Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S6E16 Jake Kennington | Engineer Yourself First, Personal Reflection, & Accepting Change
Jake Kennington shares his transformative journey from structural engineering to personal development coaching, discussing how engineers can build meaningful lives without sacrificing their careers. He explores the importance of personal growth, embracing change, and developing a strong personal foundation.
Main Topics:
- Transitioning from Structural Engineering to Personal Coaching
- The "Strong Column, Weak Beam" Life Philosophy
- Importance of Personal Development for Engineers
- Overcoming Creative Voids in Engineering Careers
- Practical Strategies for Personal Growth
- Embracing Change and Finding Purpose
About the guest: Jake Kennington is a structural engineer, author, speaker, and transformational coach who helps engineering leaders and business owners build fulfilling careers without burnout. With over a decade of experience, he founded Human Engineer Coach to guide professionals in aligning their work with personal well-being. His message: success doesn’t have to come at the cost of health, relationships, or purpose—you can have both money and meaning.
In his SEAU talk, “Engineer Yourself First,” Jake uses the structural principle of strong columns and weak beams to emphasize that personal growth must come before career growth to avoid collapse. He especially supports engineers in their first 7–10 years, a time often marked by self-sacrifice. Beyond coaching, Jake also champions creativity and continual self-expression, exemplified by his self-published children’s book in 2023. His work blends technical insight with a human-centered approach to leadership and life.
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About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
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So the moral of the story was to embrace change, because sometimes the best things in life come from change, and things that initially are perceived as not so great.
Aaron Moncur:Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast. Today's guest is Jake Kennington, a licensed structural engineer, speaker and coach for engineering leaders and business owners. He helps high achieving professionals build meaningful lives without sacrificing their careers, from delivering impactful talks like engineer yourself first to publishing a children's book and coaching engineers through personal growth, Jake brings a powerful blend of technical expertise and Human Centered Leadership. Jake, welcome to the show.
Jake Kennington:Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate you having me on, and this is my pleasure,
Aaron Moncur:Awesome. So what made you decide to become an engineer? Initially,
Jake Kennington:Great question. I think, I think my story may be somewhat similar to most. I loved math, I loved science. I loved physics. Growing up, those things came a little bit easier than most. And so when I got into college, I thought, What am I going to do with this? Right? And I switched majors a few times. I went to three different colleges. It took me eight years to get a four year degree. What were some of the other things that you were doing in college before ending in engineering. As far as college goes, I was undeclared for a long time, which I don't recommend to anyone. I recommend finding something, picking something, trying it out, and if it works, it works. If not, you move on. But undeclared for a long time, then I chose math was a major and part of the reason was it was very few credits, very few units. It was like 90 instead of 120in engineering. But I quickly realized I didn't want to teach per se, and I didn't want to do research, and I didn't know what else I could do with a math degree. And so I actually studied mechanical engineering for one semester.And props to you guys. You guys are smart. I could not hack it.
Aaron Moncur:It is the godly discipline of engineering. Yeah, they're there for a little while. Anyway,
Jake Kennington:I found it fascinating. But the reason I gravitated towards civil and eventually structures is because they don't move right. They're a little simpler. And so that was kind of my journey through college. But what attracted me to be an engineer was just that critical thinking, problem solving, application of math, right? You could see what you were creating, first on paper and then in the real world.
Aaron Moncur:Excellent. Yeah, I'll admit to doing a lot better in my statics class than I did in my dynamics class, for sure. There you go. Yeah, same here. Well, walk us through your journey from structural engineer to personal development coach. How did, how did all of that happen?
Jake Kennington:Yeah, so I followed a pretty, probably typical path for most engineers, especially structural engineers, where you go to college, you get some some work experience, right? You work for someone in the structural field. You work for someone for X amount of years before you can test. And there's the FE, the PE, and the SE, and so there's kind of this linear path for the first seven to 10 years of your career, which I followed. But what's interesting is right after that, the path is kind of unknown. I mean, there's a lot of things you could do, but it's not as well spelled out. And so right around the time when I was studying and studying for and taking the structural engineering exam, I started to have these feelings of like, Oh, no. What's next? You know, what am I going to do next? And I'd spent roughly a decade of my career on this path that, again, was kind of spelled out for most of us. And so I thought, What do I want to do for the next decade of my career? How do I want to spend my time? And if any of your listeners, or yourself, included Aaron, have thought that my initial feeling was was kind of miserable. It felt awful. It felt like, oh, no, what do I do? And I didn't have a good answer. Flash forward a couple years, still kind of struggling with that question, trying to figure it out, I ended up hiring two coaches that werent engineers, ironically, the two guys named Richie Norton and Mitch Whiting. And the reason I didn't hire an engineer was because I know there were coaches that were engineers.
