Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 82 of Working towards our purpose.

Thank you for being here. In today's episode, we are going to talk about

wanting to leave your job, but feeling lost and not knowing where to

go. But before we get into that, we are going to take a moment

to check in with ourselves, see where we're at, see how we're feeling today.

Yeah, for me, I'm feeling a

little more calmer now. Was definitely having like over anxious

mind. Lots of thoughts I was, I was doing

before I recorded this episode. I did my strategy that I talked about in last

week's podcast episode of just brain dumping everything to try to

get a little bit more focused and a little bit more calm

about what I'm doing. And yeah, it helped. So,

but other than that, feeling pretty good. We just got a bunch of snow where

I live, so that's cool if you like snow, I guess.

But yeah. So today I want to talk about wanting to leave

your job, but feeling lost and not knowing where to go. And this

episode is inspired by someone who

commented on one of my videos on YouTube. His name

is Urrypablo and

he made a comment and I wanted to respond in more than just like a

couple sentences. So, yeah, here we go.

We have a whole episode about it. So the comment was

in relation to, like leaving a corporate job and just not really knowing where

to go from there, not knowing where to turn and just feeling lost.

And I definitely resonate with that feeling and

I've definitely been in that situation before. And

yeah, it sucks. You know, you want to make a change, but you

don't know where to go or what to do. And,

you know, hopefully. In today's episode, I have three

strategies to help you find your path towards the end of this. But

first, I want to, like, sort of dig into that feeling of

why, like, we feel lost in these situations. And

yeah, hopefully sort of validate that feeling because I think it's real and I think

that a lot of us feel that. And, you know, it makes you feel

like you're alone feeling like that. You know, you look around and you think everybody

else sort of has it figured out and you're like, what am I doing? I

don't. I don't know where to go. I don't know what I want. I just

know that I don't want this. And I think the biggest thing to

notice there is that first off, it's

okay to not have it all figured out. You're not supposed to.

It takes time to figure out what you want to do with your life and

where you want to go. And I think just having the

willingness to try to find that is huge. And

maybe you feel lost and you don't know where to go. But you do know

one thing. You. You do know that you don't want to do what you're currently

doing. And I think that that's something to be

proud of and to know that you want to make a change, because that's the

first step in making change is knowing that you want it. And,

you know, yeah, it's almost the hardest part.

So I think that that's really good news.

And yeah, also just like, how do you get there? Cause

I remember for me, feeling like, how did I get here? Like, I went

through high school, I went to college. I did four years in college, and then

I went into this industry, and I was there for like, four or five, six

years before I knew it. And I was like, how did I get here? I

don't. Like, this isn't what I want to do at all.

This, you know, I don't feel like I'm contributing in the way that

I want to be. I feel like I could be doing more.

And I think it's just so normal because it's just kind of the way that

our society is structured is like, you go to high school, you pick a

job, you pick something to do, or, sorry, you pick

a major in college, and you have to pick something,

whatever the school offers. There's, I don't know, probably

20 or 30 different majors that are all kind of vaguely

in three or four different schools, and

you just feel like time's running out and you got to pick something.

And a lot of times, too, maybe you go to college and you don't. It

wasn't what you wanted, but you're trying to please somebody else or trying to make

a parent happy or just thinking that. For me, it was like I didn't

have any other answer. So I guess I'll go to college and figure it out.

Which, you know,

I maybe would have thoughts on now, but. But,

yeah, so I think, you know, from going to school in elementary and

just, like, having to do things the way the teacher says, and like,

then going to college and following a curriculum and then getting a job

and doing what your boss wants you to do, you never really check in with

yourself and see what you want to do. And that's not to

blame the system or blame other people.

