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  If you're listening to this podcast, the chances are that you're somewhere on a particular journey, and it's a challenging one. Maybe you're still in corporate, and you've been thinking about doing something different for a while now. You have the ideas, but you haven't yet made your move, and you're not entirely sure why. Or maybe you've already stepped out, and instead of feeling free, the reality is that a lot of the time you feel lost. You're exploring options, You're making some progress but nothing is quite landing and you're starting to wonder whether you made a mistake or maybe you've actually started building something and you're proud of yourself but the truth is that it's harder than you expected and it's taking much longer than you'd hoped and that wobble is real. Other options are starting to look tempting and you're second guessing yourself. Wherever you are on that journey. This episode is for you because all three of those experiences have the same thing at their root. And today I want to talk about exactly what that is and how you can shift it. By the end of this episode, I want you to have a different relationship to this thing that you've probably been calling a confidence problem. And I want to show you how a simple structured approach can unblock you. 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 quote. 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. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about something that I'm running this month. Actually, it's next week because it's directly connected to everything that we're going to talk about today. On the 18th of March, I'm hosting a 90-minute workshop called Self-Directed Work that works for you. It's £90 and it is designed to do one specific thing, get your idea clear enough to actually believe in and give you a framework for building work that fits your life, not someone else's template. The link to book is in the show notes and I would love to work with you there. Now, Let's get into today's episode. Let's start by adding a little detail to those three pictures that I painted at the beginning and I'd be surprised if you don't recognize yourself in at least one of them. So let's start with the hesitator. So this is you if you are still in that corporate job or very much inside the corporate world of work and you have been seriously contemplating making a change for quite some time now. Often I speak to people who have been thinking about taking the step out of corporate for months, if not years, but somehow that next big project comes around and you get deeply involved in it, or the next bonus payment is due and you think I'll just do one more cycle and you don't really understand how, but somehow you're just, you're still there. You're still in the thinking and planning stage. And it feels like you're just waiting for this perfect moment when everything aligns. And here's what I think is going on. I don't think that it's really a timing issue. And I don't even think it's about the money, although that is real. I think it's that the idea for what you are going to do next just isn't clear enough that it feels worth the risk yet. So that feeling of readiness never arrives because you just don't know exactly what it is that you are stepping out for. Then there's the person who did take that step out of corporate. They made a brave decision to make a change. They consciously stepped into what I call the messy middle of career transition. And they should feel really excited about it. Maybe they did for a while. Maybe there was a real sense of relief and freedom. And often there's a really necessary period of resting, of detoxing, of kind of untangling yourself from your corporate identity and that's really valid but then after all of that comes a time often when instead of kind of enthusiasm and focus and clear direction you just start feeling overwhelmed and a little bit lost and lonely and when that kicks in you can really start second guessing yourself you And, you know, sneaking back onto those job boards, wondering if you made the right choice, questioning if you were naive, you know, making space for the voices in your life that say that you should just take the sensible choice and maybe go back into that nice, stable career that you had. And it very quickly starts feeling very, very destabilizing. And the truth is that this messy middle is one of the most disorienting phases of the whole journey and that that freedom that you chose can start to feel like you're in freefall and again the same issue is underlining it's almost always a clarity problem because if you don't know what you are working on if you don't know what you are building towards then of course you feel lost. Of course you feel like... You're in free fall. And the thing that you really need to remember is that you do not have a capability problem. You've already proven that in your career so far. What you may have is a clarity problem. And then there's a third person and one that I have a lot of respect for because they've actually taken the step of starting to build something for themselves. They are in it. They are. putting in the work. They are trying things out. They're taking risks. They're putting themselves out there. They're backing themselves. But it is going slower than expected. And it's probably quite a bit harder than you imagined. And that's not because you're naive. It's because you never had the experience of, you know, being a founder. in whatever scale that is what's going on here. You are responsible. You're in the driving seat. You're the one setting the direction. You're the one making it happen. And for most people who have come out of corporate, that is an entirely new experience. And what they're used to is not only someone else setting the direction, setting the KPIs, setting the goals, you know, providing that framework, but also someone else powering. the belief. And it can feel just really destabilizing when you don't have someone else there whose belief is that kind of fuel that helps you think, okay, yes, I can deliver on that direction. I can meet those KPIs. I can achieve those goals. Because when it just all comes down to you, that's a heavy responsibility. And what's wobbling here, again, it's not your ability. It's your connection to the idea that you are building. The stronger that connection, the more you are able to absorb those hard days and show up again day after day, ready for more, building slowly, sustainably. But if that connection is weak, then everything can feel like a sign to stop or to reassess and you get stuck in this cycle of self-evaluating and second-guessing. So here is what I want to offer because I work with all three of these people and what I've noticed is that they're all essentially describing the same problem. What they will say is, you know, I just don't think I've got the confidence, I don't quite believe in myself enough, I, you know, I need to feel you more ready or, you know, I just... I just wish that I could really believe that I could do this or that I was more confident or I was more like this person or this person. And I understand why it