How to Leave a Career That Looks Successful but Feels Wrong, with Yvonne Trost [re-release] | #562

Feeling Stuck in a Career That Looks Good on Paper? Here’s How to Break Free.

What if the “successful” career you’ve built is actually keeping you from the life you’re meant to live? In this episode, transformational coach Yvonne Trost shares her powerful story of walking away from a 25-year corporate career to pursue a more authentic and fulfilling path, and how you can, too. 

This is a special re-release of a previous episode, brought back because its message is especially relevant right now.

Are you stuck in a job that no longer feels right, but fear the unknown is holding you back?

This episode is a must-listen for professionals who feel the call for something more but aren’t sure how to make a meaningful change. 

Here’s what you’ll take away from this conversation:

• A firsthand story of leaving a secure corporate job to follow purpose and passion
• How to recognize the hidden fears and beliefs keeping you stuck in the wrong career
• A practical exercise to reconnect with what you truly want, so you can transition with clarity and courage

Press play to discover how to break free from a misaligned career and step into the life you’re truly meant for.

˚

VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

˚

The original episode with Yvonne Trost was #468:

https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/468

˚

🎙️ Want to be a guest on the podcast?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

˚

Conversations and insights on career transition, career clarity, midlife career change and career pivots for midlife professionals, including second careers, new ventures, leaving a long-term career with confidence, better decision-making, and creating purposeful, meaningful work.

˚

Transcript

[Agi Keramidas]
If you're standing at a crossroads in your career, this episode is for you. My guest today walked away from a long, successful corporate career to pursue a more fulfilling life and she shares tools to help you reconnect with what you truly want and take your next steps with clarity and courage. Welcome to Personal Development Mastery, the podcast helping mid-life professionals in transition turn uncertainty into clear direction and confident next steps.

I'm your host, Agi Keramidas. Join us every Monday for an expert conversation with a guest and every Thursday for a shorter solo episode where I reflect and share insights and tools. This is episode 562.

Today, I'm re-releasing a powerful conversation that feels more relevant than ever, especially if you're standing at a crossroads in your career. Whether you're feeling the quiet pull towards something more meaningful or you're deeply aware that the path that you're on no longer aligns with who you are, this episode will give you both insight and practical guidance. Before we start, if you are a mid-life professional in a long-standing career and you know it's time for a change, I offer one-to-one coaching to help you get clear on what's next and map a realistic plan into your next chapter.

As a former dentist who has made this transition myself, I know how challenging this can feel. To explore working together, visit personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash mentor or tap the link in the show notes. Now let's begin.

Today, it is my real pleasure to speak with Yvonne Trost. Yvonne, you are a transformational leader, happiness coach, and hypnotherapist dedicated to helping individuals lead lives filled with fulfillment and joy. Before this, you had 25 years of experience as a business and IT strategy consultant, a successful but unfulfilling career that you walked away from.

You are passionate about empowering individuals to break free from limiting beliefs and embrace their true calling. Yvonne, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to speak with you today.

[Yvonne Trost]
Thank you so much for having me, Agi.

[Agi Keramidas]
I'm looking forward to this conversation and one of the things that I would like to discuss with you is self-love and self-care because I know that it is a main theme in what you do. Before we go there, what I would like to start with is actually the change of career because I think that I am similar, changed from dentistry to what I do. It is, I believe, always a very powerful story, especially at that realization or transition moment that one realizes that I need to do something else or whatever it is for each person.

I would like to hear a bit about that milestone, that transition from your corporate job to your new life.

[Yvonne Trost]
Yes, it was a quick change but a long story in the making. I grew up and back in the day, you took these career interest inventory tests in the U.S. Mine said I should be a social worker. I thought to myself, a lot of ramen noodles and I'm not talking about the fancy kind in the restaurants anymore, like the 25-cent packages of ramen noodles in college debt might dampen my spirit to help others.

My parents, loving, kind, didn't grow up with a lot. They're like, no, you need to go into a job that makes a lot of money. I went to school for business and then I went to school for finance.

Then I thought, oh, I don't want to work at a bank. I interned at a bank. I interned at a brokerage firm.