Aaron Moncur:It's kind of a recent phenomenon, like, 10 years ago, I had never heard of an engineering coach, but now there's, there's Jeff Perry, and there are a few others I've had on the show, and there's you and I probably know half a dozen at this point,
Jake Kennington:yeah. And although that's a lot compared to what they're worth. It's still a small number, right? There's not, there's not a ton of us, but I hired these guys, worked with them for about a month. We did a live event. It was a group coaching setting, and they really opened my eyes to the fact that although I love engineering and I love what I do as a as a profession, that there was maybe some voids, some things that I was missing, at least for me and and I realized that our careers don't have to be as linear as I thought they had to be, that we can try other things, other paths, and not feel Like I was starting over that some of those, some of those skills that I learned as an engineer were were transferable to other things. And in particular, obviously, if I'm coaching engineers, there's a lot of a lot of mutual understanding. We kind of speak the same language, right? We have the same background, and so having that experience with those coaches and some other things that we'll get into today opened my eyes into this world of coaching. And I thought, Man, I went through this struggle for three, four or five years of just not knowing what was next and working on myself, figuring out my own priorities, what I wanted from life for my family and my kids and me, and I thought, I wonder if anybody else in our field is struggling the way I was. And so what happened, kind of organically, is I just started to reach out to people and talk about these types of things. I think maybe as humans, but maybe even more so as engineers. We don't we kind of keep it inside. We think, Oh, it's just me, or I'm the only one struggling with this, or maybe we're embarrassed because it has nothing to do with engineering. One thing that I found is that I caught myself feeling almost ungrateful for my career and my experience. Although I wasn't ungrateful, I kind of wanted more, and the feeling of wanting more sometimes makes you feel like you're not grateful for what you have. And I found that's not exactly true, right? We can want more and be grateful for our past,and so that's what led me to become a coach was to take the things that I learned from my coaches and my experience growing up in the engineering world and try to pass those on to kind of the younger generation.
Aaron Moncur:What were some of the voids if you're okay, sharing that yeah, these coaches helped you identify?
Jake Kennington:Yeah, one of the biggest ones for me, and I 100% understand that not everybody feels this way in our in our career, in what we do, but I felt a huge creative void in what I was doing. I felt like as an engineer, most engineers love to say, Oh, we solve problems. We're problem solvers. We We love the math side of things and figuring things out and coming up with solutions, which is true, but my experience was that a lot of those things, a lot of those solutions, were dictated by other individuals, whether it was the client, your own boss, the architect, like, the further you get down the food chain, right? That the less input you have. You go, I think we should do this. And they go, No, we can't do that, you know? And so some people I know in the engineering space love their their jobs, and they feel really creative. And maybe that's true for them. For me, I just felt like I didn't have control of the types of projects I was working on and how they how they were completed, and the solutions that we were coming up with. And so I felt this creative void, and these coaches that I hired made me realize that I could do those things outside of my career, right? I could start these creative projects and kind of be the architect of one my own life, but also any, any project that I wanted to run, whether it was coaching or something else, some sort of creative project. And so in my coaching, we talk about this a lot, about figuring out the things that you want to work on that are creative, that that only you can do, that you can be kind of the architect or the conductor of a project, and then how you can share that with other people. And so that's one of them. There's there's several other. Uh, voids, but that's probably the biggest one.
