Speaker #0I'm standing in a beautiful old church in the middle of Prague. I'm there for what used to be one of my biggest work events of the season and I'm there primarily because I still have a relationship with the hosts. I'm surrounded by people in their casual business attire, chink of champagne glasses. The smell of alluring canapes, the chatter of people catching up, making connections, doing deals. And I'm very much aware that I am on the periphery, that a room that I used to be right at the centre of is no longer a place that feels right for me. And whoever that version of Alyssa was that would be the centre of attention, meeting with as many people as possible, ticking off her strategic objectives for attending, she's just no longer available to me. And for a while that felt uncomfortable and sad and there was a certain grief in it. But this time Finally, I simply felt at peace with the fact that this space that I had helped to build was no longer the space where I belonged. And I felt that I was finally able to let it go and really turn my attention to the next chapter of my work life. This episode is for you. If you have the experience of stepping outside of a career that has truly defined you, that you have felt so much a part of and now stand outside of, it's here to recognise what that feels like, to make space for how uncomfortable and emotional that can be, and to show you that. what you're experiencing isn't a sign that you have lost your way or gone astray. It's a sign that you truly are in a transition period of your career and that something new is awakening for 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 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 I get into the details of today's episode and tell you exactly where I was, why I was there and what I learned from that experience, I want to say a really heartfelt thank you to those of you who regularly listen to the show and of course to those of you who are new welcome. But it just always surprises and delights me when I have the opportunity to connect with people who have been listening to the podcast. And when they say things to me like, oh, I was going to sleep the other night listening to your episode, or I was, you know, weeding the garden, and I had you in my ear. It truly is a privilege to have that kind of relationship with people who most of the time I don't know and then when I do get to connect with you and I learn about what part of the world you're in and what it is that you want to build for yourself and your story that is such a joyful part of my work so thank you for being here and if you are ready to connect with me and if you're curious about what working with me would look like Please do go ahead and book a free discovery call. It's just simply a chance for us to get to know each other, for you to tell me what it is that you want to create in your work life, for me to tell you how I work, how I might be able to support you and just lay the foundations for a potential collaboration between us. You can find the link to book a discovery call in the show notes. And thank you again for listening. and for trusting me to be a guide on your journey. Okay, so let's get back to that church in Prague. So I had... gone out to Prague for this big summer event that is the kind of showcase event for a client of mine that I hold very very dearly actually. We worked together closely when I was deep in the climate tech space and they really have been the organisation that has just fully come with me on my transition into coaching and into regenerative thinking and you know have just really said yes to my evolving journey and found new ways to work with me and I feel very deeply connected to the individuals as part of that organisation. But what I really want to talk about today is my connection with that world and by that I mean in my case the kind of climate tech sector and that deep network that I had and the whole kind of construct of going to business events and you know connecting with people and you know finding opportunities for collaboration and doing deals that whole space and my shifting relationship to it because it's been a gradual process of you realizing that I'm further and further away from the role that I used to play because once upon a time I would have shown up at this event and I've spoken there on several occasions I have attended very regularly and there would have been a kind of subtext of you know I'm here to connect with this person, this person, and this person. You know, I would have been kind of right in the thick of things, you know, right kind of at the centre of attention and kind of very buzzy and kind of, you know, flitting from person to person and yes, like just being happy to see people, but also kind of, you know, having sort of an agenda of like how, you know, what opportunities might come from those conversations. But also I would just you know it would be quite a validating experience to say, wow, I'm really like, I'm really part of this ecosystem. You know, I'm really, I'm respected as the founder and CEO of this company, as like a key player in this industry. And, you know, it would feel really good. It would feel really validating. And you You know, for a number of years since I sold my previous company and then I've kind of gradually stepped further and further back from the work that I used to do, I've had this experience of feeling kind of further and further on the periphery of that world, like kind of almost like, you know, an invited observer who's come to kind of look in from the outside. And I don't mean that I'm not welcome. That's, that's not the point. It's more about my sense of belonging in that space. And that's been kind of an uncomfortable experience. And it's led to quite a lot of questioning about, you know, my worth and the impact that I have and kind of whether I've become irrelevant. And, you know, there's this sort of comparison between the quote, successful Alyssa that I used to be and the question of whether I am still successful in my new identity. And what I really appreciated about this recent visit was that I could so clearly see that I was on the fringes, that while I was welcome, I didn't truly belong in that space, that I really had no agenda. I was just there to support those individuals that I mentioned and to kind of I guess honour a part of my history and and that that was enough and that I was actually okay with kind of being on the outside of a system that I once was instrumental in creating and I felt a certain peace walking away from that. event, that that isn't my world anymore. And that while I am grateful for all of the experiences that I had, and I, you know, have no regrets, I don't want to change anything about my past experience of work. It's no longer a world of work that I choose to be an active