The Career Studio: Blog
Are you competing in the wrong events?
I found my MBA pretty difficult.
What took many of my classmates minutes to get would take me hours of reviewing to learn. I went to all the office hours to feel comfortable with the material.
It was hard being in an environment where everyone seemed to understand and apply the teachings faster than me.
I felt pretty down on myself most of the year.
I burned out and had to take the summer off instead of interning.
Towards the end of the program, I took a design-thinking class where…
Championing the crooked path
Last week I attended a talk with British Robinson, CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and general all-around legend and visionary leader.
She described her career as a “crooked path.”
This caught my attention.
So often we worry about the narrative of our career.
We want a straight, linear path, all tied up in a beautiful bow.
We think we’ve done it wrong if our path has twists and turns.
We think there’s a right next step, a wrong next step, and we spend lots of t…
The new formula for success
The tried and tested formulas for ’success’ in life have competition.
You no longer have to climb the corporate ladder.
You no longer have to appeal to the masses.
You no longer have to live in a major global city.
Instead, today there are infinite ways to design your career and life.
You can create fulfillment using whatever definition of fulfillment you’d like.
And while this opportunity is exciting, infinite choice can feel overwhelming.
It can be hard to know where to star…
A 15 minute conversation about people pleasing
Kat Arapis, master life and business coach, sat down with me to discuss people-pleasing and how it gets in the way of building a career, business, and life you love. We discuss how to identify if you have this tendency and a few tips and tricks to manage it to keep on a path best aligned to your success and fulfillment.
It's short and fun and hopefully, useful.
Stop slamming the door in your own face
Negativity can be a comfortable place to live.
We tend to assume new things will be hard and come up with a load of reasons to validate this assumption. Even if the familiar is mediocre at best.
When it comes to our career it’s thoughts like:
It’s too much work.
I’m too old.
I don’t have the right experience.
It’s really hard to be successful.
You can’t make any money doing that.
So we don’t take action and we stick with our status quo.
Because while these thoughts aren’t comf…
Love yourself to a career you love
Warning! This post is super ‘woo’.
Everything in my career changed when I started loving myself.
Yikes, such a freaking platitude. I know.
Let me make it more tangible.
I used to wish I was more quantitative and strategic. I used to wish I thrived in high-pressure, fast-paced environments. These are not strengths of mine. But boy did I try to fit myself into that mold.
I did a competitive MBA and spent 6 months trying to be a management consultant. I burned out during this process.
I tried…
Lessons from getting fired
I got fired once. And while at the time I was super embarrassed about it, today I call it one of the best things that has happened to me.
Here’s why.
After my MBA I found my way into tech - it seemed like the ‘right' next step and I’d get some experience that looked good on my resume.
It turned out I don’t really care about tech and generally didn’t enjoy it, but regardless I continued to stay in the space and ultimately found myself running marketing for a seed stage hardware start-u…
The Toxicity of People Pleasing
People-pleasing is sneaky. It can get you far. But ultimately results in burnout and/or discontentment.
This is very much my story.
And a story I see played out frequently in my clients.
Typically, people-pleasing is honed in childhood to maintain connection with an inconsistently available parent. The child learns to earn love and connection by adapting themselves to the needs and standards of others. Instead of learning that they are worthy of love no matter what they say and do.
Th…
How to stop procrastinating
When you procrastinate you aren’t avoiding work. You’re avoiding feelings. More specifically, negative emotions.
I’ve been mega procrastinating writing these emails and LinkedIn Posts over the past two weeks. And I know why.
I’m worried I’ve run out of good ideas.
And this brings up feelings of insecurity, incompetency, fear of failure.
Definitely not my favorite feelings.
Procrastination at its core is about mood regulation. When I avoid the task that brings up negative feelin…
Swimming the River of Misery
If you’ve ever set and then achieved an ambitious goal you’ll recognize the below journey:
- This is exciting! I can’t wait to achieve my goal.
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I’m learning a lot, this is interesting.
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Wow, ok, there’s a lot I don’t know.
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This is so hard. / I’m so confused. / I’m not doing it right.
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#$%!!!&$#@!
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OK, I figured out one thing but this still sucks.
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I figured out a couple of things, can I call it a day?
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I can almost see where I’m going.
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Nearly there.
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I did…