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[00:00:00] Sheri: Have you ever gotten lost? I mean, really lost? Like you're driving someplace and it's not just that like, "Oops, I took a wrong turn. Recalculating on the GPS and I'm back on track." I mean, you're in a strange city and you're really lost where panic almost starts to set it.

Maybe it does set it in, and you're like, "I don't even know where I am. I don't know how to get back to where I need to be. And God help me if I end up in the wrong part of town so lost like that. And there's that feeling of dread, and fear and embarrassment like, "How did I even get this confused and lost?" And it's just not a fun place to be.

[00:00:51] Sheri: Now, thank goodness today, we do normally have cell service and GPS, and we can either call a friend or plug in the right points and get back on track. And I got to be honest, sometimes when we're trying to find our calling, that's what it can feel like. It can feel like sometimes that we're just a little off and trying to figure it out. And then other times it can feel like that point of, I don't even know, I don't know how I got here and I don't know how to get out of here feeling. And I felt this way this past year like super lost. And you're going to hear that story in a minute because it's why we are once again changing the podcast name from 2020, it was Uncharted Entrepreneurs. 2021, navigating your leadership. And as we step into the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023, it is going to be the new Discovering Your Calling.

[00:01:58] Sheri: So hold on. This is going to be a really vulnerable episode, and it's going to be really deep with some of my feelings on things and why I've gone through this journey of pivoting and feeling lost and how it can help you in your search for your calling. So I hope you hear the messages in today's podcast.

[00:02:24] Sheri: Welcome to the Discovering your Calling podcast. I'm your host, Sheri Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button, and join me on this journey toward discovering your calling.

[00:02:48] Sheri: Okay, friends, let's jump into this. So as I shared, these last few years have been a lot of pivoting for me, and it's brought on some different emotions.Some of the pivoting has caused me to feel almost ashamed and like, "Why couldn't I figure this out?" Doubt in my own abilities. Doubt in what I'm doing. Sometimes it may be questioned, my choice, even walk away from a very successful 25 year career. At some point, I felt like a failure, like, "Why couldn't I make this work?"

[00:03:22] Sheri: But as I'm in this spot today, I know I'm where I'm supposed to be. And I can now look back with clear vision and clear clarity on what was happening over these last few years. It's really revealed so many things that I don't need to feel any of those emotions, that there shouldn't be shame or doubt or failure because it's all been part of the process. And what I really, really want you to get out of this message today is that sometimes finding our calling, which is what we're looking for, is messy. It is very messy.

[00:04:02] Sheri: And there's going to be times that you take a wrong turn and you just need a little recalculation to get back on track. And there's going to be other times that you do feel lost. But it's all part of the process and we can't get to our true calling without going through those messy places. And it's that place that we learn what we don't want to do, which is just as important as realizing what we want to do. And instead of looking back with those thoughts of like, "Wow, I should have maybe stuck it out a little bit longer. What went wrong? Why wasn't I successful?" And all these different thoughts, it's just going back and looking like, "No, that was all part of the plan." I didn't understand it while I was going through it, but now I can clearly see that. And finding our path and our calling, it's all there.

[00:04:58] Sheri: It's like sometimes we get closer and it's like we remember playing that hot and cold game as a kid. I love that game and I play that with my grandkids sometimes. It's like you hide the thing and then you tell them, "Oh, you're getting really warm, getting really warm. Oh, you're getting hotter, hotter, you're almost there." And they find it. Or sometimes it's like, "No, you take a wrong turn and you're colder and colder and colder," and they got to turn around. It's that game. That's the game we need to play in order to find our calling. And sometimes we're warmer and almost there, and other times it's like cold and it goes back to that scary place of being so lost.

[00:05:34] Sheri: So I want to take you back on that journey again. Because the journey I've had with just this podcast, and my business for the last three years is really one that... I can now say I have pride. Because I realize again, as I work with you and my clients, that it's like, "That's what you're going to go through. And you can learn from my journey. "So when I started off with the Uncharted Entrepreneurs, I wanted to work with business owners. It started because of the pandemic, and I was helping entrepreneurs and small business owners, realizing how they can pivot, ironically, right, pivot slightly to keep their businesses going during this scary season. We were in the pandemic. And for me, that felt really good.

