134. Good Fit
Fit matters.
Think of your favorite pair of jeans.
You like the way they look.
You like the way they feel.
You feel good when you wear them.
Because they are a good fit for you.
They’re a good fit literally in that their dimensions match your dimensions.
And they’re a good fit aesthetically in that you like their style.
And I’m sure you’ve experienced the opposite - trying on a pair of jeans only to discover they’re a truly awful fit.
Maybe they’re stiff and binding.
Or they have too much room in one area and not enough in another.
Or maybe you just don’t feel like yourself in them.
This is the power of fit.
And guess what - it’s for more than just clothes.
How good of a fit is your current job?
Your overall career arc?
Your relationship to your significant other?
Your desired morning routine?
When things are a good fit, they’re enjoyable and they don’t take as much effort to maintain.
When things are a bad fit, they feel awkward at best and sometimes they’re downright excruciating.
This week on the podcast we’re talking all about good fit, how you can figure out what’s a good fit for you, and how to make changes in your life and career so that more of it is full of good fit activities, relationships, and more.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The scientific breakdown of where our happiness comes from.
5 categories of practices for increasing happiness.
How to use the framework of a good fit to increase your happiness and satisfaction.
An indication that something you’re doing right now is not a good fit for you.
How to align yourself with what feels most natural, enjoyable, and valuable to you.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about the concept of Good Fit.
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.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I hope this finds you very well, I’m doing pretty well. I actually just celebrated my birthday, and I celebrated my birthday in Southern California. So Alex was going to a conference or something for her work in Irvine, which is sort of south of LA. And she invited me to go with her.
And I actually don’t really like traveling for my birthday, but I also didn’t really want to be home alone without my significant other. So I decided to go, and I actually had a really fun time. It turns out I have several clients in Southern California. And so I was able to have dinner and lunch with some of them. It was so fun to meet some of them in person.
I do most of my work on Zoom, and that’s really cool and I love that it gives me the ability to coach people all over the place. But it’s also so fun to meet in person, isn’t it? And we had some amazing food, and I took a pretty nature walk. And all in all, it was a pretty satisfying trip. And also I’m so happy to be home.
I’m kind of a home person. And so I often don’t want to go places. But when I do go places, then when I come home I’m so much more grateful. So I’ve been walking around Midtown, which y’all know I love, and I’m just even more overjoyed than usual. And the trees are beautiful.
And we’ve already had some really extremely hot weather here, but it’s cooled down again. So it’s been almost chilly. Like today I took a walk in a sweatshirt and pants, and I was still just a bit cold. And I was like, ugh. In the winter I’d be mad or sad, but in May to have already had it be 90 degrees and then to get this little cool snap, it was so luxurious. So that’s what I’ve been up to.
So another thing I’ve been up to is reading this book called The How of Happiness by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. I think I’m saying that correctly, and apologies if it’s wrong. I actually watched a bunch of videos of her trying to hear her pronounce her own name. But I wasn’t able to find one where she introduced herself in my brief search. So that is how a host pronounced her name when he introduced her, like they were having a chat.
Anyways, you don’t need all that information. I hope I’m saying her name right. But I’m reading this book and it’s really interesting, it’s really fascinating. The author is a professor of psychology, and the book is really about understanding why we’re happy and what happiness is, but it’s very much from a scientific point of view. And there’s a lot of teachings in there that I think come from kind of the positive psychology world.
And she’s introducing all these different kinds of methodologies, these different practices that you can use to be happier. And I’m going to give you the caveat, I have not read the whole book yet. Y’all know how I love to talk about a book before I’ve even read the whole book.
And we’re not even going to talk about the main part of the book. We’re just going to talk about this tiny concept she covers because I think it’s so important. And I think it’s really going to be helpful for you in your life and career for being happier and just more satisfied and having a better experience.
So basically, I’m reading the book and it starts out with some stuff that I already know about, like how we do have a happiness set point and some of our happiness comes from our genetics. And some of our happiness does come from our circumstances.
But according to the data I think it’s like 50% comes from our genetics and 10% comes from our circumstances, which is fascinating because people always think that their happiness is going to depend on their circumstances. But of this 100%, it’s just 10%. It’s just kind of a tiny fraction.
And then the 40% that’s left over is the stuff you have more control over, like the way you think, the way you feel, the way you behave in the world, right? So your perspectives and also the actions you take. So this is according to the science, right?
