Speaker #0Recording this episode the day after the re-election of Donald Trump. I'm not going to talk much about that today, but I do think it's important to acknowledge the profound shock and grief that many people in my local and digital communities are experiencing. And I want to record this episode openly and honestly with my own emotions in response. There is so much that I don't understand about what's happened and... Frankly, I feel like I need to disconnect from all of the analysis right now. But I do want to share with you some words from the visionary thinker, Bayo Akomolafi. He shared a post on LinkedIn yesterday that I want to share a few extracts from. Bayo said, as the institutional care of dominant politics breaks down, may we find the openings to do more than we think possible now. Something more compelling than victory shimmers in the near distance. Something that urges us to lose our way together. We'll need new forms of care now. May we be found anew. I've linked to Bio's profile in the show notes. Look, the only thing that feels clear to me is that the system is not going to save us. And I mean us in the broadest sense of life. That in fact is the root of my grief and it's not just today and yesterday, it's been something that I have been coming to terms with for a year or more now. It's letting go of that idea that the system is there to protect me and the things that I love and that's an illusion that perhaps only privileged white people ever experienced in the first place. It's clear to me that we have to step outside of the system. And our careers, our work, our effort, our livelihoods are one of the most impactful spaces that we can do that in. But it's scary letting go of that framework and structure and all the things we understood to mean that we were successful. Decorporatizing our lives is profound work in that its influence runs so deep. and also in that the potential effects of removing ourselves from corporate life, which, by the way, is pervasive even if you don't actually work for a corporate, the potential positive effects of removing ourselves from corporate life are so significant. Which is why today I want to get practical with you once again. I want to talk about the three fears that are holding you back from purposeful, regenerative work. And most importantly, I want to share ideas for how to overcome those fears because the work you do matters. It matters now and with urgency. Time is not on our side. We need change and you can be part of that. You must be part of that. And I don't want fear to get in the way of the positive contribution that you will make to a better world for even one minute longer. So let's roll up our sleeves together and get to regenerative work. Welcome to the Regenerative Work Life podcast. If you are ready to make the leap out of your corporate job and into purposeful regenerative work, this is the show for you. As you've probably discovered, transitioning into regenerative work is a lot more complicated than going on a job board and sending off your CV. This journey you are embarking on means taking risks, going against the grain, overcoming challenges, and writing your own script. It takes entrepreneurial muscle, powerful vision, and a willingness to change. Having a mentor by your side makes all the difference. I am your host, Alyssa Murphy. I have worked with hundreds of impact-focused businesses and individuals, and I am here to help you. Let's take things one step at a time as I show you how to quit corporate, find your vision, and successfully transition into regenerative work. Here we go. There are three key fears that get in the way of people pursuing purposeful regenerative work that actually makes a difference in the world. Two of these are very logical, rational fears, and I've talked about them before on the podcast. They are money and having the right skills and experience. In both cases, I believe that these fears are largely our logical brains or the fearful side of ourselves trying to keep us safe. And safe is really another word for stuck. The third fear that I want to introduce today is, I believe, often the real fear that is lying behind those other two. And that fear is... lack of confidence or self-belief. It's the deep underlying fear of, what if I can't do it? What if I'm not good enough? What if I take this risk and put in all of this effort and in the end, it's just a spectacular failure? Now, that fear around lack of confidence might seem more intangible or less concrete than money and skills. But in actuality, it's a much harder fear to overcome. With money and skills, I can, and I will, I'm just about to, offer you straightforward, practical steps that you can take to move past these blockers. With confidence, this is something that runs much deeper. It's actually much more personal. You have to learn how to shift out of a corporate mindset and learn to trust yourself and your own inner guidance. That is, that's longer work, it's harder work, it's deeper work. And today I'm going to offer you some first approaches that you can use to begin to do that work for yourself. All right, let's start with the two fears that I have covered on the podcast before. Okay, let's start by recapping on the two fears that I have covered on the podcast before. But I'm also going to offer you with each a little kind of bonus tip in a different way of looking at these today. So let's start with money. I recently did some market research and I spoke to 12 different people who were all at some point on this journey of moving out of corporate or corporate adjacent work and into regenerative purpose led work. And every single one of them, when I asked what the. the biggest blocker was getting in their way, the biggest challenge, it was money every single time. Everyone said some variation of how can I do work that truly matters to me and still pay the mortgage? I just I wish that money weren't a factor. I would love to pursue these ideas that I've had around, I don't know, community work. But. I just don't see how I'm going to make money for it. So we know that money is a really powerful construct. It has a lot of control over us. It's also a reality, okay? I'm not trying to make this completely existential. You know, you have bills to pay. You need to put food on the table. You have family that you need to take care of or other financial responsibilities. I'm not suggesting for a moment that you can just... ignore the money piece or just hope it goes away. But I do think that we need to