679: Reinventing and Rethinking Work

We've been hearing so much lately about the great resignation, about how people are rethinking their work, their career, how the newest generation to join the workforce is kind of propelling this change to some degree because they feel let down by the opportunities that are out there. All this stuff, right? All this post pandemic stuff. Stuff. Well, here we are. Maybe you are also rethinking your work, re evaluating your career, wondering if you should keep going the way you're going or if you should turn in a whole new direction or if it's time to start thinking about winding things up or conversely, going to the next level. That's what we're focusing on today. Just what is right for you. Because something I notice personally in my life in the last couple months is I've been hearing about it so much around me, but sometimes we get stuck in just hearing it around us without bringing it home. So I'm going to ask you today, let's bring it home. Let's bring it right inside you, your life. What would it look like if you really did seriously reconsider what your work was like, how you felt in it, what you received from it, how easy or difficult it was to do, where you were located? I want to open some beautiful possibilities just by asking you to get into your heart, your mind. Just drop in for a little bit and feel. That's all we're gonna do, just feel. And maybe, just maybe, by the end, some beautiful new ideas will have dropped in. So stay with me. I am Summer McStravik. Welcome. This is Flow Dreaming, episode number 679, Reinventing and Rethinking Work. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. Hi, I'm Summer McStravik, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Alrighty, my darlings. You know what we're dropping into today in our world of flow dreaming? Yes, we run the gamut here of topics from the decidedly woo woo to the decidedly scientific. And right now, today, we're kind of hovering somewhere in the middle. We're talking about work and career and really reinventing yourself in this area. And we'll be drawing on some of those energetic principles that we always refer to, as well as some just darn basic stuff where you are going to perhaps find some new pals that you can start, you know, poking around in. So I'm going to back up, go back a little bit here and tell you kind of where this came from in my own life. Over the last couple of years, you know, these crazy pandemic years, I noticed that my relationship to work was changing as well. I was, you know, previously I would be traveling and lecturing, doing lots of in person work and retreats, you know, really guiding people through this sort of reinvention process over and over to bring them to that next place in themselves. What are you capable of? What's preventing you from getting there? Are you working with the full spectrum of tools in front of you, physical and non physical? However, there came this screeching halt period where because I had been working online for so long anyway, doing actually the majority of my classes already on Zoom. So when the rest of the world hopped in, it was like, well, okay, hi, nice to see you all here. But nonetheless, the big change wasn't what I was doing, it's what everybody else was doing. Everyone was suddenly home and scared and not sure if they would have a job to go to the next day, the next week. And everyone's work began to change and I began to flex and kind of flow with that. It was a time where I decided, huh, maybe I finally am able to take on some of these larger projects that before now I'd never had time for. Now that I can kind of schedule these bigger, longer chunks of time. So what did I do? I wrote two books, actually two and a half books. I finally got my card deck, my Oracle cards, into a sort of semblance of readiness for their next step. Did a lot of big things like that. But now, just like you, I'm looking at what I've got, all the things I've done and thinking, huh, how do I want to create the next? Do I want to drop back into where I was a couple years ago, pick that up again because everyone is ready and available for it? Or have I been sort of, you know, informed by the last couple of years? And I'll tell you a couple of things I've really loved. Last few years. I have scheduled in an incredible amount of flexibility in my life. I have returned to the world of easy, which is what's working. Do more of that, right? Give to those who I've already been in a relationship and working with, you know, my clients, my listeners, my me schoolers, and free up my time to kind of think bigger and to probe and move into new places that before I Haven't had a chance. So that's what brought me to want to record this with you, to share this with you, to ask you today, this big reinvention of work, you're hearing it everywhere around you. Have you, have you really owned that yet? And maybe, maybe you have. Maybe you're like, heck yeah, summer, I'm halfway there, my resume's out, my new direction is happening. It's all, you know, woo, it's happening. Maybe. Or maybe it's more like, oh God, I don't want to. Not going to touch that. It is so fragile. If I put my hand on it, the whole thing is going to fall apart. Don't ask me to reevaluate my work life. So for everybody who's maybe in between those two or has a touch of both, frankly, this episode is for you. Imagine