Career Passion Blueprint – Day 2

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. How was last week’s episode? Did you leave it feeling inspired? Excited for what’s possible for you? Ready to take this next step? Has this been a long week just waiting in anticipation?

Now, if you didn’t listen last week, go back and listen to the last episode because this is a special series where I am sharing my master class, The Career Passion Blueprint. The first lesson was last week, and today I’m going to teach you my four step framework. Next week we will wrap up with common mistakes and pitfalls and how to avoid them, as well as some really awesome examples of how to use the framework. We also get into one of my favorite topics, neuroscience and how your brain works.

So let’s dive in.

Hello. Welcome to day two of your master class series, The Career Passion Blueprint. Today we are going to be talking about the four step framework. Thank you so much for your engagement yesterday. I loved kicking off yesterday. I hope that you woke up today excited and hopeful and maybe even a little bit inspired about what is possible for you, because that is what this is all about. I am so passionate about this topic because it’s going to change the world, if I don’t say so myself, because when we all are able to shed our social conditioning and we are able to really be ourselves and figure out what our unique purpose is, what our passion is and are happier in our lives, think about the ripple effect that that has.

It’s not just about you and your fulfillment and letting go of not feeling good enough or not worthy or every bad thing that’s been said to you in your life. But it’s also about the role modeling that you’re doing for everyone around you and for any little humans that you’re raising and what they’re going to think is possible because you decided to focus on what you really want and to not worry what other people think and to start this path to figuring this out, to figuring out why you have that unique voice, to figuring out what you really want in your life.

And I’ve never shared this much like this before. My podcast is amazing and that is where I really provide a lot of tools and steps. But this is a master class. This is a series that is taking you through the journey to knowing what to do for yourself, because not everyone has the means to really invest in themselves, and I really want you to at least be able to invest your time and have the tools and have this put together for you because it is different than anything you can buy off a shelf, that you can get from anyone else, because it is my framework.

It is how I discovered this for myself. It’s me applying everything I’ve learned from my organizational psychology degree, from working in corporate America, developing others, leading a network of women and seeing 90% of them get career advancement. It’s from my coaching certification. It’s from all of this experience. And then my unique brain that has created this process, this framework, and so I hope you feel the energy of this. I hope you feel excited to dig in. So let’s go ahead and get started. Okay. So yesterday, what we did, we talked a little bit about why we’re here.

We talked about what’s possible. We talked about the ten ways to know if you are ready for a career change or if you need one. We talked about how I help you. We talked about having a vision for your future and that visualization exercise in yesterday’s video, if you skipped it, go back to it. You can go back to it as many times as you want. What that does? The importance of that is it’s really aligning your central nervous system to what you want in your conscious mind.

It’s helping you get in touch with what you really think and feel. It’s helping prime your brain for what you’re about to create. So if you skipped yesterday and you’re just jumping into this video because you’re like, oh, I just want to get into the framework. I highly suggest you go back and watch that first video as well, because that is really priming your body and your mind and it’s setting the foundation for what you’re going to do. All right. So today. Today, we’re going to go through the four step framework.

We’re going to talk about how it works. I’m going to guide you step by step. I’m going to tell you how to apply each step, and you’re going to get some homework to help prep you for tomorrow’s lesson. So let’s go ahead. Are you ready to see it? Let’s go. So here is the framework at a high level. So this is what the framework includes. You start with evaluating where you are right now, and then we go to exploring you, clarifying the choices you want to make, the direction you want to go and then deciding on what you want and making a plan to get there.

And the whole time we are working on your mindset because this is the thing that’s going to hold you back the most. Thinking you can’t do it. Thinking it’s hard. Thinking it’s not for you. Thinking you should settle. Your brain, it’s tricky, and it’s there to support you and it’s there to help you and it has created coping mechanisms based on your experiences, and it’s operating primarily in the subconscious. So your brain can offer up thought that don’t help you but seem very logical and that support you staying the same and staying stuck.

So let’s go ahead and start with evaluate. So I’m going to walk through, like I said, the four steps today. I’m going to walk you through the four steps. I’m going to talk a little bit about the mindset. And tomorrow is really where we’re going to dig into that kind of bonus sauce, the secret sauce. The thing that makes this work all of the time is really managing your mindset. And so I’m going to dig into that tomorrow with common pitfalls that I see people making that I’ve seen my clients make that kind of hinder their success.

And then also some examples of how this has really worked for people, how they’ve applied it, so you can get some inspiration. So that is going to be in tomorrow’s lesson. So the first step is to evaluate. And this is something that a lot of people skip. They think they know where they are. They know they’re not happy, they know they want something different. And so they kind of just go right into figuring out what the solution is, right. You don’t want to spend too much time thinking about where you are, but let me put it this way.

