Deciding to Love It
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This is a continuation of my recordings from the 3-day Love it or Leave It Challenge. This episode is from Day 2 where I help you make a decision to love it. We’ll cover the following:

  • The lies that keep you stuck
  • How to decide to love your current career
  • How to start making better decisions
  • And so much more.

If after listening, you want more help in learning how to make decisions, create a plan, and actually go after it, join me in my monthly membership, the Quitter Club. We’re starting a new program called 90-day decisions where I’ll teach you how to make any decision bite-sized, how to evaluate and pivot, and how to avoid all the overwhelm that keeps you paralyzed. It’ll change how make any decision. 

 
Show Transcript
Hey, welcome to Lessons from a Quitter, where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams. Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode, the second episode of Our Love It or Leave It Challenge. If you are new here, this isn't typically when I release podcast and I don't typically release these types, but we're doing something new. Last week I had a love it or Leave It Challenge where I helped people decide whether they're going to stay and actually love their careers or whether they're gonna leave and figure out what they wanna do. And I wanted to share it here because I think that it has a lot of valuable information whether you want to leave your career or not, simply in learning how to make decisions.
So many of us struggle for so long, so much of our lives is spent in indecision and rumination and not knowing what to do. And the concepts in these episodes will help you start making better decisions when you don't have all the answers, when there is no right decision. So if you haven't listened, yesterday's episode was day one and that was how to make a decision, deciding to decide. So go back and listen to that first, and then today we're gonna jump into deciding to love it. And if you listen to this and you want help doing this work, actually implementing, you're in luck because over the next 90 days in my membership, the Quitter Club, we are going to implement together. We are going to do a tool that I call the 90 day decision. I'm gonna teach you how to break down decisions in a way that becomes doable and doesn't become final.
Like you can experiment, you can try a little bit, you can evaluate, you can pivot, and I'll teach you how to do this consistently so that every big goal becomes smaller, shorter goals that will actually get you to not sit and indecision and overwhelm for the rest of your life. We are going to spend June learning about 90 day decisions, learning all about how to make decisions and starting to flex that muscle. And then in July we're gonna learn how to love it, all of us, exactly where we are, even if we're gonna leave. And then in August we're gonna make a plan for leaving it. And you're gonna have a decision by the end of those 90 days, whether you're gonna stay or whether you're gonna go and what you're gonna do, what your next move is gonna be. You're gonna have your next decision, I guarantee it.
So if you come for those 90 days and you don't have a decision, I will refund your money, no questions asked. Now when I say no questions asked, that means if you show up and you actually do the work, if you come to two coaching calls a month, which isn't that much, if you ask for coaching twice a month, which again is not that much, we have eight coaching calls a month we have with them every week. If you come and you get the help that you need and you do the worksheets and you show that you've done that and you still can't make a decision, then I will refund you. But here's the kicker, it is so affordable to do this. I wanted to make this so that everybody stops staying in indecision for the rest of their lives. I want us to actually go after our dreams.
So you get all this for $197 a month, it is the most value that you're gonna get for this price point anywhere. I used to charge $4,000 for a program that was six months and this is three months for less than 600 bucks. And you'll have a decision, you'll have a result. So if you're ready to stop all the excuses of why you can't, even if right now you're thinking like right now, it's not a good time, the kids are off for summer or I'm gonna go on vacation, I probably shouldn't do it now, I want you to be on yourself. There's not a good time, there's not a good decision, there's not any time that where things are gonna be perfect. Stop putting it off. Get in there and learn this skill that you can apply to anything, really anything, not just your career.
And start learning how to become the decisive person that goes after what they want. So go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club and join us for the 90 day decision mini course that we're gonna do live together over the next three months. And if you're listening in this in the future, you can still access it. All of the recordings will be in the Quitter Club and you can go through it and still come and get the coaching. But if you can do it live, a lot of us need that accountability. Get in right now, don't wait. All right with that, here's day two of the love it or leave it challenge, deciding to love it. There we go. Hi everyone. I'm so excited to be here with you guys. I want you to let me know in the chat if you made a decision yesterday, if you did any unmade decisions around your house, what it was and what what, um, you thought about it after yesterday's class.
Like if the decision was easier, if you felt less stressed doing it even with small decisions, just let me know in the chat as we get started. Cause I would love to hear what decisions you guys are all making and oh my God, you put your resignation . That's a huge decision. Wow, amazing. Congratulations. I love that. Yes, I was the one who asked about my relationship yesterday and I told my parents about it. Oh my gosh, you guys are doing amazing. Yes, I made the decision to stay where I am, but logistics is a whole other challenge. Finding affordable places to live in this city is really hard. Ah, Christine, I'm so glad you made that decision yesterday because I know it is really hard. And now you can actually get started figuring it out right now that you've made the decision that you're gonna stay, you can stop torturing yourself with the back and forth of should I go somewhere cheaper?
Should I find something else? It's like, hey, I'm gonna love what it is here and I'm gonna figure it out now. Now I can spend my mental energy actually planning Mike with the resignation. Now you can start figuring out, I know you said yesterday you had a side hustle. So now we start figuring out how do we scale that so that it does replace my, um, income. Ms Ma, what an incredible decision to tell your parents. It's amazing the weight that gets lifted when we just decide when we decide to move forward. Here's the thing about decisions, and we're gonna get started, I promise in a second. Decide comes from the Latin word to cut off and that is why it's scary, right? Inherently that is why we're terrified of it cuz we know like if I make this decision, I will cut off the other possibilities.
If I resign, I cut off working here. If I move out of the C city, I cut off the all of the things I get from living in the city. And so we focus on that. We focus on everything we're gonna lose or all the possibilities, all of the sunk costs. Um, oh amazing. Miha decided to resign by June 2nd. I love these decisions guys. Look how easy it could be. Okay? But when you are cutting off, inherently there is power in that because it gives you direction. You've cut off one thing that means you're free to follow the other thing, right? For so many of us, when we are holding onto both when we're one foot in, one foot out, right? I've given the analogy of like, it's like Tarzan, um, swinging through the forest with vines, you won't make it far. If you're trying to hold onto two vines, at some point you have to let go of that other vine cuz it doesn't serve you anymore and you wanna move forward.
And so that is the power of making a decision, even if it's not the right one. Like yes, there are some cons and I'm gonna have to cut off doing these other things, but that frees me to go in my direction. That frees me to actually take action. That frees me to figure out the next step and the next step and the millions of other decisions I have to make. I have to be willing to cut off, I have to be willing so that I can open up the path that I wanna go on. Okay? So this just made me so excited and so happy. I love it. And today we're gonna dive into how you can love it, how you can decide to love it exactly where you're at. Okay?
And here's the thing, it is a decision. We have a, we have this slide that like, I can't love it here for whatever reason because of the job, because of the hours, because of my boss, because of the coworkers, because of the clients, whatever it is, because it's boring, whatever the thing is, there's a reason why I can't love it here. The truth is you can love it regardless of where you're at, regardless of the circumstances you can choose to, it's an intentional choice. It doesn't just happen, it doesn't magically appear. It's deciding and then getting to work, loving it, getting to work, getting your brain on board with why you're gonna love it. What parts you're gonna love it. You're not gonna love it all. We're gonna talk about that. You're not gonna love it all anywhere you are, no matter what you do.
