Speaker #0Welcome back to the podcast and today we are going to talk about how to get comfortable with the messy middle of purposeful career change. This episode is for you if you know that you left your corporate career for really good reasons. If you know that you are meant for a work life of impact and meaning and fulfillment but right now you are stuck somewhere in between and you are frankly quite scared that you are not going to deliver on this transition that you have envisaged for yourself. Today I am going to reassure you that you have made the right choice and that this stage that you're in, first of all it is a stage and it's a stepping stone, not a quagmire. That work life that you want. is waiting for you and the discomfort that you are experiencing right now is necessary. It can be used as the fuel that powers you through this transition and into meaningful work. 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. I spoke with someone this week who is typical of many, many people that I work with who are in this uncomfortable, messy, in-between stage. And she told me about the incredible legacy that she had had during her corporate career and how she had been part of building something new and really, truly innovative. She was there right from the beginning. She was really instrumental. in making it a reality. She had built a really deep network. She was very well connected, very well respected, but there was something that just wasn't fitting internally. You know, after a while, she realized she was not progressing in the way that she wanted to. She was even asking herself the question of whether she wanted the obvious progression path that would have been the obvious route for her. to take. And in the end, the organization actually bought in a hire right above her. So in the kind of next position that she would naturally have moved into. And, you know, she realized with, I think, an incredible amount of grace and self-awareness that, first of all, you know, things were not going to move forward within that organization. But secondly, that she actually truly really didn't want them to, that she hadn't moved into that position because she hadn't really set that intention because she felt that the impact that she wanted to have lay elsewhere. And so she left. She left for very good reasons. She made a conscious change. But now she is in that transition period as she pulls together ideas, tries out different offerings, and she you know, is really looking to articulate. the new direction for herself, but it's not yet fully realised, it's not fully clear, and it's that middle stage that feels so uncomfortable to people, even shameful in fact. We just feel so uncomfortable with the idea of pause or consideration or exploration, there's this pressure, this idea that careers should be these linear journeys that just keep going in this sort of upward trajectory. And, you know, that each step that you take looks planned and, you know, and has a sort of a rational logic to it. But that is just not the reality. And when you kind of step off of that predictable ladder, there's this understandable fear that can come up that, you know, what if you're telling everyone that you're in transition. but you don't really make this pivot work. And that is also true for people who have stepped back from careers to start families or who are looking to shift industries or, you know, are finally allowing themselves to invest in a concept or an idea that they've held on to for a long time. Until it starts to become a reality for you, you know, that's what you desperately want. You want to be able to articulate it clearly. You want to be able to show someone the plan, you know, you want to be able to map it all out. But there is this absolutely necessary exploratory period in between, particularly if your exit from corporate was not straightforward. And it often isn't. Often it's accompanied by, you know, real serious burnout or a necessary period of kind of disentangling yourself. from your corporate identity and that is all active work that needs to take place but i get it it feels really really uncomfortable and during that period you kind of you want to hide away you dread people asking the question of you know what's coming next um you know what what you must be working on something really big i can't wait to see what it is how is work going you know you just desperately don't want to have those conversations. And quite often it can happen that people start to close themselves off and kind of hide away just because, you know, they don't they don't want to get into a discussion where they can't bring that clarity. They don't own this as their story in this time. And that is what makes things feel really comfortable. And kind of ironically, that's actually what can can actually keep you stuck much longer than you need to be because you're disempowering yourself. by not really embracing the truth of where you are, and in fact using it, using it structurally as a building block for the work that you go on to do. And that is what I am going to show you how to do today. Before we come on to the practical steps, I want to take the opportunity to remind you, because it's easy to forget, that you didn't fit in for good reasons. It is not a failure. It is a sign that you were meant for better things. Look, corporate requires conformity. It asks us to play a complex and quite rigid game. And the chances are you were really good at playing that game. I'm willing to bet. I bet you played it really well. But with time, perhaps you also started to question it. You started to see it for what it was and you wondered about what it might mean for your health and happiness in the long term. You perhaps started to question whether you could actually have the kind of impact that you wanted to have inside of that system. Whether the burnout that you and many others around you were experiencing was a sign that there was something wrong with those individuals or a deeper structural indication that the work itself needed to change. The bottom line here is you did not float into the messy middle. You did not end up here by accident. You chose it because it is the uncomfortable but necessary path to change. That is why you chose it. So let's come on to what you can actually do during this stage to get comfortable. Because when we're comfortable with the stage that we're in, that experience of alignment, that's where our confidence can come back to us. That's when we suddenly feel like we can say yes to those invitations to go and speak at an event or you you know, finally have that conversation with a former colleague who is, you know, really keen to see what's going on, where we feel like we can show up on LinkedIn or other platforms and actually talk about what we're creating, where we don't have to hold ourselves back from the very things that are going to enable us to build meaningful work because of our discomfort. And for each of these six steps that I'm