How to choose the 'right' path

Transcript

Welcome to the career studio podcast, where we boil down the noise and focus on the core concepts, essential for building an energizing career you love. One that is simply an extension of who you are and how you wanna live your life. Anyone can do it. It's just a matter of knowing what to focus on.

Hi there. 

Welcome back to another bonus episode that I am recording as part of the month of celebrating the launch of the career studio group. And if you haven't heard already, I'm super excited to launch a group program that builds off of all of the one on one work I've been doing for the past four years and really brings it together into a super effective container.

It's the fundamentals of career fulfillment delivered in the supportive container of a group. And when you put yourself in a group, this gives you an opportunity not only to get coached on the things that you need, but also see other people who are going through the same thing as you get coached, right?

And then you learn from other people's challenges and hurdles. You're also in a container with other people taking action. So it's like a motivation and accountability structure. And, you know, these are people who you can weave into your own network. All these people are going to have different networks than you, and that will just continue to open doors and create opportunities for yourself.

So I think especially because so much of my work hinges on having effective conversations and learning how to have really intentional, authentic conversations, doing this, in a space where you can expand your network with the people that are in the course with you is a really effective way to create results.

So I'm really, really excited about the group. You can learn more about it now by going to my website, www.the career.studio/group and applications will open on April 2nd. Okay, now, if you want early access to the application, then you want to add your name to the waitlist and you will get access a day before everyone else.

The reason you'd want to do this is because spots in the group are limited and I am going to be considering applications on a rolling basis. I really want to consider people first who are really keen and excited for this work. I often find that what helps make people successful is if they're really here for it and they're really into it.

And so applying early or getting your application in on the earlier side helps me get a sense of who you are and what you're about. And I will be considering stuff on a rolling basis. Okay. And spots in the group are limited. I'm really trying to make the cohesion and dynamics of the group effect. I'm going to be very choiceful in who I accept.

So, yes, all right. You know, part of the whole month of celebrating and promoting the group, I'm also running a workshop called; Clarify Your North Star. And as I've mentioned before, this is really my proprietary tool on how to build an energizing career you love, really what to focus on, what to ignore, what to think about in a way that other people don't talk about, right?

I'm very intentional over what I have people focus on to determine what's right. And that is what goes into my North Star. If you would like to get that training for yourself, I recommend you register for the workshop. It's free. It's on April 2nd, the day that the group applications open. And there's 2 spots at either 3 PM or 8 PM Eastern time, depending on your availability.

I'm running it twice and if you're feeling lost, confused, you're not sure what the right next step for you is then this is the most important place to start. So you can go again to my website, thecareer.studio/northstarworkshop, all one word. So today I'm talking about how to choose the right path, right?

I'm talking about the North Star being an essential part of that. But I wanted to talk about what I often see getting in people's way of creating a career that's really energizing and right for them. I get a lot of people who come to me and say, I'm really worried about choosing the right path. I don't know what the right path is.

I have all these options. I'm not sure what's right. Okay. And I mentioned this in the episode I released last week, but oftentimes people's definition of right is exactly what's getting them off track, and they're focused on the wrong things. They're focused on the wrong definition of right, or they're focused on definitions of right that lead them away from themselves and lead them onto paths that aren't a good fit and that stress them out or that burn them out.

So I see that all the time. I personally myself have experienced that. I mean, this is why it's such a core part of my work is because it was a core thing that I had to work on. So yeah, I wanted to talk about that today. Defining what is right and what gets in the way of that. So oftentimes the way that we're oriented, especially, you know, so many of my clients are ambitious, high achieving people who grew up in environments that really prioritized academic rigor, and a certain level of professional success. 

So when you grow up in that space, there is this ingrained assumption that the right quote unquote job is one that other people will respect. So this is like an external orientation. So I need a job that has a sexy brand name, like, or a big title or, you know, a really well regarded industry, right?

This is one of the core metrics that people are using to determine if it's the right path. Or they're determining the right path because it's a path of familiarity. So maybe their parents did it, or their siblings did it, or their community tends to do that. So you know, the parents of their friends, or the other kids in college, or what were the big recruiting industries on campus where you went to college, university, you know, Then it becomes, well, this is familiar, and this whole process of choosing your career, it's very overwhelming.

You know, when we are 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, I mean, we barely know ourselves and we're being asked to choose our careers. And at this moment, I barely know myself. What do I wanna do with my career? So let me just reach for something familiar. Because that's safe and it's less overwhelming and I kind of have connections there, right?

