I’m Christy. And I believe that a career is so much more than just a job. It’s an extension of your life and an expression of who you are. A career might be something you fall into, but your dream career is created and the dream starts with you. Learn what it actually means to fall your passion, how to get unstuck for good, and how have a meaningful career that supports your life and your soul. If your career doesn’t make you feel alive, then it’s not your livelihood. 

Hey hey. What is up my friends? Welcome back to the livelihood podcast actually it’s just livelihood. Okay, I don’t want the dough podcast, just livelihood. Welcome back to livelihood. I don’t know why I’m being so sassy about it, but I am and whatever.

So, I have been thinking about this question someone posted in one of these Facebook groups that I am in asking everyone if they are guaranteed success in their career. What would they choose to be? And I started to look at the responses. And a lot of them are all these amazing super cool careers photographer. Someone was talking about going into digital marketing, starting book, all of these things. And I’m about two, three years into this dream career journey. And I think looking back at where I started, I think I probably would have answered the same way. I probably would have said I want to be a travel blogger or a photographer, or plan events, or even interior designer, but the more I thought about it, I look back at the past two years. And I see all my failures, all of my successes, all of my growth. And I’m at this place now, where even though I still don’t know if this is going to be successful. I appreciate that growth. Sure. It would have been really great. If I had started a business and made a million dollars in the first year. That’d be fantastic. I mean, don’t get me wrong. But what happens when something bad happens if everything just goes your way all the time? Can you really appreciate the hard work that you’ve put in to something? I think when things are too easy, it gets kind of boring. I mean, think about playing I don’t know go fish with your niece or nephew. It’s a really easy game and maybe you have a lot of fun and playing Go fish but I just get bored. It’s boring. When things are too easy, it doesn’t challenge you and it doesn’t make you grow or evolve. It’s kind of like working out for the perfect body versus working out to feel strong. And the difference between those two is that when you work out for the perfect body when you are starting a dream career or pursuing a dream career because you want this perfect job title you want this perfect life you want this perfect career. It gets really frustrating when you have to go out and create it. And maybe you don’t even try to create it because you’re afraid of the failure. You’re afraid of the things that are going to happen, that are the roadblocks that are going to happen that will keep you from that dream career. And it’s really frustrating when you start working on this perfect career this dream career of yours because you want the end goal so bad. You want the dream career. No, I want the dream career. But then the barriers come because there’s always gonna be barriers. There’s always going to be obstacles. And each time that barrier gets in your way Your thought is going to be I failed. I wasn’t successful. I can’t be successful. It’s kind of like if you’re working out for the perfect body and the perfect weight. You’re externally motivated. You want to look a certain way. And the thing is, you may or may not look a certain way that you want when you work your ass off. You might not lose those last couple pounds. And when you are focused on that number or you’re focused on exactly how you look, it gets really frustrating. And working out is a lot harder leaving it’s a lot harder when you’re like I have to look perfect. And this always happens you get to this place where you get this perfect body or the answer is perfect. Wait. You stressed the whole way there when you get there. And it wasn’t fun at all. And that sucks. Because I personally believe that life should be fun. I personally believe that the challenge can be fun, but if your reward is just how you look. Those folks can go away. What if you have a baby? What if something happens and you gain some weight? Maybe you break your leg and you have to be in bed for a

while. It’s going to be really upsetting when you slide back because it means that your only measurement of happiness is having that theme is having the perfect body is having the dream career and anything less than that is not good enough. But if you think about your dream career as the challenge and the growth, that it takes the evolution of who you are and who you want to become to have the stream career to live it can be so much more fun when you create it. Because like feeling sucks. It’s not fun. No one likes to fail. And I can say a million times everyone can say a million times like there’s failures or lessons to be learned. But it still sucks. It still doesn’t feel good. There has to be something intrinsically motivated. There has to be something within you to keep you going. If we go back to the example of working out if you’re working out just for the body again, the only thing that’s going to make you happy is having that goal is having perfect body having the perfect job career. But if you’re working out because you want to feel strong, that feeling is available to you at any time, all the time. It doesn’t matter how much you weigh. It doesn’t matter how good you look or bad you look. That feeling of being strong. is available to you at all. Times. And your happiness and that feeling doesn’t depend on the end goal. It doesn’t depend on whether you are 120 pounds or 103 pounds or 165 pounds. It doesn’t matter because you’re going for the feeling of the strength that you’re creating every time you work. Out. And with your dream career. It’s the same thing. If you are focusing on the end goal of this dream career and having it or not having it will determine how happy you are. Everything leading up to that is going to feel miserable What if you lose the dream career? You’re gonna go back to feeling miserable. Everything is so hinged on having the end goal. But if you look at your dream career, not as something to be achieved, but as something to evolve and grow into and to look at it as something that makes you feel stronger,