feels that way. And I understand why it feels that way. But I actually think that framing it around confidence and self-belief is what is keeping people stuck. Because if you're in that place, you can't fake self-belief. You can't import it. I don't even really think that you can manifest it. What you need is something that builds that structurally for you. And if you are trying to layer your self-belief onto an unclear idea that is not fully formed, that is not well-developed, that has not been tested, it will collapse under pressure because there's just no... solid foundation underneath it. What actually sustains people isn't some fixed internal quality that we call self-belief or self-confidence. It's having an idea that they can return to again and again. An idea that holds up when they look at it honestly and when they show it to others and when they take it to market. That is a completely different thing. And that is the kind of confidence that is buildable. So here is what I want you to understand about this concept. Belief in yourself can be a byproduct of clarity. It is not some kind of precondition that you have to create in order to get to clarity. We've just got it. the wrong way around. Clarity leads to self-belief. And you can do all the mindset work in the world and it will help you to a certain degree. But if the idea is vague, the confidence will not hold up under pressure. So the question that we're really talking about here isn't, do I believe in myself? It's, do I have an idea worth believing in? Now, I know this to be true because I lived it for many, many years. As you may know, way back in 2010, I started a climate tech communications agency. Back then we called it Cleantech. I was in my mid-20s. I had very little applicable experience behind me. And my sibling and I started the business. together. We had a few contacts that gave us the opportunity to do so. But we had no kind of, you know, directory of, you know, black book directory of people that we could call up. We had, you know, no real network. We had absolutely zero track record. What we had was an absolutely all-encompassing, unwavering belief that climate tech companies needed to be so much better. at communicating if they were going to be commercially successful. We saw so clearly how big that gap in the market was between these incredible technological innovations and the ability to actually tell the right stories about those innovations so that they could acquire customers, raise investment, you know, reach new audiences, hire the right people, all of those kind of commercial objectives. We saw that the agencies that were offering this service weren't comfortable enough with the technology, were not natural storytellers and weren't scaling their work to the stage that these companies were in. I could go on and on about this because it's, you know, it lives inside me because this is the kind of this is the idea that I breathed for 15 years. End. Let me tell you, it wasn't smooth sailing by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, we literally built this business on that idea. And we really had no right to be doing what we were doing and to be going out to people and saying, here, like, trust us with your budget, give us your brief, you know, put your startup in our hands. We can deliver this for you. But people did. You know, people chose us over the incumbent global agencies that were bidding against us because we believed in that idea so strongly. It's what helped us to grow that business from nothing to being the leader in the European market that it is today. And for me personally, it was that belief in the idea that powered me through all of the really difficult times. And there were many, many, many. When I talk about what it's like to be in that building stage and feeling the wobbles and second guessing yourself, I know that because I lived it every day for years. You know, I was, you know, I was the founder of this company. A few years in, I was the sole founder, the sole shareholder. All the responsibility rested on my shoulders. You know, I was responsible for all of our clients. I was responsible for the cash flow. I was responsible for people's livelihoods, for the people who worked for the company. And, you know, stuff was thrown at us all the time. Shit hit the fan on a very regular basis. You know, we would have our biggest client suddenly turn around and decide. they were going somewhere else. We would have, you know, investors pull the plug and suddenly a huge contract that we thought was going to be in place just didn't get signed. We were working in a really volatile market. We went through all kinds of challenges. And I personally had so many times of, you know, crawling into my bed under the duvet and crying and thinking, I don't know what I'm going to do in the morning. But somehow when the morning came, I would get up, I would go back in, I would motivate my team, and we would make it happen. And that was not because I had this kind of unshakable self-confidence. Yes, I am a confident person. But at those times, you know, I felt absolutely all over the place. The thing that allowed me to go back in and sit down with my team and say, look, this is what happened. This is what happened. this is the situation this is like what we need to do next and it's going to be hard and it's ambitious but I know that we can pull this off it was always the belief in the idea and here is what happened with time with time that belief in the idea compounded into success and I always try to explain to people that when you're in that, you don't really see. it building. It wasn't a case of day-to-day. I was going, oh, look, everything's heading in the right direction. The data is giving me good indicators. We're moving forward on a day-to-day basis. It felt like I was grabbing desperately on to the sides of a roller coaster. But as I looked back, there were these certain moments where suddenly I thought, oh, hold on a minute. I can go on maternity leave and I can pay myself. Or, you know, hold on a minute. I am able to offer people bonuses. for the first time, hold on a minute, I think we can set up a German entity and build our market even further. And in the end, it was, hold on a minute, I think that I can do a valuation for this company and sell this company to its employees so that we become employee owned and so that I can realize the value of all the years that I've put into this company and set myself up for the next chapter of my life. And the thing that took me... All the way through those 15 years, I cannot emphasize this enough, was my belief in the idea. So the question becomes, how do you get to that same level of clarity around an idea that is going to sustain you for years to come and through all of the challenges ahead? I teach a very simple four-part framework that I call the Meaningful Business Framework and I'm going to talk you through each of those parts right now. I really believe if you can answer each of these questions you have the structure that you need to go forward and test and launch your own meaningful work. The first part of that framework is the why. Yes, this is classic Simon Sinek starting with