And so she’s talking about this and about how all the things that people think will make you happy, like wealth and beauty and there’s a third one. She debunks wealth, beauty and whatever the third thing is. Everyone thinks they’re going to make you happier, but they actually don’t according to the science, right?
So all that’s very fascinating and I think it’s good to know and it sort of relates to what we talk about on the podcast all the time. Which is like even if you’re having a negative experience in a job or in a relationship or in some other area of your life, changing your perspective and changing how you choose to think, and also how you choose to show up to that situation even if the situation doesn’t change, can really change your experience, and allow you to have a much more delightful, satisfying, delicious experience of it.
That’s what we talk about all the time. And that’s sort of one of the basic ideas of this book. And the scientific breakdown, like I said, is that that’s like 40%. But it’s the 40% that’s the easiest to control, right? Because you can’t really control your genetics that determine your genetic set point of happiness. And you can control your life circumstances, but they only do 10%. Whereas this other thing does 40%. So it seems like that might be a good place to start.
Okay, so she spends most of the book, which I haven’t read yet, describing I think it’s like 12 different practices you can use to increase your happiness. But one of the things she talks about before she even gets to that is picking out the practices that are a good fit for you. And she even has like a criteria and a little quiz you can take to figure out which things are the right fit. And I want to tell you about it because I think it’s fucking fascinating and really insightful.
Okay, so the four criteria are natural, enjoyable, valuable, guilty, and situation. So natural is like, oh, I’ll do this activity because it will feel natural to me, and I’ll be able to stick with it. Enjoyable or enjoy is I’ll keep doing this activity because I will enjoy doing it. I’ll find it to be interesting and challenging. Value or valuable is I’ll keep doing this activity because I will value it and identify with doing it. I’ll do it freely, even when it’s not enjoyable.
And then guilty is I’ll keep doing this activity because I would feel ashamed, guilty, or anxious if I didn’t do it. I’ll force myself. And then the situation is I’ll keep doing this activity because somebody else will want me to, or because my situation will force me to.
So those are the criteria. And then basically, you go through each of the practices that she recommends, right, the practices that have been proven with scientific studies to increase happiness. You go through those and then you kind of rank them for those five categories. And I think what’s really interesting, and I’m going to give you a little bit of a spoiler here, is when you rank them, you give yourself positive points for natural, enjoyable, and valuable, right?
So one of the activities that is in the book is like practicing gratitude, right? This is a pretty common one. So if you think that would feel natural to you, if you think you would enjoy it, and if you think it would be valuable to you, like it would be values aligned, like aligned with your values I guess is actually really more of what that means than valuable. Although I guess maybe it kind of means both.
Okay, anyways, so if you kind of had those beliefs, then that would be a good fit for something for you to try. But if you score it in the guilty or the situation, you actually decrease the points for that. So the way I’m interpreting this is when you’re looking at what would be a good fit for you to try first for these happiness practices, you look at what aligns most to feeling natural, to being enjoyable, and to being something that you value.
And you want to look for things where guilt doesn’t come into play, and where you don’t feel forced. And I think that’s so fascinating because I think so many people are doing so much stuff in their lives because they’d feel guilty if they didn’t. And listen, I’ve been that person also, and sometimes I’m still that person. But I think a lot of times we think that’s a good thing.
And what I’m learning from this book is actually no, that kind of makes it fraught, right? And I talk on the podcast a lot about how I think guilt and shame kind of shut us down. They make us sort of want to hide or run away versus continuing to engage with something. And that’s why I think it’s so powerful to use reframes to shift out of those.
Not that we never want to feel guilty or ashamed. You’re totally allowed if you want to choose those feelings on purpose, but what I see again and again in myself and in others, is that a feeling like shame doesn’t necessarily lead to an action like accountability, even though you would think it would. It doesn’t, it tends, again, to lead to hiding or not wanting to engage, right, shutting down.
So I wanted to introduce y’all to this concept of good fit. If you want to read the book, I think that’s cool too. Read it, let me know what you think, let me know which practices are good fits for you. But for the purposes of this podcast, what I actually want to talk about was taking this concept that she’s using and applying it to your career and to your life, and even applying it to the things you’re learning from my podcast.
So my podcast has more than 100 episodes now. There’s lots of teachings, there’s lots of examples and different ways of doing things. And I know when I listen to other people’s podcasts, sometimes I try to apply everything they teach all the time, and that can be too much. And so one of the things the author recommends in this book is of the 12 happiness practices, you only pick four.