Aaron Moncur:That resonates a lot with me.I would say I felt that same creative void for a long time, and it I was able to resolve it because I started my own business, and then I could kind of drive what I was doing, and more recently, even I've discovered a knack and enjoyment for storytelling and often done through video. And so I've gotten into a little bit of video production. I used to own a photography company a long time ago, so part of it came naturally. I understood some of the technical side of things, but, and I already had some of the equipment, but I never did video before, and so I've done a few personal projects and several work projects as well with video production, and it's been super fun. You know? It's a great creative outlet for me, sometimes on Saturdays, I'll just, I'll just work on a video production project, because it's fun, you know. So I what you're saying resonates a lot with me, with that that creative void, and looking for outlets to to full, fulfill that void. You You gave a talk called engineer yourself. First, can you talk a little bit about that? Summarize the talk, as well as the the strong column, weak beam metaphor and how it applies to career and life, the product development Expo, or PDX is your chance to learn from subject matter experts, providing practical hands on training for dozens of different engineering topics, gdnt, advanced surface modeling, DFM, plating and finishing techniques, programming robots, adhesive dispensing, prototyping, tips and tricks and lots more. PDX happens October, 21 and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more at PD Expo. Dot engineer, that's p, d, e, x, p, O. Dot engineer,
Jake Kennington:yeah, I'd love to. So I gave a presentation at the structural engineering association of Utah, their annual conference last month. They do a two day conference. There were, you know, probably 12 speakers throughout the two days. And these conferences, similar to what you probably do in mechanical engineering, are high level, PhD level, very specific, cutting edge technology case studies for us would be on like the biggest earthquakes in the world and some of the buildings that survived and some that didn't, and the whys behind that. They're, they're code based, building code base. What? What are the nuances of the code? What are the changes in the new codes? And then there's little me that applied to speak at this thing and and I went the the non technical route, right? I pitched to them months ago. I said, Hey, this is my story. This is where I've been. These are the things that I struggled with, and I think that I could help other people by sharing this. And I thought it was a Hail Mary. I thought it was one of those desperation attempts that they would just be like, Thanks, but no thanks, right? And lo and behold, they said, Yes. And so I hadn't created the content yet. I hadn't created what I was going to say. I just gave them, like, a two or 300 word abstract about what this would be, and they said, Yes. They took a chance on me. So I showed up the presentation. I called it engineer yourself first. And I share this concept in structural engineering, there's a design concept called strong column, weak beam. I hate the name of the concept, because no engineer designs anything to be weak, right? And so the better name for it, my opinion, would be strong beam, stronger column. So it's a relative weakness, right? Or actually a relative strength. And in a building, you design the beam and the column to to resist the the demand, the load, right? But if you were to have one survive over the other, in let's say, an earthquake or a strong wind event, if the beam comes down, it's kind of a localized failure. It's not the end of the world. We want to prevent that, if possible, but if it happens, it's not the end of the world. If a column comes down, on the other hand, it can be much more catastrophic, right? It could bring the whole building down. And so what we do in our design methodology and our design. Concept is prioritize the integrity of the column over the beam. Again, it's not a weak beam, even though that's kind of the saying in the culture, strong column, weak beam, but it's a relative strength in the column. And the parallel that I shared in this presentation last month was that our lives, who we are as a person, is our strong column, right? It's our mental and physical, spiritual health. It's how we show up in the world. It's our relationships with other people. It's our personal development. That's our strong column. Those are the things that we need to be most focused on. And our careers are just a beam that gets supported by that, right, like a like a tree and a branch, right? Same idea. And so my experience was I didn't understand that for the first decade of my career, and I kind of got sucked into climbing the corporate ladder, taking these tests, spending all my time on these things which are which are not bad by the way, they're not bad things. I don't regret my path and where I am now. I just regret not having spent more time on myself, right? And so that's what I talked about for for about an hour, and was was received well. So well that Arizona Conference, which is in June, reached out. I had applied there as well. And they reached out to the Utah section here, and they said, Who is this Jake guy, and what is he presenting on, and is it good enough to be at our conference? And I get, I guess, I got some good reviews from here in Utah, and they gave me a their blessing, I guess. And I just heard yesterday that I'll be speaking on on pretty much the same presentation in Arizona come June. So your neck of the woods, Aaron, congratulations. That's super exciting. Thanks. I appreciate it. And a beautiful analogy with the strong beam, stronger column, I love Yeah, yeah. You
Aaron Moncur:mentioned for the first 10 years of your career, you didn't fully appreciate that, that analogy as you started working on yourself. How did that start? Where did it begin? Like, what were some of the things that you did to to grow and develop yourself as a person? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I think everybody's experience with this is going to be a little different, but I think there are oftentimes some some commonalities, right?
Jake Kennington:Mine had a lot to do with and I do this today still, and this is why, because it helped me. I read and I write, and back in the day when I was going through all this, I walked a lot now, now I try to run a little bit more. So my mornings consist of three things, reading, writing and running. And the reason I do those things, and I've done them for years consistently, is because they're the things that give me my sanity back, right? They help me slow down and kind of unplug from the world and think through my own thoughts and make sense of the experiences that I have. I love the saying I forget who said it, but there's a saying we don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. And so I found myself just busy, busy, busy. Not only in that first 10 years was I going to school, getting my experience, taking these tests and then working a full time job, but I also got married and had four kids, and anyone that has kids knows that that's just a whirlwind, right? It's just go, go, go all the time. There's so many things happening. I'm actively involved in my church and a bunch of other responsibilities, and so life is just busy by nature. And so what I've found helpful, at least at the start of my kind of personal development journey, and even now today, is to slow down, to read, to write, to walk, to move to body. And do you feel like you've found yourself now? Do you feel very different as a person now than you did five years ago or before this journey began? That's a hard question, because sometimes we it doesn't happen overnight, right? It's kind of gradual. And so the best way I can answer that is, I was literally talking to my wife the other day about this. I said, I forget what I asked her, but she goes, You're different. She goes, you're different, and I'm a What do you mean? What do you mean? I'm different. Like, five years ago, you're the same guy, but there's a lot of there's a lot of differences here, like things that are important for you are different than they were five years ago. And so I think again, to answer your question, I think some people, they it's hard to see yourself sometimes. And so if you can get that feedback from somebody else, and. Then she she was able to outline what the differences were when she thought that change started to happen, right and good and bad, you know, sometimes, but from my own perception, yes, I definitely value. The things I value are different now than they were five years ago, let alone when I started my career. And I think that's okay. I used to think that, like I most engineers hate change. We want to figure out the best way to do something, and we'll do it that way forever, because that's the best way to do it, whether it's driving home from work or whatever it may be, we found the best way to do it, and that's good in the short term, but in the long term, like people are allowed to change, you can change your mind. You can change what you value.
