Finding Brave 153: Figuring Out What You Truly Want in Your Career, with Lisa Lewis

Hello, everybody. Kathy Caprino here. Welcome to another episode of Finding Braid. I'm so excited about this episode and having Lisa Lewis here with us today. Yeah, it's Lisa Lewis Miller. That's your full name, Lisa Lewis Miller. And we were chatting about. Lisa has an amazing podcast that I was honored to be on. It's not often that I have another career coach on that show. And I'm so grateful for this opportunity because, first of all, let's face it, we all think we know best than anybody what we're doing, but it's so important to connect with other people who are rocking it in your same industry, in your same field, because as we were sharing, each of us has our own way of describing what are the challenges that people are going through. In our case, it's careers and pivoting and loving what we do and being clear about who we are and how do we build a career that matters. So I'm just so grateful for the chance. Lisa, thank you. Thank you for being here.

Well, Kathy, that's such a gracious introduction. Thank you for having me.

Thrilled. All right, everybody, let's just jump right in. We are going to be talking about what are we naming our show here? Figuring out what you truly want. You know, I have a guide. It was an article that I turned into a guide, sure fire plan to figure out what you truly want. It's one of the most downloaded things. I think so many people struggle with some aspect of I thought I knew what I wanted, but it's not this. Or I never knew what I wanted, or I knew what I wanted and I got pushed out of doing what I wanted. I mean, there's a million versions of this. So I'm really hoping that everybody listening can resonate with something we're sharing. But let me tell you about Lisa. Lisa Lewis Miller is a career change expert and the author of Career Clarity. Finally find work that fits your values and your lifestyle. Her path evolved into career coaching. You know, Lisa, I didn't really know this till I read this. Fascinating. Evolved into career coaching after working in digital marketing for nearly a decade at companies like the American Cancer society, Teen Vogue, 17, CBS College Sports. Oh, how interesting. And your work has been featured in the Washington post, Business Insider, US News and World Report, Fast Company, Refinery29, and more. And you received your coaching certification as one of the only seven coaches in the world trained in the pivot method. I can't wait to hear all about it. But what we're going to dig in with Lisa, if we can, is can you tell from, tell us from your perspective, why do people struggle so much with what to do with their career, what to do professionally? What do you think is the biggest challenge people are facing?

Well, you know, Kathy, I think that the reason why this is such an, almost an epidemic of uncertainty and self doubt and wondering what if? Is because this kind of challenge with self knowledge and discernment is actually baked into the way that we socialize and raise young people, at least in the United States and possibly, you know, on a much more global scale too.

Tell us more. How is it you mean the not knowing who you are is baked in?

I, I do. I mean it's baked into the educational system and the expectations that we have of individuals within the educational system. So let me share a little bit more with you about what I mean there. So I, as a career change coach, when I first started my work, I kept running into people over and over and over again who felt like they didn't understand what they wanted. And I wanted to dig into this and get to the root cause. Because if you can't feel confident and clear about what you want, it's really.

Hard to do the work to get it right, to do the work to.

Get it, to feel fulfilled in your career, to feel as confident and powerful and clear on your trajectory as you want to be. And so I stumble across this book called Excellent Sheep by William Derisowicz of Yale University.

Oh my.

And he, as somebody who's worked at Yale for a long, long time, has watched longitudinal changes happen at the university in terms of the sort of mental and emotional resourcing that students were showing up to their undergraduate education with. And what he was noticing was that over time students were becoming more and more nervous, more and more anxious, more and more fearful. And when we look at, let's say, the overall increases in general prosperity and well being that have happened over the United States decade after decade, he was seeing this disconnect of why are so many things in the country getting more prosperous, more safe, more possible. And yet individuals aren't necessarily reflecting that in their own, their own sense of well being and stability and clarity. And so Bill sort of goes backwards into what's happening in our educational system. And when we look at, and I'll go sort of all the way back to when universities changed from being a thing that very few people went to, you know, in the 40s, 50s, 60s, to something that was merit based, that became open and for everybody to go to, that became this big commercial endeavor. The pressures that families put onto children changed pretty dramatically. And instead of going through school, let's say at a typical public school education, just with the desire to get to the end, graduate and then start whatever sort of trade you want to go into, apprentice somewhere, get the job at the company that you're going to be with for the next 40 years, the expectation became you need to be competitive, you need to be the best, you need to be well rounded and you need to be getting A's in every subject and become captain of every team and president of every club. And this shifting of, hey, let's just have you get through your education and enter into the working world and the real world and not put so much pressure on your education to be perfect. The institutional pressure cooker got turned on and all of a sudden, beginning in the, in probably the late 60s, there was this big amount of pressure that it's not just finishing school, it's finishing school really, really well. So if you were the kind of person who felt any amount of pressure, expectation from your family, from your teachers, from your coaches, from your community, from your cultural background to perform well and get high test grades and get into an Ivy League university or get into the best university in your state or whatever that was, at some level there was a pressure to stop paying attention to your own natural tendencies and desires to pick one path over another.