keep it in perspective because we have a tendency to lend money so much power that it becomes this kind of immovable excuse or reason not to take action. We decide right at the beginning that we're never going to be able to fix the money piece and then we don't try. So With this fear, what I want you to do is find a way to take care of your financial needs. And the important point here is do not ask your emerging regenerative career or project or business to do this for you. Right now, that is an unreasonable expectation. It is not going to be able to do that from day one. It is not a fully formed idea yet. It is not a fully formed business yet. Right now, it's like a little, you know, it's like a little baby bird and it's just taken shape. It's just hatched out of the egg, right? It hasn't even really begun to spread its wings yet. We cannot ask it to fly from day one. You need to find another way to take care of your financial needs while you pursue regenerative work. Take a listen. to episode 10 where I cover three easy ways to make money while pursuing regenerative work. They're really simple and straightforward. I'll very briefly summarize. Essentially, you need to just find a job that is going to pay the bills for you. Don't let that be, don't conflate that with the regenerative jobs that you may be looking for in the future. Either stay in your current role and allow that to fund your transition, find any job that meets your financial needs and gives you as much freedom as possible to pursue your regenerative passions, or work out some kind of... freelance solution where you can do something that is very easy and second nature to you that is highly valued by others that allows you to make money while you do this work the key point is they need to be separate right now that is not to say that you are not going to be able to provide for your family maintain a decent quality of life pursue whatever other aspirations may be attached to money for you through a regenerative path, but don't expect that to happen from day one. While you're reviewing your options for sustaining enough income, and you're putting this solid financial transition plan in place, I have a bonus tip for you, which is to, alongside that work, also get really clear about the cost of your current salary. I might... do a whole episode on this but essentially when we focus our attention on the cost of leaving our corporate career or focusing on work with positive impact we rarely talk about the cost of being in that job in the first place so are you factoring that in to your financial decision making are you thinking about the time and freedom that it takes from you are you considering what it does to your nervous system to be committed to work that doesn't align with your values? Are you allowing yourself to be honest and take in the negative impact that your work or the organisation that you work for may be having? I have heard many times in fact from clients when they first come to work with me that work is sucking their life force. I hear almost those exact words over and over. Just think about that for a moment. Are you currently in work that is sucking your life force? And are you factoring that in to cost calculations? Make sure you're factoring that into your financial calculations. All right, let's move on to the second fear, which is around having the right skills. an experience for regenerative work and generally a feeling of being unqualified or that you're just not going to be able to step out of your lane and move into something that you haven't done before. I really understand that the regenerative landscape trying to sort of map out the opportunities that are out there can feel really overwhelming and confusing like you just want someone to hand you a guidebook that maps out all the opportunities. It's really hard to know where you should focus, what niche or sector might be the best fit for you, and how on earth you connect your existing skills and experience to emerging regenerative opportunities. I get that. I really understand. And I can't tell you how much I would like to hand you that guidebook. But as far as I'm aware... it doesn't exist. You see the challenge of regeneration is that it's not a sector. Regeneration is how we do life, how we do work and we need regeneration everywhere. The opportunities as I see it are everywhere and that's also the beauty of it right because I believe that there is a place in regenerative work. for everyone's unique contribution. And I believe that we have an opportunity, instead of looking outside of ourselves to say, where can I fit in, to look inside of ourselves and say, what is it that lights me up, that I have endless passion and curiosity for? What is it I want to wake up and do day after day that will serve people, that will make a meaningful impact? And how can I bring that to life? It's such a different way of approaching work opportunities. But I also understand that knowing exactly what that unique personal contribution can be is still a challenge. And there are simple steps that can help unlock this for you. I cover these in more detail in episode eight, which is around how to connect your skills and experience to regenerative opportunities. But to summarise that for you here, I think one of the most important things is actually around language. I really want you to get out of a kind of CV mindset. I want you to stop, when you're thinking about what your skills and experience are, stop thinking about them in a way that is going to slot into LinkedIn or is going to format beautifully on a CV. Stop thinking of it in a way that a corporation wants to hear, right? Because corporations, they're just... they're fundamentally about getting people to fit into boxes right and saying there's this little box that I want you to fit in and come and do you know x y and z specifically in this box and we're talking about a whole new way of seeing things so what your job here I believe is to really get to the core of what it is that you have to offer so I want you to really focus about skills. And again, that can be even a bit of a buzzword in itself. So let's get really direct and simple with this. I want you to write down what it is that you are really good at. I want you to write it down in a way that, you know, if one of my, if my eight-year-old came along and asked you, what are you really good at? You could tell him he's a pretty bright eight-year-old and he would get it. He's not going to understand. you know corporate buzzwords