Natasha

Welcome to the Career shifters podcast. I'm Natasha Stanley. Last week we heard from Monique and her pretty significant shift from a media career into life as a forest bathing guide. And today we're hearing from career coach Jo Green about the lessons and insights she heard in that episode.

Natasha

Jo is a self-confessed research nerd who made her own career change from project management into coaching and who has since supported hundreds of people to find their own version of fulfilling work. We sat down to discuss some powerful topics from Monique's story, including why holding on to anger could be keeping you stuck, what to do when you think your career idea is probably just a hobby, and the value of distinguishing between what you can control and what you can't.

Natasha

Jo is a delicious combination of big heart and tough truths. I have a hunch there are some ideas in today's episode that you'll be thinking about for a long time to come. So let's get into it.

Natasha

Jo, thank you for joining me today. This is super lovely to get to talk through Monique's story with you. What were your first impressions having listened to what she got up to?

Jo

It was amazing, both seeing the external change that happens, like on paper, the career change, but all the changes that happened in her life and in her brain and in her thinking that came was really cool. Because she persevered so much when there were all sorts of parts of the journey where she could have just run away and said, 'this is too hard. I'm just going to get back to what I was doing before'. So it was amazing hearing that trajectory as she went through things.

Natasha

Yeah. Career change looks like such an external process, right? I'm changing my job. It's all of the stuff out here. And what I think people come up against in such a big way when they start the process is like, 'Oh, actually 90% of this is internal. It's about me and my mindset and how I feel and how I navigate emotions'. And one of the first things that she talked about was this kind of split that she was experiencing of trying to keep her cool and making it look like she was fine on the surface every day at work, but really struggling underneath.

Natasha

And that is a state I think a lot of our listeners can relate to and probably a state that a lot of your clients come to you in. What's the cost of living this way? What's the impact that you see on people who are trying to keep up appearances at work every day, but really having a hard time?

Jo

I think there's lots. It's a lot of energy to do that. I hear people just sounding so exhausted, that they're having to put so much into going to work and stay motivated, stay looking like they want to be there, stay doing the job that they realise they don't want to be in anymore.

Jo

And then they get home and they're in a bad mood, and they're exhausted, and they've got to go and do whatever comes after work, whether that's going and seeing friends or looking after their kids or their parents or whatever it might be. And the weekends then become, I'm just recovering from how exhausting work is. And then it's straight back into work again. And it just feels like this relentless cycle where they just don't know, how am I actually going to figure out how to stop this? And how am I going to have space and energy to think about the career changes? Because work is so big and so exhausting and so all-consuming, to be able to keep going with it, it's such a catch-22. It's so difficult for people.

Natasha

Yeah, it really is. There's also this dynamic of... it's almost an integrity issue that I see for people. It's like, 'I feel like a fake every single day at work, going in, putting on a mask, pretending to be someone I'm not, pretending to feel a way that I don't.' And there's a real almost kind of moral injury that comes from faking something every day, right? There's the practical impact of the energy and the exhaustion that you've talked about. And then there's also this kind of fundamental damage to selfhood, right? Do you see that as well?

Jo

Yeah, which can really erode your confidence in who you are and what you want to be doing in the world as well. There's this putting on a wall and a mask to go into work when actually the inside is screaming, 'I don't want to be here and this isn't me'.

Natasha

Yeah. And for a lot of people, I almost see that they lose sight of who that person is underneath the mask. There's a writer I love called Parker Palmer. He wrote a book called A Hidden Wholeness. And I will absolutely butcher the quote if I try and say it verbatim. But it's something like, if you live behind a wall for long enough, then the true self that you built that wall to hide from the world disappears from your own view. And you forget that the wall was even there.

Natasha

And I see that a lot with people who are in this battle is... 'It feels like my values have become the values of the organization. And I spend so much time pretending to be this other person that I don't even know who I am anymore', which is really, really difficult when you're then thinking, okay, well, what do I want to do with the rest of my life?

Jo

And I think like Monique had, she needed to step away to find that. She couldn't do that when she was in that situation, which not everyone is able to do. Like she had a really great opportunity with that long service lead to say, okay, I'm going to walk away. And I loved her saying – but I can imagine it feeling really uncomfortable – 'I'm so much happier now I'm not at work'. Like that realisation and her realising how seeing that... it was a checklist, wasn't it? About burnout, that she saw and went, oh, that's what's going on. But she needed to step away from it all to be able to see that and get in touch with who she was and what she wanted and that could then start the career change journey happening for her.