I think at some point you do have to take a little bit of personal

responsibility and think about what it is that you want and decide

that you want to change the course in your life. But it is hard because

there's just so many outside influences trying to convince

you what to do. And not even to mention, like, social

media and all the stuff that's on there saying that you should do this

or if you want to start a business, you have to go sell

crap on Amazon and so many different things. So I

think really just honing in, back onto ourselves and seeing what

it is that we want to do, because there's a million different paths and a

million different options, but we really have to think about what

it is that we want. And if I think

back to myself, it's so hard to

give yourself the time to do that because it always just seems like a waste

of time. Taking a year between

college and high school or getting a job

that's in the restaurant industry to give yourself some time to figure

out what you want to do before going to college. I don't know.

It's always not incentivized. I always felt, me personally, I always

felt like I never had the time. I had to make a decision now,

and I never had the time to go and ask myself what I liked and

what I wanted to do and what I had passion

and how I wanted to impact the world. So,

yeah, just taking a moment, I think is maybe the first step and just

really giving yourself some time. And

I didn't really write that in my notes here, but as I'm reflecting on how

I felt back then, I think that's the biggest thing, is just giving yourself some

time and being patient.

And then I also want to say it is possible to make a change feeling

lost and feeling stuck in a job. It is possible

to make a change. It will take time and it will take effort, but

consistent effort over time is how you make a change in

your life. And I know that's simplistic, but I say that to say, like,

it is possible and it was possible for me, you know, I felt like leaving

my corporate job was this huge thing that I, you

know, I didn't know if I'd get to. And, you know, I was

fortunate through a series of events that I found myself there. And through

really wanting it bad enough, I was able to get out of that

lifestyle, to get out of the corporate lifestyle. And, yeah,

forever, forever grateful of that. But, yeah, it is possible.

And I think that what we need to do is we need to

recalibrate the way that our minds work. Instead of thinking

about, like, what does my boss Want or what does society want? What does my

parents want? Thinking about what is it that you want

to do? And you know, if you find yourself in the situation of

trying to figure out what you want but you're lost, I think

really thinking about your, your own goals and recalibrating

your compass to be like, okay, I've been thinking about what other people want,

but now I have to think about what I want, what's important to me,

what are my values, and then we can kind of go

forward from there. But another thing I want to touch on too is the issue

of money. Because

in this comment I thought it was strange. Not strange,

but I thought it was interesting that the person that commented was

like, money's not an issue. I just don't know what to do. And I think

money is always such a touchy subject. And

for me, I was afraid of not having enough

money, I was afraid of leaving and not having enough money. So I just stocked

it away and I had a good paying job, I was an engineer, so

I made more than I was spending so I would put some away. And I

was saving for years for this eventual escape. And

I think I want to question one thing. I think the idea

or the thought came to me that I think a lot of

people focus, hyper fixate on money. And

I know that we all need money, I get that. But I think we

use it as a scapegoat to not

make ourselves uncomfortable. Because when you don't have a 9 to

5 and you're not getting a paycheck every week, you're

going into uncertainty. You don't know what the next step is. If you quit your

corporate job, maybe you don't know what the next step is. And I

think scapegoating money is like, oh, well, I need to make money so I

can't leave. That's true. But also,

are you afraid of the unknown? And

of course you are, we all are. But that's

okay. I think acknowledging of being afraid of the unknown

and not just using money as the quick scapegoat is like,

oh, it's going to be, I got to make money, so then I can't do

it. And you kind of just shut yourself off and you don't think about,

well, what are my options? If I do put some money away and I do

save for a little bit and I have six months or a year where

I can get by, or I can find another job where I can cover my

expenses, it gives you more options. And I think

that at least for me I was quick to say, like,

oh, well, I can't quit because I need money. I don't have money. And it

wasn't until I quit that I realized.

How I could get by with such little. And I'm not saying that's for

everyone, but it's interesting how

I think about how much I made back then. And this was five, six years

ago, so it probably wasn't even that much. But, yeah,

I was making, I think, 73 or

$74,000 a year, which is really, I guess, not that much right now.

But to me, that's kind of a lot. And

this is my own opinion, but I think we can get by

with not as much as we think we need. And it's

also been ingrained into us, this scarcity mindset around money that

it's always going to leave and we're never going to have enough of it. So

we have to just pile it away in the bank and let the banks make

tons of money off of what's sitting there so we can have a security

and a safety net. All right, enough down that rabbit hole.

