After sharing my thoughts about career twice a week for 8.5 years (!), I felt my attention shifting a few months ago and knew I needed to be quiet to listen to what was emerging.
I started feeling the pull of spontaneity, variety, and creativity, along with the pull to scale back my business and ramp up the work I do in my local community to fight for racial justice and our democracy.
During those few months of quiet and community focus, I found a tiny new bud of an idea that grabbed all of my soul. And so, I'm giving myself grace to evolve into my next era.
Today, I hang up my career coaching hat as my main thing.
It's been an incredible honor to work with so many courageous folks and discover what it looks like to truly do what's right for you in your career. (And let's be honest, I'll never stop talking about doing what's right for you).
But now it's time to evolve into that tiny idea...
I'm creating the Secret Society of Unreasonable Kindness.
YOU HEARD ME. It's kindness time.
And here's why.
Cruelty blows and the level of cruelty blatantly on display in the US right now is making me pissed more than ever.
Cruelty against immigrants.
Cruelty against trans people.
Cruelty against poor people.
Cruelty against Black and brown people.
What a f*cking tired game that's played out over and over again by people who are set on dominating others.
It's time for a new game where we infuse strategic amounts of what I'm calling "unreasonable kindness" into this world. It's not random acts of kindness and it's not a cutesy naive 'can't we all just get along?'.
Unreasonable kindness is subversive. It interrupts the fear, disconnection, and loneliness that convinces us we're separate and out to get each other.
It restores faith in humanity.
It breaks the false narrative that no one cares and we're out here doing life alone.
It interrupts default cruelty.
And the thing I love most about unreasonable kindness is it's one of two things that reliably exit people out of white power groups. Kindness is powerful enough to disrupt the drug of white supremacy.
So that's... ya know... a 180 from career coaching :D
But that's who I want to be in the world at this phase. And honing your craft of creating unique ways to delight other humans in the face of cruelty is the evolution of what it looks like to have a life of options. To feel resilient and powerful in this moment rather than overwhelmed and frozen.
I'll be bringing together:
(1) Joyful people
(2) Ready to move from passively observing cruelty to actively creating kindness
(3) So that we can hone our craft and design unique moments of unreasonable kindness and delight that reconnect humanity
If that's you and you might be interested in being a founding member... send me a sign via invisible ink or pigeon (or DM)... I'll be on the lookout.
To the next chapter...
Celebrating the Journey: Right For YOU
As we reach a year and a half since the publication of Right For YOU, I want to take a moment to celebrate and reflect on the incredible journey this book has taken. It’s been an honor to see how it has impacted readers and garnered recognition in the literary world. Here’s a look back at some of the most memorable feedback and accolades Right For YOU has received so far.
Read moreMy lane is speaking up about injustice.
If you think I shouldn’t be speaking up about the injustice I see in the world, I want to be very clear that I am not the right fit for you.
We aren’t a match, it’s not a good fit, and I’m definitely not right for you. That’s everything I advocate for in my business, you know how I feel about something not being right for you, so I honor your exit from my space if we’re not right for each other.
I have intentionally chosen to use my business platform to speak up for injustice when I see it for the past 8 years and will continue to do so.
Read moreIt's OK to Have a Boring Job.
It’s OK to have a boring job.
(Am I even allowed to say that?)
I don’t think anyone ever tells us that it’s OK to have a boring job. It definitely doesn’t work for everyone. And it definitely does work for some people.
I only just recently noticed how revolutionary this message seems to be. I’ve been sharing it more and more often, the most recent time was at a workshop I co-hosted a few weeks ago. Participants kept coming up to me afterward saying how grateful they were to hear someone say that it was OK to have a boring job.
So now I’m on a mission to tell people that it’s OK to have a boring job if it works for them.
Read moreThe peril of a “should” value
A participant at my workshop said one of the wisest things that I can't stop thinking about... "The peril of a "should" value can't be overstated."
When I've done values exercises in the past, it's usually involved picking values from a list, which for me, is the surest way to end up with a big ole list of "should" values.
But when you're making choices in line with "should" values, you're creating a recipe for disaster. You're taking action based off of external definitions of success that will never allow you to feel fulfilled in the ways that are meaningful to you.
Read moreRight For YOU Awarded “Must Read” Rating
I’m so grateful to Book Nerdection for reviewing my book (and awarding it the Must Read seal!) and for highlighting what I hoped for when I published the book.
Read moreIt’s not your career, it’s your life.
I often get asked what makes me so passionate about what I do and I always give an unexpected answer.
I do my work so that people get to feel alive in their lives.
Not their careers. Their lives.
And yes, I'm a career coach, but I find that being unhappy in your career is one of the biggest barriers to feeling alive and engaged in your LIFE. So I help you move through the career challenges.
Read moreThe freedom of being decided
I have a strong viewpoint that when you are undecided about what to do with your career, your life is on hold.
I have seen people waffle for 10+ years on all kinds of career questions.
Should I quit?
Would I actually enjoy going back to school?
Have I stayed at this company for too long?
Do I want to be on this career path?
And it's crushing, exhausting, and energy-draining to be undecided.
The good news is there's immense freedom in being decided.
Read moreWhat if you didn’t have to quit?
“Our fears make us forget how many safe steps you can and should take before you even think of leaving behind what you have.”
As someone whose entire focus is helping people know whether it’s time to move on from a company where they’ve invested a significant amount of time, I love this quote from the book Refuse to Choose.
