Is staying at a job you hate holding you back from happiness? What if you’ve changed careers…and the new work wasn’t quite the fit you thought it would be? After helping a couple thousand people make career changes, you notice a few commonalities. We’ve realized that EVERYONE has barriers to making their change. Especially the busy, high achieving peeps that we’ve worked with. You are no exception! You know how you always hear those success stories of what other people have done? If you’re like me (or you’re human), sometimes they can make you a little jealous or depressed. How come it always works out so well for those other people? Well, here’s the hidden reality behind every single one of the success stories we’ve published: Zero of them were easy, AND none of them went perfectly. In fact, we find that much of the time we are helping our students make it easier to change to work they love by focusing on the right things, but focusing on the right things alone doesn’t automatically make you successful. In today’s episode, I talk about how career happiness really works. In fact, this episode is one of the lessons I teach inside Career Change Bootcamp.

A little while back, I had a Skype call with a former Google employee who made a transition into a role that fits his strengths even better. He is totally thrilled! I wanted to tell you about it because you might be thinking “who on earth chooses to leave Google? That’s the holy grail of dream jobs!” And that’s what most people think from the outside, right? But a big trap that it’s easy to fall into when you’re searching for jobs is comparing your insides to someone else’s outsides. For example, being in a job that looks like a dream job on the outside doesn’t mean it’s going to be the dream fit for YOUR inner values, strengths and interests. I can’t tell you how many people find HTYC because they’re in a job they thought would be great, but isn’t — it ends up being someone else’s dream and not their own. Or, we get emails every day about people who feel like they can’t get clarity on what their next career move looks like, so they’re stuck in a mental pressure cooker wanting to make a change forward but not knowing how. Does that sound like you? If so, grab a pen and paper because I have a ton of lessons I’ve learned from personally coaching 1,100 people through career transitions that I want to share with you to save you time, headaches, and help you make the transition you’re dreaming of happen. In today’s episode, I share 6 keys to career happiness and then how to use this information to make your change and how to focus your time to be most effective. I vividly remember being in a job that wasn’t fulfilling at all. When I was there, I didn’t understand how this whole career happiness thing worked and honestly thought that if I could just get to a better job situation then it would solve all my problems. Which means that many of us are going about the job change somewhat blindly, we’re looking at job postings online or trying to network or updating our LinkedIn profiles even spending time going on interviews but the problem is that we don’t even know exactly what a fulfilling career looks like for us. Now here’s the tricky part, we as human beings are pretty terrible at determining what will actually make us happy.  

So what happens when you’re in your role working for a company and, for the most part, it's been great. You've been there for a while, and you know lots of good things have come out of it. You've worked with a good team and you've had a lot of fun. It's been pretty meaningful, except … Now a lot of those things have either stopped or changed. Whether it's caused by a company merger or a new boss or a completely different situation. And that is that is where our next podcast guest found themselves. I say guest, but this is actually a bit of a different episode. We've done this once or twice before where we've shared an actual coaching session with you, allowing you to sit in as a fly on the wall, listening to somebody that we've worked with. On today’s episode, you're going to hear Elizabeth begin in the early stages of identifying what she really wants and needs. And even more importantly than that, some of the ways that I guide her through to help begin making this happen immediately. You're not going to hear any magic bullets in this episode (because there are none in reality), but you are going to hear some things that you may be able to integrate into your own personal life and career change right away.

“Most of the people I know, and coach, are recovering people-pleasers…” New York Times Best Selling Author, Michael Hyatt said this to me in our recent conversation.   In fact, I’m a recovering people-pleaser myself. In my first professional job, I working between 80-90 hours a week. Part of that was because the job was a bad fit. Part of that was because there was a huge expectation to work a ton of hours. And part of that was that I said “yes” to everything my boss asked me to do. Absolutely everything. Saying “yes” to every project - to every request. “Yes, sir, I can make that happen!” “Yes, I can get that extra presentation done.” Saying “yes” to all that took a bad situation and turned it into a totally intolerable situation.   Saying “yes” to too many things can hold you back from career happiness. At first, you may be excited that you’re the person that everyone can depend on. But then it changes. People start asking you to do more and more because “______ always finds a way to get it done.” In fact, it gets to the point that the people make you their first stop. This can cause resentment, stress, and fatigue - none of which produce career happiness. But you also find it difficult - or impossible - to stop saying “yes.”   Saying “no” is exactly what we talk about in today’s episode with Michael Hyatt. Michael is a best-selling author (multiple times over) and was previously the CEO of a publishing company before starting his own company. Michael is also a self-admitted, recovering people-pleaser. As such, throughout past few decades, he has had to learn to say “no” gracefully. In other words, he had to protect his own time and priorities. At one point, he said it this way: “The way that you can give people a really firm ‘No’ is to have a really firm ‘yes’ on the other side of it.” Also, he gives specific examples of how he can say “no” to a request, but still present a solution for the person. And people thank him for saying “no.” Listen to this episode to hear the whole conversation, including: Why it’s so hard for you to say “No” to people...and what to do about it How to get back hours of free time each week The connection between having a vision and conquering daily distractions Using elimination, automation, and delegation to crush even more tasks on your to-do list Why you need more than one routine to run your day The most important things you can do to be more focused and more productive Also, as an added bonus, Michael shares the best advice on how to stay happily married for 40 years.