So you start directing your brain to the things that you can love and you start watching how much more enjoyable it actually becomes. Here's what we expect to happen. We go, we get a job somewhere, okay? Um, and we expect that everything is gonna be exactly the way we want it. Now, we don't consciously think this, we don't consciously go in and say, everyone has to do exactly what I want for me to be happy. But that is what we are doing. We are thinking like, okay, I wanna find a job where my boss is kind and sets good boundaries and always gives me a good amount of praise. And my coworkers are nice and they always do their fair share of their work. And the customers and clients are respectful and they're easy to work with and they're not too demanding and they're never rude and they, you know, um, are really appreciative of the work I'm doing and my hours are reasonable and nobody ever asks me to work more.
And I don't ever have to set boundaries and I don't have to have uncomfortable conversations. Um, and I know how to do everything. I feel comfortable all the time. I never feel imposter. I never feel out of my comfort zone. I never feel panicked or stressed. Like everything is just kind of manageable and I'm never gonna make mistakes. I'm just gonna always be at 110%. I'm always gonna do really well and I'm gonna feel like I'm contributing to society. I'm doing something that I'm passionate about and it's really worthwhile and I'm doing really good and I'm killing it. And every day is fun and exciting. Okay? You get it? Like how absurd this is. But this is what we think that there's some magical space, some magical land where all of this is possible where I'm just gonna love it and I'm gonna feel so fulfilled and I'm gonna be doing something that I'm so passionate about and I'm gonna be doing something and I'm gonna know what to do all the time and I'm not gonna feel uncomfortable and I'm gonna feel great.
And this is why it's really important to understand this point. Why I really want us to slow down to love where we're at is because nowhere you go will have this no job, no business. I don't care how passionate you are about it, I don't care how much you love it, life is 50 50 and so is work. So is everything else. I think one of the biggest misconceptions and one of the most damaging things that we are taught is that there can be a place where I'm gonna be happy all the time. That there can be a relationship, that I'm gonna be happy in all the time. That there can be whatever, uh, financial, once I get, uh, get a certain financial level once I have that job, once I buy the house, once I get married, once I have kids, then I'm gonna be happy all the time.
And then when we get there and it's not like that because that's not what life ever is, we think there's something wrong with me. Maybe I just can't be happy. Why am I so ungrateful? Everything is great. I should just be happy. But you shouldn't because you're a human being and that's not the way our brains work and it's gonna suck 50% of the time. This is why if like what we had, um, made us happy, then there would be a lot of really rich, famous, wealthy people that were extremely happy and there aren't, they're doing what they love. They get to act or sing or whatever. They make millions of dollars, they get to live really luxurious lives. And we all know tons of them are anti-depressants, anxiety, drugs, infidelity, all of these things because so many of us have these hu regular human emotions that we think shouldn't be there, that there's some place that that won't be there.
And one of the most empowering tools that you can like gain is just the awareness that of course it's not gonna be like that because I want you guys to go after your biggest dreams. We're gonna talk about that tomorrow and I want all of you to resign and I want you to build your businesses and I want you to do the work you wanna do in this world. I just want you to go with eyes wide open. I want you to go knowing it's also gonna suck 50% of the time. I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. I've talked about this in my group a lot. I love, love, love what I'm doing. And when I say 50 50, it doesn't mean it's the same 50 50 when I was a lawyer, the 50 50 was very different than what it is as a business owner.
I love what I do. I think it's more, um, aligned with my preferences and my personality. It fills me up in a different way. And 50% of the time it's stuff I don't wanna do. I don't wanna do backend stuff, I don't wanna do taxes, I don't wanna do bookkeeping. Social media can be a drain. All of those things. And yet if I wanna do this, if I wanna connect with you guys, if I wanna help people, if I wanna have that impact, if I wanna have a business, if I wanna grow my membership, that's gonna be there so I can expect it. And so one of the biggest things that we can learn is how to love it where we are with the 50 50 because you are gonna learn this tool is a tool that you're gonna learn anywhere you go, no matter if you change the job and you have something more fulfilling, you still have to learn how to manage your mind and like accept that it's normal for things to not ever be, always rainbows and butterflies.
Okay? So one of the tools I wanna work through today with you guys, and it's kind of like a workshopy thing, but it's been the biggest difference I think in a lot of the people that I've coached is this is just one, um, not even tool like one avenue of getting into this work, but I want you to just see the difference right now in like how much we create suffering for ourselves where it doesn't have to be. I want us to think about the role that you play at your job. What is your role? Okay? So we're gonna define this and we're gonna take, I want you to take some like five minutes take, um, piece of paper or if you're on your computer, just go ahead and type it out. I want you to first define your role for what you were hired to do.
I want you to try to make it as neutral as possible and you can put it in the chat if you want to just figure out what was the job that I'm doing, right? If I was a lawyer, maybe I am hired to represent people in, you know, a criminal defense. Like in criminal court I was a defense attorney and my job was to figure out the best, uh, possible deal that they could get from the prosecutor and make sure they're not being taken advantage of whatever. I don't know like, and you can define your role as my role was to work this many hours. My, this is what I'm getting paid for however you want. But I want you to like think back to when you were hired to do this job. And I want you to really understand like what are they paying you as a transactional job? What are they paying you to do? Okay?
So we're gonna take a minute or two and I just want you to jot that down. And that typically can be more straightforward. It's like a simple, more simple answer. You may have like some tasks, you know, like I was hired to do X, y, and Z. There's three different like areas in which I do work. Great, we know what that role is and you can list out those tasks. You can say like I was hired to, you know, post on social media every week and to um, create webinars for the company and to drive, like increase our lead generation, whatever. It's, and then I want you to define, now that you've done that, I want you to define the job that you actually do. And I want you to define what you think your role is now. Like what you have sort of subconsciously melded it into, okay?
And I want you to list out everything that you actually think you have to do. So like whatever your thoughts are about like, okay, but I have to, as soon as my boss emails, I have to respond and I have to respond to every client, you know, uh, concern. And I have to um, make sure I'm available at all times for any meetings and I have to stay late when the boss is staying late and I have to do three other people's jobs because they're not doing it and it needs to get done. Like what other things do you think that you actually have to do? Take a couple minutes and write that and this is something that you can actually do, um, with really any role that you play. So it's really illuminating for you to do this work with even like, you know, for me I did a lot of this thinking about what is my role actually as a mother, right?
Like what is, what am I supposed to, you know, if I look at like what is the role of a mother? Like I dunno what society defines, but what do I think I have to do as a mother? And it becomes really clear how insane I think my role is, right? If I start thinking that my role is that I have to make sure my kids are never upset or I have to make sure that nobody's ever crying, I have to make sure that they are always happy, that they're never disappointed in me. That's a pretty intense role to have, right? Is that really what my role is? And I wanna just question like, is that really what I've signed up for? Is that what I want to continue doing? And so as you do this, and you can put it in the chat if you want, like if you notice anything different between these two things.
