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. Hello. Hello. Welcome to livelihood. The new pivot of this podcast. I’m so excited to share this with you, because I’ve been really, really thinking about, y’all thinking about what you need thinking about what is a career for and why are we so discontent in them?

So I think that this is going to be a lot more aligned with what you want with what I believe a career means. And I’m excited to share it with you. So I really wanna start off with this idea or this question about our careers, what are careers for? What’s the point of them? Why do we do them? Why do we work? It seems like such a simple question, but most of us haven’t even really thought about that. Like, why do you work? What’s the point? I think the obvious answer is money. We work for money. Does that make sense? You gotta pay the bills. You gotta pay rent, you gotta buy clothes and food and all that stuff. That’s the obvious answer. But, but this is also where we get stuck because we stay in that answer. We stay in careers and jobs that we are unfulfilled in and hate in our miserable because of the money.

But that is the survival mindset. The utilitarian use of a career and a career is so much more than just a means for money. And I want you to take a second and think about what it might feel like to just survive. It probably feels a little anxious, uncertain, frantic, high, strong. It probably feels a little bit like you’re treading water. The literal definition of survival is to remain alive. And that is just so sad to me because that just means that you’re you’re are just stuck. You’re just trying to live. You’re just trying to not die. And that’s how we think about our careers. And that’s how most of us see our careers. That’s how most of us look at our careers. We think it’s a job it’s making this money. It keeps me paying rent. I can buy food, all of that stuff, but that is not all that you need.

Humans are complex creatures. Yes, we are all living creatures and we need the basic necessities of to live. But you are not a wild animal living in the jungle, working a nine to five, just so you can stay alive. The human necessities of life extend far beyond staying alive. We have higher needs of the mind and soul, and we have needs for belonging and love a way to feel connected to other human beings. A way to feel seen. We need a sense of accomplishment and self confidence, and we need that creativity and continue learning. And that, that stimulation of knowledge, and ultimately we wanna be able to choose what we want to be in this life. And ex our full potential is when you’re missing these higher needs that you feel so discontent, you’re missing something. Maybe one, maybe part, maybe all of them. Cuz have you ever thought, is this all there is.

I know I thought that sitting at my desk, I would think about the next year, five years, 10 years, 30 years. And every single year was just more weight on me. And every single year that I thought about, I felt more defeated because I wasn’t looking around and I was, I wasn’t looking around and seeing how can I grow this career? How can I grow in this job? What are the opportunities available to me? And I wasn’t thinking about how I wanted to grow. And this brings me to one of my biggest points. And one of my biggest philosophies about our careers is that our career, our livelihood, isn’t just about working to support our survival. It’s a container for your mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. It’s about living life to the fullest. It is simply a container for growth. It is a way that you are presented a bunch of challenges and opportunities to say, I wanna be this person and I’m gonna grow into that person.

How can I be the person I wanna be by working at this job? It’s kind of like when you’re at school, you start an elementary school. You start in kindergarten. There’s a bunch of opportunities. There’s things that you do. You do the, the finger paints and you learn the alphabet and then you graduate from kindergarten and you go on to first grade. And then from first grade you learn, I don’t know, know whatever they learn in first grade and you, you continue that through elementary school and then you graduate to middle school and you learn so many different things in middle school, way more challenges, way more things that you never even thought you had to think about when you were in con your garden. And then you go through high school and it’s different than middle school. And you get to college and it’s different than college. And each time that you graduate from these containers of school, you become a different person. You know, more stuff. You’ve learned things. You’ve learned more things about yourself. You’ve grown. This is the same concept when it comes to your career. Every job that you have, every position that you have is simply a small little container for your growth. And your career is just the big container.

It’s who you want to be. Within this experience. When I was working at a natural history museum, I loved it. You will hear me say over and over on this podcast, how much I loved it because I still love it. I still respect all the people that worked there. And I did not leave mad. I left with so much love and joy. And when I look back at that experience, I think about how much I grew in the years that I was there. And I think back to the place that I worked at before the natural history, it was an art museum and across the street actually. So it’s kind of a easy commute. But when I was, I was a totally different person. When I started working at the art museum, I was a totally different person when I first entered the workforce.

I’m so glad I’m a different person because man, that person that I started as for injuring, the workforce was kind of irresponsible. I was late to a lot of meetings. I think I got fired for being late. So I had to learn, but each of those jobs, each of those iterations of my life was just one container of growth. And so when I got to who my career at the natural history museum, I felt like I had made it. I felt like this was my dream job. I think I literally said that to someone I’d tell to them, it was my dream job. And in the back of my mind, I was like, oh really? This corporate giving assistant or associate your dream job. I knew deep down it wasn’t. But I was like, I loved this place. This place was so cool. I mean, we had visiting scientists, we had an aquarium with a coral reef and a indoor rainforest.

Like I love this place. I still love it. But my mindset when I got in there was like, oh, I’ve, I’ve made it. I’m I’m done. I’m here. And that just wasn’t the case. So when I got a few years into my career there, I felt this dissatisfaction. I felt like there has to be something more I had gotten to this place that I had known for sure was where I needed to be. I knew I was like, this job provides for me, it’s a good place. It pays, well, I have great bosses. Wasn’t fulfilling something. And for the longest time I could not figure it out. And that was what was so frustrating was that I knew there was something missing, but I couldn’t figure it out. I had no idea what it was. And so my idea, what I thought was that I had to go look for another job, another cool place. I had to look for a different job title that sounded better or maybe made more money. And I was looking at all of these external things to be like, well, maybe that will make me feel better. Maybe that will make me feel worthy and in control of my life. And like I’ve made it.

