60. How to Build a Career You Actually Want
The idea of building a career you actually want may sound obvious at first. Like, what other kind of career would you try to build?
But when it comes down to day to day decisions, people often do what they’ve always done or choose the thing that will create the least commotion, even if it’s the exact opposite of what they actually want in their career.
Like biting your tongue when your boss does something you don’t like even though what you actually want to create is an open and honest relationship with them.
People don’t do this because they’re unintelligent.
It can be hard to slow down and think through the options to figure out which choices will actually cultivate the things you’re looking for in your career.
I’ve definitely done my fair share (and maybe more than that) of doing shit that directly conflicted with what I was trying to create in my work life.
As much as I made my corporate job work for me (see episode four on asking for what you want at work), I also made many choices that created an experience I didn’t prefer as much.
I did this because I wanted to avoid conflict and discomfort. But then I ended up with the discomfort of having things not be the way I wanted them.
And then when I left my corporate job and started my coaching business, I also built things in a way that didn’t reflect what I actually wanted my business to be.
That time around, this happened because I was building my business the way I thought I had to in order to make it work and be profitable.
I had to build my business and then un-build parts of it and redo them in order to create a business I really love. And spoiler alert, I am still working on that part, because building a career you actually love often requires some testing and learning and tweaking along the way.
Want to have a career you really love? You can. But you need to understand how to build it that way (and you need to see all the ways you’re currently building the opposite).
Tune in to this week’s episode and get the deep dive on how to build a career you really love.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The reason people think they have to do things a certain way in order to be successful.
Why following others’ advice can lead directly to burnout.
How avoiding conflict in our work environments leaves us feeling disconnected.
Why trying to steer clear of discomfort leads to building a career that you don’t actually love.
How to tell if you’re currently building your career the way you want it to be or not.
How to decide what your vision is for your career and how to start building it the way you want it to be.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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If you’re enjoying the show, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
Feel free to ask me any questions over on Instagram!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how to build a career you actually want to have.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Happy Wednesday y'all. Before we get into today's topic I want to share with you a totally unsolicited testimonial I received from someone. This morning I got a text message, and it just made my day. Here's what the text message says.
“Your coaching gave me the affirmation, I can get a job I like with the skills I have. This week's wins as I wrap up month four,” and for context I coached this person several months ago about their job search. And one of the thoughts that we came up with for them to practice was what they just said, I can get a job I like with the skills I have.
They got the job, or rather they got a job that they like with the skills they had. And it's been four months in. So then it says, “This week's wins as I wrap up month four, $25,000 raise.” $25,000 y'all, amazing, I love it. And then the next bullet, because there's several bullets this person gave me about the successes and wins.
The next one is, “Crushed a companywide presentation and was asked to make it a recurring segment in the all hands meeting.” So amazing, did a presentation and it went so well they asked them to do it every time or a version of it every time. I love that.
Huge wins in team engagement and leadership team is super happy with this person's work. That always feels amazing, so much fun. First corporate feature article, also amazing. What a great win. And applied to be a panel speaker at a conference for the first time.
And I want to be really clear, coaching is amazing, and it can help you change your life. But also this person changed their own life. They took what we worked on together, and they took what they learned from me, and they built this for themselves. So such a huge shout out to this person who remains anonymous. But yes, I do have permission to share this win with everyone. I'm so thrilled by this.
And it's interesting because sometimes people ask me about the return on investment from coaching. Coaching with a one on one coach can be a significant investment, but with wins like this I think it makes sense why it can be an incredibly worthwhile investment and an investment that just pays dividends for years. I think I'm using the word dividends right.
Anyways, you get a return on the investment for years. Let's just think this through, this person got a $25,000 raise. And what they didn't say in this message, but what I happen to know is getting this job had already given them a huge raise.
So they got this job which had a huge raise, and then they've been in it four months and they just got another $25,000 raise. And even if they never got any more raises for the rest of their life, which of course they'll get tons more, that one $25,000 raise, we have to think about that $25,000 over the course of how long they work.
If they work for another 30 years, that's 30 times $25,000, which is, let's see. Three times 25 is 75. So I think that's $750,000 if I'm doing the math right. That's so much money. And, of course, this person did this work themselves and they created these results, but this is the kind of thing you can create with coaching.