Neither of those were for me. I joined a consulting firm. I thought, I'll do this for a couple of years, figure out what I want to be when I grow up because I'll work in different industries.

Then every single year, I was thinking, well, what do I want to be this year? What do I want to do? I always had this fear of the unknown, Auggie, because I was trained to play it safe, to get the job that was going to help you get the things that everybody thought you needed, the house, the kids, the family, the traveling, all the stuff outside of you.

I wasn't taught how to look inside of me or to care what was going on inside of me. I was taught to be resilient and to try and get what was outside of me, not because they didn't care about me, but just because they thought that would keep me safe. Every single year, I was like, this really isn't the career for me, but I went to have the courage because always the fear of the unknown.

Before kids, it was like, well, could I make it? I don't know anybody that's done anything other than what I've surrounded myself with. Then once I had my family, I'm like, I have to wait till the kids go to college.

Then I can start living for myself. If you're listening and you're doing that, don't wait because you're not doing it for the kids because you're teaching the kids not to live their fullest lives and to go inside themselves and figure out what do they want to be? What do they enjoy doing?

We spend so much time at work. We should actually feel like it's fulfilling. Because life has taught us, I don't know.

There've been a lot of people who have lost their lives randomly lately. You don't know that you're going to make it to retirement. It's cliche, but true.

Things change and people change from inspiration or desperation. I didn't really have either. I was successful.

I was playing it safe. I had all the things until desperation hit because my marriage became unsafe. I have two boys.

At the time, my oldest was seven and my youngest was four. My seven-year-old asked me for a new daddy. I'd been putting up with it.

I thought, oh, this isn't too bad. I'm sure people have it worse. Always sacrificing because I thought I needed to stay in a bad relationship for the kids because it was taught you have to have a whole family.

Again, if you're staying in a bad job and you're listening or if you're staying in a bad relationship and you think you're doing it for your children, you're actually not doing it. You're not doing them any good. You're teaching them also that they shouldn't have to necessarily think about what does a deeply connected relationship look like?

Full of love, care, understanding, support. You're teaching them like I was taught. Tough it out.

Make it work. It took that terrible divorce for me to find yoga. From yoga, I found meditation.

From meditation, I found manifesting and quantum physics. All of a sudden, I manifested a gentleman in my life who was becoming a hypnotherapist. I'm like, sure, you can try and test yourself, your skills on me.

I need to stop drinking so much wine and binge-watching Netflix. Can you make that stop? But Aggie, what happened was amazing.

I didn't go into trance, really. I didn't have any new memories. Some people do both.

Some people don't. It doesn't really matter. The thing that matters is when you connect your conscious mind to your subconscious mind and you realize like, oh my goodness, I've been living my life based upon these limiting beliefs that are just lies.

They're just stories that my younger self had to tell myself to figure out like, how do I feel safe? How do I make sense of what's going on? Because nobody's childhood is perfect.

I thought mine was boring. But even if you're like, oh, I don't have any big T trauma. I wasn't sexually abused or physically abused or my parents are still together.

It doesn't take that. It doesn't take that. We're coming back to the self-love part.

All it takes is for you not to know that you're enough just as you are and that you should love yourself and can love yourself fully just as you are. And others show you that by loving you and supporting you and having a safe place where you can go to an adult as yourself and feel like you can tell them or ask them anything. So it took the universe knocking me on the head quite a bit, feeling unsafe in a marriage, getting out of that.

But then once I found the key, which is in my subconscious mind, I realized, and this is what we've done with almost a hundred of our clients. You hold the key, you've locked your own self in your emotional mental prison, and you just don't know it. And once I found that key, Auggie, I'm like, I have more to be afraid of by staying small and staying stuck.

Then I do exploring, right? I was like in a stale little pond and it felt safe, but I wasn't happy. And actually it became unsafe in the sense that I started, like if you're listening and you have coping mechanisms, maybe you're like me and you drink, you used to drink too much wine or you watch a lot of TV and you disconnect from your own self, right?

You don't really live your life or you work too much, right? Workaholics, that's also a coping mechanism. There's all sorts of things, but that becomes unsafe because it starts impacting your mental and your physical health.

