Speaker #0You left the job, changed your title, stepped away from the sector. But the operating system that defined how you worked, what you produced and who you had to be to survive, that came with you. If you've left corporate and something still feels off, or you're exhausted in a way that didn't resolve when you handed in your notice, this episode's for you. There's a client I've been working with for a while who is deeply experienced, very good at what they do, really polished, really proficient. They execute on everything that I throw at them. They're a real deliverer and in terms of process of helping them to build a viable business, out of the work that they want to do and the experience that they have. It's all quite straightforward. You know, this is someone who really likes following steps, having a kind of manual. And so at times it's kind of felt like, yep, we're just ticking our way right through the list. We're moving at a really fast pace. Everything is just coming together. Except there has been something missing and I have been really struggling to put my finger on what that missing ingredient is. And in a recent session working together we were finally able to kind of unearth what that missing ingredient was and together we discovered that he was unable to imagine experiencing joy in his work. His corporate experience had been so far removed from the word joy that it just really didn't even occur to him that that was something that you could experience in your work. And how this was showing up in our process of building an offer for him was that he wasn't bringing any of his unique... personality to the work. He had sort of shut down all the parts of himself that made him kind of charming and unique and like a really compelling person to be around. All of those existed in like this different compartment somehow and when he showed up to work it just didn't occur to him to bring those things with him and that was you All a byproduct of a corporate experience that had told him that, you know, he needed to shrink himself to fit what they needed of him. A corporate experience that was only interested in what he could deliver for that organisation, that had no real interest at all in the wholeness of who he was as a person. anything outside of the kind of mainstream course of work. He was there to meet a job description, to deliver on global objectives, and that was it. Beyond that, the organisation that he worked for was not interested in his development, in his personal life, in his wellness even. And even though he had had quite a substantial break since that corporate experience, it was clear that he was still carrying that baggage with him. You know, he'd long since stepped out of the office, been locked out of the emails, you know, even ceased to kind of primarily see himself as a part of that organisation or define himself by that job role. But the operating system, if you like, had very much come with him. His experience of work in that corporate setting was now being allowed to define what work would look like for him in the future and I was so happy that we were able together to kind of get to the root of this and really do some profound work to access the joyful parts of himself and begin to play with where those could be peppered into his business. Because, you know, not only is that going to be a more fulfilling experience for him, a more sustainable experience over the long term, but it's going to be what attracts people to work with him. People are coming because of who he is as much as what he has to offer and the boxes that he ticks. And this to me is what it is to develop meaningful work. It is to bring the whole of who we are and to be allowed to experience joy and passion and euphoria in our work and to share those experiences with others. But the reality is that For most of us who have either been in corporate or even just corporate adjacent, our idea, our conditioning of what work can be is so reductive. You know, we are very much defined by our roles far more than our experience or the challenges that we've met or the problems that we've solved or the people that we have positively affected. on our career journey. So when it comes to building new work for ourselves and doing that on our own terms in alignment with our own values and the kind of world that we want to be a part of and leave for generations ahead of us, it's really important to stop and recognize the operating system that we're still functioning within. And don't mishear me here. I'm not suggesting that you have to throw away everything that you learnt or the skills that you developed or processes that worked from your previous work experience. Not at all. I think that is a real mistake, actually. I think it's really important to bring the aspects of that kind of dominant system that work to bring those with us. But we have to do it with real awareness because most of the time this is happening at a completely subconscious level. It took the client I told you about several months of working with me to even begin to think of talking about joy in the context of work. It took me a long time to identify that that was the missing piece that I could sense because it's just not normal. is it to think about joy in the context of work? And that's just, you know, one example, but we don't, you know, we don't look at a job advert and think, well, how much joy would this bring me? We don't typically build our businesses thinking, am I making enough space for joy in what I'm doing, both for myself and for the people that I want to work with? But we can do that. We have the opportunity to do that when we choose to create meaningful work. It starts with acknowledging the weight that we might be carrying with us and then actively choosing to start putting that weight down and build differently, build on different terms. And this is almost certainly... going to apply to you. That's another thing that I want to say. I mean, I'm speaking as somebody who has never worked in a corporate environment. And even though I have worked with people leaving corporate for a number of years now, I am still taken aback, like literally my breath is taken away on a regular basis by the experiences that people go through. People who come to me completely physically and mentally exhausted and sometimes they're super aware of that they recognize that they have experienced burnout and they've really been at the brink and in some ways those are the lucky people because they you know they have the consciousness of what they're experienced and they're able to rebuild from there but more often than not it's something that is kind of wearing away at people without them even realising, and that can build in its destructiveness over time. So I, where I'm sounding, it's quite negative as I say this, I don't mean it that way, I just encourage us all to be aware of the experience that we have had of work, and make some conscious decisions. about the work that we want to come to next. That is really my invitation to you today and I'm going to offer a little exercise that you can do that I offered to a different client who just recently started working with me who has just had a very messy, quite painful exit from their job which interestingly wasn't exactly in corporate, but was in all of the negative aspects of a corporate environment very much applied here, you know, being at the whim of senior decision makers, being at the whim of the market of, you know, budgeting and financial decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with your commitment and performance. And I suggested that she uses this Tom time that she's in now when all she really needs to do is rest and she recognises that and I think that is going to set her up so well for what comes next. Of course it's tempting when you've either you know exited a role or you've been pushed out of a role, all we want to do is think what comes next, you know we want to start to fix the problem, we want to start building right away. And it just makes so much difference if you can just stop, if it is, you know, possible financially, practically for you to just pause and take some time for yourself to recover from the experience that you've had. And sometimes that is just as simple as a period of rest and reflection. And so what I suggested to this client that one of the things she could do during this period was Make two lists. One list of the things that she wanted to bring with her from her corporate experience and one list of the things that she absolutely was not going to be bringing with her. And I think that list of the things you're not going to bring with you is a powerful way of putting that weight down, of letting them go, of acknowledging that these are things that you had to go through, that you had to survive. perhaps and these were ways of working that did not feel good to you that you choose not to take with you as your operating system for the next chapter of your work life and then in that list of the things that you do want to take with you that's a really wonderful way of acknowledging that you had really important and formative experiences even if you you had a difficult experience that ended in drama or pain or burnout, that there was real value in your career experience so far that you will find a way to take with you into that next chapter and to build from. And you may well not be ready to do that yet, but just starting to capture it, just thinking of it as what are the ingredients that I'm going to be bringing with me. is a really healthy way to start to lay some foundations without getting ahead of yourself and rushing kind of headlong into what's that next role that I'm going for, you know, what's the kind of consultancy version of what I'm doing, or yes, I'm going to go finally ahead and build my own business, which of course I'm going to encourage you to do. That is what I'm here to help people do, but you've got to do it from the right foundations. You've got to do it from a place of awareness and consciously choosing. the world of work that you want to be a part of. So take some time to acknowledge what your experience has been, to think about how you can start to put down some of the weight that you're carrying which is not yours to carry. Do that exercise if it feels good to you, list the things that you want to bring with you from your previous experience and the things that you are definitely leaving behind. Some practical ways there to acknowledge your experience and with time and reflection to be able to move forward and not be defined by those previous experiences. I hope that this episode has been helpful to you. If you are ready to go deeper and you want to continue this discussion in the context of your specific experience of work, then I invite you to book a free discovery call with me. You can find the link to book that in the show notes. As I say, it's free we'll just Talk about what your experience has been, what you want to change, what you want for the future. And I'll let you know a little bit about how I work and how I might be able to help you when the time is right. So I look forward to either chatting to you on a discovery call or seeing you back here on the podcast 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.