Right.

All of a sudden it didn't matter if you don't particularly like chemistry, because if you don't put just as much time and energy and effort there and perhaps even more to make up for the fact that you don't enjoy it and it isn't coming naturally to you, then you might get a B or a C and then that might sabotage your chances to get into whatever university and then that will cascade into not having the opportunity to get a good job after graduation, whatever that means. And so we created this kind of ethos and this kind of thought process and pressure around school and that your personal opinions and preferences don't matter as much as looking well rounded and perfect on paper.

Lisa, that's fascinating. Can I amplify and add a few things that I see also a corollary to that? Absolutely. One of the most viral posts, interviews I've ever done, 8 million views and counting, was with Tim Elmore, who is the founder of now what's the name of it? He's a leadership expert and he works with young people. I'll think of it and we'll link to it. He's brilliant. And it was about the seven crippling parenting behaviors that keep children from growing into leaders. And we don't mean leaders of big corporations. We mean leaders of your own life. But of course, people who have impact, and they were everything we know about what it is to micromanage, to hover, to make your kid wrong for what the kid, you know. So in my time as a marriage and family therapist, I saw what are the behaviors that build self esteem, confidence, and resilience, and what are the behaviors that strip it away as a parent? And I would teach these things. I'd go to people's homes and there'd be PTA groups and. And parents really resisted because inherently, it seems they felt like. How do I put this? Let me say this before. When I grew up, my parents. My dad was 93 when he died six years ago. Mom is 96. They were not involved in the fabric of my life. They weren't. I went to school. I played tennis, number one. I did this, I sang. They didn't come to school events. How was your day? That was it. And never did I miss that. Now look what we have. There's so much enmeshment. And when there's enmeshment, it means you don't know where you end and the other person begins, parent and child. And there is so much stripping away of Lisa, you're my child. What do you think? What do you want? What is best for you? So I would love to overlay that and go and look at some research about have parents become more of that? They're also more anxious, if you ask me. They're also. They're very anxious, nervous. Most people are very anxious and nervous, and they're laying it on their kid. I see that. Would you agree with that?

Oh, absolutely. And I think there was a really interesting article, and I believe it came out a year or two ago. So there may be something even more updated since that said, that we're graduating from the era of the helicopter parent to the snowplow parent, from the helicopter parent who's constantly watching over things and micromanaging and making sure you get your homework done, to the snowplow parent who is trying to get all the obstacles out of your way preemptively so that you are never challenged, you are never stretched, you're never pushed, you're never in a position where you need to start accessing your own character and your internal resourcefulness and resilience. And what I think is really important to highlight about this enmeshment piece that you're bringing up is that if Anybody who's listening to this is having this resonate for you of oh my gosh. I totally remember being told, you know, not to worry about my English paper because my grades in math were going poorly or whatnot. All of this enmeshment comes from parents deep desire and potentially fear and anxiety around wanting you to have opportunity and wanting you to have it all. So number one, this is not coming from mal intent, from your family, from your culture, from your society. And number two, this has become so common and so prevalent that a lot of parents may feel the pressures to be like this because if they're not, they may be depriving you of opportunities.