And it's not that you can't create it on your own, of course you can. But sometimes we can create things a lot faster and kind of have a better time doing them, a more enjoyable time doing them with a coach in our corner. And if that's the kind of result or the kinds of results you want to create in your career, come on over and let's have a conversation about it.
And by come on over I mean scoot over to my website www.korilinn.com and set up a consult so we can discuss the future of your career and what kind of wins you want to make happen in the next several months and several years.
All right, y’all, enough about that. But that actually ties in really well to what we're talking about today. What we're talking about is the idea of building your career the way you want it to be. Now, this might sound obvious at first glance.
You're like, “Of course I want to build it the way I want it to be, why would I build it to be something I don't want?” But I see people building careers they don't actually want to be in all the time. So what do I mean when I say this? The easiest example for me to talk about is my own story.
So I used to work in corporate. I actually had a really great time there, but it also wasn't the career I wanted to have. I wasn't building it how I wanted it to be by staying there, so I chose to leave. I chose to leave and start a coaching business where I could talk to people all day long about how to create more of what they want in their careers, in their lives, in their relationships, everywhere.
But I brought a lot of habits with me from having worked in corporate and from other times in my life. Some of those habits were useful, a lot of them were not. So in some ways when I was first building my business, I was building it to be a lot like my corporate life.
I was incorporating habits, and ways of being, and ways of working, and ways of communicating with people, and ways of getting shit done that I didn't actually like or want. And why was I doing that?
I think part one of that is habit. We do things the way we've done things unless we notice that and we're like, “Wait a minute, I don't want to do it that way.” And we choose intentionally to do them differently. So that takes awareness and energy to make a shift.
But also, and I think the bigger thing for me is I was doing things the way I thought I had to do them to be successful. And that is probably what's going on with any of you who are building a career and then looking around going, “I hate this place. I need to get out of here.”
Which a lot of people who come to work with me end up in a place where they're like, “I want to keep doing this job, but I hate the way it feels right now.” Or “I want to do something completely different. How did I even get here? This is not where I want to be.”
And what I see so often is that people think they have to do things a certain way to be successful, usually because someone has told us, “Here's how you be successful, you do things this way.” And it's not that following that advice doesn't work. Because a lot of times that works really well. But it also doesn't work at all.
The way it works really well is that people are like, “Do A, do B, do C, and you will arrive at this place.” So sometimes we do A, we do B, we do C, we do D, and we do arrive at that place. But if we hated A, B, C, and D and we don't like that way of doing things, then we're probably not going to be super happy even when we arrive at the place.
And since the journey and the destination feel the same, being in the place, like whatever the alluring end result we were going for was, often feels terrible. And it often involves continuing to do A, B, C and D even though we don't like them.
Sometimes we do A, B, C, and D and it doesn't even fucking work. We don't like doing it, it doesn't get the thing we want. But a lot of us then are very hesitant to stop doing A, B, C, and D because the “authorities and leaders” have said that's what we have to do. So then we just do A, B, C, and D harder, which tends to make us feel terrible.
And this can lead to a lot of burnout. It can lead to burnout, whether A, B, C, D leads to the result you want. It can lead to burnout if A, B, C, D doesn't lead to the result you want. It can also take you to that place that I've taken to calling the pit of despair, which is the give up zone where we're like, “What's the point? Life's terrible. It's always going to be terrible. I may as well just give up and live in the giving up-ness and build a house here in the pit of despair.”
Versus bouncing back from the pit of despair, realizing all humans feel shitty sometimes and then reorienting to like, “Okay, how do I want to relate to this? What do I want to create? Who do I want to be? Et cetera.”
Okay, so if build it how you want it to be is so obvious and straightforward, why don't people do it? The reasons I just said, habit and what authority figures tell us. But I think it's also because sometimes we have a disconnect between what we're doing in the moment and realizing that that's establishing patterns.
So people do this all the time where they're like, “I want life to be one way. But in this moment, it would be hard or uncomfortable to do things in the one way I want life to be. So I'm going to do them in this other way.”
And a key example is wanting to have a really good relationship, let's say with your supervisor at work, but it could be anyone in your life. But when you have difficult feedback, you find yourself being like, “I’m just not going to give it to them.”
And so here's how this looks, we want to have the close, connected relationship with the person. We have the difficult feedback we want to give. We mistakenly believe that the difficult feedback is going to make our relationship with that person less close and connected so we don't give them the feedback.