But I want you to really catch in your brain what you think you have to do. So many people tell me like, no, no, but I have to respond to emails, I have to. And it's like, is that what you're getting paid for? How much time do you spend outside of what you're paid to do working or thinking about work? Is that really a part of your role? You just have to really grapple with that. Like where is it your actual role that you were hired to? Because I want us to all really understand something. Work is a transactional relationship. It, it doesn't matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. That is what the role of your job is, is they pay you to do a certain amount of tasks. That's it. And at some point we all decided Bec, and it's not like our fault hustle, culture, capitalism, corporate America has really instilled like we're a family and you wanna be a team player and you wanna go above and beyond and you wanna give 110% and everybody wants to.
And so we've taken on these roles of like, I'm available whenever they call and I have to be the best and I never need, I can never make a mistake and I have to, you know, and we're gonna get into that standard right now. But you wanna really figure out like, ha have I decided that my role now is to solve everybody's problem at work, to take on everybody else's job when they're not doing it. Like why did I decide that that was my role and I'm again, am I getting paid for that? Like they're paying me for a certain amount of work. I'm doing that work. Why do I feel as though I need to do more than that? That's something we have to explore.
Um, okay, so I'm gonna read some of the um, chat before I move on to the next thing. My manager pings me if I decide not to attend a meeting or an org level meeting that I don't find meaningful, valuable or productive. Our company has always required us to show community con contribution in our year end performance review. So volunteering for team wide events, brown bags and stuff. Okay? So this is where we do a lot of work on like first of all communicating but also boundaries. So our boss could want something, my boss could want me to volunteer, but I don't know if that's part of my job. I have to really figure out like, okay, I understand it's part of a performance review and when we put boundaries, we're gonna talk about this in a little bit. There might be a consequence, I might not be the star employee, I might not be everybody's favorite, I might not be the person that's like they're gonna think is knocking out of the park.
Is that worth it to me to be able to have a life outside of work? Is that worth it to me to not be burned out? And we're gonna get into that in a minute, but a lot of us do these things not because we really have to, because we could have a conversation and say like, you know what, I understand that you guys want community contribution, but that's not what I'm getting paid for. I'm getting paid. I do my work and what I do outside of work and I contribute in the ways that I want to is mine. And like I can understand this, but like that's, I'm not willing to give that time. You know, whatever we, we can have that conversation and maybe that means I don't belong here or I'm not a good fit for this fine, it's good to know, but I'm not gonna keep giving in order to sort of be perceived as just being better, being perceived as being like this is my people pleasing or my perfectionism or wanting to be liked or wanting that validation versus what are you hiring me to do?
I was hired to develop code as per business requirements for a wealth management firm. The role after six years now involved to as a business analyst where I am more closer to business users and it's more demanding and challenging. I sit consistently at the desk for hours, get things done at non-business hours to catch up. It's very tough with my one year old. Even if I'm working from home since the pandemic, um, I have set more boundaries now. Like hard boundaries. Like this is how much I can do. Yeah, this is where the tough conversations come in, right? Is that I was bra so this is what happens. What I find for a lot of us, especially women, especially like people pleasers, is that we are hired for something. We're hired for one role and then that role evolves but we never have a conversation about it.
We never advocate for ourselves in our reviews. We never bring up like, hey, now I'm doing these three other things versus what I was hired to do but I haven't been properly compensated or now because I'm doing these other things, I can't do it in 40 hours anymore because I was doing now you have to hire someone else to do the stuff I was doing. If you want me to do this other stuff, great. One of the things that we have to start changing is that like we don't owe them our lives. We don't have to martyr our whole life for our jobs. They don't get access to everything with us just because they hired us. And I know that this is a really uncomfortable thing to sit with because we've been so conditioned to like, you should be grateful you have this job and you should never like, um, you should always go above and beyond and what whatever, all the other that corporate America likes us to believe, but truly that is what leads us to so much burnout and we have more of a say in it than we think we do.
I think for a lot of us, we're just not willing to have those conversations or we're not willing to have those boundaries. Some of us do it and that's great and it becomes even boundaries don't have to be from a, um, angry kind of, hopefully they never actually are from like an angry or combative way where it's like, well I'm not gonna do this. It's really more of conversations with my manager like, l help me understand why you think that I should be doing this when this is when I'm getting paid. Are you willing to compensate me for that? Are you willing to take off other things? Like why is this a one way street where I just have to do whatever you pla pile on my plate? Okay, um, yeah Christina's saying team events outside of work hours are the worst. I don't wanna spend my free time with my coworkers.
Yes, exactly. And you said, uh, I'm not liked at work for these reasons. I mean one that's just a thought because we don't know what people think, but yeah, maybe, you know, I used to have the same thing. I used to never go to happy hours when I was a public defender and I wasn't everyone's favorite. I wasn't everyone's like best friend and I was okay with that. Like that was the trade off for me. I was like, am I okay with not being in the clique and managing my own mind around that and managing my own mind around, and this is a big one where like we like to think, oh, if I don't do this, I'm gonna get fired or whatnot. But that wasn't the reality. It was just that I wasn't in the in group, I wasn't a part of the clique that went out every night together and I was okay with that cause I'd rather be with my husband and I'd rather go home and have time to myself.
And so I was like, I consciously made that choice and I knew it wasn't gonna get me fired and it just meant that I wasn't like I had to sit with the discomfort that not everybody is going to love me and not everyone's gonna be my best friend and that's okay. I don't need them to be my best friends. I'm here to work, right? And when I got my mind around that, it became a lot easier to constantly turn it down and be like, Nope, still can't go to happy hour. Thank you for inviting me, but I'm not gonna be the one. And they got it pretty quickly, you know? Okay, so we're gonna move on from the role. This is one part and I want you to like, you can take more time to really think about what have I defined as my role and how do I wanna redefine it?
How do I wanna go back to my manager and say, hey, this was, these are the tasks I was hired for and this is everything I'm doing. What can we do here? Like how can we change this? But the other bigger one that is, is sort of related, but I want you guys to all really see is what is the standard that I am holding myself to? Okay? So I want you to just define the standard that you are holding yourself to at your own job. Okay? So you can finish the sentence of like, I know that I've done a good job, good enough job if do.dot or you can define like what you think of a success at your job. What does that look like to you? Um, what would you consider not a good enough job? Sometimes it helps to start with like, what do I, where do I feel like I'm not cutting it is like if I do X, Y, and Z.
So I know that kind of the opposite of that is where I, what my standard is. And I'm gonna give you guys an a couple of examples because I want you to see how insane these standards are. And this is what I do a lot of coaching on with people in my old, uh, in, when I did my um, smaller group program, I had a client who was a doctor for cancer patients and he was a doctor for ca cancer patients in like, um, lower income areas. And so he obviously was very passionate about what he was doing and he cared a lot and it came from the goodness of his heart. And um, he was in a place that was understaffed that he had been hired to be at a place where there was supposed to be three doctors and he was the only one.