[00:06:20] Sheri: But then there just started to be some things that are like, "Oh, I don't like this part of this coaching, I don't like doing this." There's just little things. And looking back, I should have just pivoted a little bit back then. But I didn't have a coach that could tell me that. I didn't have somebody in my life at that point who was that trusted advisor who knew what my strengths were, who knew my goals, who knew my heart's desire enough to see that what was happening was that I only needed to make a slight shift in my programs, a slight shift in my focus on the podcast.

[00:06:59] Sheri: And it's even so funny for me now to go back and listen to some of my older podcasts. It's like, "Oh my gosh, I was talking about finding your calling in 2020. What happened? What happened?" Now, I have hired in 2020 a lot of coaches. A lot of coaches. I cannot even tell you how much money I spent on programs. Like thousands of dollars. And I shouldn't say I hired a lot of coaches. I only had one coach that I actually worked with one on one. But I spent a lot of money on programs, programs on marketing, programs on podcasting, programs on messaging, programs on running a business.

[00:07:37] Sheri: And I'd been in business for 25 years, actually. I'd been in business for 35 years. And all these programs were worthwhile, and they served me well. The coaches at random served me well in their areas of expertise. But what I didn't have that I wish I had, was that trusted advisor, that coach that knew my why, that knew why I wasn't happy, that could help me dig deeper into my natural talents and strengths and could really, like I said, see that what I was looking for was only a slight, maybe 10% pivot away.

[00:08:15] Sheri: It's a ten degree change I should have made. And now I will say, I did have one, my one on one coach who was my favorite person. And we are still, actually, we're planning something in the springtime together. She's become a friend. She was one of the most impactful coaches I had, Kiera Jones. Shout out to Kiera. And she did help me on my mindset and messaging and packaging for my very first offers. And the ironic thing is, and maybe it's not even that quite ironic, maybe it's more of a god win today, is that we did an interview together on August 25 of 2020. At launch on the Uncharted Entrepreneurs podcast, and it was all on career transitions and pivoting like, "Oh my gosh." And in fact, I'm going to put the link to that episode in the show notes because I highly recommend you go back and listen to this episode and you can listen for yourself because it's super valuable. It was such a great conversation I just re-listened this morning, and you'll hear Kiera's calling story on why she went from corporate America into creating her own business, which is super valuable.

[00:09:31] Sheri: We talk a lot about mindset and the mindset you need to be in in order to make these transitions and pivots. We talk about entrepreneurship and finding your own path. We even get into pricing packages and how to just allowing yourself to get into alignment. And it's a really great conversation. So go back and listen to it. But also, listen to it at my expense, because you'll hear what I mean when you listen and you'll hear like, "Oh, yeah, Sherry, wait, isn't that what you're talking about today?" And when I listen to it again, it's like, "What happened? Why did I change? Why didn't I stay focused on that plan?" And like I said, I can laugh at it today, but it's kind of frustrating because who knows where I would have been today if I just stayed focused on that one thing instead of going on this trail that I ended up on. In reality, I know what happened. I got shiny object syndrome.

[00:10:37] Sheri: And that shiny object syndrome made me start chasing the money instead of staying true to my heart. And I got to a place where I felt like I needed to make this change because the money for strength coaching was in corporate America. The impact, the bigger clients were in corporate America. And I've loved leadership, and I still love leadership. I mean, that's what I did for 25 years. But I love leading from that free spirit, entrepreneurial mindset, not from a corporate America setting. But I didn't really recognize that. And this is where I took that turn, that took me to that wrong, the wrong part of the city where I was truly lost. And that pivot caused me to spend 2022 just floundering. Like, I really felt like 2022 was a year of floundering, of like, "What am I doing?"

