Let’s talk about starting new! It’s not the same as starting over and it doesn’t have to happen at the beginning of the year. Starting new happens when we begin our journey towards a new version of yourself. It also happens every time you recommit to that goal. You can start new today with new habits and new actions that get you closer to your goal of breaking into tech or leveling up.
Let’s talk about starting new! It’s not the same as starting over and it doesn’t have to happen at the beginning of the year. Starting new happens when we begin our journey towards a new version of yourself. It also happens every time you recommit to that goal. You can start new today with new habits and new actions that get you closer to your goal of breaking into tech or leveling up.
You are listening to the You Are Techie podcast, episode number 159.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the You Are Techie podcast, where it's all about growing in your tech so you can find the tech job of your dreams. And now your host technology learning coach, Ellen Tomi.
Speaker 1:Hey moms, are you trying to break into tech? Are you wondering what skills you really need to get hired and how those skills can be worth$45 an hour instead of the$25 an hour you thought when you first started thinking about going back to work? If so, then the your techy membership is for you. Our combination of courses, coaching and community come with the mentor support you need to keep moving forward in your tech career. It's like no other membership program available. We have the exact skills employers are looking for. You'll learn how to maximize your income with portfolio ready skills that hiring managers are seeking. Not to mention the steps you can skip so you don't find yourself down that endless tech learning rabbit hole. Join me as I walk you step by step through the getting hired process and tech sign up@techie.com. That's Y O U A R E T E C H y.com. I can't wait to see you in our membership. Welcome to the show. Today we're talking about starting new. So this is a topic that a lot of people like to discuss around the new year, and I purposefully put this episode not immediately after the new year. So this is originally being released in the beginning of February where a lot of our New Year's resolutions are falling off of the wayside. And I wanna encourage you that regardless of where you are with your New Year's resolutions, that you resolve to achieve your goals again and you'd start new again. So we're gonna be talking about starting new and when that happens and what it feels like and what to do about it,<laugh>. So when you're starting new, as I just mentioned, a lot of times we use the New Year's resolution to start new, but I think it's very helpful to having your brain that you are capable of starting new at any time. That's a really important thing. And I wanna make a quick aside for my teachers and moms out there that another time we tend to wanna start new or feel like we're starting new is the school year. I've made the joke that I often, Kevin and I will have to clarify if we mean the calendar year or the school year because I was raised by two teachers. I taught with five kids in school. We<laugh>, we often move on the school calendar, the school year. So maybe there are two times January and August or September where you feel like you can start new. But I want to give you permission and really encourage you that you can start new at any time. At any time. And so starting new is really just a commitment and oftentimes it's a recommitment. So I think that one of the big challenges with starting new is that we don't recognize how much convincing our brain takes to start new. And even after a few months, we feel like, well, I should know I shouldn't really be starting new anymore. But your brain doesn't understand that. Your brain needs to be reminded again and again. Your brain needs to be reminded of the goal. Your brain needs to be reminded of the why of the goal. And then your brain needs to be re reminded of the action steps or Tony Robbins' massive action towards that goal. And then all of that. And I would say that's at least weekly. And then your brain needs to be reminded. But hopefully daily, what is the one next right thing? So what is the one next right action step? And that's why I always talk about breaking down, getting hired into two very simple concepts, which is building your community and building your portfolio. Because then you can look at it and you can say, am I building my portfolio? It gets really tricky because I'm watching this video on Figma. Am I building my portfolio? Maybe yes, maybe no. It really depends on the lens that you are doing it with. If you're like, well, this is just helpful to know, the answer is no. If you're doing something towards one of your projects and you don't know how to do it and you're watching the video so you can know it and then you pause it and then you go do it, then the answer is yes, doesn't matter a perfect scenario. But I like to be very clear with our actions, this action is helping us. This action is not when we allow wiggle room or gray space or like kind of is this, or we're not specific, that's when we can kind of go down that tech learning rabbit hole. That's when we can kind of veer off. Okay? And then when it comes to building our community array, we have this process around go to meetups, go