And so he, uh, was taking on way more patients than he than he should have been. And one of the things that we started uncovering when I was like, what is the standard that you kind of hold yourself to? And he didn't realize this, this isn't conscious, this isn't something that he is like actively thinking, but he realized I have to save every single one of my patients. I have to, I have to always be responsible and available or someone dies. And what was fascinating is like when we kind of dug into this, most of them actually weren't, uh, like it wasn't life or death, like it was cancer, but a lot of them had really good prognosis and it was like just going through chemo. But because in his head he had created this thing that was very beautiful that he was doing, that he had felt a lot of contribution, it simply became pressure all the time.
And it became like if, if the hospital messages me at four in the morning, I have to get up, I have to respond, I can't wait, I have people are gonna die. And he created this standard that was like at a fever pitch all the time and it wasn't a wonder why he was burned out, right? His idea was like, because I have this job and because I have this skillset, I now have to save every single person. Okay? And here's the thing that I think that people don't understand when they think about, um, like being perfectionist a plus work versus kind of, we talk about, I talk about B minus work, C work, whatever, oftentimes we think like, well how can I only give 70% or 80%? Like I, we've all been kind of, um, programmed with the 110% and we think we're comparing a hundred percent to 70%, right?
We think we're like, well of course if I'm comparing those two things, of course I wanna give a hundred percent. Like who wants to just give 70%, right? Like we all want to kind of do our best. We're in these professions for reasons that felt good to us. We all wanna like put our best foot forward. So it, it seems like strange like of course I would want to do my best work, but we're not comparing a hundred percent to 70%. Okay? This is really important for us to understand is that we're comparing 0% to 70% because what I see happening is that people get burned out and quit and they leave. And this is what this doctor was gonna getting ready to do. He had gotten to the point where he was so burned out because he had small children at home. He could never be reliable for them because he was always at the whim of what was happening in the hospital and he was working insane amounts of hours that he hadn't signed on to do when he first originally worked.
And he was getting to the point where he was like, I can't do this anymore. And so he was gonna quit. And so when I was talking to him about this, I was danging like, okay, your standard could either be I can help 10 outta 10 clients all the time as every time they need. And then I'm gonna quit and I'm gonna help zero people. I'm gonna burn out and I'm gonna not gonna be in this field anymore. Or I can try to get my brain to be okay with like, I'm only gonna get to seven outta 10 people and that sucks for the three people I don't get to, but at least it means that I get to seven people. That means I can save at least seven people. I can give the my best standard to those seven people, right? We are not comparing like, can I go, go go forever because that's not a possibility.
So the real possibility is am I gonna go a hundred percent for a year and then burn out and quit? Or can I create more of a sustainable thing for myself that will keep me in this game that will keep me going? I've talked a lot about this with my standard when I was a public defender, I was doing really work that I was really passionate about and I think about this now and I'm like, what was the point of getting so burned out that I quit? Right? I felt I thought the same thing, which is even more laughable when I look back at my standard. I worked in a field where I represented people where their chance of success in their cases was less than like half a percent. Like, I mean even less than that probably. It was like very, very minuscule. I, we worked, I worked on death penalty cases at the end of like, these people had already been through the court system for 20 years, they're not winning, okay?
And yet now when I look back, I realize my standard was I have to win every case. So every time I would lose a case, I would take it so hard and I would beat myself up and I would think that I was, you know, like terrible and whatever and it's like it was just an insane standard to hold myself to. And so I want you to understand like what you're comparing when you're asking yourself what is my standard? What have I been holding myself to and what standard do I wanna hold myself to? You're comparing 0% to 70 or let's say you even state we, you're comparing like do I wanna give a hundred percent at work and only have 20% at home? Only have 20% for my life or do I wanna give 70% at work and be able to have 60% at home?
Right? There are trade-offs. It's not to say we all would love to be a hundred percent all the time. A plus work. I would love that. I would love if in my business I was going at full speed every day. I never made mistakes. I helped every person that came to me. I coached as much as I could, but I know that I can't do that and also be a mom and also enjoy my life and also not get burned out and also not quit. So when you're comparing these things and you're thinking about what is the standard, it's not just like, well I can't do less than a plus work. Yes you can. You absolutely can't. And you have to start thinking about how is that the best thing, not only for me, but for my company and for my clients and for my family.
How is it the best thing I can do to just have it be good enough, quote unquote, right? How can I decide that my good enough will allow me to then show up in my life? So like let's say that was, you know, the example of a doctor and when we, when he changed his standard, it was fascinating to see how much shifted for him when he realized I can put boundaries at work. I can't show up all the time, I can't, like yes, I can save some people and I can be there when I need to work and I can even work more than I would normally. But at some point I get to say like, my children also matter, right? But let's say you're a lawyer. If your standard is, I have to always know the right answer. I have to never make a mistake.
I, my client has to always win. Like you have to check in with yourself. If that's the standard you are holding for yourself, you will burn out, you will be miserable at work. You cannot love it here like that, right? Because it's an impossible standard cuz you won't know the right answers cuz the law is changing all the time, right? You will make mistakes cuz you're a human. Your client won't win all the time cuz that's not how it works. And so when you start changing, like my job is not like when I look back, my job as a public defender was simply to make sure that the law was followed. That's it. No more, no less. I could do what I could do in that, in that field and, and use my knowledge to be able to help people and make sure that the prosecutor wasn't taking advantage of and make sure that things didn't fall through the crack.
And that was it. And if I knew that and I could have been okay with that, it would've been a much different experience than what I put myself through. And so whatever your standard is, your standard is just, I have to know all the answers. My manager has to love me. I have to give it to 110% every day. I have to be the best employee at the company, right? There can't be anyone I sees all the time this compare and despair where it's like, oh, this salesperson, um, is getting more sales than me, so I have to kill myself. Why? Why do you have to get better than them? Who cares? Like, are you, and this is the big one I hear from a lot of people is like, we have this like fear of I'm gonna get fired. And every time I ask people and I dig into it, most people are like, no, I wouldn't get fired if I didn't do this.
Like when I, even when I was talking to the doctor, like, they're desperate for his help. He's the only one that will work in that clinic. He's not gonna get fired, right? And he wasn't even worried about that. He actually wanted to get fired because he was so burned out. But we have to start like questioning why am I putting myself to these standards? Is it because I really am gonna get fired or really that like I can't, um, sustain like that it it is required in order for me to keep my job? Or is it my people pleasing my perfectionism, my imposter syndrome, my need for validation, right? These are the truths that we have to grapple with is that where is it the actual job? And yes, some of our jobs are stressful. When I was a public defender, it was a stressful job.
It was an emotional job, but I made it so much worse when I thought that my standard was that I had to save everybody. I made it worse when I thought that everybody had to love me, I would've made it worse if I people please and I went to happy hour every day, right? Like we have a say in what we do in our jobs, we have a say. And if we can't, if you truly are like, no, if I don't do 110%, then I'm gonna get, I I'm going to lose my job then maybe it's time to leave. We'll talk about that tomorrow. But as long as you are going to stay, you have to decide what your standard is. You have to decide what you're willing to give for what you're getting, the money that you're getting, right? And it's not your fault that we do this.