[Agi Keramidas]
That's great. And what you said about the desperation versus the inspiration, and for you, the desperation was that led you to that connection as you described it between the conscious and subconscious mind. The way you were describing it, you didn't use the word spiritual experience, but it sounded like something like that to me.

But what I want to ask is for someone that, and we know very well that desperation has the power to change us very much because we are desperate. Inspiration is much more, let's say, challenging to lead our decisions, especially tough decisions like this, living a spouse or living a career that is successful in the eyes of people. How would you approach someone who at the moment would prefer to change out of inspiration rather than waiting for that catastrophe to hit?

It could be for different people. There are accidents, there are health issues. The universe does find a way to put us in the right direction.

And the more we don't listen, the heavier the pushes. Yes.

[Yvonne Trost]
Yes, absolutely. So if you feel like, well, I don't feel desperate. I didn't.

It just gradually snuck up on me and got worse and worse and worse and worse until it's like, when did I show up in an after-school special movie? In the US, when I was younger, there used to be these after-school special movies on Lifetime. And it was always some dramatic thing that you thought would never happen to you.

So if you don't have that dramatic thing that's happening to you, but you want more for yourself or you want more for your family, that's why we changed our name of our company to Limitless You, because I believe everybody is limitless. So you don't have to be suffering to want to grow. If you're not growing, you are basically dying or you're staying stagnant.

So I would say, keep growing, even if you're not suffering. Keep growing. That's where the richness of life, the true abundance lives.

So what we would do is several different things, but I always ask people, what's your magic wish? That's how I start any relationship with a client. And then we get to the root of what's at that magic wish.

Because quite often, what people want is something they've been conditioned to believe they think they should have, or they think they should want.

[Agi Keramidas]
When you say magic wish, how do you mean it?

[Yvonne Trost]
Well, do you know what a magic wish is?

[Agi Keramidas]
No, I'm not sure. And let's clarify it also for the listener, because if it's not obvious to me, then it's probably not obvious to others also.

[Yvonne Trost]
Have you ever heard or watched the movie Aladdin?

[Agi Keramidas]
Yes. Oh, that kind of magic wish. Okay.

Yes. Please carry on. Yes.

[Yvonne Trost]
Of course. Right? Because I want people to think without limits.

Quite often, Auggie, we not only get them their magic wish, their true magic wish, they get more than that. Because a human being is more powerful than they absolutely know. Your thoughts, this isn't just positive thinking, this is neuroscience, this is quantum physics, this is modern science and what yogis have known for thousands of years.

You can create what you want in your life if you believe that you can, and you start cultivating the skills in order to do so. So that's what I help people do. So let me ask you, Auggie, if I had a magic wand, what would be your magic wish?

[Agi Keramidas]
For me, the magic wish, which is like my deep desire for myself is freedom, absolute freedom in all areas of life.

[Yvonne Trost]
Yes. Excellent.

[Agi Keramidas]
I think it's quite common. The freedom is a great feeling.

[Yvonne Trost]
Yes. And why is it important to you to have freedom?

[Agi Keramidas]
Freedom is connected to success with me, to successful life, and also to fulfillment. In a way, Yvonne, and this is a different conversation, but in a way I feel that this is something that I'm meant to achieve, to fulfill, to attain that freedom. So it's not like just some thought, it is a calling.

There is something for me to grow and evolve as a person or as a soul also to reach there. So it's an interesting question. Thank you for asking me, I wasn't thinking.

[Yvonne Trost]
Well, you asked what I would do. I started to play a little bit, but I take over the whole interview. So I'll pause there.

But if you go to, because I want people, we don't stop and think about that. We usually think about what we don't want. Right?

We spend, I did also spend all of our energy trying to avoid the things that we don't want. And then we have very little energy or space that we hold to think about what we do want without limits. And that's because our subconscious mind believes that it's not possible, or that we're not enough or that we don't deserve it.

Right? You might not consciously think that, or maybe you do, right? There's a lot of people that have that conscious battle that I struggle with.