As evidenced by the Great Resignation, many people are choosing to leave their jobs this year. Sometimes that is absolutely the right next step for someone, but based on my work with clients, people often quit because they have no idea what they want. And when that’s not clear, quitting can seem like the only choice you have.
Read moreThe beauty of the “Affirmative No”
I recently came across Jeanne Safer’s concept of the “Affirmative No”.
She defines it as "the refusal to pursue a course of action that, on serious reflection, you discover is not right for you." and it immediately resonated with me and the work that I do.
Read moreWhen a promotion is a trap
A promotion is often a cause for celebration - more money, a better title, more responsibilities, etc - but when is it not?
For several of my clients, a promotion actually feels like a trap.
Read moreOne framework to rule them all
In a coaching call this week, a client let the words slip that she was going to create a silly spreadsheet as part of her job search and I had to jump in and interrupt. I invited her to drop the word ‘silly’ to describe her spreadsheet as she was in the company of someone who LOVES a good spreadsheet.
Honestly, I get overly excited about a framework... and I’m assuming you do too. It's just so darn satisfying to see a beautiful framework with structure and process and a plan and... *swoon*.
I've been doing my work for years now and although I've created a lot of frameworks in my day (I was once called a framework creating machine and I loved it), I didn’t have a big unifying framework for all the work that I do until recently.
Read moreWhy is there only one option for contribution in your job?
One of the biggest reasons that people often hover around a job search, wondering if they really need to make a change, is missing a sense of contribution in their role.
Here’s what it has sounded like to a few of my clients:
“What is important for me to do in this world before I go, and what are the strengths that I want to contribute toward that important thing?”
“I feel quite sad that I’m not realizing the potential I have. I’m wasting precious time on this earth with wasted energy that I could be contributing.”
“Now my pressure centers around the question of what am I doing with my life? What do I want to spend my time doing? This constant questioning of life’s big questions and feeling inadequate has me feeling overwhelmed and frozen.”
Read moreWhen your body is deemed unacceptable in the workplace
A lot of my work is (1) helping people make decisions they know they’ll be happy with and (2) helping people do what’s right for them in their careers. This can sound overly simplistic because there’s often much more at play than just what they get to decide.
The question we also need to ask is, who doesn’t get to be themselves at work? Who doesn’t get to make decisions that honor their values and preferences? Who has to abide by what society deems “professional” which is usually the values of white and Western employees?
Read moreWhat if the goal wasn’t to have it “figured out”?
One of my LEAST FAVORITE yet incredible persistent pressure that exists around our jobs is “I should have it figured out by now”. It’s outrageously sneaky because it seems so simple yet can cover all kinds of different pressures: comparing yourself to others, needing to have achieved something big, using an external definition of success, etc. The mean voice doesn’t even have to use any creativity, it just pushes this one button and knows that it’ll completely take you out. You’ll be in an existential crisis and downward spiral in no time!
Read moreDiscovering authentic excitement about job prospects
Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels
One of the most common indicators that you’re struggling with your career is a lack of excitement about job prospects. You’re endlessly scrolling through LinkedIn or Indeed and feeling nothing about anything you see. The worst-case scenario is that you talk yourself out of applying to anything and the best-case scenario is that you’re applying for jobs you know you don’t want. Grim either way.
Read moreThe rise of the pointless job
Several months ago I came across an article called The Riddle of the Well-Paying Pointless Job. It's such a smart look at workplace satisfaction and also supports my belief that it's ok to have a boring job if it works for you.
They start by talking about the incentives theory from 1976 - pay people more and motivation should naturally follow.
But! The problem they identify is that jobs are becoming more and more pointless:
"However, this incentive theory is being applied to spaces where the work is tedious, mind-numbing, and at best, manageable. Graeber calls these jobs “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”
Read moreFinding a calling - without all the pressure
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
So much of my work is helping relieve the pressure we place on ourselves and our jobs, and one idea that instills all kinds of pressure is “a calling”. I automatically feel daunted, overwhelmed, defeated, confused and a host of other emotions if I think too much about what it means to find a calling.
Over the weekend I finished the book, Playing Big, by Tara Mohr (a wonderful recommendation from a past client) and learned a completely different way to think about a calling.
“A calling, as we’ll define it in this chapter, is a longing to address a particular need or problem in the world. Callings are about making a contribution for the good, about in some way bringing more light and love into the world. They are a path through which we can respond to the lack and brokenness we see before us.”
Read moreIs the job search allowed to be fun?
I’m on a mission to end the job search that is draining, soulless, expectations-driven, and painful.
I remember the first time a client asked if I tell people who are thinking of working with me that I make the job search fun. It was such a revelation to her that it could be something other than drudgery. It’s not that I make the process artificially fun by candy-coating the existing process, but I help people fundamentally change the nature of the search and the interview experience.
Here’s how I would describe the current nature of the job search and interview process.
Read moreA Framework for Financial Impact
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash
Many of my clients aren’t having the impact they want to in their work and it causes them a lot of stress and anxiety. Part of the challenge is that they don’t know how to define impact for themselves so they’re using external definitions of success that feel out of alignment with what they truly want.
What ends up making a difference is identifying their values and creating the definition of impact that works for them. That’s where they experience freedom, self-expression, and authenticity.
The same can be said for the impact we can create with our money. I was really taken by the idea in “The Soul of Money” by Lynne Twist that when we align the acquisition and allocation of our financial resources with our most deeply held values, we experience a lot more satisfaction, meaning, and fulfillment. Just like impact at work, when it’s not clearly defined we’re distracted by shiny things, we overanalyze, we get stuck in analysis paralysis and we’re underwhelmed with our impact.
Read more