Aaron Moncur:In effect, I think, I think you should, well, that's very beautiful. I I wonder. Suspect that a lot of people, maybe most people, never really go through that kind of change. They'll live their whole lives the same way, and they'll be happy, you know, but I think it's a pretty special thing that you've gone through to have reflected on your experiences enough to make meaningful changes in your life and the things that you value to the extent that your wife recognizes your same guy, but different in ways. Five years later, what are, what are some signs, maybe that some warning signs that someone is succeeding at work but losing themselves in life.
Jake Kennington:Hmm, before I answer that, I'll mention this concept that I talked about in the conference that I spoke at last month, the difference between what's important and what's urgent. And I think this will circle back and kind of answer your question. So don't, don't, let me avoid the question. But what's urgent is usually what's a little bit more tangible and measurable. And we like that as engineers. We can get the degree we can pass a test, we can get a salary increase, we can finish a project like it's something, we can check off the box, right? And we can answer the email. We can make the client happy, right? And so those things are urgent, but the things that I would consider important usually aren't very urgent, ironically, or at least, they don't feel that way, and because, I think they don't feel that way because they're not as tangible and they're not as measurable. So, for example, my family is important to me. What does that even mean? Like, like, how do I how do I implement that importance in my life? Right? It's a little bit neither here nor there. My physical health is important. My mental health is important, my relationships, my friends and neighbors and anyone else, those are important. And so what happens is a lot of times we we sacrifice what's important for what's urgent. And there's a quote. Let me pull it up real quick. It was by one of our presidents, President of the United States, Eisenhower. He said we have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. And so to answer your question, let's see. Let me see if I can reframe the question and repeat it, because I want to make sure I'm answering it. You said, we can. There's some people or how do we realize if we're showing up at work and we're being successful in work, but maybe we're losing ourselves in our work, right? Is that what you asked? Yeah, losing yourself in life, right? You're in life inside, okay, the personal side of life. How do we know that we're What are the signs, right? So to answer that, I think what happens is we lose sight of what's important, and we focus on what's urgent. And I think we need to flip the script on that now. How does that show up? What are the signs? Incredibly difficult to tell sometimes, because, in my experience, a lot of it's internal. But I think there are some signs. One is somebody that's impatient, either with what they're doing in their career or even with themselves. They're always in a hurry to get something done or or to move on to the next thing. And I think there's a an element of patience that we need to have with the process right. Always be striving for more. Always be a go getter and try to get things done, but be patient at the same time. So anyone. Again, a little bit internal, hard to measure somebody's patience, right? But, but I think it you can tell somebody that seems like they're in a hurry for no reason, so they're impatient. And then the other one, I would say, is lack of excitement.
Aaron Moncur:Several years ago, my wife told me this. She's like, man, you're not miserable, but you're just not excited about anything, right, like about your work and your job. And I had done this for 10 years, and I'd been excited the whole way, and then all sudden, it seemed like, almost overnight, I just kind of lost that enthusiasm. And so for me, what happened is I I hadn't been working on these important things for a long time, and it catches up to you, right? And so you start to become impatient with the world and patient with yourself, and you start to kind of lose excitement about what you're doing, and so you have to rekindle that a little bit. Did that? Did that answer the question I was kind of round about there? Yeah, it did, definitely. You give us two very tangible, actionable things, impatience and lack of excitement. And I was thinking back to when I started pipeline, and the reason I started my company, pipeline was because I got laid off at the engineering company at which I had been working. And the reason I got laid off was I was not engaged in the work. That was the phrase that they had used to describe surely, why I was being let go. I wasn't engaged. And I think that basically comes down to I wasn't excited about what I was doing, right? I was I was bored. It was monotonous. There was no joy in it for me. I wasn't excited about what I was doing. And when I started pipeline, it was really interesting to me. I was doing a lot of the same kind of work, right? It was still product development work, CAD prototyping, testing, engineering stuff, right? But all of a sudden I was excited. I loved I loved it, even though I was putting in way more hours. You know, my old job, when I hit 40 hours, I was done. In fact, I remember it's, it's embarrassing to say now, because this is not the way to do things. This is a cautionary tale for for all of you listening, but Friday afternoons, if, if it was 3pm and I'd hit 40 hours that week, I was like, I'm done. See you guys on Monday, you know, I'm out of here. And then when I started pipeline, I was putting in 6070, hour weeks pretty regularly in the beginning. And I loved it, you know, it was, it was exciting for me. So I think that's a really smart insight, that if you're not, you're not excited, that maybe could be a sign that you're you're losing yourself in life. Well, let me take a short break here and share with all of you listeners that being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R and D services. Learn more at Team pipeline.us The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers. You can learn more at the wave dot engineer. Today we're speaking with Jake Kennington, so Jake, you wrote a children's book, and I think you are the second person I've had on my podcast who has written a children's book? It's a pretty rare thing. Tell us a little bit about this children's book and how it came to be. Yeah, that's awesome that you had someone else on the show write a children's book. We're kind of a rare breed, at least in our industry.