So it's more familiar because someone in your community or people in your community have done that. And I was talking to a friend the other day. He grew up in Canada and the big industry where he was was chemical engineering, like the smartest people in school. They all did chemical engineering and they worked at these, like, you know, the big chemical engineering companies in the area.

And so he was really bright. And so he just chose chemical engineering. Not because he was particularly interested in it, but just because that was the path that the smart kids did. So that's what he did. And then, you know, a couple of years into his degree, he was like, wait, I really don't want to do this.

This really isn't the career for me for a number of reasons. And now he's like a bio engineer, but he would have done something totally different. He said, maybe he would have been an oncologist if he hadn't chosen that path. If you had it just defaulted to chemical engineering, of course, I was like, it's never too late.

You can still become an oncologist, but my point is that's a different conversation. My point is we get swept up into what everyone else is doing. That's how we end up on these paths that maybe aren't the right fit. Because when you define right, quote unquote, with qualities that are grounded in external validation or external familiarity, you are disconnecting from yourself.

You're looking outwards to determine what's right for you instead of inwards. You're not connected to yourself. Okay? And this is a big, big problem because at the end of the day, it takes less energy to be yourself. The energy point is so, so important because if you get to show up every day and be yourself, you can put all of your energy into creating impact, into ideating, into creating results, into doing whatever it is you're there to do.

But if you are putting yourself in a space that's not the right fit for you, you are going to have to expend energy to fit yourself in. Okay? And therefore you're wasting energy and you're going to have a percentage less energy to create results, which means comparatively to other people in your job or your industry who are well placed, you are always going to be on the back foot.

because they're going to have more energy to create impact than you. So either you're going to have to work harder and longer, which means you're going to burn out and you're going to start resenting the job and you won't have a personal life and you know, whatever, or you're never going to really create as much impact, which will directly impact the results you're able to create in the career and therefore your success.

Okay. So this is this very counter intuitive thing that really isn't talked about in our education system. And in our culture, the counter intuitive thing is to realize that you are actually going to go further, faster. If you let go of trying to fit yourself in and own instead your unique Makeup and priorities and use that as the metric for your professional success.

And I say success, I mean, success can mean anything for anyone. You don't have to want to be Elon Musk to be successful. I'm not just defining success in that way. Success can be that you show up every day and it's chill and you leave at 3 p. m. and you know, you go do other things in your personal life, right?

But if you're showing up every day and you get to be yourself, it's just going to feel easy if you have to show up every day and just be you. It's like, you don't have to put on this mask. It's not like you're dreading Monday, you know, you're dreading your to do list. It's just like, yeah, this is me.This is who I am. This is how I think. This is how I add value. This is what matters to me. 

And I get to be this person in every aspect of my life. It's this huge relief. It's this huge unlock. Life just flows easier, right? This work is about getting you into flow, getting you into alignment. Okay. But it requires you to let go of what you think is the quote unquote right path, like unwind from the belief that professional success comes at your own expense. 

And what I mean by that is like in school, right? You don't get to choose what subjects you focus on. You know, for the most part, you have to, you know, get good grades or perform well in all of them if you want to do well in school, right?

So that requires you to suck it up, right? And just do what you can to be successful, even though you don't, or you're not actually interested in it. And so people who are high performers take this mentality and they apply it to their profession. Right. Like I just got to suck it up and do a good job and perform because that's how you are successful.

And this is a recipe for a career and a life that feels tiring and where you feel like you never quite fit and where you're like, well, fuck work. And you know, working isn't always the most fun. Right. Even I have said, I don't want to do this work, but for the most part, I love what I do and like what I'm doing now and how I'm talking now.

This is just who I am as a person. I would have the same conversation with anyone in my life on the weekend at a party. So you have to start believing that success comes when you're yourself. Okay. It's not from a title or an industry or a brand name. And it's not to say that stuff's not important, right?

Like, of course, it's great to have a brand name on your CV and that can help a lot, but you don't want to have the brand name at the expense of a job. That's a great fit for you. Right? That's going to be like a momentary high when you update your LinkedIn and then it's going to be shit from there on out.

Trust me. I did this and I deal with people all the time who have made these decisions and are in these spaces where, gosh, they are not happy. They chose a career path because, you know, their parents did it or that was what was being recruited at school because there's a great brand name. And they're like, God, I'm so different from all these people that I'm working with.