part of. And I respect and honour that decision that I have made. And I think that's what I really wanted to and share with you today because I think that this experience of feeling like you are now outside of a space that you were once really central to is something that I hear regularly from the people that I work with and it can be really destabilizing and you know potentially even quite upsetting and it's really all part heart of the kind of identity shift that happens when we make a conscious choice to step out of a corporatized world of work or a you know a version of our career that no longer feels aligned to who we are. And, you know, and we consciously take a new path, but that path is probably still quite, you know, quite young, quite unformed, certainly quite unpredictable. And we're left sort of feeling like, well, who, who am I now that I no longer have, you know, that, that job title now that I'm no longer part of this sector that maybe felt like a real... Family, you know, for me, like climate tech was absolutely my world for well over a decade. You know, my identity as CEO and founder, like that's, you know, would always be how I would sort of introduce myself, how I would lead in a conversation. And just thinking about who Alyssa was outside of that was actually quite challenging for me because, you know, my work was really all consuming for a long period of time. And it's okay to feel uncomfortable as your identity begins to shift. And it's really not a sign that something has gone wrong or that you have failed. It's a sign that you're becoming something new, that you're choosing a new path for yourself. And that's difficult because the old picture will be so much... clearer to you, so much more comfortable, so much more relatable than this, you know, really emergent picture that you isn't fully defined yet, that you don't know exactly where it is that you're going. You don't know exactly what it is that you want to build. Yes, you've got ideas. Yes, you know, you're making progress. Like, yes, you have a lot to give, but it hasn't kind of crystallized into something that you can replace that. piece of story from before with. You're essentially in this kind of, no limbo isn't the word that I want to use, you're in this kind of nascent period, you know, something is being birthed in you and it feels uncomfortable and I want to reassure you because I know it often doesn't feel that way and you For you, this might not show up in a kind of a big moment, like, you know, in my case, going to this this sort of big event and sort of literally finding myself, you know, standing on the outside of that. And it might be just little daily things for you. What I often see with clients is things like, oh my goodness, the LinkedIn comparison, you know, just letting yourself kind of go through the feed and seeing this person's been promoted and this person's working on this incredible project and this person's just secured this funding and what am I doing? Like, who am I? And sometimes, it's not even things that you would want to do yourself. It's very often things that you chose to walk away from. I've seen a lot of time clients looking at people in the organisation they've left and seeing how they've progressed within that organisation and this feeling of kind of you know jealousy or regret that comes up that isn't actually true for them because they know they left and they know they left for really good reasons but it's so difficult not to compare ourselves all the time and it can show up in other ways you know I think networking is really a challenging situation for many people because it requires you to have this kind of succinct fully formed story that you lead with. And if you are in that kind of messy middle place, as I call it, if you are taking the time to really find out what it is that you want for your life, for your work, you know, making really conscious and thoughtful decisions about where you go next, then you're not going to have that pithy response. You know, very likely people are not going to have the sort of patience or depth of interest to really understand what is going on for you. And so it feels really uncomfortable when you're trying to sort of, you know, when someone says, how's work going? Or wow, what are you doing next? You know, what's coming up for you? And you don't have that kind of, you know, knee jerk response that you feel really good about. It's an uncomfortable place to be. So the thing... to really hold on to is that You know, we talk about career transition, but I think we often don't really let a transition be what it is. You know, we talk about it as if it's kind of this neat little phase that we can just get through that will maybe take a couple of months and then we'll come out the other side and everything will be resolved. You know, a transition takes time. A transition is uncomfortable. A transition involves like deep introspection and identity level work and really finding out who you are, what you want and the impact that you are going to have through your work. It is very rarely, and I know this because this is what I help people do, I help people to navigate this transition and it is very rarely clean and tidy and succinct. It is almost always messy and uncomfortable but ultimately it is so rewarding. You know ultimately it's about getting to a place in your work life where you feel truly aligned with the work that you do and for me that is worth going through some uncomfortable feelings for. That is worth the risk of. standing a little bit on the outside, looking in and choosing to finally walk away. So my invitation to you, if anything that I have shared from my experience has resonated with you, is just to think about one room that you're showing up to, one role that you're playing, or one version of yourself. that you're still holding on to even though you know that you have moved on either practically or psychologically or both? You know, what space are you kind of staying stuck in even though it no longer serves you? And you don't have to do anything about that right now. I think it's just super helpful to acknowledge when we're kind of trying to belong somewhere. where we don't actually want to be. And when we acknowledge that, we can start to release it, move on and really focus on that next chapter. And if you're ready to take action on that chapter, I want to invite you once more to go ahead and book in that free discovery call. I would love to hear your story. I would love to hear your aspirations. for your work or your business and see whether there is a possibility for us to build that together so the link to book the discovery call is in the show notes and as always thank you so much for listening i hope that you enjoyed this episode and i'll see you 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.