But, yeah, I just wanted to touch on the idea of money

because I think, to get back to the subject, that the

reason a lot of people feel like they can't make a change and they're stuck

is because of the money issue. And I would just encourage and ask the

question, like, is it the money issue or is

it the fear of the unknown? And if it is the

fear of the unknown, that's okay, because it's normal to fear the unknown,

but it doesn't mean that it can stop your actions. You could still proceed

forward with feeling afraid of the unknown. So

hopefully that made sense. I didn't mean to go down that rabbit hole of money,

but I also didn't want to avoid the topic. So. So. All

right, so let's. Before we get into the three steps, I want

to do a quick little story that I think helps paint the

picture of, like, how you can feel stuck or

how it feels to try to make this change. So I was in my

corporate job. I was kind of in the same position, I think, that

this person commenting was. And I was in my corporate job,

and I was like, I don't know what to do. I was doing a lot

of entrepreneur research. I thought that I wanted to

have a business, so that was kind of my first inkling, but I didn't really

know what to do at the time. I looked at myself and I was like,

okay, I went to school for engineering. I don't want to be in engineering at

all, so it's not going to be in that. And I was like, well, what

else can I do? At the time, I knew how to do audio

engineering, and I've always loved music,

but I felt that I wasn't good enough at audio engineering to pursue music.

And I also gave myself the excuse that, like, there's no money in music.

So I found this guy online, Graham Cochran, and he was teaching

business, teaching you how to, like, run an online business and,

you know, start. Start a business in something that you're

passionate in or something that you enjoy. And

I really resonated with him. He still teaches, so you can go look him up.

And he gave you this one exercise, and he was like, if you don't know

where to start, get out a piece of paper and just write

the things that you like down and the possibilities

of what you could do down. So if you have this skill,

write it down. If you have ever had somebody ask you about something

that you have knowledge in, write that down. And then I think he

said something else. Also write down things that you enjoy, things that you

spend your time in, regardless of

if you have to or not, even if it's sports or whatever,

Just write everything down on a piece of paper and then at the end of

that, review it and look at them and think like,

well, which one of these can maybe provide a path for a job or

maybe a business? And circle those things.

So I did this task, but I remember

before I started it, I already had an answer in my head, and

I knew that I knew how to do audio engineering. I didn't feel confident enough

to pursue music with it. So I

thought to myself, I had this one day in the car listening to a podcast,

and I was like, oh, I'll do podcast audio editing. Because that's

super easy. It's just a vocal take. And I feel confident enough to

do that. So I went out and I started a business around that.

But as I was doing this exercise, I already had the idea in my head.

So I wrote this whole list that he told me to do, but I put

podcast editing at the top. Of course, I circled it, and then I just went

with that and didn't really take anything else more seriously.

And I bring this up because I think

it's a perfect example of me being afraid of the unknown. So I thought

about leaving my job. I found this one thing that I could possibly do, and

I was like, okay, podcast editing. Now I don't have to fear the unknown

anymore. Because I'm just going to go straightforward to podcast editing, and I'm not going

to think about it. I'm just going to

push forward in that direction. But if I were to take a second and to

look at the list, there was probably a lot of things on those lists that

said something about music or being a musician or

something more music related. Because that's always been the thing that

I've come back to is music, what's important in my life and what I'm

passionate about and feel purposeful. And

I didn't allow myself to do that because I wanted to have an answer

and I wanted to have a direction going forward. So I just

picked podcast editing. I didn't really do the exercise that Graham

asked us to do, and I just moved forward

towards that direction for many years afterwards. And that

business ended up not really working out. So it's kind of like maybe

a side business for me now. But, yeah, years

later I found out, I was like, I don't really.

Podcasts are cool and it's a cool industry. And it worked for a little bit

of time because it was way better than the engineering career. But

when it got hard, I was like, oh, man, I really actually

don't care about this as much as I thought that I did. And so that

was a hard lesson that I learned because I took that path because I

didn't want to fear the unknown. I didn't want to look at the unknown in

the eyes, and I just went down that path.