why. And, you know, the reason that that concept is so incredibly popular, and I've taught it a lot in the work that I've done with impact startups over the years, is because it really does make a difference. And, you know, a quibble that I have with that is that I think it often kind of gets retrofitted on to a business when they realize that it will help. to tell a good story but you are using your why as the starting point. The why is the motivation for you making this transition in the first place. It's, you know, it's what actually is going to give you the kind of fuel to make big changes. So it's really important that you articulate it for yourself so that it doesn't stay as some kind of abstract feeling. It's something that you can really hold on to and reference and come back to any time that you're feeling a little bit. unshaky. So how do you get to this? What is it that you feel deeply passionate about? What has been missing from your work so far? What are the kinds of problems that you see in the world where you think I could really make a difference? You know, what are the kind of solutions that you might like to develop that you would feel really good about committing hours and days and years of your life to? You know, what is the kind of thing that you just get fired up about and you can't help yourself? And you know, when someone starts the conversation, you just pick it up and run with it. You know, this is just your thing. This is your why. It doesn't have to actually, I think, be really super. specific. It is fine if it's broad, it's fine if it's a mishmash of ideas. The point here is to connect with what you feel really passionately about and what brings you joy. And the chances are if you've spent a long period in corporate, it's been quite a while since you've given yourself permission to do that. This is where you get to dare to dream. The second part of the framework is how. This is so important because it's just basically completely absent from any sort of corporate framing around an idea or around work. How do you want work to feel? What are the most important components for you? What are your non-negotiables? Where are you setting boundaries? What is the priority for you at this stage in your life? Again, you know, be bold with this. You haven't had permission until this stage to really think consciously about these things. But this is the opportunity that self-directed work affords us. You own this work. So you get to design how it looks, how it feels, how you operate. What kind of relationship are you building between work and life and how? Are you going to make sure that those two things truly support each other? The next thing we come on to is the what. What value do you have to offer? And if that question feels challenging or difficult to you, just think about the things that you are really good at. You know, what are the things that people always come to you for that you always seem to find yourself doing, even if it hasn't been a specific part of your you job description. You know, what are the kinds of things that you just seem to find kind of easy or obvious that perhaps other people struggle with? You know, what are the things that you feel really proud of in your career so far? You know, what do you want to do more of? Again, don't get yourself into the trap of trying to filter this down into one perfect sentence at this stage. just let it flow Build out kind of the building blocks that you can work with so you can see everything that you have to offer and you'll refine it later. And a big part of that refining comes from the who. Who is it that urgently needs what you have to offer? And I really always in my workshops underline this word urgently. It is not. going to work if you come up with an idea that you feel incredible about, that is really aligned with your why, that fits with how you want your work life to be. If you don't have an audience that is really compelled to engage with you and buy whatever it is that you have to sell, because ultimately, and I know we don't like buying and selling language, but that is what it comes down to. You need an audience that urgently needs what you have to offer and you have to be a little bit disciplined with yourself in honestly answering that question. It's also really important that that audience has the resources to pay for what you have to offer. This is when we get into the commercial rigor and in the workshop I break down how you can then reverse engineer from your identified audience or clients. back through the filters of what you have to offer, how you want your work life to be, and why you're doing this to make sure that everything is in alignment. But when you are clear on those things, the why, the how, the what and the who, the idea starts to take shape. It shifts from being something sort of amorphous into something concrete, something that you can start to test with people, something that you can put a lot more detail into, something that you can build from. And that is the clarity that you have been missing. And this framework is deliberately really simple. But I am willing to bet if you have a try at putting this into practice, that is when it starts feeling somewhat more complicated. Because it is one thing asking these kind of questions, you know, maybe of something that you've assessed in a kind of work scenario. something external, something outside of yourself, but when you are turning it inwards and you are applying these kind of questions to yourself, it's much, much harder to do. And that is why I find people really benefit from doing this in a workshop scenario where they can have feedback, when they can see other people going through the same process. Because There is real inner work that is going on at the same time. The hard part isn't understanding the framework. You've got that in seconds. I know you have. It's actually applying it to your ideas, your history, your fears. It requires giving yourself permission to lean in to what you actually care about, trusting yourself to set limits on how you work, having the discipline to choose one audience when every instinct is telling you to keep going. all of your options open and then doing the real work of building a compelling offer that is genuinely useful and valuable not just plausible and I don't think that is work that is easily done alone on your laptop I think it's work that needs structure it needs energy it needs guidance and the benefit of an external perspective which is exactly what you will get in the workshop you on the 18th of March. Together we will work through this framework, your why, your how, your what, your who, with the structure and the space to do this properly. It's 90 minutes, it's £95 and if you recognise yourself anywhere in this episode, whether you're still thinking and hesitating, whether you're exploring and you're in that messy middle or you're already building but you're feeling the wobble this is for you. Clarity is the key. Again, the link to book the workshop is in the show notes, and I'd love to see you there. Thank you for listening. And as always, I will be back here next week. 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.