he's not going to understand industry speak or um you know really particular terminology he's going to need it in fairly plain language and really core concepts so i want you to really challenge yourself to whittle that down and then once you've got time to do those core basics when you look at it you'll begin to see that when you describe your skills and experience in that way suddenly it becomes so much more transferable You know, if you take something really basic, I was talking to, I was working with one of my clients inside my six-month career transition program yesterday, we were doing exactly this process, and we came down to one of her core skills being taking scientific data and crafting that into narratives that connect with people. Now we could perhaps make that language even simpler, but to me that's enough. You're taking scientific data and research and you're crafting that into narratives that connect with people. That's a highly transferable skill, right? That can be used in almost any sector or organization or job. That's what you're looking for here. And once you've got down to that core, here's my bonus tip for you today that I didn't cover in episode eight, which is you can begin to really add your own personal flavor to it. You can really explore the nuance of what it is that you bring to that core skill that perhaps nobody else does. You know, maybe there's a particular way that you do it or there's something about your personality or your lived experience. Like begin to sort of, you know, it's almost like you've got this, like you've got to pasta, right? I consider pasta like a really transferable. ingredient, right? Loads of people are going to eat pasta, loads of people like pasta. You can turn it into loads of different kinds of meals. But what are the spices or the sauce that you're going to add to that pasta? So you can start to think about that. And that brings you in, that moves you towards finding your niche within regenerative work and that really valuable, unique contribution that you can make. OK, so that's how to approach. connecting your skills and experience to regenerative opportunities. And that brings us on to fear number three, confidence. So as I mentioned, this is a deeper fear. This is the juicy stuff now. And when I say confidence, I'm encapsulating self-belief, fear of failure, fear of rejection. There are lots of different ways to describe it. You will know the one that really kind of hits you in the gut. And it comes down to the same thing. It comes down fundamentally to a fear of, can I actually do this? Am I good enough? Most of us, particularly, am I good enough or do I deserve this? Hold that fear somewhere inside ourselves. And it has many different roots. Now in one-to-one coaching, that is something we can work on. We can work on those roots. We can work on rewiring. We can work on building new belief habits. But you can also do this work yourself. And there are two things that I want to draw your attention to when you come to, you know, if you identify this is something I want to work on. I really want to work on making more confident decisions in my career, having the courage to try new things, to take a different path. Two things that I recommend putting your focus on. The first is. reducing negative influences that reinforce that belief that you can't do this. And the second is learning to trust your own inner guidance. Again, we will definitely go into detail in both of those in future episodes. And actually, I would love to hear from you about anything specifically that would be helpful for me to cover here on the podcast. But let's start today with one action that you can take for each of those pillars, negative influence. Now, there's so much I could say about this. Negative influence is going to take so many different forms, but let's just acknowledge that the system that you are choosing to step out with to bring us full circle to where we started today is extremely powerful and extremely pervasive, and you've probably lived inside of it for the vast majority of your life. So that stepping out process you know the word stepping out is really very euphemistic for the detangling and detoxifying and de-schooling and decolonizing work that we're really talking about here and the influences of that system are going to show up all the time and one of the places that they're going to show up is in negative self-talk and negative thoughts or unhelpful thoughts you may notice as you move into this work all kinds of unhelpful thoughts of um you know i'm gonna i'll choose some of my own i'll give you some of my personal examples here for me this has looked like things like alissa um you're undoing all of the good reputation that you built as an entrepreneur um alissa you're going to lose respect from people that you fought really hard to be respected by um alissa you've lost your way um alissa um what you're doing makes no sense Alyssa, nobody is going to understand what it is that you offer. Alyssa, this is not how you build a viable business, right? You can hear the kind of thoughts you will have, I'm sure, a gorgeous collection of your own unhelpful thoughts. And these become really problematic when we over identify with them. The key is we need to create space between those negative thoughts and simply recognize them for what they are. So I want you to start noticing them. and naming them. What you name them is entirely up to you, right? But the point is, they're not you. That is not you. When I think, Alyssa, you're going to lose all respect, that isn't really me. That's not really who I am. What I mean is, I might lose the respect of the system. I might lose the respect of a sector, or the way of doing things, a kind of inside way of doing things that I'm choosing to... step out of and do things differently. So just notice when these thoughts come up. Oh, I'm having an unhelpful thought. Oh, that's the system trying to pull me back in. You can give it a little phrase. I often think of it that way. This is the system trying to pull me back, right? And just that really simple step. Oh, there it is. There's the system trying to pull me back. That creates space between you and that thought. And that's how you start to create freedom from it and that is going to have such a noticeable difference on your confidence so when it comes to negative influence or negative thoughts notice it and name it for what it is now the second pillar is about trusting yourself i want you to start paying attention to your body