We’ve now asked hundreds of people who’ve made successful career pivots one question after they’ve completed the journey:  “What advice would you give someone who’s decided they want to make a career change?” What came back was surprising! It didn’t have anything to do with the best resume ever or the best tactic to market your skills or even the steps to take Nope! Instead it turns out that all of them described making a career change as a journey and there is far more important advice to consider.  We’ve taken the advice from 6 successful career changers and put it into this episode.   https://happentoyourcareer.com/276    Listen to all the podcasts at http: https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast

Jenny Blake is the author of the books PIVOT: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One and Life After College. She is also a career and business strategist, and international speaker. Jenny has been featured as a career change expert on CNBC, in The New York Times and The Sunday Times UK. Her Pivot Podcast is a top rated show that CNBC listed among 6 podcasts to make you smarter about your career, and selected by Entrepreneur as one of the top 20 female-hosted business podcasts.  One of her personal mottos: if change is the only constant, let's get better at it. With that motto and all of her knowledge, Jenny helps people organize their brain, move beyond burnout, and build sustainable, dynamic careers they love. You’ll learn: How to stop holding yourself back by waiting to have all the time in the world for things to happen for you How to use constraints that a day job puts on your career change as a positive and make it easier rather than harder How and why creating an ideal day map for yourself will help you pivot to reach that success The importance of the scanning process of your career change   Visit the blog post for more show notes

If we are always looking for external milestones, like a new job title or pay increase, without first addressing the internal stuff, we’ll always be on the hunt. We’ll constantly be looking for that feeling, and asking ourselves that question: “Is this it?” During this week’s podcast episode, I dug deep with Kelly, a Career Change Bootcamp graduate and a woman who went through a radical mindset shift a couple of months ago. She was in the same exact place. She had all of the external things: a great job at Linkedin, an awesome apartment in the Big Apple, a savings account that most of us could only imagine…but she still wasn’t happy. From the outside, it looked like she had everything. But on the inside, she was struggling to answer those big life questions: What does it mean to lead a meaningful, purposeful life?

Have you ever considered trying to start your own coaching business? (A career coach, a fitness coach, a relationship coach, a leadership coach, anything like that?) You might be the kind of person who’s naturally gifted in helping others, but you don’t want to become a pastor or a psychotherapist, so going into coaching feels like a perfect next step for your career. Coaching can be an AMAZING career fit for many people -- and there’s a huge need for actually good coaches out there -- but there are a lot of realities about pursuing it as a full-time career path that you’ll want to know before you quit your job and start the business. Being in love with the dream of calling yourself a coach can be very different from truly having a passion for the day-to-day life of being one. For example, how much do you enjoy sales conversations? Working for yourself is an eat-what-you-kill kind of job, so you’re going to spend a TON of time bringing in clients so you can keep the lights on and pay the bills. And, how much time out of your week would you estimate you’ll be on the phone with coaching clients? Whatever you’re guessing, guess again and listen to this podcast episode with Marc Mawhinney to hear about what it was like for him (and for Scott) in building their coaching businesses. On this episode, you’ll learn how Marc got into coaching (and the books that have been his biggest inspiration), how building a coaching business is a bit like being a modern-day caveman, how to ensure you’re not getting paid in meatballs, and how to decide when (or if) you need a coaching certification.   If you think you might be interested in becoming a career coach, check out this guide we put together: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Career Coach

We talk about former first lady Michelle Obama, the founders of The Muse, and Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert and the impact they can make on your career happiness. Listen to learn the best career development books available right now and two hacks to help you speed through your reading list.   Find the guide, transcript, and more at https://happentoyourcareer.com/271 To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast  

Steve Jobs wore the same clothing every day. A famous composer used to stand on his head for 15 minutes each morning. Nikola Tesla did strange toe exercises each night to stimulate brain cells. People are weird, and I decided it’s time to come clean on the weird habits that increase my energy levels and provide personal success. Listen in for my strange confessions and for 5 ways you can multiply your own energy levels.   Find the guide, transcript, and more at https://happentoyourcareer.com/270   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast