Lost in your career? These 4 questions from a behavioral scientist are your GPS.

Feeling stuck in your career or business path? Or unclear? That frustrating thought, "I want to work on interesting projects, and I'm not doing that right now" - might be your wake-up call for change. 

This episode unveils four powerful questions from behavioral scientist Matt Wallert that will transform how you approach your next professional chapter. Rather than randomly trying new opportunities, these questions create a framework to filter what truly matters to you. I walk through each question while sharing my personal answers to show how this process works in practice. 

The answers will connect to your lived experiences and pain points you've encountered. For me, it revealed two driving themes: helping unlock human potential that's left unexplored and fixing systems that harm rather than help - this method will help you understand driving themes of your life. Understanding these core motivators has changed how I evaluate opportunities. 

This framework works equally well for individual reflection or as a group exercise with teams or family members. Try these questions yourself, then share them with someone navigating their own transition.  

Time to tune up your career GPS! Tune in!    

Transcript

Welcome to Change Wired Podcast

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your executive transformation and health coach yes, all in one package. And in Change Wired Podcast we are talking about change, about transformation, about personal and collective growth, all the tools that we can use from different fields of science and sometimes growth. All the tools that we can use from different fields of science and sometimes technology, sometimes health, sometimes productivity, sometimes just best thinkers and practitioners in the field. Again, all to serve a purpose to help you and people around you to grow, to develop and to express in this world more of our potential. Today, guys, I want to share with you by the end of today's podcast, you're going to have four questions that will help you to navigate your next chapter. Specifically, we're going to talk about your next career chapter, or maybe business chapter. You're going to have four questions that I got from one of the most brilliant behavioral scientists that we also going to have on this podcast. Actually, today I'm recording the interviewer with Matt Wallert, who is a brilliant, again, behavioral scientist, and he also shared on his LinkedIn recently four questions to help you navigate or map out your next career move I actually came up to this. I found these questions some time ago on Positive Psychology website in one of their newsletters specifically dedicated to finding again your next career or business opportunity or where it is you want to go next professionally helping you figure out that. So today I'm going to share with you these four questions and my answers so you also have an idea how perhaps you could answer them, if not better than to someone to help you to navigate the answer to these questions, because sometimes we think, oh, the question, it's clear, but then somebody else tells you, no, I actually thought that that was asking me about that, and so you don't really then know what to answer. And that's where examples help us to be more clear about what it is asked of us. And then also stay tuned in the next few episodes over the course of next couple of weeks next week, for sure.

Speaker 1 2:35

The next episode is going to be around our biology. Specifically, we're going to talk about updates on our circadian biology, or our internal clocks in every one of our cells and in our brain. That affects everything that we do as humans how we feel, how we think, how we do our work, and those things fluctuate throughout our days. Also, we're going to talk about different tests, new tests and how you best can take your melatonin to either help you fall asleep later, like for me, for example most people try to go to bed earlier. For me, I go to bed naturally, like I would go to bed at like 8 pm, but it's not always. It doesn't always work for my schedule, for what I'm trying to do in the world or the time that I want to spend with people right. So how you can take your melatonin to either go to bed later consistently and adjust your clock faster, or to wake up early and go to bed early also helps when you travel through multiple zones. The faster you can adjust your clocks, the better you will not only feel energetically, but also mentally, emotionally, and you're going to cognitively perform better. So all of that, and some sleep hacks and updates that actually work and are rooted in research all of that is coming up next week.

4 Questions for Career Transitions

Speaker 1 3:57

Today, four questions that will help you to map out your next career or business move. Again, what are you going to do in this world professionally? So how did it all come to be? Well, not so long ago, I thought to myself I want to work on interesting projects and I'm not doing that right now. And it feels very frustrating. And I had this sort of repeat coming up again and again and again and that was my wake-up call. I'm like enough is enough, it has to change. It was a moment of honesty. I thought I will cop to that.

