Career Passion Blueprint – Day 1

Welcome to Navigating your Career, the only podcast that blends personal development, professional skills and psychology to help you get happy at work and live the life you want. If you want to stop feeling stuck and start feeling better, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Melissa Lawrence. Let’s get started. Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. For this and the next couple of episodes, I am going to do something a little bit different, and if you listen to last week’s episode, you know exactly what you’re getting.

If you’re an Email Insider, meaning you get emails from me every week, or if we’re connected on social media, you may have heard that I offered a brand new master class series. I had never done this before, where I provided so much value and a step by step framework that I use with my clients, shared the common pitfalls and helped you create a blueprint for your career. And it was incredible. I delivered this over three sessions and each session built on the last. And here is what participants learned and what you’re going to be able to learn over these next few episodes: why you feel stuck in your career and what is possible for you (and it is different than you think), the exact steps I use with my clients to go from unsure and stuck in their career to knowing what they want, how to identify the career that is aligned with who you really are, not who you were conditioned to be, how your brain works and why it feels like you just can’t make progress sometimes, common pitfalls to making a change and examples of how the framework has worked for others, and an action plan to apply what you learn step by step to create your custom career blueprint. Sounds pretty incredible, right?

And it really was. It helped so many people. And so it got me thinking… You as my lovely podcast listeners, you should benefit from this too. What I taught is aligned with what you learn when you tune in every week to the podcast. And maybe you just missed this. Or maybe you didn’t have time or you just weren’t sure if it was for you. And so this is what I’m going to do because I don’t want you to miss out. Today I am going to share with you the audio from the first lesson. Next week you’re going to get my second lesson where I walk you through my framework, so be ready to take some notes. Then the next week is going to be the final lesson where you learn the pitfalls, the common mistakes, and how to avoid them and some inspiration of how some of my clients have applied this framework in their life. I am so excited to share this with you. So before we get into the first lesson, if you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I missed that. This is the best thing ever.

How did I miss it? The best thing to do is to get on my email list because I’m always dropping cool stuff like this there. You can join by going to melissamlawrence.com/email  We’ll put a link in the show notes for you and then you’ll be sure not to miss the next one that comes around. I always love connecting with my listeners too. So you’re welcome to reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook and I will drop those links as well. Alright, let’s dive in.

Here is the first lesson. Be prepared to think about where you are now and what is possible for you in a whole new way. You’re also going to learn why you feel stuck and how to know if you really need a change.

Here we go. Hello and welcome to the first day of your Career Passion Blueprint Master Class. I am so glad that you are here. This is going to create such a shift for you. Now, I call this a master class because you’re not just getting surface level concepts in this training. You’re going to learn step by step, oh baby! Blast from the past right there. Does anyone remember that song? My tune was not good or my pitch, so  you might not even recognize it. So okay, step by step, you are going to learn how to determine what your work could look like, what passion is available to you in your work and why you can’t figure it out for yourself.

And you’ll hear me use the term master class interchangeably with training. And I do that because master class, like I said, takes training a little step further. I know a lot of you have probably had some experiences with some training that weren’t very applicable or practical, and that’s not the case here. This is really something that you’re going to be able to take and apply and make changes to in your life by the end of this week. And so that is what the term master class means.

And so if you haven’t heard it, I just wanted to define it for you. So you’re going to think about yourself and your career differently after this week. And I am so excited to guide you on this path. If this is our first time together, My name is Melissa Lawrence. I am a Career and Life Coach and I host the Navigating Your Career Podcast. I help high achievers who work in demanding, highly regulated industries find their ideal career and overcome what has them feeling stuck and unhappy in their lives.

Now, when you signed up for this training, I’m guessing this isn’t the first thing that you’ve tried to figure out what to do and what is wrong and how to have the impact and growth and happiness that you want. And you might have tried podcasts, maybe you even listen to mine, or you read all the books or take the assessments or do the corporate trainings, all of the things, but they’re not working. Or not working the way you want them to. And as great as they are, as valuable as they can be, you need something a bit more and you’re still unsure what to do.

