Think about all of the things that you will get to experience in and outside of your career when you learn that taking risks is not as scary as you're making it in your head and failing is not some kind of a death sentence. It's a natural and important part of life and that your negative emotions aren't something to be feared.

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 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 of Lessons From A Quitter. I am so excited to have you here. I wanted to do an episode where I go in-depth about my group program, Pave Your Path. What it is, who it's best for, who it's not best for, all of the things. I realized I probably should have done this a long time ago. I've talked about the program here and there. I talk about it in the beginning of other podcast episodes but it's like one or two minutes and I quickly go over it. And so I figured that this would be a way to answer a lot of the frequently asked questions that I get every time I launch so that you can make a better assessment of whether the program is right for you or not. And it'll just be an easier way for me to direct people in future launches when doors are open if they're having questions to have everything housed in one place. So that's what we're gonna do today. And if you are listening to this when it comes out, doors are currently open until this Friday, March 18th. So if you're listening to this now and after you listen to this episode, you realize like yeah, this does sound like it's exactly for me. Then I want you to join. I want you to go to the link lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath and sign up, but you can make that decision after you listen to this and I'll repeat the link at the end. Okay. So let's talk about it. As many of you know, I have a group coaching program that's six months long and it is now called Pave Your Path. It used to be called Stuck To Strategy and I changed it because I changed some things in the program. While it is still similar in the fact that we are taking a lot of you from feeling this overwhelming feeling of stuck and creating a specific plan for what you're going to do, the reason I wanted to change it is because, as we'll talk about like who it's for/who it's not for, every person's gonna have a different path and that's wonderful, right? I don't want you to have the same path as other people. I don't want you to just look at what other people are doing and do the same thing. I want you to figure out what it is that you want for your life and I want you to create that. Exactly the way that it works for you, where you're at, with what you have. And so we renamed it Pave Your Path and I love it. And what the program really does is I help high-achieving people who are miserable in their careers find careers they love. And what I mean by that is figure out first what is making you so unhappy in your career where you're at? What part of that is your own mindset? Spoiler alert: it's a lot of it. Uh and what part of it are things that like no, it just does this work doesn't light me up and what do you wanna change and what do not wanna change? Okay. So what I like to say is like we clean up all of the drama that you have around your career now so that we can figure out what it is you want to do next. For some of you that's going to mean leaving. Like I cleaned it up, I know where my people-pleasing was, I can set boundaries now and I still don't really wanna do this work. I'm more creative or, you know, I have these other gifts I wanna develop or I wanna work for myself, whatever that may be. I wanna quit and I wanna start a second career, like a new career. Great. For some of you, that's gonna be like no, I cleaned up all this drama and I actually like the career I'm in. I really love this industry. I just hated how burned out I was, how little balance I had in my life. I was causing a lot of my own suffering. And now that that's been removed and I have the confidence to create my career the way that I wanted, I wanna stay here and work on that, build on that, whatever that may be. That's great too. Right? There is no one size fits all of what the path looks like. What we work on is figuring out what that path is for you. Okay. So a lot of times I ask people, well they say like well, I'm not ready to quit. You know, I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna quit in the next couple of years. And I'm like that's fine. I mean, I don't actually care if you quit. I know that's very off-brand because I'm a quitter but I love if you want to quit, that's great. And I will say, I oftentimes encourage people to not join when they're at their wits end ready to quit. I mean, you can join then but it's like when you're coming from a place of desperation of like I have to make a change right now, it's very difficult to calm ourselves down to really make rational decision from a place of like what's in my best interest. What do I truly want? Because we're just in this energy of like I gotta, I gotta get outta this. I gotta leave right now. And so I don't want you to wait till like it's that point when we have a little bit more bandwidth to be able to assess like what is the problems? How do I work on this? How do I give myself some time to either build up my runway before I quit or to work on setting boundaries while I'm here before I quit? It will give you a better foundation to be able to make decisions on, right. I liken this oftentimes to like relationships and relationship counseling, right? If you have waited to the brink of like we hate each other and we've done and said terrible, awful things to each other and we didn't ever try to like intervene before then it's going to be a lot harder to even salvage that relationship or to figure out where you wanna go from a not rational mind, but it it's just gonna have a lot more emotions. It's gonna be, it's going to create a lot more problems than if you notice that there are some problems in your relationship and you start seeking counseling, like from the beginning, right. Then there's a lot more options. There's a lot more things to look at. Like are there things that we can change where we don't need to maybe change the whole career? So I just say that to say that if you are thinking like I'm not in a place where I'm gonna quit right now but I know that what I'm doing isn't working that is the perfect time to join the program. Okay. Because what I want you to do is learn how to create the life that you want while loving the life you have. Right. I wanna clean up the drama where you're at right now so whatever it is you want