So I love your beautiful, positive, hopeful view. I'm going to give you a sliver that isn't like that. I think in the world of narcissism, narcissism, and I know a lot about narcissistic personality disorder and I ran a Facebook group with 2,000 plus adult children of narcissists. I'm sorry to say a lot of parents are living vicariously through that child, that they have weak self esteem, weak egos, and they are making that child fill them with what they didn't get either as children themselves. So while I'd love to believe that it's a large percentage of parents, look, we're all doing our best. Whether we're a narcissist or not, we're all doing our best. But I would ask parents right now to look long and hard about are you pushing them to be great because it makes you feel like you are a good, smart person, a good parent. Because you gotta cut that out. They are not you. You know, I really, I'm doing a little DOJ across the face there. Wow. So let's go back here now and tie it to why we struggle. Can I say one other thing? I interviewed Ken Rusk, who is just like Mike Rowe, who believes in the trades and how our society has denigrated them and put them down. And, and Ken says that started with the start of the computer, where the, where the hands on work we used to do. You know, in my high school, there was shop class, there was Home ec. It was called I don't even think they have shop. I don't think so now. But you know, the whole honoring of what we do with our hands, even designing something, it's now designed on the phone, it's not right. But what he's saying is we're missing such a huge opportunity for young people to choose a path that they can become Millionaires in, they can run their own, you know, plumbing organization where 10 people work for them. And he said it started at the advent of the computer. Either way, I think what you and I are saying, Lisa, is to be happy, we have to understand who we are at the core and not from a competitive view about how am I going to get over. Would you agree with that statement?

Absolutely. I think that through your socialization and how you grew up and how you were raised, there are forces that got in the way of making it easy to feel connected to who you are, what matters to you and what you value. And so I both want to show this empathy and compassion and love to say, it's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, you didn't ask for this. And if this isn't serving you anymore, if you're really wanting to have a really clear sense of identity and divest yourself from that enmeshment and feel like you can plant your flag in the sand with authority and conviction and with power, that there are absolutely things that you can choose to do now, ways that you can start to do some great unraveling of the way things used to be and stepping into new ways of thinking about yourself, new ways of thinking about opportunities that are available to you, new ways of thinking about your gifts and your strengths that can help you to find a path forward that feels so, so much better than the kind of swirl and self doubt and fear that can often come up as a product of forces you didn't have control over, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Love it. I love it. All right, now you talk about the four pillars of career fulfillment. Let's hear about it. Let's hear how. And you really focus on the pivot, don't you? Before, before we get into this, can I ask. So fun to have a colleague who does this work inside and out like I do. I often find that when people come to me and say, that's it, I've had it. I want a full wholesale revision. They don't want a wholesale revision. The vast majority of people. You know, I've had it with hr. I've had it with digital marketing. I never want to be in a meeting again. That's not true. It's that they're. They're doing what I call the pendulum swing, a pendulum effect. Like, oh, I'm so broken down and miserable in this. I want to run like I did after corporate becoming a therapist. But really, most people actually want to retain a lot of what they still love. But they want to shed what no longer works. Is that your world, the pivoting? Can you talk about that a little bit?

It absolutely is. I think that when you're in a situation in your work that doesn't feel good, doesn't feel like a fit, you get pretty clear somatic feedback about that. Right. You get a sense of not being able to get up in the morning easily. You have the Sunday scaries on Sunday night. You have a sense of knots in your stomach, tension in your shoulders, feel like you're not breathing as deeply as you could, feel like you can't relax. There's so many bodily symptoms and signals that tell us that things are wrong, but those don't make it easy to figure out where right is, where a better fit is. And so it's really easy to fall into that strong sort of black and white reactionary mode of I just want to burn everything that I've done to the ground and start afresh and start anew. But I think to your point, it's really important to do a certain amount of inventorying to identify, well, what are the things that sustained me in this space? What are the things that really drew me towards this company, this industry, this role, this department, this issue to be helping with problem solving on so that you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater? Because the worst thing. And I, as a career change coach, early in my career, I watched people do this and it was horrifying. And I realized I needed a framework to help people navigate this better. But I would watch people say, you know what? I hate everything that I'm doing. The only thing I know is that I want to help people. So I am going to go and transition to hr or I'm going to go and get my social work degree.

Or go into a nonprofit or work at academia. Everybody thinks that's fulfillment.

And it on its face looks like it could be that way. It can feel when. When you are looking at things from the outside like, those are silver bullet solutions. And so what would happen is that you then apply to graduate school. You'd get in, you'd go, you'd rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. You'd graduate and then realize that the new degree that you've gotten gives you a key to open a door to a path that still doesn't quite feel like the fit. And now you've got the burden of the student loan debt on your back, too. That feels so oppressive and feels like it really limits your possibilities. So I Wanted to give people a framework to think through what's working that I want to save and what are the things that I want to shift in order to find a path forward that uses all the beautiful things that you want to preserve, be it specific strengths and gifts, be it a specific area of interest, be it a lifestyle that you have loved and that has served you to build the sort of holistic life that you want, while also knowing where to make the tweaks and the pivots and the changes to optimize and feel like you're on a path that better feels like it fits you.

