s most important?

Having your brain hyperfocused on learning Excel like a dog hyperfocused on gnawing  a bone is often a symptom of a bigger priorities issue. Maybe what’s most important is doing work that you love, and you thought Excel was going to be something that you’d love, but it’s actually just a way to appease your boss.

Or maybe what’s most important right now isn’t learning a new skill, it’s honing the ones you’ve already learned.

Or perhaps mastering Excel IS the most important thing right now, and other things in life are getting in the way (stupid administrative reports, too many meetings, etc). By identifying what matters most, you know how to take action to remove mental clutter from your brain and let you get back into the focus zone you love.

The more you apply this process, the deeper you’ll be able to drop into the flow of your own life.

Tell us in the comments below: what’s a piece of mental clutter that’s been causing you stress? Why is the clutter there, and how can you focus on what’s most important so you can keep moving and get back into flow in your own life?

ABOUT ANGELA:

Angela Wagner is a mom, wife, entrepreneur, Life & Wellness Coach, Certified Yoga Teacher, and podcaster. She founded her successful power yoga studio, YogaSport, in 2004, and in 2010 launched the Spark program – a guided program that helps busy people create time, stress less, and enjoy life more.  In her coaching work, she teaches women to go from overwhelm and exhaustion to freedom, joy, and inspiration. Take the first step towards clarity with her free 7 Day Challenge:  7 Simple Steps To Make Your Life Sparkle So You Can Stress Less And Do More at www.angelawagnercoaching.com and listen to her Spark podcast on iTunes here.

RESOURCES:

Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Marie Kondo, Spark Joy

YogaSportDallas.com

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