But if they, if you're already feeling like I'm not suffering, your subconscious mind will hold you back if it feels you're not safe. Because the only job your subconscious mind has is to keep you alive and safe. It doesn't care if you're happy or sad, fulfilled or not fulfilled, living your purpose or not living your purpose.

So you have to spend some focused effort and like, tell people, I'm like your subconscious safari guide. We figure out what's going on back there, connect it with your conscious and give you back power. Cause Auggie, you're not your mind and you're not your body.

You're something greater. You're that which watches it. So if you're listening and you're like, I have no idea what they're talking about and how this applies to me, go to my website, unlock limitless you.com.

And there's a resources section. And in the resources section, I have a bunch of fun things for you to hold space. They're free.

The one is called, um, getting to the root of it, where I ask you what your magic wishes. And then I start you on this conversational journey. Like I just started with Auggie, we would get down to, I would be asking you seven or eight times.

And then from there, we would start getting to perhaps what is a limiting belief that's holding you back from attaining that magic wish because it's actually not that magical, right? Most times our mind just makes us think it is so that we don't take risks. We don't create change because our subconscious mind is risk averse, change averse.

If you're alive, it wants you to stay right where you're at. That's why I stayed in a career for 25 years. That wasn't fulfilling.

But now I know now I'm magical. And if you're listening and you're not suffering, but you want to be magical and feel limitless, you can do.

[Agi Keramidas]
This is great. And you actually, I'm very happy that you answered the question I was about to ask you because the concept of the magic quiz, the way you described it is great, but what can one do with it? So it's great that you offer this resource and, uh, you know, to go deeper and, uh, utilize it.

So thank you for that. Uh, I would like to go, I will switch gears a little bit, even though we'll probably end up talking about, uh, the same thing because it's connected, but I think I would like to view now this from the angle of self-love because I believe it is very important in order to, for everything that you were talking so far, I think it is an important component of all that. So I wanted to hear your, uh, thoughts on, on self-love and how, um, how can one understand it the way that you understand self-love?

Because, you know, sometimes it is one of those phrases that are used and different people might see it in a different way. Some people might think that it is a bad thing. Uh, so I would like to hear your thoughts on, on, on that.

[Yvonne Trost]
Yes. If you're listening and you think self-love, maybe you're somebody that thinks that's woo-woo or that's not important because self-love, or maybe you think it's selfish or maybe you think like, Oh yeah, I love myself. I challenge you to dive a little deeper.

Also go, I have another fun resource for that. It only takes five minutes. It's 12 questions.

It's called our self-love quiz. So if you go to unlock limitless, you.com forward slash quiz, you can take this self-love quiz in less than five minutes, Augie. And it's so insightful.

You'll get some results, but it, we apply it by not trying to describe it conceptually, but experientially, what is your way of being right with yourself inside and outside? What is your way of being with others? Right?

So rather than like taking the Webster dictionary version, I want you to look at how you're living. So many people think, Oh yeah, I love myself. But when they answer these questions, they're like, Oh, maybe I have some room to grow.

And if you do have room to grow, that's just good news because things are just going to keep getting better. So I think that, um, there's a lot of people, including my old self that thought perhaps self-love was selfish or perhaps self-love people that love themselves were egotistical because that's how I'd been kind of trained, right? I was trained to be generous, to give unto others as you would give unto yourself to always put others first to do for others all the time, even at the cost of your own, you know, whatever it is, sanity, stability, health, give, give, give, give, give, and now shall receive someday.

Maybe what I've learned though, it's not a bad rule. If you've heard of the golden rule given to others, as you've given to yourself, I've changed it a little bit to account for self-love. Cause I think it was missing.

I changed it to the platinum rule, which is given to yourself as you want to be given unto so that you can be your best in order to give unto others. Cause quite often when you empty your own self-love cup or your self-energy club or self-health, whatever it is you want to call it, you're not your best self. When you don't love yourself and you try to pretend to be somebody else, right?

How many of us are wearing masks? I, I got, I got compared to my classmate all the time. Why aren't you more like Hannah?

You're grounded. If you don't get straight A's like you need to do this, you need to do that. And we're taught to put all these masks on, right?