There's so much there. I want to ask a few questions here. You know, when. When you just spoke, what immediately flashed into my mind is, you know, how I felt when I got dumped from my career, corporate career, in a way that I knew without a shadow of a doubt I could not return to that life in any way. And the truth is, I think for a small percentage or a growing percentage, there. There is a reality that that life is so wrong for me that I have to burn it to the ground. And what I want to highlight is when you said, I just want to help people, when I ask in my career path assessment, what do you want? That's what comes up. I want to help people. And I'm like, okay, that's so great. And most people do, but that isn't enough. That doesn't give us any guidance here. But I remember when my therapist said, I know you're crying and it's the worst crisis you've ever faced from being dumped in an awful way that destroyed you. But it's the first moment from where I sit, you can choose who you want to be. Who do you want to be? And all I could blurt out was, I want to be you. And he said, what does that mean? And I said, I want to help people, not hurt people and be hurt. So I think that what you're saying is so accurate that we know in some ways. And I really want to talk through your four pillars. I think when we sit down and do an evaluation, and unless we do it, we're not going to know because, as you say, we're not in touch with ourselves. But when you write down, what do I value? What is, who do I want to be in the world, that's going to get you a little bit towards where you want to go. But I think that where a lot of most people get stuck is, okay, what do I do with that? Literally. And, you know, my therapist said, I Think you'd make a great therapist? Without those words coming out of my mouth, I don't think I would have thought about being a therapist, even though a million people have said in my life, you should have been, it didn't get in. So I want, I'd love you to talk about these four pillars and how do we do it? How do we move from I want to help to okay, what does that really mean? But the other thing we were talking before we recorded, you know, how you said you've worked with people or you know, people that said, ugh, I'm done with this, and then they got their masters and got out and went. I think part of that is also, as we discussed the seven damaging power gaps, that what I do want to say is you are you, no matter what career you're in. And if you're depressed, if you feel thwarted, if you can't speak up, if you constantly get mistreated, if your picker is broken, you pick the wrong things, you pick the wrong partners, you pick the wrong bosses, that won't change whether you're a plumber, a landscape designer, or a digital marketer. So I think part of this framework, I'm guessing too is you do have to look and read my book Most Powerful. You, you know, where are you not speaking up? Where are you not seeing yourself as the way you really and brilliant and talented? Right. Where are you continually connecting with mistreatment and where are you not building a network to help you? So I think your framework and mine do dovetail well, don't they?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Kathy, I'm, I'm glad that you brought that up because in so the four pillars methodology is a framework to help you as an individual think through what drives fulfillment for me, what drives success for me, what are the things that I feel like I can depend on and count on to navigate what the next step or two might look like?

So your framework isn't, oh, now I know I'm going to be a therapist and a coach and a writer. Speaker. No, it's what next to try one direction. Is that what it is? Or test put your toe in the water?

Absolutely. Because we live in this society where jobs are being created and sectors are evolving so quickly that even a five year plan almost feels like it's becoming obsolete because the water and sand is shifting underneath our feet so quickly. So thinking about what do I trust now and how can I use that to carve a path forward that gives me optionality is incredibly important because even think about People like, like the incredible educators of our country right now. And how when you signed up for working in education, it seemed like you could stay in education for 40 years and retire. And in most states, you know, you've got your state pension that you'd be able to access and that there was tons of stability, there was tons of safety, it was predictable. And you know, this pandemic really threw a wrench into what stability and safety look like. Because in so many districts, you know, certainly not all districts, certainly not all schools, but in many districts, the leadership hasn't been prioritizing teacher and students safety as much as they've been prioritizing trying to return to normal. And if you're an educator who has a pre existing health condition and your administration is asking you to go back into a space that may not be physically safe for you, you got to start thinking about options. Think about, is this worth it? Am I willing to go back into a space that doesn't feel like it is safe? And where I feel like my administration may or may not be valuing my safety and health as highly as I do.

Oh, wow, that's such a good point.

So thinking about optionality is a huge piece of this. So that if you find yourself with your industry or your company or your whatever, changing underneath of your feet in a way that's unexpected, you don't feel like you are falling on your butt and having to start over from zero and feeling like you're spinning and lost.