more powerful, and you focus on the things that you’ve never done before that

push you outside of your roles how you podcasts will push me outside of my comfort zone, but I can already see I’m getting more empowered about who I am as a coach and how those feelings those things right there have nothing to do with the dream job. I can feel like a badass. I can feel proud and do the things that make me grow. And each thing I do to make me grow is another step in the right direction to creating the dream career that I want. I don’t have to wait until I have that dream career to feel like my life is a dream already. To feel like my career is a dream already. I don’t have to wait until it’s perfect. It’s this dysfunctional belief that we have that we think there is a place where we will arrive where if I just become a National Geographic I don’t know why there’s always the one I pick but I think it’s because I used to want to do that. And we get so single minded about that end goal without being that photographer that we miss all the opportunities around us leaving that you would go do something if it was guaranteed success keeps you stuck. I think it keeps us in the fear stage of creating your dream careers because we want that guaranteed. And by wanting that guarantee, it makes it really scary. Because we’re not used to uncertainty humans. The human brain does not like uncertainty. What if What if you go after that career, and success is not guaranteed? Then what? I think that is a better question. Because that is what we’re always thinking that we might fail. We’re afraid to go create a dream career because we know success is not guaranteed. If you know that success isn’t guaranteed, then what would you do? What do you want to do? I really think that this is the question to ask yourself because we’re always looking for certainty. But that search for certainty is keeping you where you are now. It’s not. It’s not moving you forward. It’s not helping you take action. But when we can accept that there’s uncertainty, that success isn’t guaranteed. Then we can start to think of solutions. We can start to think outside of the box. Maybe being a National Geographics photographer is not a guarantee, but what would you do? If you can’t become that person? How do you want to challenge yourself to be that person? Can you start on the path to being that person but be open to being something else? be something else doesn’t mean giving up? It means being flexible with the opportunities that are presented in front of you to create a dream career that maybe you don’t even realize is out there. And that’s what career design is all about. It’s about taking those first steps towards the person you want to be towards being that that career that you would always wanted to do and seeing what happens seeing where that leads you. Maybe it does lead you to being a National Geographic photographer immediately due to something better. But you’ll never know. If you don’t try. You don’t take that first step towards being that person. I think another thing that we do is we think that no have this career that we’ve dreamed up that we will have become a failure. And that’s just not true. Because there are tons of people out there living and working in their dream careers. Who did not know that this is what their dream career would be. And that’s just I think the most exciting thing and something that’s just so beautiful about career design and the quest to create your dream career because we can have an idea in our head of like, Oh, hey, yeah, I want to go. I want to go that way. But then once you take the first step, you learn all these new things. I mean, I will say it’s a journey over and over again because it really is a journey. Because every time you take action towards your dream career, you get to a different place. You can’t figure out the journey by staying where you are you can’t figure out your dream career without moving without taking action. You can’t get to your final destination without taking the first step. And so instead of asking, what would I do if success was guaranteed, ask yourself What will I do because it’s

not guaranteed. What can you guarantee yourself? The only certainty that you can have is what you control and what you control is what you learn and how you decide to live your life. Ask yourself, what skills do I want to learn? Because it’s not guaranteed? Who do I want to be? Because it’s not guaranteed? What direction do I want to go? We think that there’s this end destination. We think that there’s this place and we will get there and we will have arrived. But that’s just not true. That’s just not what happens. And so this is the dysfunctional belief, believing that there’s an end goal. When I made the decision to leave my job in San Francisco because I wanted something that supported my values and what I was good at and my interests, and I made the decision to go pursue that. I had no idea what I wanted to be or what I didn’t know was that I liked creating things I really loved giving people joy. I loved helping people. And that was all they need. Because that is all you need. All you need is something that interests you that gives you joy that aligns with who you are and gives your life value. That’s all you need. You don’t need to have the job title figured out. You can figure that out later. And when you can let go of trying to figure that out, then you can let go of trying to have some guarantee that you will be this National Geographic photographer. I’m going to stick with that one and be open to all the possibilities that the universe has to offer you and that is the most exciting thing. And when you’re in that open space of just accepting whatever comes your way because you’re just following every single interest of yours and all the values that you prioritize. You can’t go wrong and there is no failure. Because you’re just following along. Just following the bliss. You focus on the process of creating the dream career. You end up creating the dream career, but you have more fun in the process. And your happiness isn’t determined by the success or the failure of having the dream career. All right. If this sounds like something you’re interested in and you are ready for that next step, you are ready to enjoy your career now and live the dream now and come on in because he towns.com and schedule a free strategy session. We’re just gonna call cessation and you’re gonna get a personalized strategy to get you from where you are now to your dream career and come over to Instagram and say hello. Share your biggest takeaways. I’d love to hear how I can help further any questions that you have. And please share the episode with a friend or colleague because I know there’s a ton of people out there, hate their jobs. And so let’s start a community. Let’s start a conversation.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai