299: Juggling Risk and Pursuing Passion while Pivoting in a Recession with Adrian Klaphaak

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That's so wise. The perspective with which or the story that we narrate about what that move is that doesn't work out. So wise to explore different ways of seeing it and then to choose, right? So is it that I made a horrible mistake and I'm screwed, right? Or is it that, oh, I made this move, it didn't work out, that's a bummer. Like it really is. And what did I learn? And how can I use this to get closer to something that really fits me?

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only concept, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello, hello Pivoters. I am back with Adrian Clavpeck. You may remember him from episode 283. What are you here to do? How to find a path that fits Adrian was my first coach. He's quoted on the COVID of my first book, Life After College. And we've been friends for a long time now, always checking in with each other, seeing how business is going, how our paths converge and diverge. But still, something I love about Adrian is just how much soul and purpose and meaning he brings to his work as a coach, a purpose guide, an entrepreneur, and founder of a path that fits career and life coaching. Adrian's coaching approach is holistic, a balance between getting results and a quest for meaning and fulfillment. He describes himself as a deep seeker with a constant itch to make things happen. And if you hear grinding construction in the background, there's just not much I can do about that. New York City Adrian, welcome to the show.

Hey Jenny, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back and in conversation with you again.

Yeah, we've had so much fun in the previous two conversations. You interviewed me as well in a mic flip, and we wanted to have this be kind of A way to touch base on what we're seeing and hearing when it comes to navigating change. So you brought up this prompt for us about people asking you when should they emphasize being practical versus following their passion, especially during a recession or very uncertain times. And a question I've been seeing is what do you do when it doesn't work out if the grass dies after you arrive on the other side?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a good one too. The grass dies. The green grass, the once green grass. Yeah. We don't always like to talk about that or imagine that when people are in the midst of change, but it does happen. So I'm happy to excited to talk about that one as well.

So through a path that fits and your Career Pathfinder program, put a link to that in the show notes, you probably interact with more pivoters than I do in that close up way. And I know you stalk clients too. So tell me, what are you seeing and also what are you advising when times are really uncertain, should people play it safer?

We do get more of the question, is this really a good time for me to follow my calling, for me to follow that passion I have when economic times are uncertain in a recession? We got this question in the pandemic as well and there's been a lot of uncertainty. So when things are more uncertain, we get more, I think, doubt question about can I really go for it now? Is it safe? Is it unwise to follow my calling? So that's a big one that we're getting right now. And it is kind of an existential, always relevant question. How much risk to take? Should I really go for it or be more practical? So the passion versus practical question is always up. It has been for the 15 years that I've been doing this and is more relevant than ever. And I think more top of mind for our clients than ever now. And you asked about how do I work with people when they're bringing that question. And the first thing to say is I always want to help somebody discover what is their calling. What are they really excited to go and do? What's their purpose? What are they here to do? These are all different ways of sort of identifying that thing that somebody really feels like they are meant to do. And so I always want to start there because if we don't, it's like, what are we really doing? I think it just leaves so much on the table to not ask that question. So always go through the process to help somebody identify, you know, what are you good at? What matters to you, what do you love? And how do we translate that all into a calling?

I love that you mentioned that because it's so easy to shortcut and circumvent the exploration out of fear of needing to play it safe. And you're right that at least go through the exercise. At least imagine if all things being equal, you could do whatever you want, get clear on what that is before kind of selling the process short simply because of what's happening in the outside world, even though you'll probably make plans and alternate routes that one could take in the midst of a recession. But I just love that you're highlighting take the steps, still do that high level, dreamy exploration, even if it feels a little bit more of a stretch. Honestly, during times like this.

It makes me think of these sort of cliche quotes like don't go out with your song still in you, or if you set the bar too low and make it, instead of setting the bar a little higher or a lot higher and missing that, that's better. And I know I'm not getting them exactly right, but I think there's a lot of wisdom in all of that. And so, yeah, we do want to know what is that calling? And then take into account, okay, what is the economic climate? What are you trying to do? And how possible is that right now? Or how big, how long is it going to take you to get there? And are there steps that you can take alongside your existing work to start building that in a less risky, more sustainable, and ultimately more doable way? So those are some things to consider.

I've been thinking a lot about this question, even in the land of self employment, because I can say that I have been following my passion for the last two years, like full out, all in, in a way I haven't done really at any point ever in my career. And the pandemic kind of sparked me to say, what would it look like to fully pursue my passion? The other side of that that people don't talk about is there may be a time delay between when your passion starts paying out and what that looks like. So in Pivot, I talk about Pivot Runway, but I think that's a very real consideration. Are you willing to pursue your passion and not be earning anything or not be earning as much or be leaning on your savings or have your savings run out? And then what would you do if your savings ran out while pursuing your passion? At what point do you put in those stopgap measures to correct course and do something that Maybe isn't the 100% love of your life passion, but that pays the bills. How do you think about that in your own business, especially now that you have a family?

Yeah, I'm also in that question often. And I like the way you framed it. I mean, the way that I heard it is like, what level of risk am I comfortable taking right now to follow my truest, deepest passion or calling? And it does change. Like, as I welcomed, you know, my first child or daughter into this world, soon after that, the pandemic started. And I remember feeling afraid about not being able to generate enough money in my business to support my family the way that I wanted to. And so I quickly got back into seeing clients one on one, which was something I hadn't done because I wanted a little bit more space at that time to be with my daughter and my wife, but also to explore some of the sort of bigger picture, longer callings. They hadn't even quite yet materialized into any one thing yet. But I was really enjoying having the space to explore those bigger ideas and think about, you know, what do I want to create in the coming chapters over many years of my career to come. And I put that on pause for a bit because I was scared when the pandemic started and didn't know what was going to happen and wanted the security of having some extra income coming in. So that was an instance when I tuned in to what I needed and chose to go with what was going to help me feel more financially secure. That was an important value that I had at the time. You know, since that time, that fear has passed and the need for security, I guess, has relaxed in me a bit and I have had time to come back to the bigger inquiries about what do I really want to do, like, what is the next evolution of me following this calling? And that has led to me wanting to do more purpose oriented work with clients. So helping people really deeply discover, you know, what is their soul's purpose and then how to bring that into life and work. And that hasn't been as immediately lucrative as the other work that I've done for the last 15 years. But it's deeply fulfilling and I'm happy to, you know, make less money and explore working with people in this new way or get fewer clients that are interested in that versus the clients that are saying help. I have this more immediate need to find a more fulfilling career path.

And isn't that interesting where you can feel your energy is so drawn to this, helping people find their soul's purpose and calling and it is a strange moment where you go, yes, this is my calling. My soul is pulling me this way. The magnet is strong in this direction. But then in the real world, so far fewer clients are interested in that piece. And it's not a direct correlation of your joy and energy and excitement about that. There's a time delay and there's also no guarantee that as many people will ever be as interested. We hope so. But that's part of that risk of taking those steps and being willing to see that right now there isn't a line out the door for that exact branch of your coaching. And yet you still feel drawn to it.

Absolutely. And I'm loving pursuing it. And I think this time delay is really interesting and so can be so true and can also cause people to abandon prematurely the thing that they really want to be doing because they put themselves out there in that way or they make that career pivot and it doesn't all immediately flourish and they're thinking, oh, something must be off here, this isn't working, or this isn't right. And I would say, well, it could all be going in the right direction. You just haven't waited, Jenny, like you're saying, you know, you haven't given it enough time. And it's not just idle time passing. It's like we use that time to try different things. You know, how do I communicate what I'm doing around purpose and to who, who's out there looking for it and where do I find those people and how do I, you know, accurately and honestly describe it in such a way that that connection is made and that resonance is there and they're excited for it. So, yeah, absolutely, there is a time delay and I think we need to be active in exploring and trying things in that time delay. And sometimes we need to hold the, you know, the new thing that we're launching on one side, you know, and then also continue our existing work, whether that's in our own business or whether that's working for an employer and doing our own thing on the side and juggling both as best we can until that new thing does catch and start to be sustainable enough for us to transition into it more fully.

I have the metaphor of you're driving on the freeway and a well established highway and then at the same time you're building an off ramp. And it's like building the off ramp takes work. In your case, you have 15 years of a certain style and topic of coaching and then we kind of forget that, oh, it took 15 years to get to this point and be clear about what it is you do and have that word of mouth and referrals and everything. And then meanwhile, this off ramp is brand new. It's like we're still, still building it. I shared recently on free time, this image that I saw on a site called visualizevalue.com and I'll put the link to this episode in the show notes that failure is the frame, not the picture. The picture is of a graph. And we could even think about a market graph or revenue chart, whatever it is. Just a big zigzag bunch of lines going way down and then way up. And if you put the frame only at the dip, only at the part of the picture where the graph is going down and you gauge failure or you judge the process too early, sure, that frame looks like a failure, but the chart's gonna go back up. It's just the bigger picture is taking more time.

That's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. It's like taking the longer view and acknowledging, I think also that if we're really following our deepest dreams, following our calling, living out our purpose, like it's going to take some time for all of that to materialize. And then it doesn't just happen and we move on. It's our path. We're going to continue doing that. It's going to continue to evolve. So in some ways there's not even any there there. I mean, there is a destination of being able to do that thing that we really love in a sustainable way that supports our life so that we can be fully on that path in our calling, doing what we love, but also because we love it, because it's a calling. We're not just going to stop once we get there, right? It's going to continue to move and evolve. Beautiful image.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I think it's interesting too, during a recession, Interesting being an operative word. Whatever, chaotic, concerning, whatever word you want to fill in. But there is a real sense, I think, for some pivoters, that if all the companies you want to work for have just put down a hiring freeze and they're tightening the belt and they're eliminating roles, it is on some level going to be harder to get a job at those places because they have actually put the brakes on. And that can also be its own form of patience, because you know that they're going to hire again. But there is this period where maybe the moment that you are ready to pivot, the world responds in a way that doesn't feel very hopeful. Not that I would discourage anybody from trying, because you never know. And sometimes I find it interesting to go, okay, then what is this timing trying to tell me? Oh, how interesting. The day I was gonna give my two weeks notice, all these companies announced their quarterly earnings and said there's a hiring freeze for the next quarter. Okay, maybe you're not gonna give your two weeks notice that exact day. Or ideally, you know, you do have that next role lined up. Or I do think that reading what's going on is important. And I'm curious what you would advise when it can feel somewhat hopeless that somebody is trying so many things, doing all the right things. They've followed your process of career pathfinder. They've been having all the networking, coffees, meetings, calls, scouring internal job boards and external ones, and it feels like nothing is shaking out to no fault of their own. But simply because of the bigger economic picture on some level, what do you advise? Would people are just at their wit's end at that point?

I would celebrate all the work sincerely that that person has done and have the trust in it that the conditions will shift and all that work will fruit at some point, but for whatever reason, it's not right now. And to take a break if you need to, if you're exhausted and give it a rest for a little bit and recharge. But to come back to it and continue building those relationships with people, I think those usually our relationships are what give us the opportunities. Opportunities come through people more than anywhere else. So continuing to invest and build those relationships is key. And not to do it in a maniacal kind of a way, but to do it in a sustainable way. And then the other thing that I would invite that person to consider is, okay, you know, what might you be able to do all on your own that doesn't require anybody else, any company to hire you or give you the opportunity? What can you do on your own to forward to fulfill this work that you want to do? And it could be a personal project. It could be collaborating with somebody else on a personal project, not through the company for, you know, hire, but on the side. Or it could even be learning, educating yourself or building some skill that will help you do this thing in the future. So I totally think it's fine to take a rest and take a break and just wise to have the patience and trust that one's efforts will fruit at some point. And I think there's always an opportunity somewhere to continue to grow if we want, if we have the energy to do that.

I'm a big fan of that too, and always have been of what can you do that's totally your own? You're not waiting for permission from anybody else. And even if it's an hour a week, or two hours a week, what is yours and yours alone? And it feels really good to have a personal project like that that no one else has a say in. You know, it's like that in itself is very energizing and something I've thought a lot about on this podcast because it's been over seven years, and I talk about it a lot on the show because it's on my mind a lot, which is I've gone through long breaks. Like some shows that I know that have been out seven years have 700 episodes, and here we are hovering right around 300, which is still a big milestone. But I look at how interesting this show for me in the arc of my career in creative projects has been so rewarding, but it has not been an up into the right experience in terms of my energy, my output, the listener growth, that's okay. I've had to take a step back and go, well, what else was I optimizing for at the time? And what else does this show bring? Like, I constantly. And again, I know I probably harp on it too much, but I like letting people in behind the scenes a little bit. That when I'm too focused on numbers and metrics, it actually takes away from what a gift it has been. And I tell other podcasters, like, even if nobody was listening, it would still be rewarding. Or would you podcast even if you had no listeners, just you and I connecting more often than usual is because of this podcast. I've made friends because of this podcast. And so I think also just reframing the success metrics can be helpful.