I love this. Would you, would you resonate with this statement? I often talk to people about, they'll come for help and they, they want to pretend they're a career coach. So they'll say, I think I want this job. It just happened an hour ago. I think I want this job. And I say, tell you what, we're going to work on the essence of what you want, then we'll figure out the form. But for you now to say, I think I now want to be, you know, a CFO when you've never had any finance experience, you know, no, we're not going to identify the form yet. First we have to get at the essence, right? Which I think is what your pillars are, and I will shut up so you can talk about them. But another thing I think you're also highlighting is that no matter what career you choose, you have to be flexible, like a lot of us who do, speaking for a living. We did it on a stage, we traveled to LA or internationally. You gotta be good with the fact that we're not doing that. And I think that that is in some way what people are struggling with in their careers as well. Like you're saying, as a teacher, as a healthcare worker, as a speaker, as a, whatever it is, almost all of us have had to change how we're doing, what we're doing. So I'm sure part of your pillar formation is what is it exactly that's making it so difficult for you? And is that going to be a fluid thing? Is it going to be with, with this career forever? So would you agree with that?

Absolutely. And let me, I'll, I'll dive into defining the four pillars, but he's taking notes at home here, so you've got something to write down. All right, so the, the four pillars, exactly to the point you just made. Kathy, talk about the, the essence in each of these categories. And I'll give you the caveat too, that for the four pillars of career fulfillment, the goal is not to get 10 out of 10 Perfect Fit Rainbows and butterflies exploding out of your computer. In each of these four categories, the goal is to figure out what's most important to you, what's the highest priority, what's non negotiable, and use that as the foundation to do the idea generation and the searching for what might be next. Be it a micro pivot.

Right.

That you discover. Actually, all I need to do to get back into alignment is just work in a different team who. Or do the same job at a different company that values different things, or whether you discover you do need a big macro shift and realize, wow, there are a lot of things out of whack in my fulfillment pillars and there isn't a path forward for me in this industry or in this career that feels like it's going to allow me to honor the things that are most valuable to me.

Beautiful, great walk.

So with that pillar number one, I'll give you the pillar and its essence. And I'll give you a question to think about for yourself to identify how to find your way to more clarity and discernment around this pillar. So pillar number one is the strengths and gifts pillar. And for anybody who works in careers, this is not a surprise because every study under the sun says that working in areas of your strength tends to lead to more satisfaction, more longevity and more sustainability in a role. But to your power gap. Sometimes it feels really challenging to know and understand what your strengths are, partially because in the working world, a lot of times what's valued is our skills, our skill set, and not necessarily our strengths and I'll give you an example from my own life. So back when I was working in digital marketing, I was working as a grassroots communications consultant, steps away from the White house in Washington, D.C. and I got the opportunity to work on all these interesting cool projects that required a certain amount of database maintenance and management to keep track of things, keep track of people, keep track of communications, keep track of where bills were in Congress, things like that. And so I accidentally, by wanting to serve my clients, became an excellent database administrator. Now, I did not care for database administration whatsoever. I was willing to do what I needed to do to serve my clients. But when I thought about what I wanted to go into and grow into next, the skill set path for me was, you know, go get a Salesforce certification or get, get another training in this area. And I felt deeply lost and confused because I knew I didn't want to do that. But it also was the only path forward in front of me that was clear. And when I started to realize that the skills, the big picture of all the different things that we can do is very different from our strengths and gifts, which I define as the sort of subset of things that you enjoy doing, things that give you energy, things that you want to do more of and want to grow in, and things that you are generally good at or could get good at. That subset of strengths and gifts is a much more useful starting place for discerning what you'd like to do moving forward. So the corresponding question for anybody who is listening is what are the areas where you feel most alive and most energized and most excited in your day to day work? And what are the areas perhaps that you don't get an opportunity to work in as much, but that, you know, bring you energy and joy that you like to grow into more? Because the other thing that I think that we see women traditionally more than men do pretty often is when they're applying for jobs, they're trying to find one that is 100% skill and strength fit. And when you are limiting yourself to only applying for jobs that you meet 100% of the criteria for, you're jumping into something where you're giving yourself no room for growth. And a thing that is a big motivator for many of us is challenge and learning and an opportunity to feel like you're expanding and that your position is allowing you to be expansive. So thinking about not just what am I currently getting energy from and pretty good at and that I enjoy and want to do more of, but also where are the Areas in which I want to grow and learn can help you to then choreograph a next move that is skills and strengths based, but learning and growth oriented.

Love it.