But I also knew that I had thought that before and because I had all the things that I thought were gonna make me happy and satisfied the paycheck, the healthcare, great bosses, great colleagues, cool place, short commute. I had all of of it and it still was unhappy. And the reason I was unhappy wasn’t because of my paycheck. It wasn’t because of my bosses. It wasn’t because of where I worked or where I lived or my commute or my job title. It was because I didn’t know what I needed. I had gotten to a place where I was satisfied. The things that I needed to survive were fulfilled. I didn’t need to survive anymore because I had the safety of knowing that I had a steady paycheck. I was there. And so I had it to do some really deep soul searching to figure out what it was that I was missing and what it was that I needed.

And when I started to go on that journey, I realized that what I needed, wasn’t more money. It wasn’t better hours. It wasn’t a cooler place. It wasn’t better bosses. Wasn’t better. It was things like creativity and contribution and connection and autonomy and freedom. Flexibility. What I realized is that it was all these untangible things that I had never really identified before, because I didn’t know that those could be needs of ours. And this is what it means. When I say livelihood, it is way to sustain your basic needs of life and a human basic needs or survival connection, love and belonging, confidence, accomplishment, creativity. Those are the needs that your livelihood is there to fulfill. And that is what’s missing. That’s why you feel so unfulfilled. And so discontent at work. That’s why you’re sitting at your desk asking, is this all there is or thinking, God, I can’t do this for another 30 years.

These are the parts of our life that we have to dive into. And they’re not so, so obvious. The things that society says in life that’s important, money status, uh, I don’t know what else that is, but that’s how I felt it was money and status. And you know what? I got both those things and you probably have them too, and you are not listening to this episode. So to this podcast, because you are happy with your money and status, you’re looking for something more. And what you’re looking for are those intangible things. Those values, those core values that are important to you that make you unique and make your life rich and full. And that’s what we need to dive into. So how do we start to explore this? How do we kind of figure this stuff out? It starts with listening to yourself. Let me ask you a question without any type of reasoning or logic. If you could just have anything you wanted in the world, if you could just do anything you wanted to do in the entire world, what would you do? My guess is that it’s probably not sitting at a desk 40 hours a week, nine to five, five to seven, maybe more days a week. My guess it’s probably something like I would travel. I would spend more time with family. I would spend more time with my spouse.

I would start that business that I wanted to start. I would start creating things that I’ve always wanted to create. I would start a new hobby. My guess is that you, your answer is not work more, is not stay at an office for more hours. And that’s where I want you to start, because that answer that you just thought of whatever you just thought of. Now, those things that you want, for some reason, you’re telling yourself that you can’t have them. And that is the lie. That is what society has told you. You can’t have, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy to get those things, but what I’m saying is that it’s possible. You can figure it out. So how do you figure it out? I don’t know. That is the biggest question. That is your journey. That’s the beauty of it. Those are the things that you get to learn about yourself.

To figure this question out. What’s my livelihood. What do I wanna do with the rest of my life? How do I find a fulfilling career? This is the exciting part. It’s the exciting part, because you get to say, oh, that thing that I just said, I wanted, I wanna be free. I wanna be able to have my own hours and take care of my health and, and take care of my family, whatever it is that you want, you can have it. You can go get it and you can make that happen. It’s just a matter of the mindset you are going to have to have to go get those things. What are those beliefs that are keeping you from having that? What are the obstacles that are keeping you from going out and getting those things that want from creating that career, that allows you to have that life that you want.

That’s what I help people with. That’s what I help you with. And that’s what we’re gonna be discussing on this podcast. I wanna help you build the career of your dreams so that you can have the life of your dreams, because your is not just about your work. It’s not just about survival or paying the bills. If that’s how you wanna see your career, that’s totally fine. Like you can do that. But my guess is that you’re here. Not because you want a career that helps you. You survive. You want a career that helps you thrive. And I wanna help you find that career that makes you feel alive because this is livelihood. This is my mission. I wanna help you design a career that not only sustains your life, it sustains your soul. And I’m here to you redefine what work looks like for you and give yourself the radical permission to go after what it is that you want. All right. I’m so excited to go on this journey with you. You’re probably gonna hear me say journey, and then I’m so excited over and over and over again, but it’s true. Make a drinking game out of it. I don’t know, but this is gonna be fun. I’m so thrilled. See how you lose a different word. All right, I’ll see you on the next episode. Bye. If you enjoyed

This episode, then come connect with me at www.christytowns.com. I wanna hear your biggest takeaways, your aha moments. And I want you to ask me any burning questions you might have about what it means to create your livelihood. And don’t forget to help spread the joy by leaving me a five star review in iTunes and sharing this episode with a friend, a loved one, a colleague, because I am on a mission to revolutionize the way we think about careers, because I really truly believe that every single one of us deserves a career that makes us feel alive. I’m so excited to be on this journey with you, and I will see you on the next episode.