You pick the four that you have the best score on, and then you don’t even necessarily try to do all four at once. You maybe pick just one of the four and you try with that. So I thought it might be really interesting for you to think about of all the things I teach on the podcast, what’s a good fit for you for something you actually might want to start applying to your life, to your career, to your relationships, right?
So it’s like I have all these teachings, and maybe you’re like, okay, the one that I think would feel natural to me, and the one that I think would be enjoyable, and the one that I would value is focusing on what is working. And so then you might go find a podcast episode where I talk about how to focus on what is working and the value and benefit of that.
And then maybe you go in your life, and you start practicing that activity, and you see what happens. And you kind of check in with yourself and you don’t try to do everything else I teach. Maybe you still listen to the other podcasts, but you don’t try to apply everything at once because you’re allowing yourself to focus on something that’s a good fit for you.
Okay, so that’s one example of how to use this concept. Here’s another example. When you think about your job, there’s probably parts of your job that are a good fit for you and parts of your job that are not a good fit for you. And so where in your job are the things that come naturally, that feel natural to you?
Where are the things you enjoy? And where are the things that you value? And how can you do more of those? And where are the things you don’t value, that don’t come naturally to you, that you don’t find enjoyable? And can we get rid of some of those? Can we delegate them? Can we talk to someone about changing our scope of work?
And one thing to really, I think, keep an eye out for, both in how you may apply the things I teach on the podcast, but also when you’re analyzing what you’re doing in your job, or what you want to do more of, or what you want to do less of. Keep in mind that according to the diagnostic from the book, or at least how I’ve interpreted it, if you feel guilty or if you feel forced, that’s actually an indication something’s not a good fit for you. It’s not an indication that something is a good fit for you.
I think so often, when we feel guilty if we don’t do something, we think that means we have to do it. We feel obligated to do it. We think it’s not optional. And I think what this book is actually showing is it’s okay to let those things go. It’s okay to deprioritize those. It’s okay to instead focus on the things that feel natural, are enjoyable, that we value, right?
And listen, I realize that we can’t always get rid of every work task we want to get rid of. But I think that this could still be helpful. And if there’s a work task you can’t get off of your plate, but you either feel guilty or it’s not a super good fit for you, can you deprioritize it? Like you still do it, but you don’t feel anxious about it anymore. You don’t judge yourself so much anymore.
You’re just like, oh yeah, this is the part of my job that’s not as good of a fit. And I do it and I still do a good job, but I don’t agonize over it because it’s okay for things to not be a good fit for me. And eventually, maybe I’d like to not do this anymore. Maybe I’d like to find a job where that’s not part of it. And where more of the job, a larger percentage of the job can be these good fit things that feel natural, that are enjoyable, and that I value and feel valuable to me when I do them.
Okay, and so obviously, there’s so many areas where you can apply this, right? I think career and jobs are a really obvious one. I think there’s probably ways to apply it in relationships, right? There’s always so many things we could work on in a relationship, but sometimes it’s like, well, what areas of the relationship maybe need work that would feel natural, that would be enjoyable, or that I would add value, or all of the above?
And are there other areas that I’m only doing because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t? And maybe do I want to change how I’m showing up to that relationship?
I also think household could be a really compelling thing for this. Are there things you’re doing around the house that you don’t want to do, that you’re only doing because you’d feel guilty if you didn’t? Is there a way to move those off your plate somehow? Without guilt tripping yourself, removing those off your plate. Like could the framework of good fit give you permission to let some things go?
And I don’t mean just not do them and let them be undone, but maybe you renegotiate with your partner or with your roommate about who does which chores. Or maybe you hire someone to clean your house because your whole life you thought like, oh, I have to clean my own house, and you’d feel so guilty if you didn’t.
But if it’s not a good fit for you, maybe you give yourself permission to make a different choice. Maybe you give yourself permission to have more of your life be full of good fit activities, and have less of your life be full of activities that aren’t such a good fit for you.
Now, like I said before, I don’t know if it’s possible to make your life only good fit activities. There’s still stuff I do that is less of a good fit. But I think one of the things I’ve done in my life is make so much more of my life good fit activities. Like I have a really good fit with my business and that didn’t happen naturally. Leaving a corporate career and starting a business didn’t give me a good fit automatically.