But then we have a less close and connected relationship with them, because they are now someone we're not willing to give feedback to. Which means they can't know us as deeply, we won't know them as deeply. And we're building up this idea in our heads through our habit that they're not safe to share this information with. And that builds distance between us.
It also goes directly in opposition to what we said we wanted. We want a close, connected relationship with the person, but we are building the opposite. And then people do this over and over.
And listen, I do it sometimes too, because that's just part of how we're all doing shit sometimes. And even when I have all the knowledge I have, I'm still a human being, as I talk about all the time. So I get into these habit patterns as well.
So we, avoid the conflict, and we avoid the conflict, and we avoid the conflict. And then we're like, “I feel so disconnected from this person. I just want a boss I can feel connected with.” And so then we go looking around for a different boss. Or a different person to connect with, or a different way of creating connection in our work lives.
But the reason we don't have the connection we're craving is not because we can't have it with this person. It's because we didn't build it how we wanted it to be. We built it sort of about what we were avoiding.
And this happens all over people's careers and lives. We're like, “Ah, I want X but the road to X has some spicy things that I don't want to get involved with, so I'm not going to take that road.” So then we do this thing where we try to get to X through all these weird side roads. But all the side roads are going to have probably some spiciness, which I guess is what I'm using to stand in for discomfort.
Pretty much everything we want in life that we don't already have is going to involve some discomfort. So when we're not building it the way we want it to be, I think, again, it's habit. It's because of what authorities tell us versus discovering our own agency and finding our own way of doing things.
And by finding, I often mean designing because we usually have to fuck around and find out what our way of doing things is. And that in its own right can be uncomfortable. But also, even if we know the wise thing to do, a lot of times we don't do it because it's uncomfortable.
So this is a kind of long and circular way of saying a lot of times when we're not building it the way we want it to be, we're avoiding discomfort. That is what it comes down to because listening to authority figures versus figuring out our own way or building our own way, that is usually, you know, it can feel comfortable to take an authority figures advice versus trying our own shit and then potentially failing.
When we're doing stuff habitually, building new habits and stepping back from the habits we've had, that can feel uncomfortable. And then sometimes it's like we know what the “wise” thing to do would be and then we're just like, “But that sounds uncomfortable, so I just won't do it.” Like the example of not wanting to give the boss the feedback so we just don't and then we build exactly what we don't want, which is the disconnection.
Beyond what I've already talked about there are so many ways this can show up in career. One way it shows up is we do a lot of work we don't actually like to do or want to be known for because we think that work is some kind of prerequisite to getting some other place.
And then we take on more and more of that work even though we don't want to do it because we're trying to build this base that is sort of usually imaginary.
It's not that we never have to learn certain skills or spend time at certain levels before we can move on. But I see this all the time where people sort of hoard a certain kind of work, even though they don't like that work at all.
And some of this may be because of an internal narrative of like, “Oh, I have to do this to get to the next level.” A lot of it is also because of what we talk about all the time on the podcast, which is people associate their personal worthiness with how much work they have.
And if that sounds like a new idea to you, go back and listen to the episode about why we overwork, I believe it's number six, but you can find it by googling, so I'm not worried about if I get that number wrong.
Yeah, so when we're not building it how we want it to be, there can be a lot of different factors in there. But that's one way we can do it, is by doing a bunch of work we don't actually like doing, but then hoarding the work and refusing to get rid of it, or refusing to delegate, refusing to ask for help. And then we just wind up with more of what we already have, which we don't actually like.
So, it seems like this is a place that is really easy to wind up in from how I've talked about it. And I actually think it is really easy to wind up there at work, and listen, in every fucking area of your life. I've wound up there all over my life in various times.
What do we fucking do about it? How are we going to figure this out? How are we going to move forward? I mean, it's actually really simple, build it how you want it to be.
But in order to build it how you want it to be, first of all, you have to know what you want it to be. You have to know what your vision is. And then what I want you to think about is, what would the current level equivalent of that vision be?
So to go back to the example of having difficult feedback for a boss that we want to have a connected, open relationship with, the example is going to be thinking what kind of relationship do I want to have with my boss? Okay, I want to have a connected relationship where I can share honestly. What is the in the moment version of that, of building that how I want it to be? Oh, fuck, it's going to be sharing what I actually think.
Now from there, you can be really clever and strategic about how you share it. You can use the compliment sandwich, which I've talked about in other episodes. You don't have to just blurt out what you're thinking. Although if you do, that's okay. We can count that as a success, even if we want to do it a little differently in the future.