I'm like, this isn't me at all. And I show up every day and I feel like I'm wearing a mask. I mean, that's it's, you don't have to live like that. Even though in school you had to just suck it up and perform. That is not the secret to life. That's like an exception for school and life. It's different. Okay, it's about being authentic and getting into flow.

Let me give my example, which I tell all the time and tell it again, but you know, I thought that when I, when I reached 30, I had been working in advertising, which I really loved for a long time. And then it stopped working. And I was like, okay, well, I need to restructure my career. I should do stuff that I think is, quote, unquote, successful.

I should work in tech or I should work in consulting and I should get an MBA. So I did all of those things. I got an MBA. I worked in tech. I tried to work in consulting. Let me tell you, it was like the worst four or five years of my life. You know, I was working so hard. I really wasn't interested in it. I burned out multiple times.

I was a massive underperformer in all of those things because I was working twice as hard just to reach average, just to like reaching passing. It was very uncomfortable. And I had, I had long thought I wanted to be a coach, but I actually never gave it any airtime because I was like, Oh, well, you know, coaching isn't a real profession.

Hey, coaching isn't intellectual enough, coaching isn't prestigious enough. And at some point, I basically chose this because I was so unhappy and coaching felt so good. I started doing some volunteer coaching and I was like, gosh, this is so easy. This is so fun, like easy in a way of ease, not boring, easy.

Like this just feels flowy and energizing and I'm so interested in it, but I had to let go of it. Doing this path that I thought was like the respected path and really choosing the path coaching, it felt very uncomfortable to tell my community to tell my family, like, I'm going to become a coach. I'm going to talk about your feelings and like, you know, self improvement.

But what has happened in choosing this path is I get to show up every day and be myself. And the conversations I have with my clients and the things that I get to think about are conversations I have anyways with my network. It's things I think about anyways. I love thinking about it. And so I have all of this energy towards the thing that I'm excited about, which is how can I help other people create careers they love?

But I had to really own my authentic makeup. And by doing that, I've carved out a niche for myself that is unique because I am unique, just like each one of us is unique, right? It's like I kind of bring this self improvement and therapy kind of sometimes woo woo lens to myself. To a community of very ambitious, like MBA types, you know, who come from this intellectual rigor space, but who are craving something that feels more energizing.

It just allows me to speak to my community in a way that they understand. And, you know, there's not a lot of people doing the work the way I do it for the audience that I do it for. And that's because I decided to own who I was, my background, my strengths, my interests, my priorities, and really design my career around that.

And, you know, this is uncomfortable also because each one of us is unique. And so therefore the path that we're going to carve is one that no one has done before. If we really are tuned into ourselves and that can be uncomfortable to like, step off of the well trodden path and do something a little bit less familiar, but that is the secret to an energizing career that you love.

 And so what you really want to define as right for yourself is, does it feel exciting in my body? Is it a great fit for who I am and how I add value and what matters to me? And do I get to show up every day and be myself? If you can answer yes to all these things, then you are on the path to an energizing career that you love.

And if answering these questions feels hard, I invite you to come to the; clarify your North star workshop. I'm going to go through all this in much more detail to give you the grounding point, the 0. 0 that I use to jump people off of the specific prompt questions I give you to really help you start to tune into yourself and what matters to you.

Okay? So it takes less energy to be yourself guys. That's how you choose the right path. It is not in brand names or sexy industries or what you think other people will think of you if you do that thing. If you are in that headspace, you are so disconnected from yourself and it's going to lead you off of the path that's flowy for you and into a space that feels hard.

All right. Have a great week. And oh yes, I think that I'm going to… I'm going to release the April podcast on the, gosh, I don't have my calendar in front of me. I'm going to release it on the 9th, April 9th, instead of April 2nd, because the workshop and the group are both going live on April 2nd, and I really want that week to be dedicated to all of that.

So I will release the April podcast, which is going to be, I think about managing anxiety on the 7th. Okay guys, have a fabulous week and come to the website and check out all of the cool stuff I'm doing. I'm really excited about where the business is going. And if you're listening here and you haven't spent any time with me, this is a great opportunity to come and get some coaching.

All right, ciao.

Head over to my website: https://www.thecareer.studio to learn more about my group and one on one programs. And if you're getting value from these episodes, I would be so grateful if you can rate and review. On whatever podcast app you use. This helps other people like you find value from the podcast too.