So, yeah, that brings me to my three steps. I just wanted to tell that

story because I think it just shows how afraid of

the unknown I was. So you're not alone out there if you're afraid of the

unknown. But instead of doing what I did, instead of

just picking the first thing that comes to your mind and running with it, take

some time. Take some time to think about what you could do, to. To

dream, to imagine what the possibilities are. So my first step here

in the three strategies towards finding your own authentic path

is to recreate this exercise that Graham told

me to do when I was looking this up years ago, and just

make a list. Make a list of all of the things that you

enjoy. Make a list of the things that people have asked

you about. Make a list of even. Even the jobs with the

skills that maybe you had some jobs in a restaurant

and you know how to cook or you know how to food prep, whatever it

is, just list everything on a piece of paper. And

the main thing that I think could be helpful to me is,

you know, maybe if I. So I'm using Graham's exercise of

making this lisp with a caveat. And I think the caveat is to pay

attention to yourself as you're writing this list down.

And anything that stands out a little bit and

makes you get excited, really pay attention to that. Anything.

Like you feel something in your stomach maybe, or

you feel some more energy coming in, or you start to smile a little

bit, or you start to fantasize about, oh wow, that would be really cool if

I could do that. Pay attention to those things. Because I think that's

the most important thing and that's the thing that I ignored when

I was creating this list. I didn't pay attention to like how I

felt about the things that I was writing because I already had the answer in

my head. So when you're making this list,

try to go into it as open minded as possible and to just like list

everything out that you can think of. Anything that you've ever liked. You know, even

if you like sports, you know, write down that you really like hockey or baseball.

We all have these like things that we're

really good at. For me, I know a lot of

just random data on bands that I like because I love researching and

seeing who's in bands and seeing when they got a new

guitar player. I just have a bunch of random information there.

Write that down. That's something I should write down. So yeah, go

into it and

maybe it's helpful. You could go to a coffee shop and set yourself

an hour or two hours and just give yourself

the time to dedicate to figuring

out what you like and what you want. And

so the second strategy you can use is

finding support. And for me, I've talked

about this before. When I first was thinking about a business and I

hadn't left my corporate job yet, I, I found this one guy,

his name is Don. And we were accountability buddies

to each other. We went to this business course and there was a lot of

people talking about businesses, but we found each

other and we were like, we don't want to keep talking about business. We want

to make a business, we want to start something. So from that

first meeting we met for three years every week just trying to keep each other

accountable and encouraging and inspiring each other to

like that we weren't crazy at this corporate job.

Because I think that's one thing that really

bothered me was in the corporate setting everybody's

just, yes sir, yes ma'. Am. And

nobody's asking questions, nobody's like, what are we doing here? This is crazy.

So it was nice to have this person who I could be like, man, this

happened in corporate today. Can you believe it? I can't believe this

thing happened. Or I can't believe they're making me do this. So it was really

nice to have somebody who you could

empathize, somebody who you could

just vent to. Really. That was helpful.

Another way you can try to find support is

through groups or online communities. There's

lots of, like, there's tons of stuff online. You can find whatever you're into.

Maybe if you are into

entrepreneurship. There's so many different entrepreneur groups online,

newcoming, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs,

mompreneurs. There's so many different categories and classifications.

I'm more of an in person person myself.

For example, if you're into music, in my city, we have

this monthly songwriters group and

a local artist puts on this thing once a month

where we all get together as songwriters and we come in community and

we share. We encourage each other to play, we encourage each other to find our

voices. It's a really beautiful group. And

yeah, there's things like that out there that you can find. And there's

lots of writers groups out there for authors or

want to be. Not want to be authors. But, um,

yeah, I don't know what the word is before you write a book. Um, but

you know what I mean. Um, so, so yeah,

go and find, try to find a group out there that can be supportive.