But basically in any given moment you want to be thinking, what am I building? Because every action you take, every micro action, every little thing, that's part of the building process.
And I don't say that to overwhelm you. I know personally, that this can feel like a very overwhelming idea of like, “Oh no, every single thing I do.” So it's not at all about perfectionism and getting every single thing right.
It's just about bringing yourself back to how do I want it to be? How can I build that in this moment? How do I want it to be? How can I build that in this moment? How do I want it to be? How can I build that in this moment?
And the more you do that, the easier it gets. Let's say you want to leave the office or, you know, who's in the office? Some people, but a lot of us are still remote. So let's say you want to log off at 5pm every day. Building it how you want it to be is beginning to do that or just slowly move toward doing that.
You can inch your way there in tiny increments. If you're working until 6:30 every day, it doesn't have to be about logging off at 5pm tomorrow, it could be logging off at 6:15. And then the day after that it could be logging off at six. We can use these incremental shifts where we're building it how we want it to be bit by bit.
And that is how we do change in a sustainable way. And that's how we go from having a career that feels fucking terrible and like a terrible fit for us, to having the career we actually want.
Now, what you may notice in this podcast is that I'm not being prescriptive at all about what your career is going to look like because honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I believe so deeply that humans, while we have a lot of similarities, are also very unique and different. And the career that feels like home to you is not going to be the career that feels like home to me, or the career that feels like home to someone else.
So in order for you to build it how you want it to be, you got to figure out what that is. And listen, you might not know right away, that's okay. You can test and learn. You can think like, “I'd like it to be like this.” And then try building it towards that and see if you like that. See how it feels.
No matter what you do, I just want you to realize that you have so much agency in your career and that these micro decisions, these little seemingly insignificant moments every day, they're not insignificant. They can take you closer to the career you're dreaming of, to the career that feels like home to you, to the career that is your career. The one built for you by you.
And it might involve a lot of little changes, it may involve some big changes. Maybe the career that you want to build isn't even in the industry you're in. That's okay, we can bit by bit build towards what you want to be doing. It doesn't have to be immediate, it doesn't have to be perfect.
But when you believe that every little piece can help you build towards what you want. that can be super fun. And it can help you make changes in an effective sustainable way. And you may not make that much progress in a day, which is okay because you don't need to.
But you'll be amazed at what you can do in six months or a year when you make change like this, and you will have the stamina to keep going for six months to a year because you won't be doing this like big burst of shift in the first day and kind of then overwhelming yourself and wearing yourself out.
So to end this podcast I just want you to think about what do you want your career to be like? What sounds dreamy to you? What sounds incredible? What sounds like home? So many people hate their careers, or really struggle in them, or just feel out of place, or are just counting the minutes and days and years until they can retire. And that's just not what I want for you.
If you want to retire, great. When you get there, great, I'm so happy for you. But what my biggest dream is, is to help you build a career that feels so you and so delicious, and is so the way you want it to that retirement is just an interesting option and not something you're waiting on to start living your life. Let's start living it now. Let's build your life and your career the way you want it to be.
All right, that's what I have for y'all this week. Thank you so much, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Happy Wednesday y'all. Before we get into today's topic I want to share with you a totally unsolicited testimonial I received from someone. This morning I got a text message, and it just made my day. Here's what the text message says.
“Your coaching gave me the affirmation, I can get a job I like with the skills I have. This week's wins as I wrap up month four,” and for context I coached this person several months ago about their job search. And one of the thoughts that we came up with for them to practice was what they just said, I can get a job I like with the skills I have.
They got the job, or rather they got a job that they like with the skills they had. And it's been four months in. So then it says, “This week's wins as I wrap up month four, $25,000 raise.” $25,000 y'all, amazing, I love it. And then the next bullet, because there's several bullets this person gave me about the successes and wins.
The next one is, “Crushed a companywide presentation and was asked to make it a recurring segment in the all hands meeting.” So amazing, did a presentation and it went so well they asked them to do it every time or a version of it every time. I love that.
Huge wins in team engagement and leadership team is super happy with this person's work. That always feels amazing, so much fun. First corporate feature article, also amazing. What a great win. And applied to be a panel speaker at a conference for the first time.