And none of them have to do with self-love. They tell us you're not enough Augie as you are. Right.

But do you think you'd make an amazing Yvonne or you would make an amazing Augie?

[Agi Keramidas]
I think it's obvious.

[Yvonne Trost]
It's obvious, but we don't, we don't live that way. Yes. You cannot be your best self.

If you don't fully love yourself, if you don't fully love yourself, then you're never going to put out the love and the light that you've been born as your birthright with. So I want you to ask yourself what you think you're not enough of. And then I want you to think about, why do I think that, where did that conditioning happen?

Like there's all sorts of way you can top, you can tap into your subconscious without hypnosis. I just like it cause it's the easiest and it's kind of done for you. Um, I don't give people the answers, but I'm their guide.

I lead them to the answers because that's where true change and embodiment happens. Um, but I think one of the things that I tell people, it's actually selfish Augie, not to put yourself health or self love first, because then if you don't, you can never give unto others your fullest. That's what I was doing.

I was working my life away thinking, Oh, I was doing it for the kids. The kids just wanted their mom at home. They just wanted a non-stress mom to play with, right?

Your partners, right? Like how many marriages or relationships they're supposed to be. You're like a ride or dies or like your best friend.

And then it becomes bickering and competitive because you give everything away and then you resent when you don't get anything back exactly like you want. And quite often you don't communicate what you want because that's also thought of as selfish.

[Agi Keramidas]
That's a big, big topic about communication altogether. Yeah.

[Yvonne Trost]
We could have a whole nother show on that. I've learned so much, so much that, you know, people don't have a crystal ball and nobody can take care of you like you can. That's my initial thought.

I don't know if you have any like, uh, pull the thread questions on that. Does that answer your question on self love?

[Agi Keramidas]
It does. I liked, uh, there was a phrase you used, fully love yourself, which I liked. Is there a phrase perhaps or some affirmation or something, a practice that can help one love themselves?

Let's say a bit more. I'm not asking for something miraculous, but some, some kind of practice that can, one can use towards that.

[Yvonne Trost]
Absolutely. Um, I think there's, there's a million different guided meditations, but one practice that is, feels a little odd, but it's accessible to everybody and it's free is something called the mirror exercise. Okay.

So if you haven't heard of it yet, there's different, different versions of it. But the version that I use and teach my community, I call my tribe is look at your own eyes in the mirror, Augie, or everybody's almost got a smartphone. Now you can, no excuse, look into your camera, but I want you to really look into your eyes.

If you've not done that, it feels really strange because we don't see ourselves. And when we look into our eyes and we start to see ourselves, we're like, Ooh, I don't know if I like what I see. So look into your own eyes and not just the eyes of adult Augie, but little Augie in there.

Cause your subconscious mind is the age of probably 10 year old, seven year old, something around that age. If you've not done the work to kind of reparent and upgrade the, the coding, it's just a little, it's a little you in there. So I want you to look into the mirror every day, into your eyes.

Like you can even now, like Augie, look into your eyes. Like when we're on this phone call here, Zoom, and I want you to see you and I want you to see little Augie. And I want you to tell him seven times, I'm proud of you for, and then you finish it.

I'm proud of you for hosting this podcast. I'm proud of you for having vulnerable conversations. I'm proud of you for like, not yelling this morning when you were frustrated, whatever, whatever the things are you like, you look into your eyes.

Seven times you say what you're proud of. And then you say seven, seven things that you're letting go of, or you're forgiving yourself for. Right.

I forgive you for being 10 pounds heavier than you want to be. I forgive you for not making the raise you wanted this year. I forgive you for, and I'm letting go of my parents, never thinking I was enough.

I'm letting go of my divorce and feeling guilty about my kids, whatever the things are. Seven times you say something, and then you say, I'm committed to seven times. I'm committed to growing my mind.

I'm committed to eating healthier. I'm committed to not yelling or raising my voice. I'm committed, whatever the things are.

So seven things you're proud of, seven things you're letting go of are forgiving and seven things you're committed to. And at the end, you say, I love you. You're my best friend.

And I got you. If you do that every morning. And if you like, it will feel weird to start.