And this is really not your fault. There’s a lot of information out there, and it’s confusing. And as we work together, as we go through this training together, you’ll hear me say things like ,”Your brain can’t solve your brain’s problems,” and that’s something that is very true and it is grounded in neuroscience and psychology. And the premise with that, what I mean when I say that is your brain is interpreting all of the information that you are reading and consuming about yourself, about your skills. But your brain is operating 90% in the subconscious and 10% in the conscious, or less than that. Which means your brain is interpreting the information, but sometimes your brain is the problem.

So it might not call that out to you. And so you may have some blind spots or some conditioning that we all have from our own experiences and life growing up and just the way that nurture works that are preventing you from really being clear on what you want and having maybe even the courage to make it happen. So you have a good job, at least on paper, right? But it doesn’t excite you. You aren’t really challenged. And you just wonder what else is out there for you.

What if you could make a bigger impact, if you could feel excited to go to work, if you stopped snapping at your loved ones because you were stressed from a hard day of doing things you don’t enjoy or if you stopped convincing yourself to settle? What if? That is what we’re going to focus on in this first part today. So what makes this approach different? What makes me different other than my bad singing and dancing, that the more we are around each other, you will get to see.

How is this a master class going to help you? Well, for one, I’m a lot like you. I grew up with limited means and really the goal to just get an education and a good job and good benefits and have house and family and a bank account and a 401K. Liking your job, having passion for your work, well that was just a luxury. Like and love don’t put food on the table, am I right? In fact, I didn’t go to college right away because I had no idea what I wanted to do and the idea of choosing a major and investing in such a large amount of money for something I wasn’t sure of really was hard for me.

And so instead, I was like I’m going to work a couple of years and then I’m going to go to college. And so that’s what I did. And one of my character strengths is love of learning and so you will find me continuously all of these books and classes and college degrees, all of those certifications have served me well in my life, but I did end up going back to school. I got a few different degrees. My most recent was a Masters in Organizational Psychology that I earned a few years ago.

But I can tell you that with every job and building a successful career and learning talent and organizational development in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, I always knew that it wasn’t my forever job. It almost felt like I was dating. You know when you meet someone new and it’s exciting and you want to learn things about them and get to know them, but it’s still new so you’re not ready to make a full on commitment. That’s kind of how I felt about different roles in my career.

I might have known what I wanted in that moment. I definitely followed things that I was interested in and got experience in those areas. But I always knew in any role that I had, that it wasn’t my forever job, that there was something more for me, that there was a bigger impact that I wanted. That I wanted to tap into an expertise and unique way of thinking on a bigger scale than what I was doing. I just didn’t know what it looked like. But I do have a human brain, and I did grow up in this society, and I did have my own belief shaping me.

And so I kept working, and I worked hard to be the best. I kept climbing in corporate America. I kept striving for those high performance reviews, and that is how I continued for several years. I played that corporate game that you are probably in right now, and I kept following my interest in doing all the DIY things. So you are going to learn an approach that is much more efficient than the way that I took. And along the way, I was told, and you might have these clues for yourself, that I should be a consultant, that I should consider my own business.

That the way I think is different, that what I wanted to achieve is not typical of the role or company that I was working with. And you probably hear things like that, too, if you really think about it in meetings with your peers, your approach to work, the way that you think, that your ideas are unique, that you’re so good at what you do. But if you’re like me, you get all of that feedback, you have your good job on paper, but you still want something different. You’re still bored, you still know there’s something more for you and there’s a bigger impact that you want to have.

You want to know that you’re reaching your potential, that you aren’t going to wake up in 25 years and wonder what you did with your life, or more so what you didn’t do, what you could have done. You want to be happier, more fulfilled, to feel challenged, to know that you are using your unique talents and gifts, and that is what this week is all about. I’m going to let you in on a secret. I wanted to have a business since I was 20 years old and I started my business the year I turned 40. Back when I first had the idea of having a business, I was told I couldn’t. But not really.

I wasn’t told I couldn’t. I wasn’t prevented. It was more I shouldn’t, and it wasn’t really supported. It was too risky. It was something that needed to be a side hustle. And I listened to the people around me for a long time because I loved them and they loved me, and they meant well. And I knew that they were just looking out for me, and I didn’t really have examples of people doing what I was doing or wanting to do or going off of this path that we’re all trained to go on and conditioned to do.