And how do you do that for you? What measures success?

Kind of like you said, I mean, I like as per free time, I love having autonomy over my time and working in a way that's aligned with my energy. And I am often willing to earn less to stick to what really energizes me because I don't believe I'm doing great work or it's even fair to someone else if I'm sort of engaging with them on something I don't care that much about. Like, it doesn't feel good to me to work that way. So I've often stopped things early or, you know, said no where I could have bent and stretched, but I don't tend to have a lot of extra capacity for bending too far, as weird as that sounds. So reframing the metrics and also reminding myself what assumptions I'm making, that something is a straight line, like, there's no guarantee that more downloads equals more speaking gigs. It could be correlated, but we don't know. I could get speaking gigs another way, or that more downloads and more speaking gigs equals more happiness. Maybe, but maybe not, you know? So I'm always trying to question the logic of if this, then that, and what are the nonlinear breakthroughs that I can invite and look for and be delighted and surprised by. And at the end of it all, like, I just want to feel that I'm putting my time to my highest and best use and doing the best that I can. And so I also remind myself I can't really control how it's received if I do the best I can and nobody likes it, I'll either keep going because it's fulfilling for me, or I can make changes, but I just can't control how anyone else responds to what I'm doing. I get that feeling releasing the books. It's like I've given them everything I can. I can influence how far they spread in the world, but also it's up to every reader that they have to enjoy it and really get something out of them and then want to tell a friend that's the best way that they're going to succeed.

What's touching me in how you're responding is that you know what matters to you and you're making your decisions in alignment with those things. So freedom, creativity, autonomy, the happiness that comes from you enjoying what you're doing. And it's really powerful just to hear somebody know what Matters to them, their values, and to be making decisions in alignment with those things, which requires a lot of courage because like you've said, it hasn't always been this externally validating line up to the right all the time. But you have and seems like you continue to source your validation from the experience that you're having internally of what the act of doing this work that you do feels like.

Well, that's the practice.

Yeah, the practice.

I cannot claim that I'm like always great at that, but that's the path to sanity. I think the other ways are sort of drive me crazy and then I'll notice I'm in a funk or I'm in a really bad mood, or I'm disgusting, discouraged and wanting to quit everything. And that's when I go, okay, I might have gotten off track here.

Yeah.

Well, and this is the thing about careers, is that there's so much that we're asking of them. There are financial security often. Right. They're how we support ourselves and our families. There's a sense of sort of social identity and reputation, success and acceptance, belonging that comes from our work. And then there's also this question of meaning and purpose and using our careers at times, you know, hopefully as a way of expressing our gifts and what we feel like we're here to do, our contribution to the world and probably many other things. There's also the just, you know, moment to moment experience of do we enjoy what we're doing or not. So there's so much that we're trying to give and receive from a career. It's a lot to ask of any one career. So in just this context of how much risk to take with career, that it's important to hold it in the context of our whole life. Like I'm an advocate of following your calling, of knowing your purpose and as much as you possibly can, expressing it through your work. And then I also feel like there are limitations to that. We can't always do that all the time. And so how can we also look to our life as a whole if our career isn't on in all the levels, fulfilling us in all the ways? How can we look to our life and use that as a means of expressing our purpose of finding fulfillment of all these other things that we're looking for? So I just kind of wanted to bring that into the conversation as well, that yes, we're talking about career, but career also rests in the context of our lives and important to zoom out and look at things holistically.

Absolutely. And sometimes Your calling is the paycheck. And you're like, I mean, I haven't had this sweet feeling in a long time, but where you're like, every two weeks, money lands in my account. I mean, that's magic. That's magic. That's its own calling. Sometimes my calling is to have security and peace of mind, knowing that of course, even jobs can go haywire. You're not guaranteed. So maybe as I'm saying that it could still be scary. Even if someone is safely getting a paycheck every two weeks, you still might worry in a recession what could happen about in job security. So how about you? When you hit a dip around passion and purpose and even thinking about risk and security, how do you navigate that? Or have you had one recently?

