15 : Leaving Google For a Career In Sustainability and a 3 Month Break with Julia Li (Part 1)

“There's also this idea of neuroplasticity. It's something we talk a lot about in mindfulness, which is that you have the power to change your brain based on what you pay attention to.” - Julia Li

Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here. 

In this episode, I'm joined by my friend, Julia Li. 

Julia and I met a few years ago when a mutual friend of ours introduced us because she was interested in becoming a facilitator of the popular course search inside yourself, which is an emotional intelligence course at Google, which teaches emotional intelligence through mindfulness.

I'm excited to bring you this interview with Julia, because she's at a point in her life where she's about to make a big move. She's about to leave Google and switch into a totally different space of sustainability. 

And this conversation goes into a lot of different areas, but it really. Points to the importance of creating sustainability within your own life. Being intentional and thoughtful about how you're spending your time and figuring out what's important to you and where you want to go with your life.  Julia share some really practical tips and practices for envisioning the future that you want to live, including thinking about how you want to feel in the future and how we can start to bring those feelings and practices into our life right now.

Julia and I are planning on recording another episode, maybe five or six months down the road, once she's taken this time off and started thinking about embarking on her next chapter in the sustainability space.

So definitely subscribe so that you can see that future episode as well. And see what Julia is up to in the future.

In this episode we explore: 

• How Julia and I know each other
• How her interest in mindfulness led Julia to work at Google. 
• Julia’s intentional approach to work and her

🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful?

That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking!

Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense.

I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters.

🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment?

Book a no-obligation fit call with me

🔥 What teams walk away with:

• Rebuilt trust and psychological safety
• A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by
• Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision
• A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately

🔥 What makes this workshop different:

• Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conference
  • One VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do."
• Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...