And I want to be really clear, coaching is amazing, and it can help you change your life. But also this person changed their own life. They took what we worked on together, and they took what they learned from me, and they built this for themselves. So such a huge shout out to this person who remains anonymous. But yes, I do have permission to share this win with everyone. I'm so thrilled by this.
And it's interesting because sometimes people ask me about the return on investment from coaching. Coaching with a one on one coach can be a significant investment, but with wins like this I think it makes sense why it can be an incredibly worthwhile investment and an investment that just pays dividends for years. I think I'm using the word dividends right.
Anyways, you get a return on the investment for years. Let's just think this through, this person got a $25,000 raise. And what they didn't say in this message, but what I happen to know is getting this job had already given them a huge raise.
So they got this job which had a huge raise, and then they've been in it four months and they just got another $25,000 raise. And even if they never got any more raises for the rest of their life, which of course they'll get tons more, that one $25,000 raise, we have to think about that $25,000 over the course of how long they work.
If they work for another 30 years, that's 30 times $25,000, which is, let's see. Three times 25 is 75. So I think that's $750,000 if I'm doing the math right. That's so much money. And, of course, this person did this work themselves and they created these results, but this is the kind of thing you can create with coaching.
And it's not that you can't create it on your own, of course you can. But sometimes we can create things a lot faster and kind of have a better time doing them, a more enjoyable time doing them with a coach in our corner. And if that's the kind of result or the kinds of results you want to create in your career, come on over and let's have a conversation about it.
And by come on over I mean scoot over to my website www.korilinn.com and set up a consult so we can discuss the future of your career and what kind of wins you want to make happen in the next several months and several years.
All right, y’all, enough about that. But that actually ties in really well to what we're talking about today. What we're talking about is the idea of building your career the way you want it to be. Now, this might sound obvious at first glance.
You're like, “Of course I want to build it the way I want it to be, why would I build it to be something I don't want?” But I see people building careers they don't actually want to be in all the time. So what do I mean when I say this? The easiest example for me to talk about is my own story.
So I used to work in corporate. I actually had a really great time there, but it also wasn't the career I wanted to have. I wasn't building it how I wanted it to be by staying there, so I chose to leave. I chose to leave and start a coaching business where I could talk to people all day long about how to create more of what they want in their careers, in their lives, in their relationships, everywhere.
But I brought a lot of habits with me from having worked in corporate and from other times in my life. Some of those habits were useful, a lot of them were not. So in some ways when I was first building my business, I was building it to be a lot like my corporate life.
I was incorporating habits, and ways of being, and ways of working, and ways of communicating with people, and ways of getting shit done that I didn't actually like or want. And why was I doing that?
I think part one of that is habit. We do things the way we've done things unless we notice that and we're like, “Wait a minute, I don't want to do it that way.” And we choose intentionally to do them differently. So that takes awareness and energy to make a shift.
But also, and I think the bigger thing for me is I was doing things the way I thought I had to do them to be successful. And that is probably what's going on with any of you who are building a career and then looking around going, “I hate this place. I need to get out of here.”
Which a lot of people who come to work with me end up in a place where they're like, “I want to keep doing this job, but I hate the way it feels right now.” Or “I want to do something completely different. How did I even get here? This is not where I want to be.”
And what I see so often is that people think they have to do things a certain way to be successful, usually because someone has told us, “Here's how you be successful, you do things this way.” And it's not that following that advice doesn't work. Because a lot of times that works really well. But it also doesn't work at all.
The way it works really well is that people are like, “Do A, do B, do C, and you will arrive at this place.” So sometimes we do A, we do B, we do C, we do D, and we do arrive at that place. But if we hated A, B, C, and D and we don't like that way of doing things, then we're probably not going to be super happy even when we arrive at the place.
And since the journey and the destination feel the same, being in the place, like whatever the alluring end result we were going for was, often feels terrible. And it often involves continuing to do A, B, C and D even though we don't like them.
Sometimes we do A, B, C, and D and it doesn't even fucking work. We don't like doing it, it doesn't get the thing we want. But a lot of us then are very hesitant to stop doing A, B, C, and D because the “authorities and leaders” have said that's what we have to do. So then we just do A, B, C, and D harder, which tends to make us feel terrible.
And this can lead to a lot of burnout. It can lead to burnout, whether A, B, C, D leads to the result you want. It can lead to burnout if A, B, C, D doesn't lead to the result you want. It can also take you to that place that I've taken to calling the pit of despair, which is the give up zone where we're like, “What's the point? Life's terrible. It's always going to be terrible. I may as well just give up and live in the giving up-ness and build a house here in the pit of despair.”