going to show you, I'm going to keep it really, really simple because I do acknowledge how difficult this feels. But there are just little baby steps that you can take that I believe each of these can feel really, really manageable. And when you get through the steps, I think you will feel very different. I hope that you will feel empowered and that you will start to see the map unfolding ahead of you. And you will start to feel that you can start putting yourself out there, start having those conversations and start making the work life that's waiting for you a reality. So let's get into it. Step number one is to acknowledge your feelings about leaving. You know, whether you, whether you were the instigator of leaving or whether circumstances pushed you. to a decision or whether you know you were one of those people who received these impersonal 3am text messages announcing that your job was finished whatever happened to you i'm sure that there is an element of sadness there there there is with any ending even when we consciously choose it there may well be anger there because Even if you chose this, that doesn't mean that it didn't hurt. It doesn't mean that harm wasn't done to you. It doesn't mean that things could have been different. And that can really lead to shame as well. And this feeling of wishing that things had been otherwise. And all of these feelings, if you just keep those bottled up, if you don't want to look at them, you don't feel that it's reasonable, to have those emotions that is going to block you from building forward so i understand that this is the sort of thing that coaches say all the time and if you're a kind of highly practical person it feels you know just like ripping your own skin off but here are some ways that you can think about just acknowledging those feelings you know is there somebody that you can talk to perhaps completely outside of this situation you know where you can just have an explicit rant session where you can just I just want to talk at you like for half an hour I'll buy your coffee you just sit there and listen and I'm just gonna be completely unreasonable for half an hour and just vent you will feel amazing afterwards I promise you you know and or you can do that on paper I really encourage you to like not not look at this in a kind of rational intelligent way just let those feelings out, vent them, rant them, get them moving. out of your body so that you can move past that difficult stage. The second step is to re-label this period for yourself. So often when we're in transition we want to use corporate language to describe what is going on and the only words that corporate have to talk about this are things like taking a sabbatical which to me just implies that you've pressed the pause button and that you're going to go right back into the system when you finish. Or a career break, which I think is a really loaded term that everyone seems to understand as, you know, oh, you got lost, you failed, you didn't know what you're doing. And, you know, very often that's the kind of mentality that we bring to it when we think of being in a career break. So don't use terminology like that. you know, whatever you might, you know, put on, I don't know, if you even feel the need to put something on your CV or on LinkedIn, be honest with yourself that you are actively building the next chapter of your career. You are doing the work right now. And I don't apologise for using that kind of coachy language because the internal work has to happen first. I can show you how to define your offer. I can show you how to research your audience. I can show you how to create a financial runway. I can show you how to do a business plan. But none of that is actually going to work and land if you are caught up in your own emotions and your own unhelpful thinking about this. You have to do the inner work first. That's why I started with acknowledging. those feelings. And now I want you to redefine for yourself what is going on here. You are in startup mode. Whether or not you ever actually start a company is not the point here. Think of yourself in startup mode. You are gaining information. You are developing ideas. You are researching. You are testing and experimenting. And all of that is valid and necessary work to you build something long-term, sustainable and impactful. So you need to be doing what you are doing right now. Don't think of this as something passive or inconsequential. It is active and it is necessary. Step number three, get clear about what you do know. So I understand there are a lot of unknowns right now, and that is part of what makes this feel so uncomfortable and so messy. You want this neat story that you can tell about what's coming next, but the reality is you don't have that clarity yet. So start with what you do know for sure, however little that might feel to you. So if you know for sure that the next chapter of work is outside of corporate, state that, write it down. If you know that you will be your own boss, state that. If you know the broad area that your work will be in, great. Let's lock that in, get clear on it. make those decisions. And if and when you can do some deeper thinking about the other elements, then you can start to add to those things that you have locked in and you have made decisions on. So these broader things could be things like, what geographical region are you going to be working in? You know, are you staying in the country you are in now? Are you willing to move? Are you going home? What does that look like? Do you want your work to be online or is it really important to you to be in person and be kind of physically connected? Are you comfortable with a mix of both? Explore those options for yourself. Think about what problems it is that you want to solve. I'm going to say more about why leaning into the problem is so important. But if there are kind of recurring questions for you, or if there are... certain things that you want to bring together. I'm working with a client at the moment who has a lot of experience in music and audio and in culture, but wants to move into climate. So we're looking at how we can bring those two sectors together. What is the crossover there? And as you're doing this, if anything feels overwhelming or sends you spiraling or get, you know, just stuck in indecision, leave it. Move on. What we're doing here is focusing on what you know. Think of it like ingredients. So you're writing your list of ingredients and you're adding to that list whenever you can. You don't know yet what recipe you're going to make, but you can get really clear on the ingredients that you're working with because clarity is what you're looking for here. It's what you're lacking and it's what you feel is holding you back. So Get really clear about the ingredients that you're working with. What is it that you do know for sure? And commit to those things. That's the other aspect of this. You know, if you have said, I know that this next stage of my