Natasha

Yeah. Monique had the chance to go on long service leave and she had that space to regulate her nervous system again and do that reflection. And as you say, there's many people out there who are craving a career change and just can't step away from the grind for whatever reason. So for those people, what can they do to... sort of create some kind of space and objectivity as they decide what might come next?

Jo

I think it can be thinking about creative ways to find the space in the week. So it could be, what do you do at the end of the day to finish work and then start the next part of the day? So is it that you go have a shower? Or, we're all working from home now, so it needs a physical change of space. I'm going to go for a walk around the block. I'm going to exercise or something. I'm going to change my clothes. I'm going to do something that goes, 'work is done. Now it's the other me I'm kind of getting in touch with'.

Jo

I've had some people take one day a week of annual leave over the course of several months so that they just get one day a week, hopefully a Friday or a Monday, so they've then got three days together to create a bit of space to start thinking about their career change and not what they want to do. Or taking like a big chunk of leave, of his annual leave or unpaid leave or asking him to go part-time or whatever is going to sort of create the space. Actually physically making that space to be able to do it, I think can be really important.

Natasha

I love that it's such a simple-sounding thing to do, but it can be really powerful, right? Herminia Ibarra in her book, Working Identity, talks about... again, I'm probably going to get the name of this wrong, but I think she talks about it as Identity Buffering. And she says exactly the same thing. This is the place or the space where I'm trying on this identity. And this is the time and the place when I'm trying on this one. And something as simple as I'm changing my clothes or I'm taking a shower and splitting that work identity is a beautiful idea. What else springs to mind in terms of ways to make room for some objectivity, do you think?

Jo

I love... how Monique then got in touch with what she was drawn to in the world. And I think that's some of it, like having space to do the things that you love, tune into the things that give you energy, that light you up, that fill your cup, that bring joy to your day, whatever it is, however you want to phrase it.

Jo

Because that can firstly make the working week feel a bit better, but can also then give you some little clues to where you want to follow your curiosity with the career change and go and explore it a bit more. And she obviously had that great opportunity with the long service leave to step away and find that. But I think for people who are still working, it's creating the time to go and do that, whether it's going and just one day a week going, I'm going to go and do something different on that day to go to that workshop, or to that course, or to that thing that I've always thought, I wonder what that would be like.

Jo

It can spark some ideas. It can start the ball rolling on things. It can be some really little simple things like that. But again, it's creating intentionality to do that in the week. Otherwise, the problem is the weeks can just go past and the months can go past and none of this happens because the space isn't created to do that.

Natasha

Yeah. And I love that idea of not just doing things that you already know fill your cup, but also taking the time to do things that are new and novel and different and maybe give you that dopamine hit, but maybe give you some new ideas. Because I remember Monique talked about Dorie Clark and her suggestion that instead of looking for your passion, look at what do you do even though nobody's paying you for it. And that was great for Monique because it immediately sent her down the nature pathway. And for people who are like, 'I don't even know who I am anymore. I don't do anything outside work because I'm exhausted and tired and burnt out', as you were saying. What you're pointing to there gives them a way of maybe starting to find that out, right?

Jo

Yeah, I agree. It's got to bring in some newness because otherwise you're just going to be having the same information coming in.

Natasha

I think a lot of people, certainly that I work with, when I start to talk about what you're pointing to of 'get some new inputs, go and do some stuff you've never done before...' There's an immediate concern of like, 'but what is the right thing for me to do that I've never done before?', right? 'How do I make this as productive as possible? How do I choose what to do? I don't know what to invest that little bit of time in that I have every week.' How do you think about where to start if someone's feeling that way?

Jo

It's pressured, isn't it? There's so much pressure we put on ourselves for it to be perfect and be the right thing. I think I'm always saying to people, 'done is better than perfect'. Like, just go and pick something. Because until you've gone and done it, you don't know whether you're going to like it or not. And maybe there'll be a tiny spark of something we can learn that is actually... I mean, Monique was brilliant with this, wasn't she? When she saw the tour guide and she watched. It was so great. It made me smile. And she just was kind of eavesdropping a bit on what this tall guy was doing and went, 'oh yeah, I don't want to do that. That's not what I thought it is. And I don't want to do that'.