If you, let’s say, are going to a friend’s house for dinner and they moved to a new house an hour away from you. And you haven’t been there yet, it’s your first time, you’re excited, you get dressed up, you get the car, put it on the GPS, and about halfway there, the GPS dies. And so you don’t know how to get there. You’re not really sure what this little town is that you drove through.  Your phone’s still working, GPS just isn’t. So you call your friend and you say, “hey, I’m on my way but my GPS died and I’m not really sure how to get to your house. Can you tell me the way? Tell me the directions.” She’s like, “sure, where are you at?” And you say, “Well, I saw a rest area a little ways back, and I passed a Food Lion grocery store and I think I saw a sixth street somewhere not that far away.” And so she has a hard time figuring out how to get you to her house because you don’t know exactly where you are. You know, generally where you are, but you don’t know exactly.

And if you know exactly, that is going to be much easier. Then you can get step by step directions. You can make a step by step plan. So this is why it’s important for you to make sure that you know exactly where you are, because what I see people doing, and this is a little bit of a sneak peek of a pitfall that I could talk about tomorrow but I’ll give you right now, is people often skip this. And then what happens is they get frustrated because they make a plan, they’re not really sure where they are so their plan they made isn’t the greatest, but then they don’t think they’re making progress, and they’re kind of spinning their wheels and getting frustrated. So then they just stay the same because they’re not actually seeing their progress because they didn’t accurately evaluate where they are. And because they didn’t accurately evaluate where they are, they’re not only seeing the steps they’ve already made, but they also aren’t really on the right path exactly. They’re a little bit off course because they started from the wrong spot. So to evaluate, there’s an exercise I want you to do.

And if you have access to the workbook, if you downloaded that, if you registered to get that ahead of time, then this is in your workbook. Otherwise, what you will do is write down these five different categories: career path, work life balance, self confidence, self confidence I define as how you talk to yourself, how confident you are to walk into meetings and talk without preparation, how much you trust yourself, how much doubt you have, not how confident you are at doing the things you already know how to do.

It’s a big misconception. Relationships at work and how you spend your work days. And if you want to add any other category that you’re struggling with, like relationships or anything like that, like at home, personal categories, you can go ahead and do that as well. And then for each category, I want you to rate it from one to 10.  10 is I’m really happy with this category, there’s not really room for improvement, and one is I definitely need a change, something has to be different. This is miserable.

So give it a number. There’s no right or wrong. And then I want you to write down why you rated it that number, and also what would make it a ten? So for your career path, for example, let’s say you gave it a two. I want you to write down why you rated it a two and what it would take for it to be a ten. Is it something that you would need to feel? Something you would need to have, a certain amount of money, a title? What is it that to you would feel like a ten? And do that for each of the categories.

And that’s going to give you an idea of where you’re really struggling because you might think career path is really what you’re struggling with, but maybe it’s work life balance and self confidence. Maybe that’s where you rated yourself the lowest, so that’s really where you need to focus and the career path will come when you work on those things. So it’s important to really get clear on where you are and to do this evaluation assessment. This is also going to trick your brain, and I love to trick your brain.

So this is going to be a non threatening way to look at what improvements you want to make without signaling your brain that you’re going to change something and so it better freak out and put in sequence one, two, three, so that you stay the same. So it’s going to be really non threatening way for you to explore this. This is also going to give you something to measure. So sometimes when we’re unhappy, we’re just like, I’m stressed. Well, how do you measure that? Is it stressed or not stressed?

Because that doesn’t really tell you your improvement. You could be stressed at a ten, make a bunch of improvements, and then feel stressed at a five. But if you’re still stressed, you’d say you’re stressed. So then it’s going to show no improvement. And then that’s going to keep you stuck and it’s going to make it frustrated. So instead, I want you to really be clear on what that number is so that you have something to measure over time. Okay? Because your brain is going to just go into all of these different, it going to sometimes have a temper tantrum. It’s sometimes like a toddler.

It’s just going to be like, no, I don’t want to. So this is going to be a really good exercise for you. And it’s also going to help you make a really clear plan for what you want. Okay. So the next is to explore. We’re going to explore who you are, not what jobs are available but who you are and what you want. So your brain, again is going to tell you all sorts of things like, you’re not qualified for certain things. Who are you to start a business?

