Speaker #0If you have experienced burnout and you've taken the time to recover, if you've stepped away from work to reset and reimagine what you want, or perhaps if your hand has been forced by layoffs or major unexpected life changes and suddenly you are just questioning everything, there is a critical question to ask before the job searching, the business planning. or the next big decision. Before you take action, you need to think about how you want work to feel and how work should actually support your life. This episode is about why that question comes before job titles, business ideas, or career plans, and how it can actually save you from ending up right back where you started. I'm going to talk about why changing jobs often doesn't solve burnout, how this question can become a decision point and how if it does guide you towards working for yourself, it can become the compass that you return to again and again. If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections, and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. Welcome back to the From Corporate Into Calling podcast. I'm so happy that you're joining me today. And I'm going to start by taking you back about 10 years in time. The year is 2016. The UK has just voted for Brexit and I have a four-month-old baby. I'm actually in Berlin and I am running around with a crazy schedule as I attempt to not only use this opportunity to do some strategic networking for my company, but also to set up a GmbH, which is a German legal entity for a company, which is something that I promised I would do as soon as I found out about the Brexit vote. I said I would have it done within a year. And the fact that I had a small baby at the time was not going to stop me from doing that. And so my four month old came with me as I went to the notary, as I learned about how to set up a bank account, how I looked at offices, started to meet people there. It was a crazy time. I had good support from my family to do it. It wouldn't have been possible without it. And you know what? I had an energy and an ambition like I had never experienced before. I was so driven during that period, even with a small baby. And I got the job done. The following years were some of the fastest growth period for my company. I remember distinctly when he was 10 months old and my husband was actually working away and it was January, I remember, and I realized that I was scheduled to be in five different countries other than the UK during the month of January. And I had, you know, grandparents and my siblings all kind of lined up to do the childcare. And I think I actually stopped breastfeeding at that time because I realized it just wasn't going to be possible. My hormones were all over the place. And I just basically lived on. adrenaline. And, you know, it built from there. The company continued growing. My husband and my son and I actually moved to Berlin twice to support that transition. It was a really exciting, really powerful growth period that when I think about it now, I actually just can't really conceive of how I did it with a baby. But somehow I did because that was the kind of stage of life that I was in. I had that energy. I had that drive and I had that ambition. Now, fast forward and my son is soon going to be 10. He needs me in a very different way. It's not a physical way anymore. He can take care of himself in all kinds of different ways. But he needs me as he begins to learn how to navigate the world. And as he begins to really think about the person that he is and grapple with the complexities of life. And it is really important to me in this season to be very, very present for him. And not just for him, because he has two younger brothers. I have twins who are going to be six. in the next couple of weeks. And they need me very keenly at this time, very physically, very presently. To be honest, there is nothing more that they want than mummy time right now. And I made a really conscious decision that in this period, I was going to be very, very present for them. So as my company continued to grow over the last decade, About three years ago, I began the process of selling my company to my team and we became an employee-owned organization, which is a decision that I feel absolutely fantastic about and has set the company up for the future and set me up for the next chapter of my work life. And when I was thinking about what that chapter looked like, I really took a lot of time to sit with the how. I had, you know, quite a few options, to be honest, I could have really, I hate this term, I could really leveraged my network and, you know, my position as CEO and founder and the fact that I'd, you know, done this exit. But most of those options just didn't appeal to me at all, quite frankly, but also didn't fit with the stage of life that I was in. I knew absolutely that I was not going to start another startup. I didn't want to be in a high pressure. high pace stage of life anymore. I wanted to be here for my kids. I wanted to be able to do school drop-offs and pickups and do packed lunches and play dates and all the things that sometimes, of course, I find incredibly boring and dull, but actually really, really matter to my kids. And that I would miss if I had made different choices in my work life. It's also really important to me to be very engaged with my local. community and have a much slower, more localized way of living. And a lot of that would not be incompatible with some of the different choices that I could have made. So my choice as I created Regenerative Work Life and the Meaningful Business Incubator were driven, yes, of course, by what I was passionate about, by what I was good at, by how I knew I could create value for people. but also for how I wanted my work life to look and to be and to feel. And that is what I really want to encourage you to think about through today's episode, because the fact is most people completely skip this question when they're thinking about the next stage of their career. They think purely in terms of what, what is it that I'm good at? What it up? options are available to me? What am I going to do next? And they don't stop to think about how they want work to feel and the relationship between their work and their life and how work could actually actively support them in whatever stage of life it is that they find themselves in. And what happens when you ignore the how is that you end up back inside of the same system that you left you might change something on the surface you know the job title the company maybe even sometimes you know the country or the area that you're working in but you're not looking at the fundamentals underneath of how that work is structured and the