Jo

Or it could be you're at something and it's someone that you meet. That one thing they say just makes you think, 'oh, I didn't know that that existed in the world. I didn't know you could work like that. I'd never thought of that that way'. And it's just this tiny little thing that might seem so insignificant, but when you have lots of those... they can really build to give some clues about who you are, what you're drawn to in the world, what you want in the future that can all start to come together to piece together the career change.

Natasha

Yeah, the willingness for the clues to be tiny, right? Rather than coming as a fully formed career idea.

Jo

Yeah, and that takes the pressure off, right? Otherwise, you're right. Otherwise, people... go in thinking 'that one thing I'm going to do is going to be the thing that figures out the whole career change.' Because you just want, when you're in that situation, particularly when you're so desperate to get out of work that isn't feeling right and is so draining, you just want to know what to do to get out of there. It's really hard not to put the pressure on.

Natasha

Yeah, it is. Monique has this kind of enchanting humility about her that I just absolutely loved. And... One of the places I think we really saw that show up was when she realised, okay, 'nature is the place that I go when nobody's paying me for it.' And she started to explore what kind of careers were out there in the nature space. Now, she didn't give that great significance in our conversation. But for me, that on its own was huge. Someone really well established in a big fancy media corporation, even being willing to consider a career in something that's so different and that for so many people would say, 'oh, that's just a hobby. It's not a career. It's never going to pay as well. I'm not going to bother.'

Natasha

But she didn't do that. She had the humility and the curiosity and the commitment to go and check out different jobs in that space anyway. Do you see a lot of people get stuck in this idea of, 'Oh, that's just a hobby' or 'That's not going to be realistic for me'?

Jo

Yeah, people just stop at the first hurdle because they can't see what it could become. Because 'yeah, that thing's just a hobby. If I do that, maybe I won't like it anymore because it 'll become work. Because work to them is something negative rather than it being something that actually can bring them energy and build them up. And so they just stop at the first hurdle of dismissing anything in that whole area or industry because, no, that's just a hobby.

Jo

Whereas actually, you don't know what you don't know. You can't be what you can't see. So maybe there is something in that that you haven't thought about yet. And if you just start off with that tiny thing of there's something, like Monique did, there's something about nature for me. and go with it. And I love, she just delved into it.

Jo

And that's what I really, really encourage my clients to do is just go and immerse yourself in that world once you've figured out some of the areas that they're drawn to, which is exactly what she did. She was going off and doing hikes and looking what other people are doing in their careers and speaking to people about what they're up to, reading books because that's where the idea came from and immersing herself in that world. She was so open-minded. in doing that. And that's what I really encourage people is just go and see because you don't know yet. And maybe it will, maybe it will end up still being a hobby, but you won't have wasted anything. You might learn and meet some wonderful people who also really enjoy the same stuff as you in the process of doing it and find out new things that you could do as work, as a hobby, who knows. But if you close yourself off from the beginning, then you could miss something that could really be wonderful.

Natasha

The question that I find myself asking people all the time, sometimes explicitly, sometimes in a more gentle way, is are you willing to be gloriously wrong and delightedly surprised? Are you open to that? And sometimes just that willingness to be like, wouldn't it be great if I was completely wrong about this thing I'm completely certain about? It can sometimes just be the kicker.

Jo

Yeah. That's brilliant.

Natasha

You talked there about how Monique found the thing as she was reading a book. Tell me about what you heard in that part of her story when she read that line about forest bathing.

Jo

Part of what I heard was how she changed and how you mentioned how she changed in talking about it. I heard energy change in her voice. It was such a clear moment for her. But also then when you delved into what is forest bathing and getting her to explain it, you can just hear how articulate she was, how much energy she had talking about it, the lightness that came, just the joy in her voice that was there.

Natasha

Totally, yeah,

Jo

And I love that. That's one of my favorite bits for clients is seeing people. It's infectious when people are in that state. They're just like, 'this stuff, this stuff'. It's like your body is saying, More of this, right? I want more of this stuff. This is what brings energy and joy to life. It's that fuzz that we get. And we can miss it because we're not paying attention to our bodies. We're all up in our head. All the stuff like Monique was saying, it's got to be how I think about work and success and money and practicalities and blah, blah, blah. All the stuff of career that we just get caught up in. And then we can miss the clues that our body is giving us that actually tells us what's really aligned with us, what resonates with us. And that doesn't lie. It's either there or it's not. That can often be the bit that people miss. They're doing work that they're good at. They know the kind of skills they want to use. They're getting paid to do it, but they're not fulfilled because they're not getting this buzz of energy. And Monique put it so brilliantly that she'd always thought that work wasn't supposed to do that. Work wasn't supposed to give you energy. It was just there as something to give you money. And I could just love that shift in her that she suddenly saw, oh, actually, I can get this from work. How amazing if you can have it at work and outside of work and feel really fulfilled in both. That's where it all starts to come together.