The last one that I had was.

When the pandemic started and I explained that I was freaked out and I ended up cutting short, kind of the bigger picture exploration of what do I really want to do as the next evolution and focused more on stability in the short term. But when I get into a dip, I usually take time away, actually, like you were alluding to earlier, you know, what I really do in reality is usually struggle through it for longer than I want to admit until I'm either feeling some kind of serious discomfort in my body or just finally have that wake up call like, oh, I'm really not happy, something's off. And when I can finally recognize and admit that, then I try to take some space from my work altogether and take some days off. And usually in that time just go and do something fun, something that feeds me, connect with friends, do something outdoors, surf, hike, run, something like that. And then I also incorporate spending some time alone, some reflective time where I'm trying to listen to myself. And I often think the dip has a lot of wisdom. If I can say, okay, what is it that's not feeling right? What am I supposed to learn right now? Or what is this dip trying to communicate to me or show me about what is not working and what I really want to be doing? And then just continuing to sort of open up the space to try to listen to what do I really want or what feels right to me now? What really matters to me now? You know, how can I come back to my purpose and sit with it and ask myself, okay, what does the next expression of that look like? So coming back to those kind of questions in that reflective time, it really is all feels like it's coming back into connection with my deeper self is the essence.

And taking a step Back. I like how you keep reminding us that sometimes you gotta put it down. That my friend and I used to have this joke. We're like, put the baby down. You know, like, sometimes you gotta put the thing down. Baby's not a thing. But whatever. If you're imagining a box, a backpack, whatever is heavy, you gotta put it down sometimes and step away. So we talked about not gauging failure too soon, but what about people who have pivoted? We mentioned at the start, when the grass has died, you get to the other side and you're so clear that you've not made the right move. Like, maybe someone's celebrating. Sure, they shook loose from an old job or something that was kind of tying them down. Maybe it was golden handcuffs. Maybe it was something else. So the good news is they got moving, they made a choice, they pivoted, and then they get there, and it's just unambiguous. This is not it. And they're super clear. Just the same way you could sit down for a first date, and within three seconds, no. Oh, yeah. There's no chemistry here. This is not going to work. What then? Have you seen this with any of your clients or students?

I have definitely seen this. You give a couple specific examples. But what I can say is that that first move that they were hoping wasn't just the first move, but was the thing. The right move ends up becoming the first move in a sequence of other pivots. That's often what ends up unfolding, is that they do continue on, though. I can think of somebody I worked with a couple years ago, Valerie, who made a career change, was excited about the job that she had chosen, felt like it was the right next step, and then discovered that it wasn't. And that helped her fast track towards her deeper, bigger dream, which was to start her own business. So she ended up leaving that job and starting her own business, which was, you know, in our work together, the thing that she really, deeply felt called to do and really wanted to do, but wasn't quite ready to go all in on it. And there was this other path that presented itself that seemed like a good next step. So I think that can happen, that you don't like this first move, but now that you've made the move and you're in motion and that makes it easier for you to take another step toward something that you really want to be doing.

Yeah.

What about you? What have you seen or what do you counsel when somebody lands in a role they don't like?

I do think it's part of the gamble, part of the die roll. Like, you cannot know it's inherent to the growth process and to the process of pivoting, that there really aren't guarantees. I mean, if it weren't so painful for the person in the middle of it, we could just step back and say, of course, not every pivot's gonna work out when you're the one in it. It's so hard not to take it personally or feel like you made the wrong decision. And I say in the book, decisions are data. I do believe that. I do believe that shaking loose from something, the inertia of slowly stagnating or being actively unhappy or uncomfortable, being able to kind of shake loose from that, like you called it, the initial pivot or the first steps is important, and that serves a big function. And so then once you've loosened the lid of the jar, okay, so the second place that you've landed in this scenario isn't perfect. Okay, but the jar is loose. You're warmed up. You've already been searching, you've already been connecting with people in your network, and you may learn something new, even from this interim pivot that says, oh, I thought I wanted this. And surprise, surprise, I don't. My hypothesis was incorrect. And the whole point of running experiments and having hypotheses is to prove ourselves. We're either correct in our thinking or we're not. So it is just, I think, another nudge from the universe saying, not it yet. Keep going. You know, it's like that game I talk in the book about, the hotter, colder game, but what's the one? Oh, I spy. I spy with my little eye, you know, like, I spy this opportunity. Nope, that's not it. It's something else. And we can't know sometimes until we try. And I think to just try not to catastrophize, like, I made the wrong move. I'll never be happy again. I'll never find the right fit. There will never be a job that is good for me. Like, I'm totally screwed. My career resume is going to go into the tank, you know, like, no one will hire me ever again. I think it'd be really easy to go through that whole spiral, and I have not seen that to be true. I always see people land on their feet. I really do.