to conferences, meet people, follow up with them, move forward. But ultimately you want to be building a community where you can ask someone, will you hire me? Will you hire me? No. Okay, why not? You're not hiring. Okay, you don't think I have the skills? Okay, what skills am I missing? Okay, can you introduce me to someone who can hire me and love saying this because my students and I laugh, like that's so easy for me to say, oh, you just ask them for a job. And it's so filled with the emotion and fear and terror, right? When it breaks down to it, that's really what you're doing. Now, not every person in your community, I don't want you to be scoping them up for like, well, I'm not gonna talk to you if you can't offer me a job. That's not like a common problem that I go across. Oh, so most of the time people are building their communities and they love the part where I teach on serving them so much that they wonder why you're helping them. And so I think when you give to people and you just give authentically from your heart, that's a part of your day-to-day. That's great, that's fantastic. That's what you should be doing. And you can be thinking, will this person hire me? When will this person hire me? How can this person hire me? Am I building the right skills for this person to hire me? But notice that I didn't say, am I done with my portfolio? So a lot of times I know people who get hired before their portfolio is quote unquote done. And the reason for that is because building your portfolio is usually enough. Doing the work of the portfolio is usually enough. And usually the risk is that you spend too much time on your portfolio. And that doesn't mean that I think it should be junky or it I should be great. But there's a saying in startup that if you are not embarrassed of your M V P, like of your first release, then you've released too late. And that's a real problem in building a company. And that's a real problem in getting hired that you can overdo your portfolio and just, I'm almost done. I'm almost done. No, it's much better to have a section that's, you know, missing or coming soon or to be filled in, but you are applying for jobs and talking to people and letting them know you're ready and just updating your portfolio along the way. It's more important that you're doing the work is my point. And you don't wanna spend so much time on your portfolio that you aren't actually doing, you aren't actually designing or developing that. That's a real fear and a real problem. And so, okay, kind of backing this up to starting new. When we're starting new, the very, very important thing is to remind our brain what we're doing. We are not into the habit yet. We don't quite know what our routine is, what it means to build our community, what it means to build our portfolio. And I just touched on a few things, but what's the one next right step? You have to think about that every day. And I use a planner, a print off, I tweaked it a little bit. It's adapted from Brendan Bouchard's High Performance Academy. What I love about something that Brendan once said that was really meaningful to me is like they said, what would people be surprised about you? And he said, they'd be surprised how much time I spend planning what I will do and thinking about what I will do. And I thought that was really impactful. And then I remember they asked him how long, and I forget if it was two or four hours, and I don't remember if that was per week or per day. But the point is that most of us are not spending that much time thinking about exactly what we will do. And this only gets exacerbated when we're talking about starting new. One of the reasons that we quit is that we haven't given ourselves the time to remind ourselves exactly what we should be doing. And then at the end of the day, if we don't quite get it done or do it or do exactly what we said, then we're like mad at ourselves. And then that leaves us with thoughts that we're not really committed. And so really, if you just remind yourself every day, okay, think deeply about what I should be working on, and then do that work to the best of your ability, regardless of if that's eight hours or one hour, or two hours or 25 minutes, whatever the time is that you have, that you're pushing forward and making progress. And then at the end of that time period, just taking a minute and saying, I showed up for myself. I showed up to build this new habit. Look at what I did. This is, this is so essential to starting new. And a main reason why people do not continue is that they're always starting something new. It's not going the way they thought. Well, in the beginning it's always very tricky to even know the right steps to take. So reminding yourself what they are is very important. We can start new. Anytime you can recommit to something that you've started, it does not matter how long. I know that it feels like maybe you've tried other things, it didn't quite work, but your journey is your journey and you will need as much time as you need to continue to build those habits and build the right habits in the right way. And so why not enjoy that? Why beat yourself up along the way? That's really ineffective way to do it. So when you are starting new, how it will feel is overwhelmed a lot of overwhelm, which is why reminding yourself exactly what you're working on. And in that Brennan Bashard and there's, it's, you can