None of us because of patriarchy and capitalism and the hustle culture and everything that we've been programmed from when we were children to always be the best, always get a hundred percent always be the a plus student. Like we have always valued that we've gotten the pat on the head. A lot of us are very high achievers. And so I think that when you realize like, okay, this is the water I'm swimming in, this is corporate. America is not gonna change, capitalism is not gonna change right now, right? We have to decide how am I gonna show up? I'm no longer gonna do this. I don't need to be the best employee, right? I need to manage my mind around how do I want to interact here? What do I want them to think, right?
Once you do this work, you can then learn how to actually do things with less guilt, right? Like do do less without guilt. Sorry. So one of the things I work on a lot in the club with people is learning how to do less because we've all got like have this really insane standard that we always have to be doing that we've just been told we have to be productive all the time. Even our weekends, even our vacations, even our nights we're so mad at ourselves if we're not like, oh my god, I just watched Netflix or I just scrolled and I'm always like, okay, so what you were resting, right? Like your body needs time to rest and we are not given that in this society. And so you have to learn to do that. And when you can start realizing like I am allowed to have rest, I'm allowed to give 70% so that some of it is rest.
So that on weekends I don't have to prep for the week ahead and do more work and always be doing work, right? You learn how to set boundaries when you know how to manage your mind, you learn how to advocate for yourself. You learn how to say like listen that yeah, I know you're asking me to do this additional work, but I have these other things. So which one do you want me to prioritize? Right? It's not necessarily going in guns blazing. I mean like, I'm not gonna do this. I hate being here. It's simply being able to articulate, okay, you hired me for these tasks. If you want me to do this, would you like me to out give this to somebody else? Who else do you want to have? Do the work that I was doing? Right? And that puts the onus then on your manager to figure out like, yeah, hey, do I need to hire someone else?
As long as you are doing the work of two or three people, they will not hire other people. They don't need to. Why would they? It's amazing for them. They're getting a great deal out of this. It's on you to decide that they no longer get free labor. And then you get to start living your dream life. This is something that I focus on a lot with the people that I coach is there is so much that we can do exactly where we're at. That is our dream life stuff, right? If you start thinking about if I didn't have to work or if I had the perfect job or whatever your version of your dream life is, what would I do every day? Outside of some extravagant things like vacations and stuff, there's things that you could do every day that you would enjoy reading, you know, while drinking your cup of coffee.
Um, taking time off to go for a walk, being able to take a nap. You know, like just small things, seeing friends, having lunch with friends, throwing dinner parties, whatever your thing might be laying out in the sun, going down to the beach. Things that are available to you right now. And we aren't doing it because we're also burned out. We're all so exhausted, we're all so overworked. We're all sitting in rumination. We're constantly spinning. And when you can learn how to like absolutely stop like the giving of 110% and you can start putting boundaries and you can live to a standard that's actually doable. It's amazing how much time you start opening up for things that you wanna do. So your homework today is to just find one thing that you could do to love it here more. Okay? That might mean you are gonna take your lunch break this week, okay?
For all my people who keep working through lunch, what if just one day of the week you don't have to do the whole thing, you just don't. You go sit outside in the sun and you eat your lunch or you take your book and you, if you're working from home, you sit on your couch and you read it for that hour while you eat or you put on some music and you dance around, whatever it is. Maybe it's that the one thing you're gonna do is you're gonna wake up and you're gonna have your cup of coffee without sitting at your desk. You're gonna sit and stare out the window and look at your backyard. Whatever it is, figure out one thing that you could do to love it here more. Because here's the thing, you will, oh, here's are some like, um, examples. You can stop working on your lunch break.
Maybe you're gonna close your laptop at 6:00 PM right? Maybe you're gonna set a boundary with your coworkers chit-chatting. Maybe you don't get your work done because someone comes by every day to talk to you and you don't wanna be rude and you don't want them to feel mad. But today you're just gonna be like, you know what? I'm really sorry but I don't have the time to talk. I wanna get my work done so I can get outta here by five o'clock because I wanna go do other things. Right? Whatever it is, find one thing You have to do this work to prove to yourself that you have the power to create the life that you want. Exactly where you are. I think I get to this, but I wanted to make a point that like this skill is needed because what we talked about in the beginning when we talked about the fact that you're not gonna find some magical u unicorn place where everything is gonna be the way you want, where you have all the boundaries, where everybody is super kind, where nobody else, um, you know, demands all these things from you, you're not gonna find that place.
And so what you need to do is create that. And that's a skill that you're gonna have no matter where you go. When you go to the next job, hopefully you'll be more fulfilled. You still have to know how to set boundaries. You still have to know how to live your dream life exactly where you are, right? So especially if you have to stay in the near future for so many of my friends who know that they can't quit right now, right? They know that like the next six months to a year, two years for whatever reason, maybe you're waiting for some kind of promotion. Maybe you want to save more money, maybe you have to pay off some debt. Whatever the reason is, it doesn't matter if you know that you're gonna stay here, stop torturing yourself, stop going back and forth like, I should quit. Oh my God, maybe I should quit. Maybe I should. We, we've already decided we can't. So then we can do the work of deciding to love it here. Learn to manage your mind exactly where you're at. Because again, when you leave in the future, you're just gonna hook yourself up. Cause now you have that skill. Sometimes it's like an actually even better training ground. You're like, hey, if I can learn to love it where I'm at in this very high intense place when I leave, it's gonna be a breeze.
Decide to stay and love it and know that you can change your mind in the future. This is a big one and this is what we're gonna talk about in a minute, is decide that I can love it right now and know that I can leave. And this is the lie number two that I wanna go through quickly. And we can do some coaching or some chatting about your questions. I know I see a lot of the um, chat. Um, I'm so glad you guys are chatting it up. This is the beauty of a community, but I can't read it right right now, so I'll read it at then, but okay, line number two is I can't love it here because if I love it, I'll never leave. Now this is a subconscious one. This is not one that we actively think, okay? But we do think, oh my God, if I actually end up liking it here, then I'll stay stuck forever.
Okay? And so what we do is we start self-sabotaging, all right? And the truth is that you can love it and choose to leave it. And in fact, that's the best way to do it. I'm gonna explain why. Listen, we've been given a lot of beliefs from society, right? You should be grateful. It's a good job. Other people would kill to be here. It's not that bad. Suck it up. This is adulting, you know, why would you leave? It's so safe. Whatever other people wanna tell us, okay? And for a lot of us, we feel guilty when we want something else, right? We feel guilty that like it is good here, it's not that bad, it's fine and it is a good job and I have good coworkers. I should just be happy. And so what we do is we self-sabotage because we think we need a justification to be able to leave.
We think that we need to a good excuse so that other people don't wonder why we wanna leave, right? And so we complain all the time to everybody else. We talk about all of the bad things that are happening. And have you ever noticed that like when you focus on something, it grows, right? Like if you find something annoying about someone and you focus on it, it like becomes the only thing you see and you wanna like murder to them, right? Because what you're focusing on, your brain is giving you more of. You're like, oh my God, there they go with that chewing, I'm gonna stab them . Even though it's just chewing a little bit loud, right? This is what happens. Like when I start thinking about, oh my God, my boss is such a jerk, I start looking for every time he is a jerk, I start looking like, look how he, look what he said to Linda.