Jake Kennington:I wrote the book, like I said earlier, I have four kids. I wrote this first book for my oldest son. His name is Harvey. He's 10 years old now. I wrote it 10 years ago, and I wrote it about our experience, my wife and I, of having no children, to having a child which is a total 180 in life, right? All this responsibility, the life changes, also in your home all the time, having a baby is just a wonderful blessing, but it's also a complete 180 in what you were doing in life at the time. By dear friends, I say good exactly, at least for a good decade, right? A while, yeah, and so we knew that was coming. I actually started writing the book before he was born, and kind of predicted some of the outcomes of our life being turned upside down and having this child. But I wrote it from the perspective of our dog. His life getting turned upside down, and how he saw that kind of as a threat or a bad thing. Obviously, they become best friends, like like kid and dog do, right? And so it was a blessing in disguise. And so the moral of the story was to embrace change and to look for the good and everything that comes our way, because sometimes the best things in life come from change, and things that initially are perceived as not so great, right? And they help us grow and learn and change ourselves. And so if I'm being honest, that book was written for my wife and my son, but it was probably more therapeutic for me to write it and convincing myself that change was okay. And so flash forward again 10 years later, because he's 10 Now, last year we or a year and a half ago, we redid the book completely, hired a new illustrator, lady from Turkey, which did a fantastic job, and we gave it to the public, we put it out on Amazon and self published it, and we figured that it was time to share something that was so special to us, to the rest of the world. I've since committed to write three more because my my second son is seven, and he keeps saying, Dad, wears my book. And so it was such a great experience for me to kind of to kind of not necessarily control the project, controls the wrong word, but be in charge of the project. Obviously, I didn't illustrate it. I just wrote it, and I hired my brother as well to kind of help me format it and get it on Amazon. And and so there's this other muscle we use when we're not the one doing all the work, but we're the one in charge of the work, right? We use the word responsible charge in engineering, same concept. And so I was able to kind of flex those muscles a little bit and learn how to steer the ship, if you will. And you know, the money was on me. I had to pay for it, and the outcome was on me. My name's on the cover, but there's a lot of other people that go into a creative project like that. And so it was one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done, just for the experiences I've had within my own family, but also to be able to share that with with people outside of our family as well. That was great.
Aaron Moncur:I liked what you said about change and and change can sometimes lead to really wonderful things in your life. I'm going back to the change I had in employment where I got laid off and then I decided to start pipeline, and it was this scary thing. I remember feeling physically ill when I got laid off for for days, and then I started pipeline, and somehow miraculously found some work. And it it was life changing. And now I look back on that time and am so grateful that I got laid off, because it's legitimately been one of the the best things that's ever happened to me. How, how do you help your clients develop a mindset that welcomes change?
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Jake Kennington:Yeah, it's hard. Like you said, when you're in it, it's not the funnest thing all the time, right? It's actually, it's the crucible, right? It's tough, it's hard. But I think what I talk about a lot with, with my clients, coaching clients, and in coworkers and other people is, like, it's kind of on purpose, right? I don't tell people to go look for what's the right word pain and suffering. Like, don't go, don't go looking for it. It'll find you, right? You'll find changes that just come up naturally, but embrace them when they do, because you never know what's going to come out on the other side. And so again, in the moment, it's difficult, but I think we can all look back on things that we've been through that were difficult, whether it's being a parent or losing a job. You. And a lot of these, these things sometimes are on purpose, right? Like we signed up to be parents, you know, you unfortunately did not sign up to be let go from from your last job. And so sometimes it's intentional. Sometimes it's out of our control. But regardless, one of the things that we talk a lot about in the coaching program that I run is to focus on the things that are within your control and things that are outside of your control. Quite frankly, you just have to let go and not worry about it harder, harder to do for most people, including myself, than it is to simply just say it but, but those are some of the mindsets we work on controlling what we can control, which is mostly how we react to what the world throws at us. It's our attitude, it's how we show up. The nice thing about personal development is it's mostly controlled by you, like, like you control if you wake up at 5am and go on a run, or if you read, or if you're journaling, like nobody can stop you from doing that kind of stuff. And so I think that strong column analogy, again, comes into play. It's like, what are you doing for yourself to work on you? And then the benefits kind of come down the road, but we have to be willing to to kind of embrace change. I think that's the initial the initial response that I try to help people have is just like, you know, everything will settle down, it'll be okay. There will be a a new normal when we go through these hard experiences, like you did with starting pipeline.