Natasha

As I'm listening to you, I've almost got like this mental image of someone in that moment of being given permission to even imagine that that could be possible. And there's this weird kind of dual experience of like giddy childlike, like I get to go and play. And then this real fear of if I let in that possibility, then I'm also letting in the possibility for heartbreak. The bigger I allow myself to dream and the more hopeful I allow myself to be, the more open and vulnerable I am to deep disappointment if I find out that it's not possible. And there's a real courage, I think, to being willing to step into that space that we saw Monique really embrace.

Jo

And you could hear her. I mean, the phrase her friend said... it wasn't 'just do it', was it? It was 'Just do the thing'. But she was like, okay, I found the thing. Now I've got to go do the thing. So she had huge motivation and fire in her belly of like, I have got to do something different now. But then it all sort of galloped from there in a way, didn't it? In a way, maybe a little bit too quickly, but then all the doubts sort of came later and she sort of freaked out and went, oh God, what am I doing? But the initial like, buzz of like, I have to do this thing was so strong for her. Yeah.

Natasha

Monique's friend Ed, if you're out there, high fives for this mantra that I think is now going to become the mantra of many, many people. I think everybody needs a little Ed's energy in their career change.

Jo

Definitely.

Natasha

I also, though, and you mentioned this before we started recording, I also sometimes see people decide, okay, I'm going to just do the thing. And the thing that they do is they sign up for a three-year master's program, right? Or they just go for a job in a new area that's giving them energy. What kind of caveats or provisos or guidance might you give to people about the thing that they might just do in a way that allows them to have that ed energy and also maybe mitigates the risk of taking a big leap into something?

Jo

Yeah I think, it's as you said, it's like the energy is there and that can be amazing for the momentum and so it's not losing that but it's finding some ways to do it in a small way first to just work out the sort of nitty-gritty and the nuts and bolts of it because And I mean, Monique had such a great realization, which I had on my career journey as well, of 'I want to do this thing. And then, oh, I've actually got to run a business doing that as well'. And hadn't quite thought that through. So I think going back a step and going, okay, let me go and find out the false facets of what would this career be like? Not just the bit that really excites me, which for Monique was the forest bathing, but also what would that look like as a full career? And how can I go and find out what that would be like day to day? How can I go and go forest bathing and see, okay, this is the experience. How can I try it out with a friend and just see how does it feel if I do it? How can I go and speak to as many people who are doing forest bathing in different ways to understand what's it like self-employed? What's it like employed? What's it like doing it as a portfolio career? How do people have this in as a mix? Just to be able to make a really informed decision about what you want it to look like, if it's what you end up wanting to do, that can just add a bit more A bit more support and a bit more understanding about what the journey is going to be before you've taken that massive leap.

Natasha

Just do the thing and just do the little thing first and then do the next little thing and then just do the next little thing.

Jo

Yeah. Yeah. One step at a time.

Natasha

You mentioned there that feeling of panic that set in for Monique like a couple of weeks after she'd signed up for the training. Yeah. And one of the aspects of that that she mentioned was the knowledge that once she committed to this path, other people would know and she would have to deliver. It's easy to say, oh, we just don't care what people think. But I think this is a very real worry for people, especially people who are making a change to something very different. What strategies can people adopt to maybe take the edge off? Knowing that if you're making a big career change, other people will know what you're doing and they might be watching.

Jo

It can be difficult because if like Monique, you've taken a long service leave and people are going, what are you doing now? That's really hard of like, how do you give an answer to that? But it can be coming up with your stock standard answer that you're ready because you know that question is coming of what you feel comfortable is the answer.