And you might have a hard time coming up with seven things to start. And it's okay. If the seven things from yesterday are the same things as the seven things from today, but let your mind be open.

And that's also where some things come out of your subconscious and you realize you've been judging yourself for something perhaps when you get to the forgiveness part. Right. That is a huge way.

Right. And it only takes, I don't know, five minutes.

[Agi Keramidas]
I want to thank you very much because this is indeed practical, indeed very useful and the way that I know that how powerful Miro's work is, but this exercise and the way that you describe it, I will definitely invite anyone intrigued to try it. I will actually utilize some of its elements on my own routine, so thank you very much for this. I will start wrapping this intriguing conversation up, Yvonne, and I do have a couple of quick questions that I will ask you.

Where do you want to direct the listener, the mastery seeker who wants to find out more about you? You mentioned the quiz and the resources.

[Yvonne Trost]
That's the best spot. I'm on all the socials as my name is Yvonne Marie Troost, but my company's name is LimitlessU, but go to our website because I put so many things out there for you that you can get started. UnlockLimitlessU.com forward slash resources. You'll find the quiz. You'll find the getting to the root of it, your magic wish. You'll find a limiting belief lie detector, a joy regenerator, a ton of things that you can get started.

If you want to talk about any of those or if you're just like, I want to talk to her, there's a button to link a call. UnlockLimitlessU.com forward slash call. I offer a free discovery call to anybody that wants to sign up and start to find and unlock themselves.

I switched careers not because this is all about moneymaking. I switched careers because I want to give this gift that I have found to as many people as possible. If you want to listen to more amazing podcasts like Auggie's, we have one called How to Be Happier for Entrepreneurs.

Whether you're an entrepreneur or not, it applies to you. We bring people like me, people that are healers, or people that have gone through a transformation. You're saying earlier, people that want to be inspired.

I'm hoping that through listening, whether you're feeling desperate or you're feeling I need to be inspired, that we could help you in both ways.

[Agi Keramidas]
That's great. Thank you. Yvonne, I have two quick questions for you, final questions.

The first one is what does personal development mean to you?

[Yvonne Trost]
Personal development, what does that mean to me? Wow. Well, if you'd asked me five years ago, it would have been a very corporate answer.

Now it's just much deeper. It's energetic. It's evolving as a human being, right?

If you've done a lot of what you read, self-help books, or you've done personal development, or even if you see a therapist, a lot of that's all working on your conscious mind. And your conscious mind, by the time you're 35, is only 5% in charge of what you say, do, think, your whole personality. So for me now, personal development, I've kind of taken it to the next level.

And I try and help people take it to the limitless level. And that's understanding your subconscious mind and taking back the steering wheel of your life and of who you are, and connecting your mind, body, and spirit.

[Agi Keramidas]
Nice. And the hypothetical question, if you could go back in time and meet your 18-year-old self, what's one piece of advice you would give her?

[Yvonne Trost]
Oh, gosh. 18. Well, if I could meet my 18-year-old self, I would need a lot of time to tell her all the things that I've learned.

But the biggest piece of advice I would give is lean into your intuition and creativity and know that it's all going to be okay. Don't try and control things. Don't try and plan it out.

Be open. Explore.

[Agi Keramidas]
That's great. Yvonne, I want to thank you so much for this conversation. I enjoyed it.

It was illuminating, I think, in many ways. And those practical exercises that you offered, I think they are immensely useful. So I want to wish you all the very best with carrying on with your mission, helping others.

[Yvonne Trost]
Yeah, thank you.

[Agi Keramidas]
Any last parting words?

[Yvonne Trost]
Don't wait. Don't wait to start loving yourself and figuring out who you truly are and what truly lights you up. Start now.

[Agi Keramidas]
Thank you for listening to this conversation with Yvonne Trost. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on creating a career and life that genuinely align with who you are becoming. If you are a midlife professional in a long-standing career and you know it's time for a change, I offer one-to-one coaching to help you get clear on what's next and map a realistic plan into your next chapter.

As a former dentist who has made this transition myself, I know how challenging this can feel. To explore working together, visit personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash mentor or tap the link in the show notes. Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.