Who are you to go into that role or speak up or do a TED talk or whatever it is that you might want to do? So we have to explore who you are first, because otherwise all of these things of what you might want might bubble up and your brain is going to shut them down. So we want to look at, same thing with jobs. If you apply for a job and then you look at it and then you’re like, I’m not going to be qualified for that but really you are, it’s just it’s tricky.

So exploring who you are is going to help you peel back the social conditioning that has experience since you were born. So when you were born, you didn’t have any preconceived notions of who you are, of what you are capable of. No, you were just a little baby. And then eventually someone told you you needed to wear pants, and then you learned you had to wear pants. You can’t walk around naked all the time. So your conditioning has been happening throughout your entire life, with your parents, with the TV, with school, with everything around you telling you what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s expected of you, what will give you praise, what’s socially acceptable.

And all of this social conditioning goes into your subconscious, which is over 90% of how your brain functions. You have less than 10% that’s actually making conscious decisions. So we need to peel back the social conditioning. We need to understand who you really are and what you want without the influences of your partner, your kids, your family, your friends, the TV, your company. We need to know you, get to know you.

When my clients do this, they say, “Oh, my gosh. I’ve never known myself like this before.” I had a client recently say, I think I even actually shared it. She sent me a note that she, like, has gone through this process and learned all these traits about herself and that she is freaking awesome. And I love that. It just made me smile so big. So this exploration piece is really important. I’m going to offer you some questions to think about, to help you dig deep into this exploration so you can think about, again this is going to be in your workbook if you registered and had access to it. Otherwise, just write these down or come back to the recording later.

What brings you joy? What was the last time that you felt happiness, sparks of joy, lost sense of time? Was it in your current job? Was it at home? Come up with as many ideas or examples as you can think of of when you felt really great. When you have no care in the world. Time just lost sense of time because you were so immersed in enjoying that moment. What did you want to be as a child? Sometimes we want to be things as a child, and then we decide it’s not acceptable.

And so then we go a more traditional or logical route. And maybe there’s something to explore there about something that you wanted to be as a child, that you didn’t explore. And what would you do if you could do anything? If you didn’t have any money, time, people, limitations, what would you do with your time? All of these questions can be clues to who you really are. You can think about your values, what you value in your life, what you value as a person, what you want for yourself.

This type of questioning is really going to help you explore yourself and understand yourself better. Now, the next step is to clarify. So you’ve evaluated where you are. You’ve identified what you want to work on. You’ve started exploring who you are and you’re coming up with some direction. Now we need to look at patterns and trends and themes. And then you’re going to brainstorm all of the ways that you could meet the needs that you came up with in the exploration phase. And then you’re going to research them and test them out.

You can do informational interviews. You can do research online. You can talk to someone at work that maybe has some experience in that area. I did this with my coaching program. I had practice clients, and that was a way that I really reinforced that having a business on my own and coaching outside of a corporation is really what I wanted to do. That’s what really fired me up. But had I not had that experience, I wouldn’t have known. I was really trying to maintain my coaching within a corporation.

I had created a coaching program where I worked and I was coaching people for a certain percentage of time within my role. But I really loved testing it out by having practice clients, having people that hired me outside of work. And I worked with them in the evening and to be unbiased and 100% there for them like no one else in their life, because I don’t have any preconceived notions of who you are. I only see your potential and I don’t have to worry about what your boss thinks or HR thinks or anyone.

I’m there for you. And so having that, helping people get results that way is just it fills my cup so much. And so that was a way that I discovered that I really needed to have my own business. So doing this research, testing things out is really important to the process to clarify what you want. And then you decide. After going through that process of clarification, then you decide what are the steps I need to take? So let’s recap the framework. So Evaluate, you look at where you are, what you want to be different, what you want to be the same.

Explore is where we peel back those layers of social conditioning using some of the questions that I gave you and digging deep into who you are. Clarify is where you look at patterns and test out research and options, and then Decide is what you want to do and how you make it happen. And then managing your mindset is what you’re doing the entire time. So I have had people get hung up at different parts of this framework. So it’s not just A-B-C-D or E-E-C-D.

The managing your mindset has to be the whole time. Sometimes people will get resistance around the exploration. They don’t want to peel back social conditioning. They’re scared of what they’re going to discover. They want to stay within the comfort of everything they’ve known. Some people don’t like the clarification. They want to just decide and go, that they’re uncomfortable with being patient and with really sitting with themselves and making sure it’s the right decision because they’re used to go, go, go, go, go. And then some people their limitations, their blocks, their mindset work is really in the decide phase.

It’s when they actually figure out what they want and need to make it happen. Then it’s ooh, now your brain is really kicking in. You’re going to leave your cushy job and go try this other thing? You’re going to build a business? You’re going to go to another Department? What about everything you’ve built? What will your partner think? What will your family think? So then we have to coach through that. So it’s really important to go through this whole process but to also manage your mindset along the way.