system that you're operating inside of and what happens then is that you go back into that same cycle of burnout and I have seen this. too many times to think that it might be accidental. I have spoken to several people who have been through real deep burnout, not once but twice, and they talk about it in this way that it's almost just an inevitable part of having a professional career and being employed. It's almost like it goes on their CV, you know, I did this amazing period of work for this corporate, and then I shifted and I did this really incredible. period of work. And then, of course, I had a year-long burnout and I had to recover from that. And it's not normal. We really need to remember that. We need to look at how work is structured and how it supports us. Now, why do we look at this question first? Because the externalities just don't get deep enough for real change to happen. A job title is not the same thing as work that fits your life. Something that you feel deeply passionate about and moved to make a contribution towards is not the same thing as work that is truly sustainable for you as a human. The structure of our work and the system that it operates inside of determines the outcomes that we get. It determines our experience of that work, how sustainable it is for us and how we can keep showing up to it. Before you take action, whether that is looking at a job, applying for a job, starting to plan work on your own. thinking about developing a business, I want you to pause and I want you to think about how. How do you want work to feel? How should it support your life? And it is not enough to think of this in an abstract passing way as you're, you know, I don't know, doing the washing up or taking the dog for a walk and listening to this podcast. You really do need to sit down and write these things out for yourself, because otherwise, you're going to be conditioned, as we all are, to think that these things are fluffy, that they're not important, or that you don't deserve them somehow, or that it's not realistic. So you might listen to me talking about how and think, okay, I want work to feel, let's say, you know, I want it to fit around, take a similar example to me, I want it to fit around my children. So I want to be really present. for my children and the things that they need. And I really need work to fit into school hours. And I'd love not to be able to work during school holidays so that I can be with the children. Now, the next thing that's going to happen in your brain is you're going to think, but that's just not realistic, or I can't ask for that, or how am I going to find something that's viable to do in that way? I want you to just put all of that to one side for a moment, just focus on the how and get those things written down. These are some of the things that you might want to think about. What kind of pace are you looking for in your work? What would feel sustainable to you? Right now, I need a relatively slow pace of work. I need to actually be able to define that pace to a certain extent. And I'm totally open to kind of bursts of intensity. But then I need to know that I can surround those with much calmer periods when I can return to my family, take time for myself, all of that kind of thing. Another thing you can think about is flexibility. How important is flexibility to you right now? To me, it's extremely important. I can be deeply consistent in how I show up, but I have to have flexibility. I need to be able to, you know, take my kids for a doctor's appointment. if they need me to, I need to be able to not work like I do during school holidays. So that doesn't mean that I don't have a really robust operating system for my business. But it means that flexibility is built in to that system. And that's actually what allows me to show up consistently. You might also want to think about the kind of level of emotional load that you are willing to take on during this time. Some of us are in periods of life where actually we can take on quite a lot in terms of pressure or maybe our kind of exposure to the issues that we're working on or you know we can develop quite a thick skin around like politics that might go on with work all of that kind of thing and some of us are in much more vulnerable periods of life perhaps you know you have I don't know caring responsibilities. within your family and actually you can't show up to work where you're being asked to do an awful lot of that in your day-to-day life as well. You might and this isn't just about what you want to say no to it's also about what you want to welcome in through your work. So is it really important to you to have face-to-face interactions with people and that's going to dictate the kind of work that you do. Is international scope and being exposed to different cultures and, you know, and different languages and different experiences, is that something that lights you up that you really want to centre in your work? Is this a time for work where you really need to be thinking about joy? thinking about things that perhaps haven't been fundamental to your work life before, and you want to experience joy in your day-to-day work. These are the kinds of questions that come in to the how, and I'm going to guess that you probably haven't spent that much time thinking about it. But when you sit down and write these out, you will see that it starts to take the shape of what work could be for you. And it will start to show you what... decisions you need to make and what might not actually be a good fit for you anymore. So let's assume that you have taken that time, maybe you've paused the podcast, maybe you've done it afterwards and you've come back to this, you've written down how you want to work, how you want work to feel and you've had the courage to let this be quite ambitious, to really be selfish for a few moments and be real to what is going on in your life. So you've got that now. The next thing is to think about how that guides your decision. So let's assume you're in one of those positions that I described earlier. So maybe you've been through burnout or you've had a long pause out of work or you found yourself in a position where work is changing whether you like it or not. Now look at your how for how you want work to feel and then ask yourself, for example, is full-time employment actually compatible? with this kind, this how that I want to experience. Because the vast majority of experience, I would say, in full-time, particularly corporate employment, is that it is fundamentally incompatible with how most of us actually want to feel and experience our lives. And I'm going to just underline that because it really bears saying again, I think that full-time corporate employment is in most cases incompatible with how people want to feel and experience their work lives. Now, you may, of course, find the diamond in the rough. You might find that incredible job that, you know, at the company that is really doing things differently, where there's a really strong alignment between the life that you want for yourself and the work opportunity that's been presented to you, a company that has... really, you know, done some work to kind of unravel the dominant systems that isn't operating on extractive terms. And if that is available to you, wonderful. Go, you know, absolutely go for it. But in my experience, and from what I hear from all of the people that I work with, those roles are really few and far between. So this is a way of getting past that should. that people get really stuck on when it comes to full-time roles that sound amazing, that sound on paper like, wow, I should want to take that step up. I should want to have that name on my CV. You know, this is fantastic money. How can I possibly walk away from it? Everybody wants this kind of job. I really should want to do it. When you have that how written down and it's really clear for you. It helps you move past the should because if it's incompatible, it really doesn't matter how incredible the job title is. It doesn't really even matter to some extent how good the money is. If it's incompatible with how you want your life to feel, then it isn't the right decision for you. So what do you do then if you realize that most of the opportunities that are available to you or certainly how you've thought about your work life and what you've imagined that to be? is no longer compatible. Well, in many cases, it leads people to consider developing work on their own terms. So becoming self-employed, becoming a freelancer, doing fractional work, or developing their own meaningful business, which is, of course, the focus of my work and my work with the Meaningful Business Incubator. Because when you design your own work, you have the opportunity to shape it around the stage of life that you're in. I spoke earlier about what I need from this phase of my life with three young children and wanting to be really present for them and also just the age that I'm at and where I am in my life's journey. My work fits around that. beautifully. It actively supports it. Is it easy to do? No, of course not. I'm an entrepreneur. My constant struggle is trying not to let work fill up every moment of my working day because I'm constantly wanting to iterate and improve and solve problems. No, it doesn't just happen. I have to be very intentional and very conscious. But because I started with how and I built from there, my work life. beautifully supports the whole of the rest of my life. And that is really deeply meaningful to me. And I've seen how meaningful that can be with the people that I've helped to design work in that way. And when you have, so if let's assume that your how is guiding you towards work on your own terms. and for now Let's not worry about exactly what scale or scope of that is. People can get very caught up in, well, I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't think of myself that way. I don't want to have a big business. There is a whole scope of possibility available to you. The important thing right now, if what I'm saying is resonating, is recognizing that conventional employment, as you have previously understood it, may not be compatible to how you want your wife to feel. So let's just work with the realization that you need to build work on your own terms. A really comforting thing to know is that those hows that you have worked on, the how of your work life, is going to be your constant companion in that process of building and developing your own work. It is your compass, your North Star that you can come back to again and again. And it's so important that you... do, if you're in the stage of actually starting to build something out for yourself, you must build it hand in hand with your how. You must refer back to it really regularly because otherwise, I promise you, the extractive norms of how we do business will take over and you will end up with a mismatch between this work that you're building and the life that you actually want. So what do I mean? Let's get really practical. Your how will actually help you to make decisions about which clients you work with, about how you design your offer, how you actually engage and work with people, about your pricing, about how much you want to grow as a business, about the kind of boundaries and non-negotiables that you set. You need to keep referring to it at all these points and that is how you create work and life that actively support each other. And that is... a really beautiful, really meaningful thing. Remember, if you don't change the system that you're operating within, you don't change the outcome and the experience that you have either. So look, you don't need the full plan yet. I want to take that responsibility off your shoulders for just a moment. Perhaps you've listened to this and this is the first time when you've thought, You're right. Yes, I need to let go of the job search. I need to let go of the opportunities that other people think are meant for me, but just don't feel right to me. I need to let go of what I thought my career was going to look like. I need something that is more meaningful, more personal, more personal to me, and that is actively going to support my life and maybe even bring me back to life. It's enough just to know that. The first and most important thing that you need is the how. So take the time to really think about that. Don't be afraid and go after what you want. If you would like to share your experience with me as you think about how, if you'd like to discuss the next steps once you've got that how defined of how you actually begin to turn that into a resilient, meaningful work. or business for yourself, then please reach out. You can reach me at Alyssa, A-L-I-S-A at regenerativeworklife.com. And you can book a call with me and I would love to discuss that with you. So I hope that this episode has been really helpful for you. And the takeaway is, before you get into the what you're going to do or who you're going to do it for, what your offer looks like, any kind of major decisions, about your work life, please start with how you want to feel. And that is how you'll create work that brings you back to life. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll see you back here next week on the From Corporate Into Calling podcast. If this episode of From Corporate To Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life. to you and to the world around you.