career, I'm going to be my own boss, then don't waste your time on job boards. Don't waste your time having interesting conversations about full-time employment possibilities just in case. Commit to the things that you do know and get really clear on them. first for yourself, but then as we come on to the next step, I want you to practice communicating those ingredients with others. So we talked about how when you're in that messy middle, you often hold yourself back from conversations and opportunities because you want to have the clarity first. But the point is often the clarity comes from testing in those live scenarios. from going to the event and speaking in front of an audience, from having the conversation with that, you know, key person who might just be able to introduce you to someone else who can make this happen, of putting stuff out onto platforms where people can, you know, can give you ideas and resources and point you in the right direction. And also... You know, I believe it's really important that you start saying this out loud. And what I mean is communicating the things that you have locked in on that you know for sure. So this might sound like, I know that I need work to be flexible so that I can be really present for my children. I know that I want to use my permaculture training in some way. And I know that I also want to build on the really successful career that I've had in marketing. So that would be three ingredients. And maybe, you know, this this person that I'm imagining also knows that online suits them really well, but they do need some in-person interaction. Well, then you've got four key ingredients. Start talking to people about those. Don't feel like you have to have it all worked out, you know, to validate having a conversation. Putting yourself out into real world situations, communicating what it is you know for sure about your work life, that is how you start to get to clarity. You don't get to it on your own, inside of your Google Doc or in your notebook. You've got to start putting it into real world situations. And the more you practice this, the more comfortable you'll get, the more you'll start to flesh it out, the more decisions you'll be able to add. So your list of ingredients will get longer and longer and longer and the recipe will start to reveal itself. Now, the final tip that I want to or the step that I want you to take is to lean in to the tension. So I asked before, do you know what the problem is that you want to solve? Problems are fuel for building your own self-directed work or meaningful business. This is where you want to start getting comfortable with having an entrepreneurial mindset because to an entrepreneur, problems are what you build a business around. Entrepreneurs actively need problems. They want to look for two pieces and think, how can I bring them together. They want to say there is a need here and a solution here. How do I integrate those two? That is how you create really successful business ideas. So do you hear what a difference this is? You're right now feeling like these pieces of your work life that you can't put together, that that is somehow a kind of failure, but it's actually the tension that you need to build something that is really unique, that has intrinsic value, that is going to have a really active audience that wants to be engaged with it, and that is going to work that's going to really fulfill you and drive you forward. Lean into the tension, embrace the problems. If you want to work in regenerative agriculture, but you also want to deepen your ties with your cultural heritage, lean into that. If you want to build impact in a market where it hasn't been done before, lean into it. If you can't understand why no one has offered permaculture as a service before, lean into it. That is how real innovation and personal satisfaction happen. By working through the tension and solving the problem and building out of the mess. That is what we are doing here. We are building out of the mess. Let's recap on the steps that you're going to take. So first of all, acknowledge the feelings that you have around why and how you left. Secondly, redefine this period for yourself. You are not on sabbatical. That is passive. You are actively building the next chapter of your career. Get clear about what you do know for sure, even if that's a very short list. to start with and then start building those decision points start building those ingredients and with time the recipe will reveal itself practice communicating those ingredients to others when you've got that clarity that is enough for you to go out and have you know strategic kind of cornerstone conversations that are really going to unlock possibilities and opportunities for you and finally lean into the tension Develop your entrepreneurial mindset. Problems are good because they are what you are here to solve. That's why you are in the mess that you perceive yourself to be in, to find the problems that you were meant to solve, to discover the consultancy offer where you deliver unique value, to fully understand the components of your healthy, happy, resilient content. and satisfying work life where you truly fit. That is my vision for you. That is what I see happening for the people that I work with. All of the examples that I have shared today, they're not plucked out of my imagination. They are based on real stories of incredible, talented professionals like you who consciously chose to step out of the corporate system and build self-directed work that was truly meaningful to them and really beneficial to others and to the world around them. That is what I am all about. If you are ready to build even more of that clarity, start with the steps that I've just shown you, put that into practice. And when you want to take that to the next level and start building a kind of structured framework for your meaningful business, I have a workshop coming up on the 18th of March that is all about the meaningful business framework. This is where we will map out the why, the how, the what and the who of your business. It's super practical, really hands on, and it covers all of the foundational pieces that you need to then go on and to develop your own offer, consultancy, self-employed work, or even your own meaningful. business. I've had really great feedback about this workshop in the past. As I say, it's really hands-on. We're going to, you're going to come away from the workshop with your framework completed. So if you're interested in that, it's on the 18th of March and there will be a link in the show notes where you can go and read about it and book your place for the workshop. In the meantime, I hope you really enjoy getting comfortable with that messiness and reminding yourself that you are in exact the place that you need to be to build impactful work for many years to come. Thanks for listening. And I'll see you back here on the podcast next week. 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.