Versus bouncing back from the pit of despair, realizing all humans feel shitty sometimes and then reorienting to like, “Okay, how do I want to relate to this? What do I want to create? Who do I want to be? Et cetera.”
Okay, so if build it how you want it to be is so obvious and straightforward, why don't people do it? The reasons I just said, habit and what authority figures tell us. But I think it's also because sometimes we have a disconnect between what we're doing in the moment and realizing that that's establishing patterns.
So people do this all the time where they're like, “I want life to be one way. But in this moment, it would be hard or uncomfortable to do things in the one way I want life to be. So I'm going to do them in this other way.”
And a key example is wanting to have a really good relationship, let's say with your supervisor at work, but it could be anyone in your life. But when you have difficult feedback, you find yourself being like, “I’m just not going to give it to them.”
And so here's how this looks, we want to have the close, connected relationship with the person. We have the difficult feedback we want to give. We mistakenly believe that the difficult feedback is going to make our relationship with that person less close and connected so we don't give them the feedback.
But then we have a less close and connected relationship with them, because they are now someone we're not willing to give feedback to. Which means they can't know us as deeply, we won't know them as deeply. And we're building up this idea in our heads through our habit that they're not safe to share this information with. And that builds distance between us.
It also goes directly in opposition to what we said we wanted. We want a close, connected relationship with the person, but we are building the opposite. And then people do this over and over.
And listen, I do it sometimes too, because that's just part of how we're all doing shit sometimes. And even when I have all the knowledge I have, I'm still a human being, as I talk about all the time. So I get into these habit patterns as well.
So we, avoid the conflict, and we avoid the conflict, and we avoid the conflict. And then we're like, “I feel so disconnected from this person. I just want a boss I can feel connected with.” And so then we go looking around for a different boss. Or a different person to connect with, or a different way of creating connection in our work lives.
But the reason we don't have the connection we're craving is not because we can't have it with this person. It's because we didn't build it how we wanted it to be. We built it sort of about what we were avoiding.
And this happens all over people's careers and lives. We're like, “Ah, I want X but the road to X has some spicy things that I don't want to get involved with, so I'm not going to take that road.” So then we do this thing where we try to get to X through all these weird side roads. But all the side roads are going to have probably some spiciness, which I guess is what I'm using to stand in for discomfort.
Pretty much everything we want in life that we don't already have is going to involve some discomfort. So when we're not building it the way we want it to be, I think, again, it's habit. It's because of what authorities tell us versus discovering our own agency and finding our own way of doing things.
And by finding, I often mean designing because we usually have to fuck around and find out what our way of doing things is. And that in its own right can be uncomfortable. But also, even if we know the wise thing to do, a lot of times we don't do it because it's uncomfortable.
So this is a kind of long and circular way of saying a lot of times when we're not building it the way we want it to be, we're avoiding discomfort. That is what it comes down to because listening to authority figures versus figuring out our own way or building our own way, that is usually, you know, it can feel comfortable to take an authority figures advice versus trying our own shit and then potentially failing.
When we're doing stuff habitually, building new habits and stepping back from the habits we've had, that can feel uncomfortable. And then sometimes it's like we know what the “wise” thing to do would be and then we're just like, “But that sounds uncomfortable, so I just won't do it.” Like the example of not wanting to give the boss the feedback so we just don't and then we build exactly what we don't want, which is the disconnection.
Beyond what I've already talked about there are so many ways this can show up in career. One way it shows up is we do a lot of work we don't actually like to do or want to be known for because we think that work is some kind of prerequisite to getting some other place.
And then we take on more and more of that work even though we don't want to do it because we're trying to build this base that is sort of usually imaginary.
It's not that we never have to learn certain skills or spend time at certain levels before we can move on. But I see this all the time where people sort of hoard a certain kind of work, even though they don't like that work at all.
And some of this may be because of an internal narrative of like, “Oh, I have to do this to get to the next level.” A lot of it is also because of what we talk about all the time on the podcast, which is people associate their personal worthiness with how much work they have.
And if that sounds like a new idea to you, go back and listen to the episode about why we overwork, I believe it's number six, but you can find it by googling, so I'm not worried about if I get that number wrong.