Jo

I'm thinking about a client that I've got at the moment and he is in a really technical job. He's realized he wants to do something that's more people focused. So even just saying to people, I really want to make a change. I haven't figured out exactly what that looks like yet, but I know that I want the career that is more focused on using my people skills and my technical skills. Because that then gives something people to sort of hang off or to ask another question and say, what do you mean by people skills? Or I've got someone that's gone from this to this. Is that the kind of thing you mean? So it doesn't need to be, I'm exploring whether to be a UX designer, a midwife or a whatever, like ABC. It can be the broad strokes of, I know it's not this, but I'm thinking it could be something to do with this. But I'm still in the exploratory stage. So I think practicing and having it ready, what is the phrase that you're going to say? Because you know it's going to be coming from people. The other thing that Monique said was that she realized it was more of an internal thing than an external thing. She was feeling it as there's this pressure externally of, oh, what are people going to think? And then she realized it was actually an internal thing happening for her. So I think that might have been partly that she just needed to get used to the identity change that she was having. Because she put on this new coat, this complete change in her and in her life. She just needed her brain to catch up on it. And she said it was actually the pressure she was putting on herself rather than the pressure she was feeling from other people.

Natasha

Yeah. Yeah, lovely. What do you see people tussle with the most when it comes to that... internal experience of having to renegotiate your own sense of who you are and your own sense of identity?

Jo

Some of it can be letting go of the past, letting go of this career that they'd invested a lot of time, maybe money, maybe energy and studying things to be in. It feels like a lot to turn their backs on it. Or like Monique, she'd been in that company for many, many years as well. It can feel hard to walk away from something that you've been so invested in and that can come with it and I think when she was talking about all the fear of failure that she had and that beautiful story of when she went and set up that forest bathing to do with her partner and then she vomited because she put so much pressure on herself oh my goodness there is an amazing Renee Brown podcast called the FFTs I'm not going to swear, the effing first time, where she so, as Brene Brown does, so eloquently talks about the fact that when we're doing something that is new, we put so much pressure on ourselves and that we need to call it out and name it. I'd be like, yeah, this is hard because this is new and that's okay. It's supposed to be. And knowing that that's part of the journey that we're on to that mastery, to getting better at it, And knowing that and just naming that can really help just to ease the pressure of like, yeah, that's where I'm at right now. And that's okay. I know I'm doing the right thing. I'm going to carry on. Just do the thing, as Monique said. Just one step at a time, because time is the thing that's going to gain the confidence and move the identity. The more time and the more things you're doing in that new space, the further you are away from that previous identity that you had.

Natasha

It sounds like there's stages to this renegotiation, right? And Monique went through an exercise where she looked at everything that she'd done in the past in her career. And what is it about those things that felt good? And what is it about those things that didn't feel good? And that can be an incredibly insightful process. But for a lot of people that I work with, it's unbelievably and surprisingly emotional, right? There's a grief to it of... As you say, letting go.

Jo

That's exactly the word I was just thinking of. Yeah, there's a grief to it. Yeah. I actually say to clients if they're finding that really hard, that there's either something about the career, the place that they're finding hard to let go of, or that they've actually got some anger there, which could be from a redundancy or a manager or something. But actually putting pen to paper and writing it out and getting it out of your body can be the best way to do it. And then if you want to go to the next stage, you could burn it. You could rip it up. You could do something like that. You're right with that piece of paper. You've got to get it out. Otherwise, it's just going to sit there. And sometimes I can hear that with clients where they keep bringing up either their current work at their seller or in their past work because they're stuck in that sort of trauma of this thing that isn't right and this thing that's bad. And they've got to move through that because, yeah, there's got to be a sense of being able to let go. Otherwise, you can't come into that new identity because you're still stuck where you were before.

Natasha

Yeah. I also often see people that they need to grieve. They might need to express some of that anger. And then there's also a real element of forgiveness that's required. I see so many people beating themselves up. I've wasted so much time. I should have done better. I should have made a different choice. And there's really something there about recognizing that you were doing the absolute best that you could with the information and resources that you had at the time and forgiving yourself for what life has looked like thus far.

Natasha

So you talked for a bit there about that experience of becoming a beginner again, which Monique really took ownership of after those initial wobbles and What are some of the other mindset shifts or practical things that people can do in order to get a bit more comfortable with beginnerdom, especially if they're coming from a career that they're really established in?