I came into my business with all of these ideas and ways of being from corporate and from other jobs that I’d worked. And so I had to then kind of question those ideas and then see what wasn’t a good fit, and then change it. In the very beginning I started my workday at nine because that’s, you know, nine to five, it’s what you do. And it was a while in my business before I was like, you know what? I don’t want to take calls at nine anymore.
I might still check my email. I might still answer my Slack messages. But I’m not going to do that anymore. And I started making my first call of the day at 10. And that was an example of something I did for myself that was a better fit for me. It’s more enjoyable, it feels more natural, it gives me this really long, luxurious, gorgeous morning that I love and cherish and gives me time to take my walk.
And sometimes I don’t sleep well, so that gives me time also to sleep in if I have a night of sleep that doesn’t go the way I want it to. And I value that. So that worked out really well for me as a good fit, but I had to have that moment of like, is this okay? Am I allowed to do this? Is someone going to come and tell me I’m not allowed?
No one’s going to come and tell you you’re not allowed. But I think because we were all children, it does, so often when we’re changing what we’ve decided is or isn’t okay, sometimes it does feel like an “adult” may come and be like, “What do you think you’re doing?” I get that. I have that too.
Okay, so take some time and think about this and ponder on it. And do a little assessment of your life. How much of your life feels like it’s a good fit for being natural, being enjoyable and being something you value? How much of it are you just doing because you’d feel guilty and ashamed if you didn’t? How much of it are you just doing because you feel forced to or you feel like the situation is making you or someone else is making you? And then what changes can you make?
All right, y’all. That’s what I have for you today. I also want to say the next round of Satisfied As Fuck group coaching is coming up in the fall. So I realize that’s still a little ways away, but I’m going to go ahead and start taking consult calls about it.
And if you know that this program is going to be a good fit for you, I want to go ahead and get you signed up because if you sign up early, there are some bonus coaching calls that you’re going to have access to. And I would love to start coaching you right away. And I would love to have you in the next cohort because it’s going to be spectacular.
Every cohort is so much fun. And every time I run this program I learn so much about how to do it. So I’m already super thrilled for the fall cohort that’s going to happen. And I also have some one on one spaces because I know that there are also people out there who really like to do the coaching work privately and have it be very focused on the things that they want to work on. So I have some spaces open for that as well.
And you can slide on over to my website, korilinn.com, and sign up for a consult call with the work with me page and we’ll have a conversation about what’s going on in your life, what you want to be going on, how coaching could maybe help. And if it seems like a good fit, I’ll tell you more about the group and more about the one on one or whichever one of those sounds like fun for you.
And then, of course, I also have my brand new offering Unhinged As Fuck, which is a year of coaching and mentorship with me, plus some one on one deep dive days that we can do in-person or virtually. And you can also sign up for this consult at the same link if you’re interested in that.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. 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.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I hope this finds you very well, I’m doing pretty well. I actually just celebrated my birthday, and I celebrated my birthday in Southern California. So Alex was going to a conference or something for her work in Irvine, which is sort of south of LA. And she invited me to go with her.
And I actually don’t really like traveling for my birthday, but I also didn’t really want to be home alone without my significant other. So I decided to go, and I actually had a really fun time. It turns out I have several clients in Southern California. And so I was able to have dinner and lunch with some of them. It was so fun to meet some of them in person.
I do most of my work on Zoom, and that’s really cool and I love that it gives me the ability to coach people all over the place. But it’s also so fun to meet in person, isn’t it? And we had some amazing food, and I took a pretty nature walk. And all in all, it was a pretty satisfying trip. And also I’m so happy to be home.
I’m kind of a home person. And so I often don’t want to go places. But when I do go places, then when I come home I’m so much more grateful. So I’ve been walking around Midtown, which y’all know I love, and I’m just even more overjoyed than usual. And the trees are beautiful.
And we’ve already had some really extremely hot weather here, but it’s cooled down again. So it’s been almost chilly. Like today I took a walk in a sweatshirt and pants, and I was still just a bit cold. And I was like, ugh. In the winter I’d be mad or sad, but in May to have already had it be 90 degrees and then to get this little cool snap, it was so luxurious. So that’s what I’ve been up to.