search for it. I'm sure it's a productivity planner, like it's a free download in that there are two major things. So there's room for other spots, but there are two major things that you do. And I have a lot of other planner<laugh>. I feel like I like embed that in like four systems because I think it's really important to know what the bigger picture is. And I love starting new, I love starting new, but really there's a harm in starting new. There's a harm that if you're always starting something different new, then you're not gonna make any progress. And so I wanna encourage you to start your goals new again, the same goals, not changing your goals. So if you're listening to this, I'm hoping that's, you know, breaking into tech. And so if you're breaking into tech and you're thinking, yeah, but I tried that, I've done it. I, you know, I went to a bootcamp or I've been working on it for a year, or I've tried to leave teaching and it just didn't work. I tried to do this over the summer. Listen, you don't know when it's gonna take. You don't know exactly when the transition's gonna be. And the more and more energy you put towards it, the better and better your prospects of achieving that goal are. So I wanna remind you that starting something new can be exciting, but then it can also be overwhelming and that's normal. And recommitting yourself to that goal, that same goal, and just again, committing to it and resolving yourself to the fact that you will have that outcome is part of the process. Because your brain is going to fight you on this. It's going to say, no, you can't do that. No, you're not gonna be a good mom. No, your family can't handle it. Whatever. What if my kid gets sick? And just in case you're wondering if your kid gets sick, then you go take care of your child. That is what happens. So<laugh> or you work from home that day, that's just the way it works. Or you take them to the doctor. So people who are working take their kids to the doctor all the time. And I only laugh a little bit because I had the exact same thoughts, like, what do I do if my children need me? What if they need me in the middle of the day? Can I tell you how many times in the middle of the day my children have needed me? It is like very rare. And if they do, okay, then you leave a meeting. But if you are showing up every day and you are doing the work you are supposed to do, then your child needing you once a quarter or every other month is just not that big of a deal, right? Even if you have five. So the focus here on starting new, I just wanna remind you that you can choose the same goals and just start a new way of doing it. Start a way of doing it where your brain, you are reassuring your brain every day. Like, Hey, hey, this is what we're doing. Everything's okay, everything's okay. When you are away from your work, do not be surprised if your brain goes into freak out mode and is naming all of the fear and all of the ways that this will not work. And so that's a very normal thing to have happen, but you don't have to indulge in those emotions and thoughts. Just stay, remind your brain what you're doing. It'll be okay. And when your brain's like, oh yeah, how? Then we'll figure it out and then sit down and actually do the work. That is actually a calming thing for your brain to help your brain say, you know what? We are committed to this. Look, we are making progress. And remember that it's not really how much time you put in it in a given day. It's more important that you're putting in consistent time every day and showing up every day. And some of you have different schedules. You say, well, it's a three day a week thing for me, no problem. But I do feel like the consistency of showing up is the important thing. So for most of you doing that five days a week is a great idea. And if you are transitioning from staying at home, you likely will need a weekend coffee shop, work session, or an evening, take an evening away from bedtime and go to the coffee shop and do that. And I say, go to the coffee shop. Because one final point on starting new, changing your environment, even subtly, like by leaving the house and going to a coffee shop is really powerful for your brain to say, whoa, she means business. She means this is for real. So I know that sometimes it's just easier to just open your laptop at home and you're thinking, I'm, or you work all day, or like Ellen been gone all day. I understand. And you know, maybe the change of environment for you is at home. But I do think that getting away from all of the distractions, like some of you are really into cleaning what is wrong with you? But you know, getting away from the laundry in the dishes and just being in an environment where it's not your job to take care of any of that. It's just your job to focus on your work and what you're doing is calming and reassuring for your brain and helps your brain as you're starting new, whether you've had this goal for a long time and your habits are starting new, or you are brand new to this goal and you are building those habits. Thanks so much for being with me here. I'll see you next time. Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to sign up for the You Are Techie email list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies, training and never ending support to get hired. Sign up@techie.com. That's Y O U A R E T E C H y.com. I'll see you next time.