I think that's so wise. The perspective with which or the story that we narrate about what that move is, that doesn't work out. So wise to explore different ways of seeing it and then to choose right? So is it that I made a horrible mistake and I'm screwed, right? Or is it that, oh, I made this move, it didn't work out, that's a bummer. Like it really is. And what did I learn and how can I use this to get closer to something thing that really fits me?

We'll be right back just after this.

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One of my favorite things that's always in my pocket is the story we'll see. I've heard that it's a Chinese parable. I'm not actually sure the origin because I've seen several different attributions, but it's essentially the story that there's a farmer and his son and something bad happens and he says, we'll see. And then something good happens and he says we'll see. And each next thing is a consequence of the one previous, and everyone around him is kind of judging it in the moment as either so wonderful or so bad. You know, like, oh, there's a draft coming and they're gonna get his son. How terrible. We'll see. Oh, his son was horseback riding, broke his leg. How terrible. Oh, but then the draft comes and he can't go away. Oh, wonderful. Anyway, this idea of we'll see never leaves me because you don't know the bigger intelligence at work. And some people eschew the line that everything happens for a reason. And I totally understand why and why some people would not believe that. But I do find it interesting to get curious that you don't know, maybe this interim pivot, it's not the right career move but you meet your future partner or spouse, you know, but you meet a mentor that changes your life or connects you to the next thing. And that door wouldn't have opened unless you were in this subpar situation and that we don't know what door, what part of our life, what's going to swing open. So just staying curious about that. It feels like I really messed up here and I completely made the wrong move and I picked the wrong company. And the other thing that I saw and heard recently is the person had all these red flags in the interview process that only upon landing the job did it confirm that those at the time, yellow flags were, in fact, bright red. And if nothing else, it was a lesson in intuition and strengthening that muscle of, oh yeah, I did get a weird vibe from the recruiter. Oh, yeah, they did pressure me when they were making the offer. Oh, yeah, they did make up a competing candidate and told me that I couldn't negotiate my salary. Like, oh, yeah, all these things were happening. And so for this person, no, the middle job, because she did land somewhere successfully, the middle one was terrible. But it also reinforced for her that she wasn't crazy. All those intuitive hits along the process, we're trying to tell her something. And I've definitely learned the hard way through intimate relationships of red and yellow flags. And sometimes it's like you're not glad that you ended up with a totally toxic person or relationship, but it teaches you. It certainly teaches you how to recognize those things the next time.

That's right. And I think these challenges do make us stronger. It's not that we're looking for them, but that when we encounter them, and they're inevitable, of course, but they do. They make us stronger, they make us wiser, they ultimately can help us land in that right thing.

So if we wrap up, what would be one experiment that you would encourage people to do after they listen to this episode?

I'm going to go back to where we started, which is allowing yourself to really.

Dream. What do you really deeply want to do? And to entertain that possibility, let yourself be with it. And when I say dream, I don't know if even that's the right word as much as it's like when you listen deeply, what's in you that wants to be expressed, that wants to be engaged with and deepened into, and to allow yourself to imagine and envision what that could look like, what you might do, how you might follow it, and to see where that starts to lead you.