So another thing I’ve been up to is reading this book called The How of Happiness by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. I think I’m saying that correctly, and apologies if it’s wrong. I actually watched a bunch of videos of her trying to hear her pronounce her own name. But I wasn’t able to find one where she introduced herself in my brief search. So that is how a host pronounced her name when he introduced her, like they were having a chat.
Anyways, you don’t need all that information. I hope I’m saying her name right. But I’m reading this book and it’s really interesting, it’s really fascinating. The author is a professor of psychology, and the book is really about understanding why we’re happy and what happiness is, but it’s very much from a scientific point of view. And there’s a lot of teachings in there that I think come from kind of the positive psychology world.
And she’s introducing all these different kinds of methodologies, these different practices that you can use to be happier. And I’m going to give you the caveat, I have not read the whole book yet. Y’all know how I love to talk about a book before I’ve even read the whole book.
And we’re not even going to talk about the main part of the book. We’re just going to talk about this tiny concept she covers because I think it’s so important. And I think it’s really going to be helpful for you in your life and career for being happier and just more satisfied and having a better experience.
So basically, I’m reading the book and it starts out with some stuff that I already know about, like how we do have a happiness set point and some of our happiness comes from our genetics. And some of our happiness does come from our circumstances.
But according to the data I think it’s like 50% comes from our genetics and 10% comes from our circumstances, which is fascinating because people always think that their happiness is going to depend on their circumstances. But of this 100%, it’s just 10%. It’s just kind of a tiny fraction.
And then the 40% that’s left over is the stuff you have more control over, like the way you think, the way you feel, the way you behave in the world, right? So your perspectives and also the actions you take. So this is according to the science, right?
And so she’s talking about this and about how all the things that people think will make you happy, like wealth and beauty and there’s a third one. She debunks wealth, beauty and whatever the third thing is. Everyone thinks they’re going to make you happier, but they actually don’t according to the science, right?
So all that’s very fascinating and I think it’s good to know and it sort of relates to what we talk about on the podcast all the time. Which is like even if you’re having a negative experience in a job or in a relationship or in some other area of your life, changing your perspective and changing how you choose to think, and also how you choose to show up to that situation even if the situation doesn’t change, can really change your experience, and allow you to have a much more delightful, satisfying, delicious experience of it.
That’s what we talk about all the time. And that’s sort of one of the basic ideas of this book. And the scientific breakdown, like I said, is that that’s like 40%. But it’s the 40% that’s the easiest to control, right? Because you can’t really control your genetics that determine your genetic set point of happiness. And you can control your life circumstances, but they only do 10%. Whereas this other thing does 40%. So it seems like that might be a good place to start.
Okay, so she spends most of the book, which I haven’t read yet, describing I think it’s like 12 different practices you can use to increase your happiness. But one of the things she talks about before she even gets to that is picking out the practices that are a good fit for you. And she even has like a criteria and a little quiz you can take to figure out which things are the right fit. And I want to tell you about it because I think it’s fucking fascinating and really insightful.
Okay, so the four criteria are natural, enjoyable, valuable, guilty, and situation. So natural is like, oh, I’ll do this activity because it will feel natural to me, and I’ll be able to stick with it. Enjoyable or enjoy is I’ll keep doing this activity because I will enjoy doing it. I’ll find it to be interesting and challenging. Value or valuable is I’ll keep doing this activity because I will value it and identify with doing it. I’ll do it freely, even when it’s not enjoyable.
And then guilty is I’ll keep doing this activity because I would feel ashamed, guilty, or anxious if I didn’t do it. I’ll force myself. And then the situation is I’ll keep doing this activity because somebody else will want me to, or because my situation will force me to.
So those are the criteria. And then basically, you go through each of the practices that she recommends, right, the practices that have been proven with scientific studies to increase happiness. You go through those and then you kind of rank them for those five categories. And I think what’s really interesting, and I’m going to give you a little bit of a spoiler here, is when you rank them, you give yourself positive points for natural, enjoyable, and valuable, right?
So one of the activities that is in the book is like practicing gratitude, right? This is a pretty common one. So if you think that would feel natural to you, if you think you would enjoy it, and if you think it would be valuable to you, like it would be values aligned, like aligned with your values I guess is actually really more of what that means than valuable. Although I guess maybe it kind of means both.
Okay, anyways, so if you kind of had those beliefs, then that would be a good fit for something for you to try. But if you score it in the guilty or the situation, you actually decrease the points for that. So the way I’m interpreting this is when you’re looking at what would be a good fit for you to try first for these happiness practices, you look at what aligns most to feeling natural, to being enjoyable, and to being something that you value.