Speaker 1 4:36

Clearly that forced me to stop just tasting clients and doing more reach out and figuring out finding the next business opportunity, who I can work with. It forced me to stop and think better, deeper, about where it is actually. I want to do what it is. I want to do every single day of well, at least not my entire life, then for the next few years. Because I'm not doing this, and that was the answer, sort of surface level level, one type of answer I want to work on interesting projects and I'm not doing that.

Question 1: What Do You Want to Do?

Speaker 1 5:15

And then one evening, before falling asleep, I ended up watching a video by a brilliant behavioral scientist that I mentioned at the beginning and we're going to be interviewing for a podcast today, matt Wallard, and in it, in this video, matt shared four questions to ask yourself when navigating a career transition or business transition what do you want to do in the world? Right, if you feel like it's the time for reinvention, for transition, but you don't exactly know where to go or what to start. These questions will help you to figure out where it is, where it's a good place to start looking, and will give you more of a filter, a better way of filtering different opportunities and things that might come into your life, so you could try things that have more potential to work out, maybe applying for jobs or again trying out new clients or business opportunities. So, without further ado, four questions and the answers. Hopefully they're going to be very useful to help you. You can also use the same questions to help people around you to navigate their career move, choice or business transition. And and that's it. Let's jump into questions.

Speaker 1 6:39

Question number one what do you physically want to do in your life, meaning, what do I want to do day to day? To me, that means applying my experience, my knowledge, to real world challenges. I wanted to find problems worth solving and solve them. I want to learn research, do some data analysis, build hypotheses, integrate knowledge across disciplines and create solutions. Then I want to apply those solutions in collaboration with other people stakeholders, teammates, partners, governors and business people and social workers. Half of my time spent in deep thinking, creating learning, half of my time connecting, coaching, speaking, working with others. I love creating content like this and learning from others, interviewing people and then sharing that Also a huge part of what I love doing. So behavioral design system thinking and making things better that's actually what I want to do as my job Behavioral design system thinking, making the world better, making things better and people's lives better.

Question 2: Who's Your Ideal Collaboration?

Speaker 1 7:48

Question number two who do you want to work with? And the question is, as Matt explained, is, in a sense, that who do you want to spend your time with day to day? For me, that is geeks, the thinkers, framework builders, scientists, system designers, people who obsess over clarity and complexity in equal measure, and I want to collaborate also with business people, creatives, policymakers, social entrepreneurs those who live closer to the problems directly affecting people's lives. One of my favorite things in the world to do is building bridges between disciplines, between people, between mindsets. I want more of that as well, and that's why I feel like I want to spend some of my time with the geeks and thinkers and scientists and people who try to figure things out, and then half of my time in the world working with different stakeholders who apply all of that and make business stuff happen, create solutions and affect people more directly. But then also I want to talk to people and explore and, in conversations, figure out what actually can work better right. So third of my talent is system thinking and design, third is tinkering with solutions. And third is communication with diverse groups of people, translating their points of view into something they all can relate to and something that can then be translated into a solution. So this is who I want to work with and spend my days with.

Question 3: Measuring Your Impact

Question 4: In Service of What?

Speaker 1 9:24

Question number three who do you want, or what do you want, to be accountable for? So how do you want your work to be measured? For me, it's results, it's real change, it's impact I want to see in the world. Imagine this and I often have this picture in my head like I'm sitting on some bench and I'm looking at the world, at people walking around me, kind of, you know, like people in world watching and thinking to myself you know, because of me this shit works better. Like the world just works smoother, and then maybe also observing and taking notes and thinking about how to make things even better. So this is what I want to be accountable for a real change in the world. Helping people thrive, helping clients, helping others have access to more opportunities, creating outcomes that last systems that outlast me when I'm no longer here in the room, building sustainable systems that keep on giving, expanding our collective knowledge those are things I care about and I want to be accountable for difference in these domains. I want to be useful. I want to make a dent in the world. One might say, don't we all? Well, actually no. If you're listening to this podcast, there is a high probability that you are one of those people who wants to make a dent in the world. But, believe me, that's not how most of the people think. Question number four in the service of what think. Question number four in the service of what.