[00:11:39] Sheri: And again, I spent money on courses. I invested in things that I thought were going to be beneficial to myself and my clients. But what I found was 2022, because it wasn't true to my heart, it wasn't true to my calling. It was a challenging year, and this is how you know. So this is what I really want you to hear right now is you know that it's not the right move for you when things just feel super hard. And that's what 2022 felt like.

[00:12:12] Sheri: The first half, I should say, of 2022 felt like it for me basically, this time of year. So December of 2021 through June, July of 2022. So six, seven months just seemed really, really hard. I felt like I was hitting brick walls everywhere around me. Everything I tried just seemed hard. It seemed like it was tougher to get clients, and it seemed like when I was actually doing the thing and coaching the clients and working with them, even though I loved doing the workshops, it just never felt right. I never felt like I really belonged.

[00:12:53] Sheri: And in fact, I probably went through a little identity crisis, and I'm going to talk about that in one of the new episodes in season four. We're going to talk about that identity crisis of trying to figure out where do you belong? Because I think a lot of us go through that when we're trying to figure out our calling. And that identity crisis and that struggle made me realize this is not where I belong. I don't belong in a corporate America setting. Now, again, I love leadership and I love entrepreneurship, and I love working with leaders who run their own business, but I don't belong in that setting of leaders in a corporate setting, because that's not where I grew up. That's not where I worked, and that's not where my mindset is. And I think because I was trying to force myself into that setting was where the challenge was.

[00:13:47] Sheri: And again, I want you to hear from my story that if you feel like you're just hitting one brick wall after another and everything you're doing just feels like a struggle, then maybe you're on the wrong path. Maybe you totally need to take a 180 turn. And that's where I realized I was. And actually, I was just doing an interview yesterday, and we were talking about how she was saying the person I was interviewing was saying how she feels like she knows she's in her calling now because all the puzzle pieces have fit. And we know we're not in our calling when we're trying to jam the puzzle. I said this is what I had said back, was like, "Yeah, I get that, because when we're not in our calling, we're trying to make the puzzle pieces fit." We're like my six year old granddaughter who's just like, "I'm going to make this puzzle piece fit here. It looks like it should go here," and it doesn't. And that's what it feels like when we're way off track of our true purpose and finding that fulfillment and calling that we're looking for.

[00:14:44] Sheri: And when I finally realized that, it was like, "Wait a minute. Who am I? What do I really enjoy? Who do I really want to work with? Who do I really want to help?" And that's where in July, I started to pivot back to this, Discovering Your Calling. And we landed where we are today. And I was smart enough this time to take the time to really evaluate is this the right move? I coached some people on it. I created some programs. I started talking about it, and I realized, "Yes, this is where I'm back. This is where I belong. And it's not quite where I was in the beginning. In 2020, it's better. It's even better.

[00:15:33] Sheri: But you know what? If I had not taken that wrong turn and tried to do the corporate thing and the team programs, I wouldn't have known that. And that's all, again, just part of this beautiful process that will help you find your calling. And I want you to feel okay with that because everything we do is going to be part of the clues. I always say to my clients, our life leaves us clues. And the clue is if it seems very hard, it's not where you belong. Whereas if it seems like it's coming with ease and it feels great and it just makes you feel whole, then that's a clue. You're on the right path. And this discovering your calling, where we are today, it feels perfect. It's like goldilocks testing out all the beds. This one's too hard, this one's too soft, this one's just right.

[00:16:30] Sheri: And that's how I feel. Like the conversations I have with my clients are just easy. The downloads that come from God, it just flows so naturally. And the process that I'm using is my process. It's not somebody else's. And that was a challenge I had last year. I was trying to use somebody else's process. That just didn't. It was a great program but it wasn't my program.

[00:16:58] Sheri: And now I just get to show up and serve and that's what I love to do. So yeah, there's still challenges and it's not perfect, it never will be, but I know I just need to make a few tweaks. It's kind of like when we're off sailing, sometimes you just need to adjust the sales a little bit. You don't need to take them down and change the whole direction of where you're going. It's just small little pivots along the way. And that's what I want for you. I want you to have that feeling that your life has fulfillment. There's a purpose to it. It's not profit driven, it's purpose driven and you know you can make an impact. And that's what you can have when you're truly, truly living in your calling.