So it did seem risky, and it was already scary to do. And so to have that hesitation, which is just your brain doing its job, and then to have people around you that are jumping in that pool with you on that hesitation or even swaying you away from wanting to do this work for yourself. It’s easy to listen. They didn’t know that they were clipping my wings, so to speak. I let it keep me small for a long time because they meant well and because I could believe that, and it was easier to believe that than it was for me to believe that there was something special about me, that if I nurtured or if I grew could be something.

So I silenced that voice that I had, that there was something more to this life and more to my career and that there was more impact I could have, probably like you do, too. I tried to convince myself that what I had was enough and that I shouldn’t want more, and I needed to be grateful and then I would almost shame myself for wanting something different with how fortunate I was with everything that I had. And I tried to tell myself to just take up more hobbies.

So I kept working towards being the best that I could in corporate America. And I was pretty good. And I did take up some different hobbies. But to be honest, one of the biggest fears of my life is that I would never live up to my potential, and then I would let all of these things stop me from being, doing everything that I want for my life, and that I, on some level, know is possible, that I would never know this potential, that I would look back and regret not working harder to discover it and not listening to myself more than listening to the people around me, even my spouse, even my best of friends and my family.

Because like you, if you would have asked me what I wanted, what my ideal career was, I would say I wouldn’t know, that I didn’t know. I got really comfortable just saying I’m liking where I am right now and I’m getting really great experience. I don’t know what I want ten years from now. A lot of things could be possible, but I didn’t really feel passionate or driven towards any of them. So then you end up chasing circumstantial things like money, titles, things that look good on resumes, make you feel good about yourself, make your bank account look good.

But they’re not really what is making you happy and fulfilled. And so not being able to answer that question is what this training is all about. It’s what I help people do. It’s for those of you that aren’t sure, that know that there is something more for you. Maybe you’ve never chosen your career. Some people, when they come to me, they’ve worked really hard to get where they are and then they reach it and realize they’re not happy still, and we work through that. Some people know that they were never in a career that they chose.

It was something that made sense that was offered to them, that maybe their parents wanted for them or that everyone else around them did. Maybe the driver at the time that you started your career was really just around finding a high paying, successful job to be able to take care of yourself. That was my driver. But if it isn’t making you happy, if you’re not happy when you wake up in the morning, if your days are running together, what is more important, the happiness, the passion or the title? And you can have both.

Sometimes people think, I coach directors and sometimes people think you can’t have them both. You can’t be happy in your career and have a high paying job or a high level job. If you want that, you have to maybe do a freelance job or go out on your own or do these other things and you don’t have to do that. A lot of that is up here. You can have both. But I know if you are here, then you are successful already, that you’re a high achiever and you want to be happy too, that you want them both.

You want to use your voice and your talents differently. You want to feel valued. You want to know that you’re making an impact on a bigger scale, and I get it because like I said, I was like you. Now, well, I took the plunge, as I’ve sort of said. At the end of 2019, I established my business, and I went full time and left my corporate life in June of 2020. I discovered what energizes me, my unique talents, what I’m really good at, what helps me feel like I’m getting the most out of my one life.

I got to know myself really well, and I continue to do so. I continue to be open to what is possible. And I learned that that voice, it was there for a reason, and I’m so glad that I listened to it, and it took me a lot longer to figure this out, than it’s going to take you because I am going to give you the steps. I am going to help you create that blueprint for yourself. I help my clients do this day in and day out is listen to that voice, to find their happiness, to find their peace, to know that there is something possible for them, that it’s greater than they have now and to help them actually achieve it. I’ve helped hundreds of people. Hundreds. I worked with people as the associate director of a large pharmaceutical company for several years. I worked with people during my certification process for coaching and during my graduate studies for organizational psychology. And I work with people now in my business. Now, if you’re wondering how to know if you really need a change, I’m going to share some telltale signs because again, I know what it’s like, and you might be here because you’re curious, you just wanted to see what this was about, and maybe you’re secretly deep down hoping that this isn’t for you.