And you want to look for things where guilt doesn’t come into play, and where you don’t feel forced. And I think that’s so fascinating because I think so many people are doing so much stuff in their lives because they’d feel guilty if they didn’t. And listen, I’ve been that person also, and sometimes I’m still that person. But I think a lot of times we think that’s a good thing.
And what I’m learning from this book is actually no, that kind of makes it fraught, right? And I talk on the podcast a lot about how I think guilt and shame kind of shut us down. They make us sort of want to hide or run away versus continuing to engage with something. And that’s why I think it’s so powerful to use reframes to shift out of those.
Not that we never want to feel guilty or ashamed. You’re totally allowed if you want to choose those feelings on purpose, but what I see again and again in myself and in others, is that a feeling like shame doesn’t necessarily lead to an action like accountability, even though you would think it would. It doesn’t, it tends, again, to lead to hiding or not wanting to engage, right, shutting down.
So I wanted to introduce y’all to this concept of good fit. If you want to read the book, I think that’s cool too. Read it, let me know what you think, let me know which practices are good fits for you. But for the purposes of this podcast, what I actually want to talk about was taking this concept that she’s using and applying it to your career and to your life, and even applying it to the things you’re learning from my podcast.
So my podcast has more than 100 episodes now. There’s lots of teachings, there’s lots of examples and different ways of doing things. And I know when I listen to other people’s podcasts, sometimes I try to apply everything they teach all the time, and that can be too much. And so one of the things the author recommends in this book is of the 12 happiness practices, you only pick four.
You pick the four that you have the best score on, and then you don’t even necessarily try to do all four at once. You maybe pick just one of the four and you try with that. So I thought it might be really interesting for you to think about of all the things I teach on the podcast, what’s a good fit for you for something you actually might want to start applying to your life, to your career, to your relationships, right?
So it’s like I have all these teachings, and maybe you’re like, okay, the one that I think would feel natural to me, and the one that I think would be enjoyable, and the one that I would value is focusing on what is working. And so then you might go find a podcast episode where I talk about how to focus on what is working and the value and benefit of that.
And then maybe you go in your life, and you start practicing that activity, and you see what happens. And you kind of check in with yourself and you don’t try to do everything else I teach. Maybe you still listen to the other podcasts, but you don’t try to apply everything at once because you’re allowing yourself to focus on something that’s a good fit for you.
Okay, so that’s one example of how to use this concept. Here’s another example. When you think about your job, there’s probably parts of your job that are a good fit for you and parts of your job that are not a good fit for you. And so where in your job are the things that come naturally, that feel natural to you?
Where are the things you enjoy? And where are the things that you value? And how can you do more of those? And where are the things you don’t value, that don’t come naturally to you, that you don’t find enjoyable? And can we get rid of some of those? Can we delegate them? Can we talk to someone about changing our scope of work?
And one thing to really, I think, keep an eye out for, both in how you may apply the things I teach on the podcast, but also when you’re analyzing what you’re doing in your job, or what you want to do more of, or what you want to do less of. Keep in mind that according to the diagnostic from the book, or at least how I’ve interpreted it, if you feel guilty or if you feel forced, that’s actually an indication something’s not a good fit for you. It’s not an indication that something is a good fit for you.
I think so often, when we feel guilty if we don’t do something, we think that means we have to do it. We feel obligated to do it. We think it’s not optional. And I think what this book is actually showing is it’s okay to let those things go. It’s okay to deprioritize those. It’s okay to instead focus on the things that feel natural, are enjoyable, that we value, right?
And listen, I realize that we can’t always get rid of every work task we want to get rid of. But I think that this could still be helpful. And if there’s a work task you can’t get off of your plate, but you either feel guilty or it’s not a super good fit for you, can you deprioritize it? Like you still do it, but you don’t feel anxious about it anymore. You don’t judge yourself so much anymore.
You’re just like, oh yeah, this is the part of my job that’s not as good of a fit. And I do it and I still do a good job, but I don’t agonize over it because it’s okay for things to not be a good fit for me. And eventually, maybe I’d like to not do this anymore. Maybe I’d like to find a job where that’s not part of it. And where more of the job, a larger percentage of the job can be these good fit things that feel natural, that are enjoyable, and that I value and feel valuable to me when I do them.