for a second that you indeed do have an empty plate in front of you. Imagine, you know, you're back, maybe you're 22 years old and you're staring ahead and thinking, gosh, what do I want to do? Where do I want to go? And maybe when you think back to that point in your life, partly what's going through your head is, I didn't know then, I didn't know now. I just went for jobs and went in a direction where it kind of worked, where it just seemed easiest, you know, I took the first place who hired me, basically, and I kind of defaulted into what I'm doing. Or maybe you were the opposite. Maybe you said, I always knew what I wanted to do and I jumped in and I started to do it and I did it and I did it. And now I'm so tired and burned out and exhausted. I want to do anything else in the world. But looking back like this, what I'm not asking you to do is think about what you particularly did. Like either of those two scenarios I just described, I'm asking you to think about the feelings in them. When I go back, I had maybe a dozen different things I wanted to do personally. I was studying opera, I was singing a lot, semi professionally in college, I was sewing, I loved to sew. Became pretty expert at being a seamstress. I thought seriously about fashion design. I know no one would believe it now, judging how I exist in pretty much jammy pants most the time. I was so interested in nutrition, herbs, natural therapies, natural health. I even studied for a while with a pretty famous naturopath here in San Diego county working for him. Boy, there are a lot of interests. Writing, of course, Love to write. Took classes in writing, art. I painted, I drew. Took a lot of art classes in college. I mean, everywhere. I was just kind of like, I could do anything. I could do anything. Desktop publishing that had just come out. I was doing graphic design. Yeah. Like, seriously, I was doing all of these things. Dabbling, dabbling, enjoying flitting from thing to thing, here to there. How many different creative outlets could I do? I was also already doing my intuitive work, paid professionally for that. But eventually I landed. But the thing is, the way I landed, it wasn't with a lot of clear, clear intention. It was more like, what's working, what's moving, what's getting the most traction. That's what I began to do more and more of. There was an element of thoughtlessness, of easefulness in it. And I'm contrasting this to today. Today, for those of you who are, say, over 30, when we think about switching, transitioning, changing, that thoughtless ease is pretty absent most of the time. Instead, we're really calculating, will this work? Is this gonna work? Will I make enough money? How long will it take to get there? Can I pay the bills? Will I do it? Is it too late to get this started? Will anybody hire me based on my past record? Why would they take me when what I've been doing till now is so different? Calculated, afraid, doubtful. Just want to bring that into real strong clarity in front of you, because that is the biggest thing in your way right now. Not your skills, not your age, not the money you've got to earn, but that feeling of difficult, calculated, unsure, doubtful, lack, scarcity. That. That's the biggie. So today, here. Here's what I want to do. I want us to counter that. And maybe you don't want to fully shift your work. Maybe you just want to shift it up to the next level like you like what you're doing. But you need to bring it to the next place where you can have more time to yourself. You can have more freedom in your life. Maybe you've worked yourself to the bone and you're thinking, I don't want to keep on like this. This all falls under this umbrella of rethinking what you're doing and reinventing what you're doing. So today, again, circling back, we're gonna feel what it would be like if your work began to shift. Pretend the shift has already begun, right? It started. It started the moment you first had that little wiggly feeling inside of, I'm not really happy with this. I want something else. That was it. It's already there. Can't pretend it's not. Can't close your eyes to it. It's there. And what it's doing is. It's working in the background. This feeling, this urge. It's working in the background. And what it's doing is. It's saying, huh, we need to bring in some new options, opportunities. We want to help this person. You shift how you feel, where you're going, what you expect, and who you are in what you do day to day. So in keeping with our flow, dreaming, emotional endpoints. If you don't know what those are, just listen to some of my past episodes. I think I might even have one called emotional endpoints. I should have the whole list in front of me, but scrolling through about, you know, 700 episodes gets in the blink of an eye is. Is difficult, and they just pop in my head. But your emotional endpoints, in a nutshell, if you haven't been through me school, by the way, in me school, I teach you all of this in a very clear, you know, devoted way. But emotional endpoints are those feelings that we're after at the end of the game, right? The feelings that we want to feel in our work life, not even caring so much how we get to those feelings or what it is that takes us to those feelings. Because by default, if we get those feelings, we're probably going to be loving and enjoying what we're doing, because the feelings