That you’re going to learn that you actually should just keep with what you have and not do anything, because that would be easier. So here are some signs that you need a change. The first one is your stressed and tired after work regularly. So not just once in a while, when maybe you stayed up late the night before, but your work almost drains you. You don’t have energy for much else when you get home.

You might hit the wine bottle or the Netflix or the shopping online or food, doing other things to distract you and bring some joy, because you just spent a whole day doing something that you know doesn’t really align with what you want. It’s hard to be present in your personal life or at home because you’re bringing the stress from work home with you. So this could look like complaining to your partner, being withdrawn, checking your work phone a lot. You can’t wait for a day off.

You count down the days until your next vacation. I’ve had clients like this. When we started working together they would count down the days until their next vacation. And then you take the vacation and you expect to feel energized and you don’t. You’re looking forward to your next vacation. You feel like your work isn’t valued. There’s so much more that you could be doing that you could be bringing to the table in your career and in your life. You have so many ideas, you have so much potential, and you’re kind of playing it small.

You’re not at the table to make the changes that you want to make. You become complacent and that you still do a great job because you’re you and you’re a high performer, and that is what you do. But you don’t care like you used to. When you went into your job, you used to be excited for the problems you could solve, to raise your hand, to point out when something wasn’t right, to try to make things better. You cared about the company. You cared about the work.

Now, if we’re honest, your 70% is probably one else’s 100%, so you still do a good job, you still get those high performance reviews, but you don’t bother to raise your hand as much. You don’t bother to push your ideas or to try to make the company better any more than you have to. You kind of just don’t want to put in the energy and effort like you used to. You scroll online looking for other jobs, either on LinkedIn or Indeed. Maybe you’re looking at college alumni seeing where they are today, if they followed a path similar to yours, if they’re more successful than you based on how you define it.

If you look at what other people have done to get ideas of what you should do for yourself, looking at certifications other people take. Maybe you should just take that pad your resume a little bit more. Your job isn’t using your skills and abilities. It’s using some, but not all and there’s a lot more you have to give. And you’re having a hard time balancing work and home, and you don’t feel like you’re doing great at both. You convince yourself to stay for the benefits, for all of the wonderful things that you have at your good-on-paper company, good-on-paper job – the health care, the vacation, your salary, your annual bonus.

Your boss is good or great even or maybe just good enough. The company has a lot of potential. They do good work. That’s why you should stay, because if you don’t, what if you leave and it’s not better? What if you make a change and you’re unhappy? So you convince yourself what you have is good enough and you have a nagging feeling that there is something more for you that you are playing small and so you want to explore it. Now, if you listened to that and any of those reasons resonated with you, you are in the right place.

Not all, could be all. Some people have all of them. But even just one, if you thought that’s me, then this is where you are supposed to be. What I’m going to teach you over the next few days is going to be a new approach to answering the question. What is your ideal career? What do you want to do next? What are you passionate about? I am going to show you why this is hard to answer and to understand your brain, your unique way of thinking, which is so important as you approach this framework, this question and really anything in your life.

And I’m going to show you the pitfalls that people run into and trying to do this workn and examples, case studies of people that have applied it, how they’ve used it and what it did for them. You’re going to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks. You’re going to stop Googling for the answer or asking your colleagues what to do or other people in your life. You’re going to stop trying to convince yourself that what you have is good enough. You’re going to discover this for yourself with my framework, with the blueprint you’re going to create for yourself that I am going to share with you.

It isn’t going to be what you’ve been told before. It is going to be what is going to work for you. This isn’t something you’re going to get from your HR, from your corporate training, from a book you can buy off the shelf because this is something that I created. It’s the blend of my organizational psychology background, my years developing talent in pharma biotech, neuroscience. I’ve been fascinated with how the brain works for 15 years. I’ve been studying this. I put all of this together in how I help my clients and what I’m going to share with you.