Okay, and so obviously, there’s so many areas where you can apply this, right? I think career and jobs are a really obvious one. I think there’s probably ways to apply it in relationships, right? There’s always so many things we could work on in a relationship, but sometimes it’s like, well, what areas of the relationship maybe need work that would feel natural, that would be enjoyable, or that I would add value, or all of the above?
And are there other areas that I’m only doing because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t? And maybe do I want to change how I’m showing up to that relationship?
I also think household could be a really compelling thing for this. Are there things you’re doing around the house that you don’t want to do, that you’re only doing because you’d feel guilty if you didn’t? Is there a way to move those off your plate somehow? Without guilt tripping yourself, removing those off your plate. Like could the framework of good fit give you permission to let some things go?
And I don’t mean just not do them and let them be undone, but maybe you renegotiate with your partner or with your roommate about who does which chores. Or maybe you hire someone to clean your house because your whole life you thought like, oh, I have to clean my own house, and you’d feel so guilty if you didn’t.
But if it’s not a good fit for you, maybe you give yourself permission to make a different choice. Maybe you give yourself permission to have more of your life be full of good fit activities, and have less of your life be full of activities that aren’t such a good fit for you.
Now, like I said before, I don’t know if it’s possible to make your life only good fit activities. There’s still stuff I do that is less of a good fit. But I think one of the things I’ve done in my life is make so much more of my life good fit activities. Like I have a really good fit with my business and that didn’t happen naturally. Leaving a corporate career and starting a business didn’t give me a good fit automatically.
I came into my business with all of these ideas and ways of being from corporate and from other jobs that I’d worked. And so I had to then kind of question those ideas and then see what wasn’t a good fit, and then change it. In the very beginning I started my workday at nine because that’s, you know, nine to five, it’s what you do. And it was a while in my business before I was like, you know what? I don’t want to take calls at nine anymore.
I might still check my email. I might still answer my Slack messages. But I’m not going to do that anymore. And I started making my first call of the day at 10. And that was an example of something I did for myself that was a better fit for me. It’s more enjoyable, it feels more natural, it gives me this really long, luxurious, gorgeous morning that I love and cherish and gives me time to take my walk.
And sometimes I don’t sleep well, so that gives me time also to sleep in if I have a night of sleep that doesn’t go the way I want it to. And I value that. So that worked out really well for me as a good fit, but I had to have that moment of like, is this okay? Am I allowed to do this? Is someone going to come and tell me I’m not allowed?
No one’s going to come and tell you you’re not allowed. But I think because we were all children, it does, so often when we’re changing what we’ve decided is or isn’t okay, sometimes it does feel like an “adult” may come and be like, “What do you think you’re doing?” I get that. I have that too.
Okay, so take some time and think about this and ponder on it. And do a little assessment of your life. How much of your life feels like it’s a good fit for being natural, being enjoyable and being something you value? How much of it are you just doing because you’d feel guilty and ashamed if you didn’t? How much of it are you just doing because you feel forced to or you feel like the situation is making you or someone else is making you? And then what changes can you make?
All right, y’all. That’s what I have for you today. I also want to say the next round of Satisfied As Fuck group coaching is coming up in the fall. So I realize that’s still a little ways away, but I’m going to go ahead and start taking consult calls about it.
And if you know that this program is going to be a good fit for you, I want to go ahead and get you signed up because if you sign up early, there are some bonus coaching calls that you’re going to have access to. And I would love to start coaching you right away. And I would love to have you in the next cohort because it’s going to be spectacular.
Every cohort is so much fun. And every time I run this program I learn so much about how to do it. So I’m already super thrilled for the fall cohort that’s going to happen. And I also have some one on one spaces because I know that there are also people out there who really like to do the coaching work privately and have it be very focused on the things that they want to work on. So I have some spaces open for that as well.
And you can slide on over to my website, korilinn.com, and sign up for a consult call with the work with me page and we’ll have a conversation about what’s going on in your life, what you want to be going on, how coaching could maybe help. And if it seems like a good fit, I’ll tell you more about the group and more about the one on one or whichever one of those sounds like fun for you.
And then, of course, I also have my brand new offering Unhinged As Fuck, which is a year of coaching and mentorship with me, plus some one on one deep dive days that we can do in-person or virtually. And you can also sign up for this consult at the same link if you’re interested in that.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. 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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