Feel like you've got some Runway.

I love it. I have a quick question. I really want your answer to this. I just had a client ask me. We've worked together. She's taken my career path assessment, which has you think about all these things, but she said, what do you think about taking this, you know, Cliftons strengths finder, assessment, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to be straightforward with everybody. I don't find those terribly useful. They didn't help me. And secondly, I think that if you think about these things, and yes, we often need an outside person to help us, a coach or a mentor, because we, you know, the thing that's really easy for you, I love to be on stage and speak to a thousand people. You know, if it's easy for you, you don't see it as a strength. You don't, you don't get it. But I think you have a conversation with a mentor or coach. I feel that's better than taking an assessment of your strengths. And darn it, you ought to know what those are without having a quantitative assessment tell you. That's my view. What do you think, Lisa?

Well, Kathy, I appreciate your boldness and your bravery with saying exactly how you feel about the assessment, because I'll say that the things I see that are good in the strengths finder is that it can oftentimes give you language for things that you may have known about yourself, but may not have known the right way to articulate. But the strengths finder as an assessment is typically very grounded in and rooted in your skills and what you have done. And it's not very skills.

It's not what we're talking about.

It's not looking at.

Right. The skill is what you're good at. The talent is what you're gifted and love to do, and it flows and there's energy there. Thank you. Thank you. I so appreciate your view. So that was pillar one, strengths and gifts, right? What's pillar two?

Pillar two is magnetic interests. And there's. There's such a pervasive belief in the world of fulfillment around work that you need to do something that you. You love and you feel deeply passionate about and that you feel is purposeful. But if you are feeling like you're not 100% sure what that might be for you, that just becomes a huge pressure trap of trying to Find the one singular thing that you. That can be your passion for my purpose. Absolutely. And you know you are not a hammer, right? You don't have one singular purpose in the world. You are a dynamic, nuanced, interesting, beautiful human being with so many layers and ability to grow that thinking about purpose and passion in such a narrow, myopic way can be incredibly limiting. So we talk about magnetic interests, which are just the types of challenges and problems and questions that you find yourself gravitating towards. So this might be the question for you of what are the types of projects that I raise my hand to volunteer to help with, be it at work, be it in a volunteer leadership capacity. What are the sorts of things that I find myself downloading podcasts on or reading books on or looking at articles on or people that I tend to follow on social media? What are the different topic areas that they tend to align with? Because if you look at just the areas that you find yourself curious and interested, if you give yourself the space to move into something in that world, in your career, even as a part of your career, it can allow you to develop a sense of purpose and a sense of passion over time that is unlikely to be there from the get go when you're thinking about something as more of an outsider or as somebody who just hasn't been a practitioner in that space or in that vein for a long time.

It's beautifully put. Beautifully put. You know, I would say that I feel that when we do this, what are my magnetic interests? Where am I curious? And we also go back to who we were from 16 years old onward. We will see themes that are undeniable, like I'm an advocator. I tend to be a strong voice for those who don't have a voice. That's always who I've been when I was 10 and bullied, you know, I stood up to the bully and then, you know, told my friends how to stand up to the bully. I. So I would say I do think after they do this kind of work, this kind of evaluation and take the pressure off, what's my passion that you, most of us can distill down into a sentence who we really are and what we care about most. Like for me, it would be I'm a catalyst for breakthrough. That's, that's the goal. Let me help others, you know, transform what is in their way. So I think that we meet, I think we, we meet on the same road, you and I, that you don't, you don't just go, whoo hoo. I woke up and now I know I'm a catalyst for change. You know, it's, it's in this work and it's in the putting your toe in the water of all this and embodying it, right?

Absolutely. David White has this, this beautiful quote where he talks about these beautiful questions, and beautiful questions are ones where we can't just immediately, you know, snap to the instant easy answer. These are questions that you have to sit with and live into and ponder and meditate on and pray on and discern over the course of weeks and months. And you know, you're absolutely right that when you look at your life longitudinally and look back to who you have been in different eras and especially in childhood, oftentimes themes will emerge and they will be shockingly clear. And I say that this in particular is a great exercise for people who are in roles where they are caregivers in their lives. And their energy and focus has been so much on what are other people's interests and needs that they feel like they've disassociated from their own. So if you're taking care of an aging parent, if you are a parent and taking care of children of your own, what Kathy just outlined of thinking back to who you were at 16 or at 12 or at 8 can be incredibly informative about the role that you played and the kinds of things that you sought out in your free time that are likely still very much true today.

