85 When Your Career No Longer Feels Like You How to Make Small Decisions and Have Your Own Back

Welcome to the Great Leader Great Mom podcast, where we trade in mom guilt and burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy. I'm your host, Liz Strolley, engineer return life coach. Mom of three and founder of the School of Courage. Here we talk about leading at work and at home, without losing your sanity, your sense of humor, or yourself. If you're ready to drop the guilt and grow your courage, you're in the right place. Well, welcome everyone. This is episode 85. We're pivoting away from our holiday series and we're diving into just a whole new block of work around our career. And so today is all about When your career no longer feels like you, and I want to tell you how to address this without deciding to burn everything down, because I know a lot of you are traumatic like me and you go j straight to that as your option Maybe you say it's in midlife, but there's this point in our career where it sounds something like nothing is technically wrong with my job or my career, but it doesn't feel like me anymore. It doesn't feel like something I want And your job may still look great on paper. People might still be really impressed about it. You're competent. You're respected. You worked hard to get here and yet something inside of you maybe has shifted and there's a little voice in there whispering to you. And it's not loud, it's not dramatic, just enough to make yourself question it all. And sometimes the spiral begins where we think things like Should I just be grateful? Am I bored? Is this burnout? Is this my boss? Do I need to make a big change? Am I just at a low point in my career? What's happening with me? And so today I want to slow this conversation way down in your brain because the answer is not quoting or pivoting or reinventing your entire life. The real work here is internal and it's the quieter work It's about making small decisions, understanding why you're making them, and learning how to have your own back when the clarity isn't obvious. Right? Like no one's telling you what to do. And most women, we don't struggle because we don't know exactly what to do next. It's a different problem. It's because we don't know how to decide And think about so much of our careers. If you're like me, you spent time having mentors and having other people in your life that you could go to and be like, what should I do? Should I apply for this job? This is in my development plan, right? For like the next job I should have, the next group I should be a part of, the next functional area I should look into and get really good at. And what I find is we women often overthink all kinds of options. We look for that permission from somebody who we deem as worthy of having that opinion in our life. We want certainty as well. We want someone to tell us this is the right decision. And what we end up with is we stay stuck way longer than we wanted. And it's really sneaky because indecision is a way of staying comfortable and a way of staying stuck, so you don't actually make a decision. One of my clients came to me and said, I feel like I'm standing at this crossroads, but every sign says, well, don't go mess this one up. And then there's that pressure, right? You feel it, and that's what keeps you frozen. You think, I can't mess it up. I've come this far. I don't want to screw it up going forward. And so when your career no longer feels like you, the goal is not finding the right decision or the perfect decision. The goal is getting to a clear decision, one that is from you, not some external source telling you what the perfect decision is. So here's a story which you may be able to relate to about a high performer who did everything right. And I know I used to work with so many women who are incredible at execution. They've been promoted because they're reliable. They're trusted because they don't drop the ball. They're seen as leaders because they can handle more. They always say yes when somebody comes asking at their door. And one client told me, I don't hate my job. I just feel like I'm playing a version of myself from 10 years ago. And her instinct was to immediately ask. What's my next role? What industry should I switch to? Where am I gonna find the happier place? But underneath all of those questions was really a fear, a fear of disappointing people A fear of wasting what she built or a fear of making the wrong move. And what she actually needed wasn't a big decision. Because you can't find your happiness or your joy or your appreciation or your value outside of yourself. And so many of us walk around the office and we look for that approval, that happiness, that joy from the company, from others, from our achievements, from our job titles. And it's not there. It never satisfies because that's not the way it works. We need to come back to ourselves and we need to ask ourselves what is it we really want in our careers? So here's what I teach instead of big massive pivots, so don't go burn down everything and look for a new job. What I want you to see is how to make smaller decisions on purpose. Smaller decisions sound like I'm gonna stop saying yes to projects that drain me. I'm gonna stop willingly working extra to do things that aren't core to my job. Like how many of you take on all these extra projects for the charity work of the company, and I'm not saying that's bad at all. I'm saying when you do it from a place of resentment and guilt, that's what's not healthy. How many of you could make a small shift in speaking more honestly in meetings and asking the tough questions, asking the open questions. We all find ourselves so often in this performative culture where we want to always look competent, we want to know all the answers And instead, what if we just paused and said, I'm gonna raise my hand and be like, here's what I heard you say. Let me check back in and see if this is where you're going. And sometimes that small act of curiosity, that small pause, helps open the way to saving so many people's time. because you're executing more efficiently and not pretending that everybody knows the answer can read minds about what maybe a boss or some leader is asking you to go do. These small decisions, they're not huge life changing ones they're little tiny ones where you show up and build that relationship with yourself. You start building that courage within you and You come back to who am I in this moment? Who do I want to be? Why am I choosing to show up this way? Do you want to show up from a place of fear or obligation or guilt? Or do you want to change that and show up in a way that's with curiosity and empowerment and just feeling alive and self-respected, not because of what other people will think, but because of this is who you are are. When we make decisions and we understand our reasons, we stop second guessing ourselves and we don't look around for what other people think with this like needy hustle mentality. I want to share another story from a mom who thought she needed a new career, which could be some of you, and she came to convince me that she needed to leave her field entirely and do something totally different. And she said, I don't recognize myself at work anymore But as we slowed down, we realized something important. She was unhappy because she kept abandoning herself inside her career, where she was saying yes when she really wanted to say no. She overrode her own needs. She ignored the resentment that was building within her. And her first shift wasn't a resignation. She was learning to have her own back. And when she got better at that She realized what was actually going on in her mind and was able to question and say, wait a minute, is that really something I want to do? Or is it coming from that place of fear again or that place of people pleasing? and just gonna leave me in resentment. Her clarity returned and she built her own self-trust. So when I say having your own back, what do I mean? I mean trusting your internal signals, allowing space for uncertainty, like going with your reasons and not looking around for other people to disagree with you or not walking around trying to prove. yourself to other people. Having your own Mac means you choose yourself even when others don't fully understand. I love the phrase of we need to allow other people to be wrong about us because so often they are And they are gonna judge you. We are so afraid of when people will judge us and criticize us and make up stories about us. But the reality is we can never control their stories or the way they will judge us. We have to get really clear with our decisions and have our own back. And it doesn't mean go and burn down the bridge of your career. Don't blow things up. Don't look for immediate answers. Confidence and clarity, it doesn't come from certainty or having the right answer or the perfect decision. It comes from learning about you. Are you gonna support yourself when things get hard? Are you gonna have your own back when a decision may not turn out as you thought? Look inside yourself and build that self-reliability, that self-confidence So if your career no longer feels like you, here's what I want you to remember today. You don't need a big move. You need an honest reason in all your decisions. You need to get really clear on what is it you want and why do you want it. And do you love your reasons? If so, proceed forward. Your next chapter doesn't require a giant leap. It requires you being present with your reasons. yourself. The more you practice having your own back, the clearer everything becomes. You're not lost. You're just starting to listen to yourself in a way that we've never done before. If this all resonates with you, come and join my membership for moms who want to stop feeling overwhelmed and have amazing impactful careers and be the leader everybody wants to follow. Go to courage. thscholofcourage. com for more information. With that, everybody, have a great week. See you next time.