Aaron Moncur:But it's going to be a better normal, right? There's a phrase I've adopted over the past year or so that has been helpful for me, and it's there's freedom and acceptance. Change is going to happen, whether we like it or not, and I've found for myself, personally, the more I push back and resist that inevitable change, the harder it is, right? The more suffering there is, the more pain there is, the more fear there is, the more worry there is. And I won't pretend for a second to be proficient at this yet, but I'm sure I'm working on it. I find that when I can step back and just say, You know what this is happening. I don't like it, but it's happening. I accept it, and accepting doesn't mean giving up. I think that's an important distinction. Accepting and giving up are two different things. I'm not throwing at the towel, but I'm saying, You know what this is happening. This is the
Jake Kennington:this is the current reality. And something about that change in mindset has helped me relax in situations where I would not have been able to before. It's it's actually been kind of miraculous. How comforting it is to just say, You know what? This is how it is and I accept it, versus just continuing to push and fight and kick against, against these changes. And it's it's a tough, I think it's a tough balance, because sometimes you do have to push back right if someone is trying to push you off the edge of a cliff, you're not going to just accept that and let it happen. So figuring out when to push back and how hard to push back. I have not mastered that, but there's something there, and there's freedom and acceptance. Let me add one thing. I love that acceptance is wonderful. I love that phrase that you have. I've been getting into a lot of ancient stoic philosophy lately, been reading several books, and it's been phenomenal in my own personal journey. But Marcus Aurelius was the Roman emperor, or some 2000 years ago, whatever it was, he wrote in a personal journal that, as we understand, was never meant to be given to anyone else. It was just for him. And we have a copy of that. It's called meditations, and I've been reading it, and there's a line in there that he writes about. It's like any journal. It's all over the place, right? It's just whatever he was thinking about is, it's not like your typical storyline or or novel where, where there's this, this flow. It's just scattered thoughts. But ironically, a lot of the same things come up over and over and over again. And one line that he says, and I'll try to quote it, if I can remember, he says, the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. And so the idea is that there's always going to be obstacles in anything that we do, and more specifically, there's always obstacles when we're trying to do something that's good for other people or ourselves, whether that's work on ourselves in our personal development journey, whether that's a creative endeavor, anything that you're trying to do, whether it's working out art. Some sort of creative anything helping other people. There's always going to be this resistance or this obstacle, and the idea is that like not to avoid the obstacle, but like go through it, right and figure out what's on the other side, and and accept, like you said, acceptance. Um, accept what it is for what it is. And again, that's not to be bullied or pushed around or pushed off a cliff like you were saying, but some things are just outside of our control, and we have to deal with those things, and the quicker we make friends with that idea, the easier it is to just move forward.
Aaron Moncur:There's a book called The obstacle is the way. Have you read this? Ryan Holiday, love it, yeah, right. That's fantastic. They picked up Marcus Aurelius meditations, yep.
Unknown:Well, what are some practical ways that engineers can start building these, these strong columns in our lives, right? That whether they be daily routines or habits or mindsets. What are some of the like, the tactical processes that that you use the protocols to start building these habits and mindsets? Yeah, great question, because a lot of this becomes theoretical, right? It's like, we're kind of talking about these ideas and concepts, but you're like, What do I do with this? How do I apply this in my life? And so I would say three things. There's a million answers, but I'll focus on three, the first one, and all three of these I shared in my presentation here in Utah, and I'll share again in Arizona.