That's beautiful. I love it. All right, pillar three and four, what do we got?

Pillar three is the personality pillar. And this one is one that is not talked about a huge amount in the world that we live in. But I'm certain that this is a big priority for you and for the folks that you work with, because the personality pillar asks you the question of do I feel like the organization that I'm working in, the supervisor that I'm working for and the team that I am a part of allow for me to bring more of my full self to work. And that means is there values alignment? Is the organization promoting ends in the world that feel good? Is there the opportunity to feel like the environmental ecosystem that you're working in works well for you? If you are a deep introvert and you are working in a space where there are no offices, there are glass wall pop in rooms there, it's a sort of open bullpen, open office space. Even if it's the most incredible fit for your strengths and for your interests, that space in the ecosystem is not going to allow you to feel like you can do your best work because it's a little bit incongruous with your natural wiring and your natural tendencies. So noticing where you tend to be most effective and what type of community and culture around you makes you most effective is real important. And I'll say for anybody who's listening to this, who has been, who's experienced bias, microaggression or discrimination, that's a piece of personality fit within an organization because this is not trying to justify bias or racist or sexist behaviors in office places. But some people don't notice that, don't care, or it doesn't affect them.

That's the truth.

And other people, it very, very much does. And if you are one of those people who has felt this and experienced this, you don't need to try to shame yourself into staying at the organization because it works for other people. You deserve to be in a place where you feel psychologically safe and seen and where people actually want you to bring in different pieces of your experience and your background because it helps them with their bigger picture goals around service and creating value. So if you're not experiencing that within your current organization, be not afraid to still hold that up as being beautiful and valuable and worthy to seek out in another organization to honor. If you go the entrepreneurial route and start your own thing, you know, personality fit is subtle, but it matters just as much as, if not more than some of the other pillars in this process of finding a place that feels like home and feels like it could be a fit for you.

I love your language. I love the way I know that everyone listening is going to be nodding their heads. It's like a bobblehead. I just want to throw. This is to focus on you, Lisa, but this show. But I do want to say one of the. And while I'm not a huge fan of qualitative quantitative assessments. Sorry, I love qualitative. I do have something called the dominant action style Quiz because I saw just what you're talking about, that there are six dominant action styles that hundreds and hundreds of people that I interviewed and then thousands who took the assessment that reveal their preferential style to why they want to pursue a goal and how they do it. So it's striver, seeker, pacer, researcher, challenger, advocator. And to your point, if you're a seeker in an organization that wants you to strive like you don't want, they just want get it done. Or if you're a challenger and you want to say in a meeting why are we even doing this project? But you're in a culture that says shut up. It's just as you said, honor that. We need all of these styles, we need all of these gifts. That's what a diverse world is. So we tend to make ourselves wrong when we're not part of the dominant culture. But to your point, know that these things are so important and valuable and love them about yourself, but find an ecosystem that supports them. I think that's to your point, right?

Absolutely.

And pillar number four. I can't wait to hear.

So pillar number four is lifestyle fit and lifestyle needs. And this is the acknowledgment that for some people, work is a huge part of your identity, but that's not true for everybody. And how much you want work to be a part of your identity and how much space you want work to take up in your life, how much oxygen you want it to breathe in the room can vary. And that's a personal choice and there's no wrong answer to it. So the lifestyle needs question is what do you want your job to enable you to have and to create in the rest of your life? Do you want a job that has really rigid boundaries around 9 to 5 because you love clocking off and being able to just be really present and focused with your family? Do you want a job that is super flexible and you get the work done whenever you want to or need to so that you can be whoever you need to be during the day if things come up and you have a family emergency or you have something else going on in your life? Or maybe you are training for marathons and you need to go on an early morning run that overlaps ever so slightly with the beginning of technical work hours? There's a question of how can work be designed in such a way that it enables you to live the life that you want? But of course, the lifestyle pillar also includes what's the compensation you need to be making to live the life that you want to be living? And what are the benefits you need to be getting in order to feel like work is working with your life and not competing with your life or degrading the quality of your life. I don't know that there is such a thing as perfect work life balance or perfect work life boundaries. But noticing what you value and how you want the two to inform one another how you want more of a work life flywheel to be created, how you might want to have more agency and freedom with respect to your career can be invaluable. And then helping you see paths forward that feel like they fit.

I love it. I mean, if we can do this kind of assessment, I think it's exactly as you said, Lisa, let me know. Will it immediately tell you, yes, it's time to leave your corporate career and become a therapist? No, but it'll get you moving towards exploring the essence of what you want, trying it on, which is, I think, is a critical step. And I think it answers the swirl questions that keep us stuck. But I don't know what I want. I know I just want to help, or I hear this. I don't have a calling. How do I get a calling? You don't get a calling. The calling comes and gets you, but it gets you out of that swirl that paralyzes you. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. Once you've mapped your four pillars and what matters most to you in each of these four dimensions, with strengths, magnetic interest, personality, and lifestyle, you now essentially have a bit of a scorecard to help you both. See, are there ways that I can ask for things differently? I can have stronger boundaries and say, stop when something is happening that's not right and violates my four pillars, or I can be asking for more of things that would make my current experience and current situation better, or do the four pillars show me that there may not be a path forward towards honoring all of these values within my current situation, and it's time to explore what else is out there. It gives you a great springboard to say, okay, let me brainstorm, or let me work with somebody who's. Who's an expert on coming up with ideas around, how do I find these things? Where would I be able to honor all of these values at the same time? So it's a great tool to help you feel like you can get unstuck and get into motion, be that baby steps or be at much bigger leaps.

I love it. And I think it also helps us understand what I talk about as the four buckets that people are confused about. Do I want more success in my current job? As I define it? No. Maybe I just want a new job at a new employer. I need a new ecosystem. Or no, number three, I need a new career. It isn't going to be a job shift in this, It's a new career. Or number four, it's time for me to launch an entrepreneurial venture. And I think that these four pillars, doing this evaluation work is going to help you start to see more clear, clearly. And sometimes we straddle these buckets. I find, okay, what you might realize is it's time to leave this company. I'm done. But I'm not sure if it's a new career. So then you take the steps of perhaps interviewing. Right. It's everything you and I do every single day. I love it. Lisa, it's so clear. It's calming to even hear you talk about it. I mean, I don't think that doing this work is going to make us all stressed and anxious. It's going to make us go, ah, I'm finally getting out of the swirl.

Absolutely.

Any last things you want to tell people about those people who need clarity, who aren't. Aren't getting it, what they're doing. Anything else?

Well, if you're listening to this and you've read Kathy's work and you love the power gaps, going through some inventorying work and discernment work like this is going to be so, so helpful for allowing you to feel more empowered and more equipped to be stepping in and bridging some of those gaps. Because clarity is oftentimes the best fuel for courage and the best fuel for bravery and the best fuel for stepping into showing up as the person that you want to be, even if you feel like that person is really far away from who you perceive yourself to be in the moment. So there's a beautiful kind of cross pollination and synergy between taking the time to do the discernment on your own and then operationalizing that into behaviors, boundaries, asks, decisions, all sorts of beautiful things like that.

I couldn't agree more. I love it. All right, tell us everything. Where do we find you? Where do we read your new book? Tell us everything? Where do we get your resources? Where do we send everybody?

Well, if you've been loving learning about the four pillars and you want to dive into them more deeply, my book Career Clarity just came out and I'm so excited to have it out in the world. And you can get more information about where to pick it up@getcareerclarity.com book. You'll have links to all the retailers. You'll have a link to get bonus goodies if you've purchased the book. So if that's resonating with anybody who's listening, it would be such an honor to get my book into your hands and hopefully serve you even more in that way.

Wonderful. And if people want to work with you, where do they go? What do they do?

If people are interested in finding out more about working together, you can always go to getcareerclarity.com and explore more about our programs and offerings and the career clarity certified coaches that we have on the team and figuring out what would serve you best in this moment to get the clarity and momentum to really move into what you want.

Oh, I loved it. What an honor and what a thrill to talk to someone who does this work day in and day out and has lived it. And you've gone through your shift as well from a previous career. So I do have to say I have a little bit of a bias towards people that have done the work rather than are just talking about it. So everybody race over. You know, pour over everything Lisa has and offers and I know you will move forward to more clarity and more power too in the process. Thank you for joining. Thank you so much. I hope you're inspired and you really feel you understand the four pillars. And if not, please share a comment wherever you see this. I have a feeling Lisa will jump on there and respond and I will too. So everyone, I hope this is helpful and have a very brave, clear, clarity filled week and we'll see you next time. Thanks again, Lisa.

Thank you, Kathy.