particularly when it comes to decision making now the chances are that when you make decisions you do so from a very thought-based logical you rational place. You go straight to your mind and you kind of intellectualize it and that's how you approach your decisions. There is another way. I want to invite you to start paying attention and listening to what your body has to say about decisions that come up. This can be any decision at all. It doesn't even have to apply to your career. If that feels too difficult to start with, make it something really simple. One of the great ways I like to teach people to start doing this is to, like when it comes to it's lunchtime, what are you going to have? You can have the salad, you can have the soup. Right. Now, you might immediately go to your brain thinking, OK, well, it's cold. So I think the soup would be quite a good choice because it will warm me up. But it might have cream in it and I don't react very well to dairy. So maybe the salad is a better choice. And I might feel quite good about myself if I had the salad and you get the idea. Right. But instead, just pause and just notice which of these two choices is my body drawn to. When I think about eating the salad, what does that feel like in my body? When I think about choosing the soup. What does that feel like in my body? And perhaps you might begin to notice that one of the choices feels good to your body and the other choice maybe doesn't feel so good. And then you can slowly start to do this around career decisions. So just notice even little things. Maybe there's, you know, somebody sends you an email or a connection request. Let's go really small. Someone sends you a connection request. How does that feel to you, accepting that connection request? How does it feel in your body? Is there a tightness, maybe a kind of closing down? Is there tension or is there expansion in your body? Is there a warmth? Is there a kind of uplifted feeling? Just start to notice. This might be very unfamiliar to you. So start small and just learn slowly to listen to the wisdom of your body because it can be the most incredible, reliable guide. Because your body... is not influenced by all of that corporate conditioning. I mean, each of us are unique. I don't want to speak directly to your body, but in most cases, our body doesn't really care about what other people think. It doesn't care about shoulds. It doesn't care about what something looks like on paper. It knows what it wants, and it will guide you in that direction. And here's the good news. Each of the fears that we've discussed today is connected. So when you tackle the money piece and you have a solid plan in place to meet your financial needs, and when you're able to articulate your transferable skills and experience and get much clearer on the unique contribution that you will make, you'll already see a huge difference in your self-confidence. Conversely, the more you build your self-confidence, finding distance from negative thoughts, learning to trust yourself, the more equipped you will be to handle challenges that may come along, like working through financial setbacks. or finding the courage to try things that you've never done before in your career. Right, let's summarize what we have learned today and how you can go ahead and put this into action. Number one, put a financial transition plan in place. If you need help with this, it is exactly the kind of thing that we can work on together inside my two-week regenerative pathway coaching. I've done this for several clients now and it is a game changer. We literally approach your finances like we would a startup business plan, which is something I have a lot of experience doing. So, you know, we'll ask questions like how much are you able to invest? What will your sources of income be? Where are you willing to rethink how much income you actually need? What's your baseline? What targets will you meet and by when? I know all of that. You're thinking, Alyssa, I thought you were telling us to step outside of the system. This is very much old system language. Yes. In some ways, that's true, but it's also exactly what the fearful part of your brain needs to hear. That fearful part that tells you you're never going to be able to make the money piece work when you're pursuing regenerative work, if you can give it a fully worked through and costed plan for your career transition, it will relax, it will sit down, and it will let you get on with making this incredible transition. So if that's something that you would be interested in working on with me, take a look. at my regenerative pathway program go to regenerativeworklife.com forward slash pathway you can read all about what we do in the two weeks okay the second action i want you to take get out of the cv mindset and get really clear about what you're good at what are those core highly transferable skills that are going to bring incredible value to a regenerative organization or maybe even form the basis of your own offering or business Strip them down to plain language and then really work on the nuance of exactly what it is that you bring that will make this really unique. And finally, trust your inner guide and watch out for that corporate conditioning. Pay attention to your body's reactions and responses. Know that they will guide you in the right direction. And when those unhelpful thoughts show up, which they will, just recognize them for what they are. a lifetime of growing up inside a system and a construct that really doesn't want to let you go. But you can do this. You are doing this. You are breaking free and forging new paths. I'm so proud of you and I'm so honoured to be part of that journey. So before we finish, a reminder that the episodes you want for details on the first two fears are episode 10 for three easy ways to make money while pursuing regenerative work. and episode eight to learn how to connect your skills and experience to regenerative opportunities. And if you are ready to do this work and build a purposeful career that will actually make a difference in the world, but you're struggling with where to focus and finding your direction, then Regenerative Pathway is designed for you. It's a two-week coaching program that will give you a personalized, actionable roadmap to confidently navigate those next steps towards a regenerative career. Go to regenerativeworklife.com forward slash pathway to find out more and book. Thank you for listening. Let's get to work. I'll see you back here next week.