So this works. It works for me. It works for my clients, and it will work for you. You likely don’t know what you want yet, not for sure. But there is something that you want to feel and you might be thinking that this is maybe a new job or a promotion or getting your foot in the door somewhere else. Or maybe something is holding you back. Maybe you know that you could build more confidence or that like a lot of people, you had a challenging childhood or traumatic experience that has kind of shattered the way that you think about yourself and what is possible for you.

But no matter what it is, this gap that you feel is a feeling that you are trying to chase. And so far, you’ve been trying to fill that gap with things that don’t work. So at this point, if you’ve been multitasking, come on back. I want to take you through a guided visualization so that you can really think about what is possible for you, and you can tap into how you want to feel and what you want your days to look like. So we’re going to take a moment right here.

I want you to, hopefully you are already in a comfortable place, but get in a comfortable place. If at this point, you want to pause and sit on the floor, lay down, just get a blanket, I want you to get very comfortable. And if you’re comfortable doing so, close your eyes. If you’re not comfortable closing your eyes, you can just kind of gaze off at something, look out the window. But something that is going to be calm and serene for you to really focus on yourself. So I’m going to guide you through some visualization.

Now, I want you to think about a day. You can pick any day in the future. It can be another month, but I want you to pick a specific day, like a Tuesday. I want you to think about how you feel on that day, how you want to feel, what your ideal day looks like. Can you picture it? What season is it? What’s the weather like? Get really specific. What day of the week is it? What time did you wake up in the morning? How did you wake up in the morning?

Who is there with you, if anyone? Maybe you have a cup of coffee or tea on the patio. Maybe you have kids running around. What’s on your schedule that day? Do you have any meetings or appointments? Who do you talk to? What are you looking forward to? What do you do during the day? Who did you help? What problems did you solve? If you left the house, what time did you get home? Was anyone there to see you, to greet you? What did you do for dinner? How did you spend your evening?

How did you feel at the end of the day when you put your head on your pillow? Now that you’re not stressed or worried or scrolling for a new job, how do you spend your time at home? What do you choose to focus on during the day? How did you feel knowing that you are whole and wonderful just as you are and there isn’t anything that needs to be fixed about you? You are enough. You contributed to the world, to your family, to your loved ones, to your society, the way that you wanted to.

If you closed your eyes, you can open them up slowly. Come back to me. The way you want to feel, whether it be happy, confident, loved, fulfilled, enough. It’s possible. The impact you want to have in your community and your life is possible. The relationship that you want to have is possible. That feeling that you want, that gap that you have, you can fill it with the right feeling. You can feel how you want to feel. Do you see that? Do you feel that? How are you feeling hearing this?

I hope you are feeling inspired and excited like I am for you right now. I have been where you are. And if I can do this, if I can find my passion and build a business, if my clients can do this work, change jobs, go to new companies, get promoted, get happy where they are… You can answer this question for yourself too. You can feel happier. You can have direction. And I am going to show you exactly how. No more feeling frustrated or guessing. So tomorrow I’m going to walk you through my four step framework.

I’m going to teach you how to use a blend of psychology and neuroscience and professional development principles to discover your unique path. Are you ready? I wanted to stop here because I don’t want to overwhelm you now with going into action. I want you to sit. I want your action to be to sit with this idea of what is possible, what you are capable of, that there’s no more guessing, that you’re going to get the solution. You’re going to fill that gap. That this is the place for you.

So when you go to sleep tonight, allow yourself to dream about what is possible and join me tomorrow. The lesson with the four step framework is going to be in your inbox tomorrow. Bring a notepad and a pen and be ready to take notes. Or if you have the workbook, bring that along too, because tomorrow we’re diving right in. If you have any questions about what we talked about today, about what’s coming up, you can just reply to this email. Let me know. I will get it and I will reply to you.

If we’re on social media, you can post on social media and tag me. I’m happy to help. I’m cheering you on and I cannot wait to see what you do. It’s going to be amazing. I will see you soon.

Coaching with me is the best way to guarantee you get happy at work and achieve your career and life goals. Getting started is easy. Head over to www.melissamlawrence.com to learn more and apply. It is the first step to get you from feeling stuck to knowing exactly what you want and have the tools to make it a reality. I will be by your side the entire way.