Jake Kennington:The first one I call own the morning, which is a fancy way of saying having a morning routine. And whenever I talk about morning routines with people, I say you need to move the body and you need to worry about your soul, whatever that looks like. And so again, for me, it's reading and writing and running. Somebody told me it was the three R's one time. And I was like, well, one of them is a W, but close, close enough. They're like, I like the three. They can't spell. It was an engineer, that's what's funny. And I'm like, Oh man, but the reading and the writing get kind of my my nourishment for my soul. It gives me my sanity. And then the running or working out or doing something physical, helps me decompress, helps me stay healthy, helps me show up better as a father and a husband and an engineer in my career everywhere else and so what I tell everybody is, find some sort of morning routine that's going to get you excited about the day, whatever that looks like, but it usually is a morning routine that helps you slow down and think and meditate or observe, reflect and so and I say the morning some people tell me, I'm not a morning person. And to that person, I say, Well, is it working? Whatever they're trying to do, maybe they push it to the nighttime, right? And they say, well, I'll do when I get home from work. If that works for you, do it like that's great. But I found that most people say that and then they don't do it when they get home from work, whatever it may be. And so I urge people to try to fit that thing first thing in the morning, because it goes back to important versus urgent, right? It's like these things are important. We should put them first in the day. So on the morning number two, and I've kind of talked about this a little bit, and this goes back to Marcus Aurelius, and his writing in his journal is a practice of daily reflective writing or journaling. It's something that's helped me throughout my life, specifically in last five years, to just slow down and reflect and learn from your own experiences. As a father, it helps to remember, because there's so many things that happen that you go, I'll never forget this, things that my kids say or do or whatever it may be, and then, like, a week later, you're like, I can't remember that experience, or at least parts of it, the feelings of what happened. And so there's an element of remembering things as well. And then the third thing that I'll say is having these creative outlets or creative projects, that happens within the workplace. I think we can apply the same principle within the workplace, but I think it's fundamentally important to do it outside of the workplace as well, and ironically, like me writing this children's book, when I was working at Reveley engineers in Salt Lake, they knew that I wrote the book. And we have a bunch of K through 12 clients, right that we do a lot of design, a lot of schools, and we were hosting this event, and there was going to be a bunch of Superintendent of superintendents there, and the marketing department got a hold of me within our company, and said, Hey, would you come speak at this event? We love that. You're an engineer, but you're also, you know this other you wear this other hat, you're you're an author, a children's book author, and what we'll do is buy a bunch of books from you and donate them to this. Tools. And I was like, Yeah, for sure. And so it takes a little bit of outside the box thinking, but ultimately, these creative projects outside of work, I think, have a correlation or an influence on what you do in your engineering profession and make you more valuable. And so I talked to a lot of engineers. I'm like, What are your hobbies? What do you like to do after work? Like, what how do you spend your time? And a lot of them are, like, hobbies. What are you talking about? You know, I don't do anything, and I always find that very sad, that we're a little bit one dimensional sometimes. And I can say that because that's how I was for a long time. It's not to sound impressive, it's not to rattle off a list of look at all these cool things that I do, but really it's how do you fill your time and your life with things that you feel are important to you, and then inevitably, those things like I said, help you show up better as an engineer as well. I agree, and I think that these these personal projects, these creative outlets, they can lead to other opportunities, kind of like you were saying, right? You've got to speak. And they bought a bunch of books from you.
Aaron Moncur:I've had similar experiences where I've just done this personal project, and I involved some other people, and they learned about what I was doing, and it led to opportunities and just fulfilling experiences. Yeah, I never would have had, had I not put myself out there and just done this thing, right? I wasn't looking for monetary compensation. I just thought it would be a fun, useful thing to do, and so I did it and and people liked it, and it led to some great experiences. Let's see, I think let's do maybe one more question, and then we'll wrap things up here. If you can share, of course, not sharing anything confidential. But is there an experience or a story that you can share with everyone where you helped an engineer shift from feeling stuck or, you know, exhausted, to waking up excited about their work and life again. Yeah, I'll share two short ones, and I'll share two because they're, they're quite different, but I think the crux of the situation, or the the importance, is the same.