And so you might be thinking like, okay, this seems hard. Can you just give me a test and tell me what to do? And the answer is yes and no. There are tests out there that can give you some clues. I use them as part of the puzzle of you. So there are assessments that I use that are scientifically validated that are a piece of the puzzle. But you are familiar, I’m sure, with aptitude tests, with quizzes. I have a quiz on my website, actually – Are You in the Right Career?

But these quizzes and the ones that say, okay, you would be a social worker would be your ideal job. You should be a teacher. If you believed those to be true, you would take that test and follow that career. But that is not the way it works, because we are more complex than a simple assessment that tells us what to do with our lives. That is why this process is so important and it works like a charm, because you are the person that knows what’s best for you.

You just don’t know it yet, and you need some help discovering who you are and what you want and learning the tools to make it happen. A generic test can’t tell you who you are. This process will certainly help you figure it out. This process, this framework, like I’ve said, it is grounded in psychology, in neuroscience, in everything I’ve learned in my career so far. It is unique. You’re not going to see this anywhere else. You’re not going to learn about yourself and know this decision is right for you anywhere else.

This is where the work is, and I’m giving this to you. And you might be thinking, Well, this isn’t going to work for me. And I lovingly tell you that you’re wrong. You’re wrong. This has worked for me. This is really, the way that I came up with this is based on my own experience of figuring this out for myself – all of my years in corporate America developing talent and leading a network of women and going through a coaching certification and getting a master’s degree and applying it with hundreds of people in all of my clients.

It has never not worked. It’s just will you work it? Will you do what you need to do to make it work? Will you go through the steps, go through the process? So I want you to take some time to reflect. I want you to reflect on this.  This was a lot of information. Like I said, I haven’t done this before, giving so much of what I do with my one-on-one clients and in my Happy at Work Club. Like, I haven’t given so much before, but I believe in you, and I believe in your potential. .

And I want you to cut the clutter, cut the books, cut all of the stuff. And I want you to just have a voice. And if I am the only voice that you hear, I want you to know that what you want is possible, that this framework works, that you can actually overcome, no matter what your trauma or experiences in the past that has shaped you that has beat you down, you can overcome that. No matter what questions you have about your future and what’s possible for you, you can have whatever your destiny is, and you can figure out what that is with this process.

So tomorrow we are going to dig more into case studies and pitfalls and mindset. But for tonight, I want you to reflect on where you’ve been holding yourself back. What you daydream about? What would you love to have? What do you love about where you are now? Because there are things that you have now that are great too. What do you want to keep what you want to take with you in this next chapter, this next season? And then I want you to go through each step.

I want you to look at it. You have the workbook. There’s some guidance there, but I want you to dig a little bit deeper. Like, how are you going to actually go through these steps? Carve out time to go through the evaluation process If you’re not doing it today. Carve out time to explore who you are and figure out how you’re going to do that. Carve out time to clarify what you want, to take notes from this session and then how you’re going to decide what factors you need and then what you need to do to make it happen.

And how are you going to manage your brain the whole way? Tomorrow, I’m going to give you more insight into how your brain works. I’m going to help you learn to manage it better. But I want you to reflect on what you’ve learned so far. It’s a lot of information, and I want you to take advantage of this opportunity that you have where I am providing you this. And I’m also here for questions. You can reach out to me any time. You can email me, you can contact me on social media.

Let me know your takeaways, your ahas. I love hearing those. And I also love helping you with your questions. So if you’re feeling stuck, if you’re not sure, if you’re confused, just reach out to me. And finally, thank you so much for being here with me today. I’m having so much fun teaching you this. I hope that you are feeling as inspired as I am for you. I am cheering you on every step of the way. And tomorrow we are just going to take this party a little bit farther.

And then next Tuesday, there’s going to be a live Q&A. You’ll get some instructions on that. It’s going to be at 12:00 p.m. eastern If you want to join live. You can submit your questions. Come live and ask your questions so that you can take this and apply it. If you have questions, I put my contact information here. You can contact me through Facebook @melissalawrencecoaching through Instagram @_melissalawrence on LinkedIn @melissamlaw and you can email me at melissa@melissamlawrence.com

If you’re watching this through your email, you can just reply to the email. I am here for you and let’s see where you go. Let’s see what exciting things you create for yourself. I can’t wait to talk to you tomorrow and take this even further where you can actually see some examples of this being applied. I will talk to you soon. Have a great rest of your day.

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.