Jo

I think one of the things Monique put so well was letting go of the outcome, like finding ways to to let go and play and experiment within it. I thought it was great that her creativity has really come in the business. She had this such, this massive fear of failure that came up in the career change. And then she was talking about how she's experimenting with things and the weekend retreat that she planned that she didn't get enough people to sign up. Oh, well, I learned from that. I'll take it into the next thing. I think it was just brilliant. I think that she could, the shift that she had there was one of the biggest things I took from her journey. of being so caught in that sense of fear of failure to then embracing it and being part of how she works. And I think that really shows something of having to let go of the outcome and just give something a try because you don't know till you've tried what could happen, what you could learn, where it could take you. So I think just going into every conversation, every little experiment and thing that you're doing with an expectation of this is going to be what it's going to be. Maybe I'm going to learn something tiny from this. Maybe I'm going to learn something medium or large from this. Who knows? Maybe there's going to be something that's going to help. Maybe there's not. But if I sit at home and just think about the career change, nothing is going to happen.

Natasha

Yeah. Yeah. The time is going to pass anyway. Right.

Jo

Exactly. So better to be getting on with it.

Natasha

It makes me think of... what is his name? There's a psychologist, Brian Little. He has this lovely linguistic flip that feels really relevant here where he makes a distinction between the pursuit of happiness and what he calls the happiness of pursuit.

Jo

Yeah.

Natasha

And it's like, I can either be like, I have to get to the place and then I can be happy versus I'm going to have a really good time getting to the place.

Jo

Enjoy the journey, isn't it? It's the, yeah. And all the steps along the way.

Natasha

Yeah. Look at how much I'm learning. Look at how much I'm growing. Look at the... Look at the relief of not having to be the expert. Look at this mad world that I've stepped into that I didn't know existed. Look at all these new people that I'm meeting that I didn't know before. I can be happy now and along the way, as long as I take that pressure off that you're talking about of having to immediately come in at a certain level.

Jo

It makes me think about what's in our control and what's not in our control as well. Because so much of... the things that people are doing in the career change aren't in their control. If you're going to send a message to someone asking, hey, can I have a chat about what you're doing in your career? Hey, can I come along and shadow you or get involved in that thing? You have to let go of the outcome. Is it going to be yes? Is it going to be no? Well, I could get people sometimes to draw a circle. Inside the circle is what's in your control. Outside the circle is what's not in your control. And it's so simple, isn't it? When we look at it, what's in our control is what comes out of our mouths, the actions that we take, how we react to our thoughts and feelings. Yes, we can't necessarily control what's happening of them coming up, but how we react to them, what we focus on, what we spend our time on, but we can't control what other people are going to do.

Jo

So... Byron Katie's The Work, which I like her phrasing, which is around 'my business, your business, and God's business'. So my business is my stuff. Your business is whatever you're doing, and I'm not going to put my kind of thoughts and feelings and fingers into what you're doing. And God's business, in inverted brackets, is... the weather, the traffic, whether your car breaks down, I wouldn't have any control over any of that stuff. All we've got control over is our business. I think it helps people then take back the agency of what can I do in this situation? What can I actually control? Well, I can control making sure that I'm creating space to think about this growth change and work on this growth change and send messages to reach out, to have conversations, to Go and follow my curiosity and get stuck into stuff and delve into the world so I really want to go and explore and hear more about things. Because that's what you can do. And if you get a no or you don't hear back from somebody or something doesn't work, you just pick yourself up and go off and do the next thing. Because there's always going to be the next person or the next opportunity if you look for it. Because that's what's in your control.

Natasha

It's liberating, huh? It really is. As we talk about beginnerdom, and taking initiative. There's a certain level of freedom to experiment and get creative and be a beginner that's available to you when you're setting up your own business. And I'm imagining people thinking, well, I don't want to set up my own business. I want to get a job. And there's not so much scope to get a job as when you're a beginner at something because you haven't got that room to just kind of make it up as you go along. Employers expect transferable skills and a certain amount of experience and there feels like there's a different kind of hurdle there to get around. So for people who are looking to move into employment, how might they think about that state of beginnerdom and experimentation? might be different from what we heard in Monique's story?

Jo

I think the first step to it is then finding ways to get involved before you're employed in that area. It's kind of like you're approaching it like, I'm already doing this. And so I'm going to go along to the talks, the conferences, the things that are on in this space, because it's Then you're going to know what's going on in that industry. You're going to be up to date on stuff. You're going to meet people and hear about things that you wouldn't otherwise. You might be able to find ways that you can get involved, whether voluntary opportunities, whether bits of work that you could do for free, whether things that you could get paid to do, to find ways to get involved before you're employed in it. Because you're also proving, I really want to be in this space. So I'm already spending my time and my energy here, even though I'm not actually getting paid to do it yet. And people really respect that because they've turned up and that's given them a real leg up when it's come to then, hey, there actually is a job opportunity here because they've proven, hey, this is something that's really important to me and this is the stuff that I can do hopefully as well. So just finding little ways to get involved in doing things can be really important in that stage.