Jake Kennington:I worked with an individual that was a little bit younger in his career, maybe in the first decade or so, or a little bit less, and he was at a job where ultimately it just wasn't a good match. And that happens sometimes it wasn't what he wanted from his career, and there's no problem with that. That's something that you just kind of have to figure out. And a lot of times, to be honest, a lot of times, honest, a lot of times where you land on your first job isn't where you'll be your entire career, right? So we talked, we talked for almost a year every week, roughly, and we worked through a lot of things that he was dealing with, and mindsets and how to approach, you know what he would do next, right? Okay, so I don't want to work at this job. What do I do next? And what happens with a lot of people in that scenario is, is they start to think, well, is engineering not for me, right? Should I do something else? And he was going to become a highway patrol officer he was going to teach he was, like, on the ledge ready to jump right in the sense of, like, forget this engineering thing. I'm out. And so what I helped him do was not necessarily walk him off the ledge, because if that's what he wanted, then let's go after that. Let's pursue another career. But we talked through it, and it wasn't necessarily engineering that was not fulfilling him or giving him meaning and purpose in his life. It was just the company he was working for. And so what I helped him do was, instead of be in this limbo state of I don't know what to do, the best way to find clarity is to take action, right? And so, in fact, it's the only way to find clarity. Make a decision, take action, and then you'll find clarity and confidence in those decisions. It might be the wrong decision, it might be the wrong action, but at least you'll know, right? And so I encouraged him to start applying for jobs and helped him find one and and it was a great experience. It wasn't the first job. He went to his first interview, and he left, and he's like, Man, I do not want to work there, right? And there's that clarity, right? And then this, luckily, the second job he applied for, he got. He's He's thriving. He's in a better place. It's just been a good fit for him. And then the second example I'll give you is very similar in the sense of how we work through the problem, but very different in how it showed up. And so this guy is owns an engineering company. He started it about three years ago, and. He has 15 employees, and so the the first individual was early career individual contributor. Right? This guy that I'm going to talk about now is is an owner of a company. He's in his at least his second decade of work, and his problem was that for the last three years, he's been working 70 hours a week, right? And if you've ever started a company like you mentioned Aaron at the beginning, you're okay with that, and it's almost inevitable, but at some point, you're like, This can't be what I signed up for forever, right? You're like, this can't this. Can't go this way. And so what he needed help with was breaking free of the mindset of only He can do it right, the mindset of, I have to micromanage because I can't delegate and I don't trust people. Right? He would never say that to anybody. He trusted his employees, but he wasn't acting like he trusted them, because he's micromanaging them. He's controlling everything. He's reviewing everything and so and he knows this, he knows he wants to delegate, but it's it's taking off that individual contributor hat and putting on the CEO hat, or the boss hat, or the president hat, whatever you want to call yourself. And the irony, or the funny thing about it, is it's the same process. He had to decide how he wanted to show up in the world. So make the decision that I'm going to be somebody that delegates, and I'm going to be somebody that stops being an individual contributor, and I'm going to run my company. Then he had to take action in that direction. So decide, act. And then he found clarity, confidence, and then the last thing I forgot to mention is opportunity. If you follow that loop, it repeats, and inevitably you find clarity, confidence and opportunity. This guy I'm working with right now, just last week, he calls me and he says, Hey, I found a guy that I can hire to free up my time, and it's a guy that was an old co worker, a friend of his, that he trusts and that he could almost immediately delegate a large amount of his time to. Now that was going to happen. We didn't make that happen, like him and I, working together, didn't make that opportunity to come up. But I would venture to say that if he wasn't in the right mind space, or he wasn't looking for those things, that that might have came and went right. And so I think if we work on being decisive, on what we want, taking action in that direction, that clarity and confidence will follow, and eventually we'll have opportunities. Now I didn't expect it to happen that fast for either of these individuals, sometimes it takes, it takes a while, and there you need to be patient, right? But you keep doing the things that you know are going to get you to where you need to be. And so hopefully, those are two examples that maybe cover a large portion of your audience, listening that maybe they're one or the other somewhere in between, but they can relate to those experiences. Those are terrific, Jake. Thank you for sharing. How can listeners get a hold of you? Oh, wonderful. So I'm on LinkedIn. I'm sure a lot of people that come on here and other podcasts say that. Jake Kennington, you can see me on LinkedIn and my beautiful face here. That's an easy way to get a hold of me. I also have a website called human engineer coach.com and then also just plug a new thing that I'm doing. I'm teaming up with Jeff Perry. He's another engineer slash coach. There's not very many of us, but, but there's a select few, and he's been on your podcast, Aaron, before. We're teaming up to do what we're calling an engineering challenge. It's going to be 14 days long. We're going to talk about a lot of these personal development things, about building your strong column, and how we can do that, how we can show up in a way that we want to show up in our life. And we're going to kick it off with a one hour live event on Zoom or on a computer somehow. And then we'll do 14 days of emails, practical strategies and tips to do exactly what we talked about today. And then we'll close it with another live event. And so you can get more info on that at challenge, dot human engineer coach.com, completely free. So we'd love to have as many people join us as possible and get to know everyone there. It's fun to do it as a group. There's a sense of community and and we'll have a lot of interaction with each other. So those are the ways that you can get in touch with me, and we'd love to have as many people as possible during this challenge. It's going to be a fun time.
Aaron Moncur:Wonderful. We'll have links to all of those in the show notes. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, Jake, thank you so much for being on the show today. What a delight it was to get to know you and hear some of your background and your insights and how you're helping engineers out there. I love it. Thank you so much again for being with us today.
Jake Kennington:Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate your time and doing the show. This has been a great experience. Thank you.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. To join a vibrant community of engineers online visit the wave dot, engineer, thank you for listening.
Unknown:You.