we want to have are probably somewhere in the realm of, gosh, I love this every day. I'm so good at this. I am so rewarded for this. I am so seen for this. This is amazing. I love, love, love, love this. Those are things like emotional endpoints and, oh, I can go much more into those, but I won't right now. So today, I want you to go into your work and think about your emotional endpoints. From the very first moment you said, huh, this needs to change. That was an emotional endpoint. That was the desire inside of you popping its little head up saying, hey, I'm not liking this. I want something different. Can you feel that right there? That is a feeling. That is an urgency, a desire, a craving. New, different, better. That's an emotion. Took me like 10 words to describe that single emotion, but it's an emotion. You can sense it in you. Longing. Okay, maybe longing, but longing in a happy, desirous way. So think of this work right now. Think what you're doing in your life, whether you need a complete reinvention going in a new direction, whether you need to Find the direction. Or, you know, third option, you'll like what you're doing, but it's gotta move to a new level. It can't stay the way it is now. What if everything in your work went completely 100% right? This is one of my favorite kind of what if questions, by the way. I use this all the time. What if everything in your work went 100% right? Starting right this second, like happening now, even as you're listening, Even as you're listening. What if everything went 100% right? Can you just feel how messes are now being cleaned up? Can you feel how things that have been blocked, like promotions or, you know, projects are suddenly freed and moving and flowing? Can you feel how if you have staff or co workers, everybody is suddenly happy, supportive, you're getting stuff moved through, your joy level is starting to skyrocket. Can you feel how if you work for yourself in some way, all the things you've been needing or wanting are starting to happen? Maybe you're getting new leads, new clients, new customers. Maybe you're getting huge success stories. Maybe your business, your practice is starting to just boom. And not only that, but you're not feeling burdened or overwhelmed or tired because it's all booming and growing in such a way that you're able to actually create more free time for yourself. Because the way it's developing, the way it's growing is taking less from you, not more. These are just some ideas on a practical level, what if rethinking your work means, oh, I may never go back to the office, Maybe I'll follow the lead of so many other people and go ahead and buy that house way up on the hilltop. You know, that formerly would have been a four hour drive from the office, but that doesn't matter now. I'm going to go there and I'm going to spread out and start living my retirement now. I'm going to get my dream house now, even while I remotely still tune in and get work done. Or maybe you're working at a job and saying, I want one of those remote work jobs that everybody keeps talking about, why don't I have one of those? And so you're looking and you're finding what kind of reinvention would work for you, what would make you really happy? Is it $5 more an hour, $10 more an hour? Is it maybe not getting any more, but getting kind of cut into some of the company profits or having more perks in other ways, Better health insurance, more time off, a four day Work week. Shape it. Go ahead, slap it. Put it together. Maybe it's this feeling like, yeah, my side hobby is really taking off. I mean, wow. I make, you know, mosaic hubcaps for cars and. Whoa. Who knew so many people wanted to roll around with these little glittery hubcaps? But I just can't keep up with these orders. I'm in a good way. I mean, I'm just like, wow. I'm devoting every weekend evening. I'm getting my kids, I'm pulling my partner in. We're all just mosaicing like crazy. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I can't believe it, but it's happening. Those handmade soaps, they're flying off the shelf. What is it? Rethink your work. Before you actually receive this kind of thing in your physical life, you've got to have this strong emotional template for it already in your heart. And a lot of us, unfortunately, instead, have this kind of weaving, meandering, not sure, timid. I want it, but I know I can't have it. I want it, but I don't know when I'll get it. That's what we keep kind of pumping out of us every single day, and we don't even realize we're doing this. All right. I mean, it feels logical, it feels sane to be like that. I'm asking you, though, now to go ahead and commit. Create this emotional template. Create this energetic template. This is the basis of flow dreaming work, my friends. We start with creating these templates, energy templates, emotional templates inside of us. And sometimes they don't even start, really, with a lot of clarity. They're kind of vague and hazy. They just start with a longing. I have a lot of freedom in my life. I have a lot of income in my life. Great. You're like, yeah, but that's not precise enough, Summer. How's life going to give me that if I don't give it the exact thing I'm supposed to be doing? And I say, you know, it's funny, but life is kind of a lot smarter than we give it credit for. If you want a lot of ease and you want a lot of income and