Natasha

Yeah. The phrase that I always have in my mind when I'm trying to apply this is just "act like a duck" . You know that saying, like if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck? Just go act like a duck. People will treat you as a duck.

Natasha

I want to get to a topic that I don't think is talked about enough in career change spaces, the money side of things and finances. So this is one of the biggest concerns of any career changer. And I was really grateful to Monique for how frank she was about the whole thing. She said, y'ou know, I was lucky to be able to jump all in because I didn't have a mortgage. I don't have kids. I have a partner that was able to support me as I retrained'. Many of our listeners won't be in that position. So what kind of strategies or advice do you have for people in terms of thinking about their finances through a career change, especially those who perhaps don't have the kind of flexibility that Monique did?

Jo

I think the first step is exactly what Monique did of actually sitting down and looking at what you're spending each month. Because we often have an idea in our heads of what we think we need coming in, what budget we have. Actually, if we sit down and look at what she said, they realize how much takeaway they were eating and that's something they could scale back on. Because sometimes that can come from the exercise of, oh, actually, now I've taken a frank look at things. Maybe there's changes to be made or not. Maybe sometimes it isn't. But just doing the maths and knowing this is what I need coming in each month to make sure there's a roof over my head, there's food on my tables, the essentials are paid for. And having that, oh, that is the non-negotiable lowest number. that I can have coming in. That needs to be really clear. So the first thing is just to get super clear on that. I think as much as that money thing is really important to do the maths, it's also really important that that is not the first criteria when you're looking at a career. So say that you've got this thing and you're like, I'm really curious about being a newswife, right? Just for example. And you hear that a midwife doesn't earn as much as your minimum amount is. And you go, well, that's ruled out. I'm not even going to go and speak to anyone in that space because I know I can't do that because I'm not going to earn enough. But I will say to people, but hold on, go and have a conversation with that person and say, what is the starting salary? Where would that grow to? What other careers are linked to this that I haven't thought about yet? I'm not sure that I can afford to study and do all that study that you've done for that. Or I'm not sure I can afford to be in a role like that. What other options are there for me? What else should I be looking at? Because there's something about that role that means that it's on your radar that you're looking at. And that's where you need to start with that curiosity. Otherwise, there's all these things that you're going to miss just because you're starting off with the money question. One of the things I love the most about her story was that part because She talked about how she used to think that work was about just getting money and it wasn't something that would give back to her. And now she said that she gets, I think she said time, energy and creativity from it. It's not just about the money. She's getting other things from work as well. There's a great book that talks about, his name is Sahil Bloom, I think five types of wealth. So money is one type. but there's time, social, mental, and physical. And that's what she's talking about there, right? That actually she was putting all her eggs in that wealth part, about the money part of sort of wealth and success, I guess. But actually the career change has given her some of the other buckets too. How much better would it be if we were all getting so much more out of it like she is?

Natasha

Yeah. And that's super valuable as well for, not just for you but for the other people in your life as well people who have kids for example we're taking a holiday in our own country this year instead of like jetting off somewhere sunny but also my kids get a really contented version of me when we go to the park after school instead of me who's harassed and stressed and sitting there on my phone checking my emails all the time and that kind of different sense of affluence and different idea of wealth that you can give to yourself, but you can also give to the people that you love most in the form of a really lovely you. It's well worth considering.

Jo

Definitely. Yeah, the ripple effect of that. Monique was brilliant, wasn't she, of talking about the stuff that she was doing and that she needed when work was bad. And when work felt good, she didn't need that stuff anymore. She didn't need to put the money into that because work was actually filling her up rather than her having to go outside of work and pay for all this stuff. So we've got to think about all of it as part of the future.