Look how he's talking to this person. He's so surly. Why can't he just be nicer? And then I start focusing on it more and more and I complain about it to my coworkers. I go home and I complain about it to my husband and then I talk about it with my friends and family and it starts growing and growing and we start getting to this place of like, oh my God, I can't even be here. I cannot be here. We obsess over how certain aspects like the work, oh my God, the hours they text me at all times. All of this is unmanageable, right? And we do this on purpose because then we feel like I'm quote unquote justified. Of course I can't stay here. It's impossible for me to be here. Right?
And I'll, I'll just give you really quickly about my story. I didn't realize like all of this stuff I learned afterwards, I wish I had known it then. But when I was a big law attorney and for people that aren't lawyers, big laws like the top 10 law firms, or I dunno how many, maybe 20 law firms, um, they are notorious for being really, um, working you into the ground and they pay a lot of money, okay? So for a lot of people when they, um, when you come outta law school and you have a lot of debt and you have an ability to work in big law, a lot of people just end up there because it's almost too hard to turn down the money. And I went to big law because I wanted to pay off my law school debt so that I could go.
Cuz I knew I wanted to be a public defender. And I knew that you don't make any money as a public defender. So I decided like a really smart thing for me to do was to go to the law firm, make an insane amount of money for a 26 year old, pay off all my loans, like live at my parents' house. And I did that. It was one of the smartest financial deci decisions I made. Um, but when I was there, I, I went to this big law firm in 2008, which was right when the mar market crashed and there was tons of layoffs, but I wasn't laid off. And it actually wasn't that bad of work. Like there wasn't the insane amount of caseloads because they just didn't, A lot of the work had dried up, but I still hated it. Like I didn't wanted, the work that I was doing was not meaningful to me.
I didn't like being tethered to my phone. I didn't like that they could message me at any moment and have me come in. I didn't like that feeling, that anxiety that it brought. But I also felt very guilty cuz I was like 26, 27 years old. I was making $160,000, which at the time was insane to me. And it was more than either one of my parents had ever made. And my parents were immigrants to this country and they had worked so hard at their whole life to give me this life. And I felt like such a brat being like, I don't like this. I don't wanna work here, I don't wanna be here. And I had even said it to my mom and I had gotten chastised and my mom had, um, kind of reamed me for being a, you know, ungrateful and had said a lot of things of like, well work's not supposed to be fun and like you think I like work and I don't even make what you're making and whatever.
And so I really felt like I can't leave. If I quit, she's gonna be mad at me and disappointed in me, everyone's gonna think I'm a brat. Um, it's really not that bad. I could just suck it up. And I made myself miserable in those two years. I complained so much. I constantly, like, I gave myself an ulcer from the amount of anxiety that I would have every time they would email me, even though what they were emailing me was not that big of a deal and I didn't have to work that much. I look back and I'm like, holy moly. And I know, I know why I did it because my mom turned around and was like, oh my God, quit. Just stop. Go do something else. Because I was complaining so much. And when she said that it was the most freeing thing, I was looking for her permission.
I wanted her to be the one that says, you know what? It's okay for you to leave. It's okay for you not to do this. And I did it on purpose. I didn't realize I was doing it on purpose at the time, but now I realize that I just didn't have the courage to just tell myself like, it's okay if she doesn't get it. She doesn't have to get it. I don't wanna do this work anymore. I wanna find something else. And so I find so many people do this. I was just coaching someone in the club yesterday on their business about this because they so many of us hold back on like growing our business because we're almost scared that like, oh my God, if I go all in and if it's successful, then I can't leave it. And I was telling her like, you just have to give yourself permission.
You can build it as big as you want. You can love it as much as you want, and you can still choose to leave and you can decide, Hey, that's done. I'm done with that. We're seeking permission and we don't need it from anyone other than ourselves. So the new belief I want you to start adopting is that it's okay for a chapter to end. It's okay. For whatever reason, you're allowed to leave simply because you want to. This is really important, especially for women. Women have been so socialized in our patriarchy that we are not allowed to ha want things that everything we do is for some other people. And so it's okay to invest in yourself or it's okay to, you know, whatever, if it benefits your family or if it's for your children or if it's because you know, whatever. If it makes sense for your career, you're never allowed to do it just because you wanna do it.
And so it really is important to start rewiring your brain to be like, no, I get to just decide that this one life I have, I just don't wanna work here because I don't want to. Right? You can decide if the chapter can end because I wanna experience something new. I wanna grow in different ways. I get this one life, I just wanna try something else. Maybe I just want more money. I want more time, I want more contribution. I wanna work in a different field. All of those reasons are perfectly good. So while you are staying, choose to love it. That won't keep you locked in. It doesn't have to. I think for a lot of us, we think if I end up loving it, if I think my coworkers are great, or if I end up like really doing well here and being, you know, a great salesperson or whatnot, then I can never leave.
But it's not true. It simply makes you happier and you get to leave for the right reasons. And this is what I mean by that. A lot of us, when we're so miserable and we're leaving from a place of panic, we don't make great decisions, right? When we're leaving from a place of desperation of like, I can't stand it here. I can't be here any longer, I just have to take any other job. We're usually not making like the best decisions for us. We're going to places that aren't going to, um, serve us, right? It's like take about as an analogy. If you are gonna get married, and if you're dating people with the idea of like, I'm, I hate being single so much, I'm so miserable and depressed, I have to find someone right now. Like I have to be in a relationship or I'm gonna die.
Like, you're likely not making the best choice in partners. You're just picking the next person because you wanna be so desperate to get out of it, right? When you learn to love where you're at and you decide like, I love being single, but I actually like wanna experience just being with someone else, right? I wanna experience companionship. I wanna experience how I'll grow in a relationship. I can make the decision to find someone and change my situation just because I want to. It's the same thing with your job. If you choose to love it, I promise you, you can still leave it and you can do it from a place of like, I don't have to leave right now. I can get my money in order. I can um, decide what it is I wanna do. I can experiment, I can meet people, I can do it on my own timetable. There's no sense of panic. And like I said, you learn the skill that you're gonna take with you anywhere. You learn that no matter where I go, I can figure out how to love it.
So decide to love it my friends. It's an intentional choice. It's an intentional decision to do this work to figure out what are the parts I can love it. How can I start creating things that will get me to love where I'm at? How can I start advocating for myself? How can I set more boundaries? How can I take my life back and make it more intentional instead of just going at the whim of what everybody else wants for me? It doesn't just happen, okay? You don't just fall into the perfect situation. So your last piece of homework is besides figuring out what, how you can do one thing to love where you're at, I just want you to write out a permission slip to for yourself. I'm allowed to pursue whatever I want simply because, and fill in the blank. Just give that to yourself.
Take a moment and just allow yourself to know I can love it here and still decide I want to leave because I want growth. I want more excitement. I want contribution because there's more to my life than this because it's not fulfilling because I know I'm meant for more. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It does not matter what the reason is because I simply want to, because it sounds fun. Cuz I don't wanna spend my whole life doing one thing. I don't care. Write out your permission slip, figure out the one thing that you wanna focus on that will help you love it exactly where you're at. And then come tell me about it. Go on the Facebook group in our private Facebook group or DM me on Instagram and tell me what's the one thing you're doing this week to love where you're at more.