you want a lot of freedom, let's just pretend for a second. Those are your top three. Ease, freedom, wealth. Oh, and fourth one. Happiness, right? Happiness with what I'm doing, to me, that's like giving life. What do they call it? Carte blanche. It just is like saying, hey, find me whatever is out there that I might not even know of. But if I feel those four feelings as a result of it. I'm in. I'm all in. And that's kind of a wondrous, deep, trusting opening. Because what you're saying is if you give me these things, safety as well as some freedom, happiness and monetary success, it means I can't hate whatever you bring me, right? Because it makes me happy, because it gives me enough money to thrive with, because it gives me the kind of freedom in my lifestyle I want. Because it gives me the security where I feel like it's not going anywhere, it won't be taken away, I can trust it. Like, you've nailed it. So whatever you are, that's what I want. That's why when I say you don't have to know precisely what it is, just know those top level things, those are your ultimate emotional end points, you know, always keep something like that there. That's the top of the pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid can be all the things you're exploring. Well, I hope it comes from, you know, my redbubble shop. I hope it comes from my Amazon sales. I hope it comes from my writing career, I hope it comes from my singing career, my acting career. I hope it comes from real estate. I hope it comes from my mlm. I hope it comes from, gosh, you know, could be anything that you're hoping it comes from. But you're also saying, I want ease, flow, freedom, security, all of that in whatever it is. And I'm willing to let that grow, reinvent, rethink. So I know we're talking kind of extremes here. On the one side it's this big, emotional, energetic, blueprint, extreme. And then on the other side, we're getting granular. When I talked about buying that house that used to be a four hour drive up on the hill, I want you to be adding things like that in too, because you do. You already have a lot of these daydreams and desires that you want, that you crave, that have been making you happy. Maybe you've actually said to yourself, gosh, I wonder if it is possible to retire four or five years earlier than I'd previously planned. I wonder what I need to do, like seriously to start thinking about that. I've always wanted to invest in real estate. Maybe it's time to actually look into that. If I can't buy something outright, don't have the funds, I'll join one of those real estate investment funds and just get some money in the door, get my foot in the door, think in those terms as well. Because Think of that as kind of like the granular stuff. You're giving your life, you're giving your future, you're giving it the big picture stuff, but you're also giving it these little opportunities. You're putting this one out and that one out and saying, well, well, what do you think about this one? Give me some feedback. How about that one? Give me some feedback. Right? That's like being on the front edge, the leading edge of where things are flowing. You've got to have a lot of stuff, a lot of action happening there in order to eventually reach that big picture stuff and have enough of that big picture stuff tumble in. You follow what I'm saying? The idea is don't put off any more. Don't put off any. Any longer. The whole world is caught up in this desire, this revolution in our energy and our thinking. You can capitalize on this wave of energy you, too can reinvent and rethink. If you really commit to that, if you really open your heart to that, there is a darn good chance you're going to come out of this with a significant, positive revision to the way that you're doing things. And that's what we're all looking for. I want it to be easy. I want it to be flowing. I want it to be something that really does speak to my gifts and makes me feel like this is what I'm here for. My truest, deepest gifts are being utilized, right? That's something that a lot of times we even overlook in work. You know, work is the thing that makes us money. It's not the thing that makes us feel like our deepest, truest gifts are actually being lovingly utilized and supported. Yet that, truthfully and truly is what so many of us are actually looking for. So throw that in, too. By the way, if you've never taken notes while listening to one of these podcasts, this might be a good time to start, right? Little ideas flickering, shimmering through your mind. You know, I tend to listen to my podcast a lot when I'm driving, and it causes me to fire off all kinds of great ideas. So, you know, I've set up a habit now of having Siri on my phone so that I just, you know, constantly output. Siri, make a note. Siri. I don't have to take my hands off the steering wheel or anything. Siri, make a note. Siri, make a note. Siri, Siri. Or I'll say text myself, right? So I send these little texts to myself, knowing that when I stop or when I get back, Home or to my home office. I'll look at all these texts and then I gather those together in this big long sheet of notes that I can then kind of leap off from. So just a little idea here and that's something you can do now. Rethink your work. And the last thing I wanna share with you is, you know, it may sound a bit like I'm saying brainstorm. It's time to