Natasha

Yeah. I always recommend when people come to me and say, I'm really worried about the money side of my career change. I've no idea what I want to do yet, but I'm already stressed about it. I tell them immediately that go and open a new savings account. You may never have to use it, but start putting in a pound a week or a dollar a week or wherever you happen to be, whatever your local currency is. And it's, I think of it as like an F.U. fund. I may never have to use it and maybe I don't have to take a pay cut and I don't have to take a gap in between my current career and my next one, whatever. But at least I know that it's there and I'm building it up, however small it might be. And if I don't have to end up using it, I can go and take a lovely holiday. But just that feeling of making progress to Even if it's just really, really small. Psychologically, it just takes a little bit of the pressure off. Yeah, it's a safety net. Yeah, that's really great. I love that idea.

Unknown

I'm going to use that.

Natasha

What have we not talked about yet from Monique's story that feels important to bring in?

Jo

I think something she talked about was how intentional she was in thinking about how she wanted to work in the future. And lots of people I think don't think, hey, work wasn't working for me before. How do I want to make sure that doesn't happen again? And she was really great that it's going to be better boundaries, better working hours. I'm not going to do that to myself again. And I think that's such an important step for people to take. I have one lady who on the outside, the career change, well, it wasn't the career change. She ended up in marketing in a different kind of company, which the culture was much better for her and how she wanted to work. But the big shift for her was that she was going to go in setting much better boundaries that she was actually going to be able to go to. I think it was choir that she wanted to go to every week, but she was going to make sure that she actually got to go to that. Because she hadn't been doing that. She hadn't been seeing her friends. She didn't have a like outside of work. And so it was sort of a fresh start of finding a company where that was something that they embraced too. And what I love was when she got all the forms and stuff to start this new job. On the form, like, you know, what's your name and address and all that stuff. It had, what's the one thing that we as your employer can make sure you go to each week? Wow. And she was like, oh my God, this is exactly what I wanted so she could put. I want to go to choir on Wednesday. And they were going to make sure that she did that. So she found somewhere that she was really going to support her to have a lifestyle side of work. And I could so hear that in Monique's story that she really sat. She was really intentional with thinking, how do I want to live my life? What are my values? She said, really asking herself those deep questions to make sure that that this was a clean break, not just in what she was doing, but in how she was approaching it as well.

Natasha

Yes. We are so well trained, I think, to think of ourselves as sort of in the passenger seat when it comes to our careers. Like I'll take the opportunities that I can get and I will put up with whatever my employer is doing because they have this control over me and whatever the job market's doing, I'm at the mercy of that. And recognizing that, oh, actually, I get to be in the driver's seat is really exciting and really scary at the same time. Because it's like, okay, if I get to design this, and if I get clear on what matters most to me, then it's on me to design. find what's going to work and to put down those boundaries and to take ownership over my work it's a real mindset flip but it's such a powerful one huh?

Jo

Yeah and then it's staying true to it, isn't it? But there's a great um I've got a great youtube i can send you for this that's called The Choice Point and it's really about thinking about moments in life when you have a choice and it could be you come home What are you going to do tonight? Are you going to sit in front of Netflix or are you going to do stuff that's going to help with your career change or with your hobby that you want to do or whatever it might be in life? We've all got choices in every single moment of what we focus on and what we do. Are you going to move towards a life where you're living your values or away? And it's as simple as that. And that's, again, what Monique was so brilliant at doing. was really facing up to all the stuff that bubbled to the surface in her career change and going, oh, here's all the juicy stuff I've got to deal with to make sure that actually this is going to happen.

Natasha

Yeah. Super courageous. Really, really. Yeah. What a woman.

Jo

Yeah. It wasn't just the career change. I feel like it was such a change in thinking and lifestyle and identity and so much of her. Yeah. It's so cool. Really inspiring story.

Natasha

Well, Jo, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you. I have no doubt that there's going to be lots of people out there listening thinking, I want to go and hang out with Jo more. She really knows what she's talking about. If people want to check you out and find you online or elsewhere, where should they go?

Jo

Sure. My website is jogreencoaching.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn. If you just look for Jo Green and put career coaching, I'm sure you'll find me. It's a pretty easy name to remember. Thanks,

Natasha

Natasha. A big thank you again to Jo Green, who you can find at jogreencoaching.com. Next week is a new career change story. We're going to hear from Daniel, who found a way to combine his personal and professional selves in a new career that feels authentic and exciting.

Daniel

It was hard because I kind of felt I was better than this. I deserve a life that is more fulfilling than this. And why can't I have that?

Natasha

Make sure to tune in to hear how he did it. And I'll see you then.