Okay? All right, so now I can ask, you can put your questions in. I would love to a answer your questions. Just a quick plug again, um, I talked about this yesterday, but if you wanna do this work in more depth, if you want help actually learning how to set boundaries, like learning these concepts is great, but we all know what happens. It's like as soon as you have to then go have that difficult conversation, all the thoughts come in. And so this is where we do the work together, right? This is, you can come monthly, you learn, we have whole modules on boundaries and all of the things how to love what is, how to create your dream life. This is the majority of the work that we do, is learning how to manage our mind and loving what we do through the model, like through managing our own thoughts.
Like I said in the model, you learn a model that ha I'm sorry, in the roadmap, you learn a model that helps you manage your mind. You learn about boundaries, you learn about manuals, you learn about lifestyle design. You do all this work to help you love exactly what is right. And you also learn how can I love where I'm at, exactly where I'm at in my short term while making a long-term goal. And I mentioned yesterday, in addition to all of the roadmap and stuff that you get for the next 90 days, we're going to do, um, the 90 day decisions, right? We're gonna spend all of June learning how to make these 90 day decisions. So we're gonna break down our goals into 90 day decisions. We're going to learn how to love it. So all of July is gonna be figuring out your love it plan, which is how are you gonna figure out how to create that lifestyle that you want where you're at?
How can you have more time? How can you have more boundaries? How can you have more energy? How can you do less? How can you do the things that you actually wanna do? What is feasible for you in your role? And maybe when you do this work, you realize it's not that feasible in this job. Okay, great. Then that leads us to August where we learn how to leave it, where we figure out our quitting runway, where we figure out our vision, where we kind of figure out what is our next 90 day decision and how are we gonna work through these short-term and long-term goals. Okay? So come and in the next 90 days, make a confident decision about what you're gonna do. Are you gonna love it or are you gonna leave it or are you gonna do both? Which is what I recommend.
Um, if you don't make a decision in 90 days, if you come and you do the worksheets, you do the coaching calls, you come to two, at least you get coaching, you raise your hand and you actually get coaching on your situation. So I can help you figure out what's going on and you can't make a decision in 90 days, I'll give you your money back because I am so certain that I can get you to a decision so you can stop spinning so you can start like actually going towards the life that you want. So stop sitting on the fence my friends, come join me. Like I said, it's $197 a month. It is jam packed with value. You get eight coaching calls a month. You can pick my brain on anything we can do, um, coaching on whether you're gonna love it, whether you're gonna leave it and anything in between.
And you'll learn how to manage your own mind, which is really the best gift of all. So I hope you guys join me. Um, I think Michelle yeah, has the link in there. So decide to join us and let's do some q and a now. Okay. Wow, you guys are super active in the chat. I'm gonna have to go back after this and read all of these. This is amazing. Um, okay, if you do have a question though, plop it in the q and a because, um, I won't be able to find it in the chat. Okay. All right. I know that life and work is 50 50 and it's never gonna be the perfect situation, but I try to find better opportunities for life for a little more fulfillment, but there's always the trade-off. For instance, I change teams for more interesting project work, but I ended up also getting a really toxic manager.
How do we leave a place when there's always something we're getting in return that's negative? So that's part of understanding this. We can understand it on an intellectual level, but truly learning to live with the 50 50 is understanding that, like we talked about yesterday, there are no right decisions and we can't know how it's gonna turn out and we can manage our mind around it. So when I say is like a lot of our thoughts are what, like our thoughts are what drives our feelings and how we act, right? So when we are thoughts are focused on now, let's say the toxic manager, it's gonna create a really terrible situation for us. So we have to make a decision like, okay, I've made this trade off and now I'm doing this work and so I can focus on the loving the work and I can focus on dealing with the manager in other ways and having boundaries.
Or I can focus on leaving again and I can clean up all of my thoughts that maybe stop me from saying like, well, I've already changed once, I can't change again. Like this is where like learning how to manage your own mind comes to figuring out what is it that I wanna do here? But part of what we talked about yesterday that's really important to understanding this is that the fact that there's a trade off is not a problem. Like when we think it's a problem and we abstain from making decisions because we think, well, I don't know what the next negative thing is, we don't also get positive things. We don't get all of the opportunities and the fulfillment, right? You could go and it could be the best thing and there's some really small negative trade offs, right? The 50 50 is something that's more in your favor of like the positive 50, but that only happens from doing and evaluating.
So it's like, okay, we did this fulfillment, we did this trade off, now what do we wanna do? Do we wanna stay and like it and not trade off or something else? Or do we wanna make another decision? It's always just a series of decisions and then managing your mind. If we set a boundary like heads downtime, like heads downtime on my calendar and people in positions of leadership, like a manager book a meeting during that time, how do I enforce my boundary with them without south revising my relationship? I had this talk with my manager multiple times and it was non-negotiable. Okay? This is like a really fascinating thing with boundaries that you're gonna have to figure out is that yes, there's some things that are gonna be non-negotiable at your work and you have to decide, is this something I can manage my mind around or do I have to leave?
Okay? So what I mean by that is, like when I was working at the big law firm that I talked about, part of the deal of working there is that they pay you a lot of money to have access to you all the time. That's part of the gig. Like they can email you and you are expected to respond at all hours. Okay? There's a lot of industries that are like that and you can decide, I'm willing to accept that in this role because A, it pays me a lot of money. Like for me, I was like, okay, I'm gonna work for two years. I'm gonna be at there beck and call, and I'm gonna focus on the fact that I'm paying off my student debt and I'm gonna be able to leave and go do the uh, work that I really wanna do, right?
So that's the trade off I'm willing to make and then I can focus on the things that I love about it. I can focus on the fact that I'm getting paid an insane amount of money and I can focus on the fact that I'm paying my debt, but I can't change this non-negotiable, right? Then there's other times where we have to really figure out is it really a non-negotiable or is it something that we're gonna just keep having conversations around, right? I've had one conversation, it might be that I have to keep reminding my manager like, Hey, when I've booked these times, it's because I need to do work. So if we have meetings, then I'm not gonna get these projects done. Is that okay? Like, should I push back the project till next week when we have these kind of conversations where they start realizing, um, okay, like I can give her, you know, even if it's for like, maybe not all the time, but it's like, Hey, I would like to like not have meetings on Mondays.
Let's say that can be something that maybe it isn't non nonnegotiable, it just requires more conversations, but it does require for you to, um, for you to figure out which one it actually is. Is it really a non-negotiable where like, I might be going to this place because I'm gonna get insane. Um, it's gonna look insane on my resume, it's gonna set me up. I'm gonna do really great networking, I'm gonna make a ton of money, okay? I'm willing to like play their game. I don't control how they run their business, right? But I have to decide where am I just telling myself that it's a non-negotiable and they're not gonna change? And when is it that I'm just, I need to have this conversation more than once and then I have to manage my mind. Like if it really is a non-negotiable, then you have to figure out what are times where I can do heads down?