brainstorm. I want you to brainstorm for sure. Like just sit down, grab some paper. What could I be doing? What do I want to do? What would make my heart sing? And then from there comes the how do I get there? Or how do things have to change for me to get there? That is where we rope in our flow. We rope in our future self. We rope in our energetic blueprints that we're creating, by the way. Way we make these blueprints via Flow Dreaming. Flow Dreaming is a technique, right? It is the way that we muscle this into being. Energetically muscle this into being. So if you're unclear what Flow Dreaming is, please, please, please, please go back and listen to one of the introduction to Flow Dreaming episodes. By the way, you can get Flow Dreaming on all different places. It's on Spotify now. Of course it's on it. There is an app that you can get download from any of your app stores. It's the Flow Dreaming podcast app. It's also got everything. In fact, it has. The app has more episodes than any other place because the first, oh, I think four or five, six seasons at least maybe a couple hundred episodes. They're for premium subscribers. It's like super cheap though, to be a premium subscribers. I think it's like $2 a month or something. But that's where the whole entire library is. So you can find that too. And also on YouTube. So if you haven't found the Floaterming Podcast on YouTube, you can also check that out. Alrighty, my friends, have I got your wheels spinning? Do I have you enthused and excited? This is the perfect time to take this kind of reinventing gander. Gander. Is that a word? Gaze. What word am I thinking of? I think that is a word. You ever do that thing where you say a word and it made sense, but the minute you say it, it sounds completely foreign? That just happened to me. There's gotta be a name for that. I bet there is. I'm gonna have to go wiki that after this show, but this is the perfect time for you to take a peek at this part of Your life. Make those pivots. Allow those pivots to come in. Don't miss this wave. Don't miss this wave. By the way, last thing, if you're really set on this, I have a really significant part of my Flow Dreaming library of flow dreams, which are meditations. They are these active energy processes that are recorded with audio and music anywhere from five to 20 minutes long. I have a ton of them in the work and career sphere because that is obviously an area that always really interests me. So you can find everything from my dream job to a Wealthy life playlist to one of my favorites, the Entrepreneur's Flow book. Thriving Wealthy Entrepreneur. So super good for those of you building your own business. And the classic prosperity challenge. Perhaps that one has been used more than any other one of my programs that I have. So go check those out@flowdreaming.com in the meantime, I hope, hope, hope this has given you some inspiration, some joy, and some readiness. Plunge in. It's time to rethink. It's time to really take it out of the abstract, take it out of the longing and say, you know what? I actually am gonna do this. And I'm gonna look back sometime and say, huh, that was the year that I actually planted those seeds that led me to where I am now. And I am so grateful I did that. I'm so grateful I took that time, that moment to move past my fears, move past my uncertainty and say, hmm, yeah, I want this. This is where I'm truly gonna go and just free myself from all those fears and say, yeah, this actually can, can happen. All right, my dears, we are not doing a live flow dream in this particular episode. As you know, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. But I encourage you, you can get these live flow dreams@flowdreaming.com. these are the energy pie to uphold the mindset that I share with you in this particular podcast. And you can also find, you know, my meditations elsewhere out there on the. On the Internet. Just look me up. Google me. Flow dreaming.com Summer Mixtravic oh, my gosh. There's a ton of stuff out there. All right, I love you guys, and I'll see you all next time for another episode of Flow Dreaming. Flow Dreaming is a universe. On the one hand, it's extraordinary. It's a technique that can change everything in your life. You can feel better, manifest your dreams, heal it does it all. And to learn it, well, just go to flowdreaming.com and get my free kit that teaches you how look under Free Goodies and you can also download the Flow Dreaming app, which has the kit right there for you. But Flow Dreaming keeps going. Once you fall in love with the technique, you might want to know how to use it better. How to think better, feel better, really change inside. That's why I have Flow on a monthly membership where I teach people a new way of using flow in their lives every single month. Check it out. Finally, you might be perfectly ready for MI School. I know you've heard a lot about MI School, but maybe you haven't actually looked it up yet. It's my most effective program, a culmination of 20 years of teaching. It's been taken by hundreds of students over the last seven years, and this is where you really light that fire that grows and you make this a life worth living. You can find it all@flowdreaming.com so go check it out and at least write yourself a note, even if you can't check it out this minute. And while you're at it, subscribe to the Button Cast.