[00:17:41] Sheri: So I just want to wrap this up because I know it's a lot of emphasis, like a lot in this podcast. So some key takeaways again. Number one, is that pivoting and changing are part of the needed process. So no shame, no failure. It's just part of the process we need to go through in order to find our calling. So embrace it. Number two, look for the clues, everything. If everything's hard, it's time to make some major changes. If everything's flowing easier, you're probably close to the right path or on the right path. Number three, if something seems just a little off, then maybe just make a slight change. Don't do like I did. Chase the shiny object and go in a whole new direction. Just figure out the small change. Number four, have a trusted advisor, a coach or a mentor who knows your goals, knows your talents and strengths and knows what you're looking to do.

[00:18:38] Sheri: And here's the key part. They can't be afraid to help you see how big of a pivot you need to make or how small of a pivot you need to make. And sometimes that's tricky because sometimes we rely on friends or family members to do that. And a lot of times they just want to protect us and they won't say the hard things that a good coach will tell you. So those are the four key takeaways.

[00:19:03] Sheri: And as we close this up, I want to let you know what's next for the Discovering Your Calling podcast. You're going to hear more podcasts like this with me, just sharing my heart and my story and tips for you to help you find your calling. You're going to hear from some really great guests that I have on. In fact, on January 2nd is our first official launch date. So January 2nd of 2023, it's the official launch date of the new Discovering Your Calling podcast.

[00:19:34] Sheri: So these have just been some little sneak peeks, some little taste of what's to come. Think of it as the appetizer. And that first interview you're going to hear when we officially launch season four, this is going to be so powerful. So my guest is Hannah Mezza Irving, and oh, my word, the interview we had was so powerful, so good. Hannah, when we were done, Hannah said she felt like she just had the best therapy session ever. And I felt like it was the best conversation around transitioning into a new colleague. It was just perfect. So Hannah is a former lawyer turned copywriter and it's just such a great conversation. So you're going to get that first.

[00:20:23] Sheri: And then on the the following week on January 9, you'll get another solo episode from me, and I'll be diving into that whole identity crisis and what happens when we lose the identity, we've been holding on to for 20 something years and a lot more with that. So in the meanwhile, we're going to take a break. If you happen to be listening, catching these live, it is the end of December of 2022, and we're wrapping up the year. So after this episode, we're going to take a little pause in the Miter household until these new episodes drop. But I would love for you to go back, catch that episode with Karen I.

[00:21:03] Sheri: And then there's another oldie but goodie that I thought would be helpful this time of year. It's episode 37 from December 2020. And there, I shared my seven simple steps to book in your year. So if you're looking for a great, systematic plan to close out your year so you can really jump start 2023, that's a great one to go back and listen to. And again, I'll put the show notes. I'll put that link in the show notes.

[00:21:30] Sheri: And again, if you're listening in real time, Happy Holidays to you and yours and I will see you back in 2023. And if you want more, until we start again, join the Discovering Your Calling Facebook group. And again, I'll put the link in the show notes because you'll hear in the other podcast, we mentioned some other things. They're old, they're gone, they're done with. So the Discovering Your Calling Facebook group is where you want to be today.

[00:21:54] Sheri: All right, my friends, until next time. Remember, life is short, so go out and enjoy the beautiful journey of life.

[00:22:02] Sheri: Thank you, friends, for spending this time with me. My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action toward discovering your calling. But before you sign off, just two more quick things. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, can you do me a huge favor and leave a review or share this with a friend? Help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world.

[00:22:25] Sheri: And second of all, if you haven't yet, don't forget to check the show notes to grab your Five to Thrive guide. It's my gift to you. It's a guide to help you intentionally invest in your natural talents so you can turn them into strengths. Think of it as your personal navigational guide on your journey to a fulfilling life. And until next episode, remember, you've been created to live a life of fulfillment, purpose, success, and joy.