It's time for Word to the Third, my reflections on purpose, life, and growth. I'm Toby Brooks. I'm a speaker, author, professor, and forever student. Each week on Becoming Undone I bring you guests who have dared bravely, risked mightily, and grown relentlessly. High achievers who've transformed from falling apart to falling into place. But every third episode it's my turn to reflect, refine, and reprocess on Word of the Third. This past week we had family in town and Tay started his baseball season for his junior year. So I chose to take a little break from the show for a minute and enjoy this season, guilt-free. And as I reflected back on my last two guests, Bridget Borzillo of Cosodance and Bill Benjamin of The Last 8% Academy, I realized that that was the right decision. In both of those interviews, the thing that resonated with me the most was this idea of being present and being brave in the face of big transitions in life. For Bridget, it was stepping into entrepreneurship and founding her own dance company after a career as a college athlete and then as a dancer in other companies. For Bill, it was a similar decision to move from the safety of a good-paying job in the computer software industry to the possibilities of making a bigger impact in the world with the transformational teaching of lifelong friend J.P. Palu Frye. In both cases, that safe solution would have been to push forward in a career path that was predictable. But for both, the call and the potential of a deeper purpose became just too much to ignore. So they pivoted and they went all in in a new direction, fully present. Taystead football coach and athletic director Chris Soffley has several great coachisms, but a personal favorite of mine has become his encouragement to his players to be where your feet are. It took me a second the first time I heard it to really get what he meant by it. But it's more important today than it's ever been in my lifetime. You see in today's world, it's easier than ever to be distracted by our technology or our thoughts. I've spent more time than I care to admit being physically present at important events, but mentally somewhere else. Whether a wandering mind or a device that ironically connects me to the outside world while making me absent from the one I'm actually in, if my mind isn't focused on the moment where my feet are, I miss out. Sometimes being where our feet are requires real discipline. As Bill talked about in his episode, our emotional regulation through the limbic system serves as a reward that can be hard to shake. Dopamine release is a motivator, and it's not much different from many other forms of addiction. If you don't believe me, think about what it would feel like if you accidentally left your phone at home for the day. Being where our feet are allows us to respect the past, but to savor the present. Understanding that distractions can pull our focus, and realizing that goals and dreams, as helpful and motivating as they may be, can rob us of the joy of the moment. We need to pay attention both when and where we are. For so many of my guests, the real tendency for the high achiever is to plow forward after both successes and failures alike and be on to the next challenge. On one hand that's admirable, but on the other it's a missed opportunity. We never know when or even if we'll get a chance to come this way again. So my takeaway this week has been to pay attention, to respect the past, to aim for the future, but to relish the present and be all-in for the season in which we find ourselves. Bricks and buckets. Each week on Becoming Undone I reflect back on the highs and lows of my week in bricks and buckets. Bricks are attempts that miss the mark while buckets sail through the net clean and true. It's that basketball equivalent of roses and thorns or happies and crappies whatever you want to call it. This week's brick is the modern job search. All over the media we hear about this great resignation and how companies are so desperate for good people. I'd like to think I'm good people, but my attempts to find new opportunities have yielded me almost nothing. I work with an executive coach monthly. I've paid to redo my resume and improve my cover letter. I meet regularly with two different seasoned professionals who serve as mentors. Despite all that, after countless applications for spots including full-time, part-time, and even volunteer spots, I've gotten very little response. What's worse is that most places today automate that whole search process, and they've sterilized it so much that the job seeker is left completely in the dark. No acknowledgement that materials have even been received, no update on the process, no notification when the job is filled by another candidate. Nothing. And then there are jobs that ask for the resume. Mine's got down to about three pages for non-academic jobs. Or a full curriculum vita, which in my case is 33 pages for academic spots. And then they ask you to manually copy and paste in all the same info into their application software. It is a maddening and usually fruitless process that seems to have only gotten worse since the pandemic. And don't even get me started on jobs that don't post the salary ranges. Do better hiring managers. It is inexcusable how unseeker friendly and outright rude you've made the whole process. Let me step down off of my stump and talk about this week's bucket. This week's bucket is promotion. I've been in higher ed since 2001. I went back and forth between working as an athletic trainer and teaching athletic training for two decades. If you aren't familiar with the process in higher ed, you usually hire in as an assistant professor after you get your PhD. And after a probationary period, usually seven years, you apply for promotion and tenure. Tenure means you have a guaranteed job for life and promotion means recognition as a growing professional, as an associate professor. I was tenured and promoted in 2016. And the next step is to go up for full professor. Now, higher ed is in the midst of change. I recently read that somewhere around 20% of folks with PhDs actually secure permanent positions in academia, with other more specific areas being as low as 3%. Of those faculty, it's been estimated that around 20% of them will get tenured and promoted to the associate level. And only about 20% of them go on to be full professors. That means if we started with 1,000 PhDs, about 200 would get tenure track jobs at the assistant level. Six or seven years later, 40 would get tenured and promoted to associate. And another five or six years later, eight would get promoted to full professor. So the likelihood is less than 1%. At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn here, I was thrilled this week to learn that my application for promotion to full professor was approved and that after two decades of teaching and clinical service, I had reached the highest level in the higher ed hierarchy this year. I'm not sure what this means for my future, but I'm thrilled to have made it this far. What about you? What are you working on? What are you waiting for? What are you doing in the meantime to get better every day? I'd love to hear about it. Surf on over to UndonePodcast.com and drop me a note. I'm Toby Brooks and this has been Word to the Third. Becoming Undone is a Nitro-Hype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, contact me at UndonePodcast.com. 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