I love that when you listen deeply, what's in you that wants to be expressed. Ooh, so good. So good. And I'm going to add take a success inventory. So it's natural and it's easy to focus on what we don't have, what we don't want, what's missing. It could be of your whole career arc or it could be one project. So I gave the podcast example, and when I focus on metrics, it's easy to get into compare and despair. But then when I make a little success inventory of connecting with my friend Adrian and making new friends and keeping in touch and having fascinating conversations, like, I really remember how much the introverted side of me lights up with this activity. And even I'll get speaking inquiries that come from a podcast. So I remind myself, oh, yeah, the metrics isn't the measure of success. Look at all these other things that are happening. And so maybe I would encourage listeners take a success inventory for something that you might be feeling kind of insecure about or unsure about. What have been the gifts so far?

Yeah, you advocate for that in pivot. Is that the part of the plant step?

Well, definitely. Plant would be what's working like, even if it's 5 or 10%. Yeah. What's working best? So in this case, let's say using the podcast, an example, even our episodes that we record together, we could go, what's working? Oh, when we just flow, we have a starting prompt, and then we just flow. We don't have any script, and we go, great, let's double down on that. And then we could challenge ourselves next time we come without a prompt at all, and we sit down and hit record. And that could work or not, I'm not sure. But we could go, adrienne, what's on your mind today? And then you'd have to really dig because we wouldn't be thinking about what should we talk about. We would just go, what is most alive? I think you put it that way in email or the previous chat where it's like, what's alive for you today?

Yeah, well, that success inventory is a key first step that I use also with clients when they're saying, what do I want to do next? I think it is an always useful and relevant inquiry to come back to what's working? What am I proud of? What's making me happy? What do I want to celebrate and acknowledge that's working? Well here it's so different to start any kind of what's next question or what should I do question from that place of connectedness to what I'm good at or what my gifts are or what's working or what I'm enjoying, then I don't know what's possible. Can I do it? Is it gonna work? What should I do? Right. So different.

Do you have people do a success inventory of their whole career to date, or is it more in the moment?

I do life and work together. I say think back on your life and work. It could be professional, it could be personal. It could be a tiny thing that went unnoticed by everybody else, but was significant to you. But to think about times when you were at your best. So that's the framing that I use. I've also in the past used think of success stories, personal and professional. I like your term inventory. I mean, it's all getting at the same thing. And I like to go as far back as they want to go and also to include life and work and everything in between.

I also love picking one that went unnoticed by other people. Like, that's even a really interesting inquiry of what's something tiny, imperceptible almost to other people. Because I'm going to have him on the podcast. Maybe it will have already gone live with Luke Burgess. He wrote a book called Wanting Stuff that We all probably know on some level, but he explains it really well of how we're all mimetic creatures and we learn what we want by seeing what other people want. And so when you said find something teeny tiny, it kind of is an antidote to that. It's like if we don't gauge those successes or peak moments only by what's popular or sexy to other people, what would have gone unnoticed but felt so good to us on the inside?

Yeah, exactly. And especially when we're trying to think about bringing something new into our career, into our life, or what's next. If we're only looking at that which we've done for work that may or may not have been wholly fulfilling or wholly encompassing of who we are, we might not find it in what we've already done or been recognized for. It might have been some little thing that only we picked up on. But then that little thing, if we give it more energy, will become what we do even. Or birth, you know, become the core of this new project or path we walk or career.

So beautifully said. Thank you, Adrian. Tell listeners where they can find you. And I know you have a special promo for pivoters for Career Pathfinder, so give us the goods.

Yes. Thank you, Jenny. It was so fun to connect today and let the conversation flow. And I do think you're right. We had some ideas before for the conversation that were helpful in getting us started, and then I definitely felt the moments of flow when we just let it run. So that was great.

Yeah. Well, maybe I'll challenge us next time. We just show up.

Sounds good. Sounds good.

I love it.

If it's terrible, we can scrap it and not even answer.

Exactly. It's either gonna work or it won't, but it's worth trying. I love it.

Nice. Yes, you can find me at A Path that Fits.

And I do have a promo for Pivoters. You can use the promo code Pivot when you check out at a path that fits.com pivot and the promo applies to the Career Pathfinder Group coaching program, which has helped thousands of people find their calling and translate it into sustainable work.

Amazing. I didn't build a course simply because Adrian already built was so good that I never created one other than LinkedIn learning, so it has my complete stamp of what I recommend. Thank you so much Adrian. This is so fun and I already can't wait till next time.

Me too. Thank you so much Jenny.

Thanks everybody for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at jennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.