Yeah, so when we're not building it how we want it to be, there can be a lot of different factors in there. But that's one way we can do it, is by doing a bunch of work we don't actually like doing, but then hoarding the work and refusing to get rid of it, or refusing to delegate, refusing to ask for help. And then we just wind up with more of what we already have, which we don't actually like.
So, it seems like this is a place that is really easy to wind up in from how I've talked about it. And I actually think it is really easy to wind up there at work, and listen, in every fucking area of your life. I've wound up there all over my life in various times.
What do we fucking do about it? How are we going to figure this out? How are we going to move forward? I mean, it's actually really simple, build it how you want it to be.
But in order to build it how you want it to be, first of all, you have to know what you want it to be. You have to know what your vision is. And then what I want you to think about is, what would the current level equivalent of that vision be?
So to go back to the example of having difficult feedback for a boss that we want to have a connected, open relationship with, the example is going to be thinking what kind of relationship do I want to have with my boss? Okay, I want to have a connected relationship where I can share honestly. What is the in the moment version of that, of building that how I want it to be? Oh, fuck, it's going to be sharing what I actually think.
Now from there, you can be really clever and strategic about how you share it. You can use the compliment sandwich, which I've talked about in other episodes. You don't have to just blurt out what you're thinking. Although if you do, that's okay. We can count that as a success, even if we want to do it a little differently in the future.
But basically in any given moment you want to be thinking, what am I building? Because every action you take, every micro action, every little thing, that's part of the building process.
And I don't say that to overwhelm you. I know personally, that this can feel like a very overwhelming idea of like, “Oh no, every single thing I do.” So it's not at all about perfectionism and getting every single thing right.
It's just about bringing yourself back to how do I want it to be? How can I build that in this moment? How do I want it to be? How can I build that in this moment? How do I want it to be? How can I build that in this moment?
And the more you do that, the easier it gets. Let's say you want to leave the office or, you know, who's in the office? Some people, but a lot of us are still remote. So let's say you want to log off at 5pm every day. Building it how you want it to be is beginning to do that or just slowly move toward doing that.
You can inch your way there in tiny increments. If you're working until 6:30 every day, it doesn't have to be about logging off at 5pm tomorrow, it could be logging off at 6:15. And then the day after that it could be logging off at six. We can use these incremental shifts where we're building it how we want it to be bit by bit.
And that is how we do change in a sustainable way. And that's how we go from having a career that feels fucking terrible and like a terrible fit for us, to having the career we actually want.
Now, what you may notice in this podcast is that I'm not being prescriptive at all about what your career is going to look like because honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I believe so deeply that humans, while we have a lot of similarities, are also very unique and different. And the career that feels like home to you is not going to be the career that feels like home to me, or the career that feels like home to someone else.
So in order for you to build it how you want it to be, you got to figure out what that is. And listen, you might not know right away, that's okay. You can test and learn. You can think like, “I'd like it to be like this.” And then try building it towards that and see if you like that. See how it feels.
No matter what you do, I just want you to realize that you have so much agency in your career and that these micro decisions, these little seemingly insignificant moments every day, they're not insignificant. They can take you closer to the career you're dreaming of, to the career that feels like home to you, to the career that is your career. The one built for you by you.
And it might involve a lot of little changes, it may involve some big changes. Maybe the career that you want to build isn't even in the industry you're in. That's okay, we can bit by bit build towards what you want to be doing. It doesn't have to be immediate, it doesn't have to be perfect.
But when you believe that every little piece can help you build towards what you want. that can be super fun. And it can help you make changes in an effective sustainable way. And you may not make that much progress in a day, which is okay because you don't need to.
But you'll be amazed at what you can do in six months or a year when you make change like this, and you will have the stamina to keep going for six months to a year because you won't be doing this like big burst of shift in the first day and kind of then overwhelming yourself and wearing yourself out.
So to end this podcast I just want you to think about what do you want your career to be like? What sounds dreamy to you? What sounds incredible? What sounds like home? So many people hate their careers, or really struggle in them, or just feel out of place, or are just counting the minutes and days and years until they can retire. And that's just not what I want for you.
If you want to retire, great. When you get there, great, I'm so happy for you. But what my biggest dream is, is to help you build a career that feels so you and so delicious, and is so the way you want it to that retirement is just an interesting option and not something you're waiting on to start living your life. Let's start living it now. Let's build your life and your career the way you want it to be.
All right, that's what I have for y'all this week. Thank you so much, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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