Speaker 1 11:06

I personally believe that well, let me tell you a story. First, a client asked me just a couple of days ago I didn't feel like I'm making a difference, and this is a successful business owner who is making a difference, even though sometimes we think that our work is not as important as something that somebody else does changing the world and impact thousands of people, right? So the client asked, or shared a I don't feel like I'm making a difference. How do I have a bigger impact. You know thousands of people and all, not just my clients and then I ask him well, who do you want to impact and help, and why? It's probably not all of the people. The why matters.

Speaker 1 11:45

I personally believe that we care most about the things that once caused us pain Like we felt. You know that pain should not exist in the world and this is the caring that naturally comes to us. You're like. You know, I want to make this part of the world better. I suffered from it and I don't want others to suffer. That's a very common narrative. I think we are sort of designed to be that way to see what's not working in the world, especially if it costs you pain, and wanting to make it better for others.

Speaker 1 12:20

For me, two themes stood out and emerged over the course of my life. Number one potential left unexplored. Chad GPT put it so well in just three words potential left unexplored. I always wanted to do so much in my life, like I wake up and I want to do stuff, and I feel like I still feel this and for a long time I felt as a kid, as a teenager, that I just couldn't do everything I wanted to do Like grown country not enough money, not enough access, so much time wasted figuring out to just how to find a fit, an opportunity to express all of that desire, instead of just letting my potential go into full bloom and apply it to some meaningful stuff in the world. Right, instead of that, you're just kind of like trying to break free from all of this stuff so you could finally do what it is you were designed to do, so potential left unexplored.

Speaker 1 13:18

I feel we need much better systems to helping people to just do what they want to do and go, get out there and solve problems. The capital, the education, the network, the people like, whatever it is people need to develop their potential and apply it. I feel like we need to do a much better job and I want to create systems which allow to do that, and I somehow know that I'll have the opportunity to contribute to that. And then the second thing theme that stood out that I care deeply about systems that harm instead of help. I hate seeing people and I experienced that on myself, on my sister, on my family, and I see people all the time just suffering their life, energy stuck in loops, bad food, toxic habits, addiction, passive distraction when all it might take is one nudge to move them toward health and purpose and possibility and yes, expressing more of their potential. I believe we can design the world as a garden for human potential, not just scatter the seeds and hope for the best. I feel we humans have this unique potential to cultivate that garden and we should strive to do our best to do so. So that was me, now it's your turn.

Applying These Questions in Your Life

Speaker 1 14:43

So which way from here? Before we sum up and review the questions so they're better in your memory? Obviously you can always re-listen, even do it with other people as an exercise, and do this exercise together again, with your family, with your team, in your team, in your organization. People do need to think about changing their ways and figuring out where to go next so they could contribute the most of their potential to the task so your organization could thrive, your cause could thrive or your family could thrive out where to go next so they could contribute the most of their potential to the task, so your organization could thrive, your cause could thrive or your family could thrive. So amazing questions to go through, not just by yourself, but also with people around you, people that you lead or people who you live with or encounter in your day-to-day life. Before we jump into repeating the questions, guys don't forget to rate, review. So this podcast go into more ears and we contribute to cultivating this kind of thinking that then creates the desire to go out there and change things. And by sharing this podcast, you are also contributing to making this world better, one pair of ears at a time. So read, review, share and, of course, do the exercise.

Speaker 1 15:55

Question number one what do you physically want to do in your day-to-day job? What does your ideal job transition, business look like? Question number two who do you want to work with? Who do you want to spend your time with while doing your work? Number three who do what? What, not who?

Speaker 1 16:16

The question number who was the second one. Who do you want to work with? And then the third what do you want to be accountable for? How do you want your work to be measured? A success or failure or progress, right? So what do you want to be accountable for? And then, in the service of what? What cause or suffering or injustice? What do you care about? So what do you want to dedicate your talents, your work days to? So in service of what? Four questions to reroute your career, your business, from a brilliant behavioral scientist, matt Waller, who's going to be on our podcast very, very soon, maybe out your next chapter. That is what this podcast was all about. Please share review rate. Thank you for your attention, for your urge or your desire to improve, and till next time, stay tuned and keep growing.