Um, you know, accountability, buddy, is great. And

I think the biggest thing is to just find people that let you

be yourself. Because that was the biggest thing for me in corporate was I just

didn't really feel like I could be my authentic self. I didn't know what my

authentic self was because I was so used to being in

that type of setting where I was just trying to fit in. So

try to find people that you could be weird with. Maybe you have some

friends who you can really be yourself with. I think it's important

to spend time around those types of people, people who encourage you

to be yourself, because that's how we get unlost.

That's how we sort of reset our

compass, is by finding out the things that are unique

to us and, and what makes us unique.

So I think those things are really to be encouraged at this time of

trying to find and become unlost.

I don't know if that's a word, but. Okay, so now the third step

is, or the third strategy is to actually

make a step and I think that this one's really important because it's

so easy to plan stuff and to think about stuff and to never

take an action. And I think taking an action is what drives

you forward. Momentum is

super important. And I think it's the hardest thing to

take the first step and to move in a direction that's away from

where you're at currently. So whatever you can do to take a step

I think is crucial.

It doesn't have to be big. It can be a small step. It can be

the smallest step ever, maybe if you're. If you want to take

photography seriously because it's something that you really like, like, go get a

camera, you know, invest in yourself to go down that

path. You know, maybe you could

volunteer somewhere. If you're really into animals, you can volunteer at

any animal shelter and just move in that direction.

Move towards where you want to be and you don't have to have. Again, you

don't have to have it all figured out, but just moving in a direction

that you find excitement in and something that lights you

up inside, that's where you want to try to follow. And

even if you don't know anything, the easiest

thing I can think of is go and buy a planner,

if you're a planner type of person. I'm super analytical, so I love planners.

But for me, I would go get a planner and I would carve out

time around my corporate job where I could try to

devote time to this new direction that I'm going. And

I would just brainstorm. If I don't know what

it is, just set 30 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day and just

brainstorm ideas. What could I do? Just give yourself time to

dream and imagine how you want to impact the world in a positive way,

what you want to do with your life, and to give yourself that time

that I never did. Just give yourself the time to

think about where you want to go and what you want to do. So that

could be the simplest step, or even just getting a notebook or using a notebook

that you have. But I think it's really important to take a step

which. Whatever feels slightly

uncomfortable but still gets you to do it, I think is where you want to

go. So, yeah, so those are the three steps.

Make that list of everything that you're interested in and you can

possibly do. Find support, and then take

a small step. That's

three strategies of finding your authentic

path and changing directions from being in a

corporate job or a job or an industry or career that you know you

don't want to be in. So hopefully this was helpful.

Hopefully you followed me there a little bit. I think my thoughts are still a

little all over the place, but that's okay.

The last thing I want to say too is to have patience, because

I talked about giving yourself time and space and

nothing happens overnight. Instagram and social

media makes you think that people are overnight success. They are

not. And you know, if you stumble

into that, that's cool, but nothing that's like

worth anything. Okay, I'm not gonna say that.

But yeah, just to have patience because things move

slowly sometimes. But by having

patience and trying to feel

comfortable and not having it all figured out, I think those are

probably the two biggest things that I needed to hear back when I was trying

to make this change. So I do want to say that.

And yeah, also be kind to yourself. You beat

yourself up so much for not having it figured out and

try to be kind to yourself. And that leads me into my lead

magnet that I have out there. It's a free PDF guide

that is structured in seven days and it gives you like a

30 minute journal prompt and some writing and reading that will

try to help you be more kind to yourself. And it's free. You just click

the link in the description. I'm actually still working on it

and adjusting it a bit, so I'm messing with the

title. So I don't really have the total

title right now. It's like Being kinder to Yourself.

Inner Critic. Yeah,

that sort of genre. I still don't have it all figured

out and that's okay because I'm working on it and I'm making it better and

hopefully it's better for the people that download it. So anyways,

I'll do. I'll end it here and thank you for

listening and thank you Curry Pablo, for making

a comment and inspiring this episode

and hopefully it was helpful. But I'll see you all on

another episode real soon. Take care,

Sa.