Like, can I talk to 'em where we have one hour a day where there aren't meetings or whatnot? Okay, just had to share goalie, not a question. Literally had a meeting at two 30 before this where I resigned. Message from my manager, thanks Mike, I'm excited for you and envious of the freedom of the unknown you're stepping into. Why be envious if you can do it too. Ah, so good. You're gonna start, you're gonna hear a lot more of that. I had the same exact experience with when I quit the law. I've had so many people tell me, I'm so jealous when I was a big law attorney and I quit, uh, when I was leaving all of my, um, the partners, like making them insane money, like have been there. I had so many of them tell me like, oh my God, I'm so jealous.
I wish I could go too. And I was like, you can, you know, you can, right? Like, you know, you're not, they don't own you. Um, but it's amazing how much we kind of put those handcuffs on ourselves and, um, never actually leave. I I liken it to like a caged bird with the door open, right? It's like you could fly out, but we just, we have this vision that we're stuck, but that's awesome. I'm so proud of you and I'm so excited for you. I decided not to go to law school and pursue my master's in public policy instead. Now I'm so stuck on choosing a career internship. I think because I'm so traumatized from being stuck on a path I hated and making the wrong decision. Any advice on how to just go forth with any internship and trust myself? Yes, you do it by doing it.
And what I mean by that is that the same thing we talked about yesterday, you're not stuck, you're scared and that's okay. Of course you're scared, right? Of course you want it to turn out great, but we don't know how it's gonna turn out and it likely might not be great, right? Like, how can you know, you're sort of picking a career and you won't know until you try it. And so what you can do is have your own back. What you can do is decide like, of course I don't know what I'm gonna do. And of course I'm scared. And what we talked about yesterday, like the gag and go like, this is where we gag and go, this is where we know I'm gonna be scared that I'm making the wrong decision, but there is no right decision and the only way I learn is to take a step and evaluate.
So I'm gonna trust myself. This is the thing about trusting yourself. You don't trust yourself to make the right decision. That's not trust. That's again, searching for certainty. And none of us can do that. None of us make the right decision all the time, okay? It's trusting yourself to figure it out regardless of what happens. So when you trust yourself, when you say, I'm gonna go forward with this and I'm gonna trust myself to know that, like even if this isn't the right one, I'll find another one. I'll pivot, I'll do something else. Okay? When you know when you can do that, then you can trust yourself to just make a decision right now and just know no matter what happens, you'll figure it out, you'll go to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And that's all any of us can do.
And so staying stuck and waiting for this right decision will keep you stuck forever. You just gotta gag and go, my friend, you just gotta do it. And you gotta know you're gonna feel the whole time. , that's okay. Nothing's gone wrong. It's not gonna feel good. That's normal cuz you're doing something scary and at least you're out in the world learning and evaluating and figuring out what you wanna do next. Literally 98% of the people at my work are workaholics. Like they wake up, they would wake up if an email popped up at night while they're asleep and reply or would reply from their vacations. And believe me, these people are rewarded. Of course they are. But I came to realize even if I am very, very sincere at my work, I can't be all these people rather, I don't want to be.
So obviously I'm not holding up to their standards. Do not always get higher year end ratings at work. So setting boundaries is in this case, is more challenging, okay? First of all, it's not that it's more challenging, it's that we all want our cake and we wanna eat it too, okay? And I get that. I want it too. I wanna be able to set boundaries and have everybody respect it and have everyone do what I want and still love me and still totally understand and get all the rewards, but it doesn't work that way. Okay? So of course your, uh, colleagues who are workaholics are gonna get rewarded for that because it benefits the employer, right? The employer has to pay less people because there are these people that are going above and beyond and they're gonna get better output. So of course they want that.
And so of course they're gonna reward that, okay? What happens is that we then have a choice. Do I want to have that year end high remarks? Do I want them to think really good of me? Do I wanna maybe get $10,000 more on a bonus or 50,000 or whatever it is? Or do I wanna not be burned out and hate my life? Those are my options. There's no one where it's like a perfect world where everything happens. Great. This happens with like boundaries all the time too, even in personal relationships. It's like, well, I wanna set a boundary with my mom and I want her to respect it, but I want her to not be mad at me and I want her to be super happy about it. It's like, well, she's not going gonna be because she didn't have those boundaries before. And so your, the question becomes like, do I wanna set a boundary and maybe have to deal with my mom feeling upset, but also then have my own peace of mind and have my own life and whatever, right?
They're trade offs and you have to decide. It's not to say that this, the dec the decision is the same each place, right? Each time. So when you, it's not that it's a difficult situation to set boundaries, it's simply that you don't like, like you want to have all of the benefits while still having boundaries. And we don't get that. So we decide our 50 50 is okay, I don't get the high remarks on the year end ratings or I don't become the star employee, or I'm not loved by everybody else and I get to actually enjoy my life and I get more time at home to actually, you know, I don't know, be the um, mom, I wanna be the wife, I wanna be whatever it is for you, daughter, whatever, like friend. That's more important to me. Here's the thing that I will say that's like, um, again, when I say the work of like the people pleasing or the perfectionism or the imposter syndrome, all of that work is why it's, it's so important.
I always think about this now, like I look at, um, I don't work with people, right? It's like my own business, but I see so many people who still are like keeping themselves, like they start their business and then they keep themselves on this hamster wheel where they kill themselves. They're working 60, 80 hours a week because they wanna prove that they're good enough. They wanna prove that they, um, I don't know, like whatever it is, prove they're worth. And so they try to build this business so that they constantly want more because they want like, they see other people. And I'm not saying I fall into it sometimes because it's like, well this person has a million dollar business and that person's doing this and I wanna do it. And then when I take a step back and it's like, okay, but what is the life that I wanted?
Right? What is, do I wanna only work 20 or 30 hours a week? Do I, am I willing to have that trade off? Or maybe I won't make as much money but I'm creating the life I want. Like I have to constantly get back to what my vision is for myself. Cuz I see so many people go so hard and then burn themselves out and shut down their own businesses because they were trying to do it like everybody else because they wanted it all right? They wanna be the person that's on every platform and has this big audience and makes tons of money and has a big team and that requires you to work a lot and then you get super tired. So it's really understanding what the trade-off is and like what is the vision I want for my life and can I be okay with not being the best of the best?
Can I be okay that everyone doesn't, you know, like is good? Like what is my good enough? And could that be like, how can that make my life so much better? Um, in the replay today, you'll have the PDF this day, two of the PDF and that asks a lot of these questions that you can just take some time to like really figure out what that role and that standard is for yourself. So you can start reminding yourself like, this is what I wanna live up to and this is why this is the best thing for me, for my family. This is why I wanna do this. Alright, my friends, that's what I got for you today. I think we got through all of the questions. Um, I would love for you guys to join me in the credit club. I love doing this work and the coaching calls are one of my favorite places to be. You can come with whatever it is you're struggling, um, whatever situation, and we will coach on your thoughts and you will learn how to manage your thoughts so that you don't have the need to people please and, uh, perfection and do all the things that we've all been trained to do. It's time to unlearn that. So join me@lessonsfromquitter.com slash quitter club and I will see you guys tomorrow for day three where we decide to leave it. All right, my friends, I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.