to start building there isn't the added pressure of it has to get done immediately because I'm so miserable, right? Because that's what sort of sends us in these groundhog day kind of spirals that we go through where we're so unhappy so we like think about a side hustle but then it becomes so overwhelming because we don't think we're gonna build anything in the next six months and then so that when we quit and then we're more miserable and we keep repeating that same cycle, as opposed to knowing like I can clean up my mindset where I'm at and like where I'm at and still slowly work on this creative project that I have or this side hustle that I wanna build. And it might take me a year. It might take me two years. Even if it takes me three years, that's totally fine. I'm working towards creating the life and the career that I want. And I'm not in a rush to do it right now. So that's where we start from. Alright. And then obviously there are some of you who are like no, I'm done and I'm miserable and I need to quit. And that's fine too. Like I said, I mean, we can decide what each person's path is gonna look like. And for some of you, it's like I need to quit in the next three months because I can't handle it. Then we figure out like what is the short-term goal? Do you need to get into another job? Do you have enough saved up? What are we gonna do with that? I just think that you leave yourself with less options when you do it that way. Okay. So that is one of the first questions I get. Another question I get with this, it's kind of in line with that where it's like I'm not ready, you know, some people think they're not ready cuz they don't wanna quit. But other people think like it's just not a good time, right? Like I don't know if I'm ready right now for this. And I will say this, like obviously there's never a good time. There's never a good time to take on a lot more work. And not that this is a lot more work and time wise but doing the introspective work is hard. I'm not gonna lie to you. This isn't like you come in and we just sit and sing kumbaya together. Like you have to do the work. You have to be willing to look at yourself realistically and where you're adding to your problems, what you can change, what you can't, how much patience you're gonna have to have. And so I life gets in the way, right. And we all are already juggling so much. And it seems like adding one more thing is the last thing we need. But my question when people like say that it's like well, think about what that alternative is. If you don't have the time now, that just means you are constantly going to be running yourself ragged. You're going to be continuing the same things that are creating your suffering and it's just gonna compound on yourself. And so I always wonder like why are you prolonging that suffering? Like yeah, you could do it in six months but then you're just gonna suffer for six more months. Why wait when you already know that there's a problem here that we need to fix? And I see like so many results for my clients. I see how relaxed they become like how much easier they breathe. How some of the stress and the guilt starts going away and how they can take control of their own lives. And I hear them say like I wish I I had done this sooner. And so I'm always wanting to understand when people are saying like well, I know I'm unhappy and I know that this could help me but I'm just gonna put it off. Right. There is no good time. And I think for so many of us who are used to putting everything and everyone ahead of ourselves, there's always an excuse, right? Work is really busy. The kids need me. I don't have the time to do this. Whatever. And part of this is learning, I mean, the entire point of the program is to learn like how do I put my own needs first? How do I start realizing what is is gonna be crucial for me living the life that I want and how do I prioritize that een if that means I drop balls other places, right? There's other balls that I can't keep in the air. Can I be okay with that? Because I know in the long-term that this is what I need in order to be in a better place. Before I go into the rest of the questions that I get, now that I've told you sort of who this is for. I wanna tell you a little bit more about what the program offers. Okay. So there is a course aspect to it where there are over six modules of content that I've created specifically for this process. So it takes you through a process, a step by step guide on like how to start managing your mind, how to start managing your life where you're at right now. Like what boundaries to put up, how to deal with other people, how to start loving the things that you can do in putting yourself first and then how to manage your future, right? How do you start figuring out what it is you want to do? How do you start implementing that? How do you start testing and experimenting and pivoting? All of that stuff. So those are basically a more in-depth version of what you get on the podcast. So if you like the podcast and you feel like it's helped you, do you want a more structured and um in-depth version of it that will walk you through this process? With each video are worksheets that help you work through the exercises and apply it to your own situation. So you get those weekly and you work on that on your own. And then we come together every week for a group coaching call and sometimes we do little workshop styles, we'll work through what was released. And most of the times it's just coaching. You bring in what you've been working on, what's coming up for you, what's stopping you from being able to implement certain things and we coach on it, right? And if you've been to the free monthly coaching calls, you know sort of the format but it's with a lot less people, it's a small group. And I cannot tell you how much I love group coaching. I think group coaching is the most transformational container for coaching. There's a room for other types. One-on-one is great. But here's the problem that I found with one-on-one: there's a lot of times we're often like deer in headlights when we're getting coached. We're so close to our own problem that it's hard for us to see. And when somebody else is getting coached on the same exact thing, which they often are, because we all have the same human brains with the same like five fears over and over again. It's so much easier to see cuz you see their faulty thinking very easily and you start then implementing it in your life. It's like oh, I do that same thing. I'm constantly catastrophizing. I'm constantly thinking it's all or nothing. Right? I have a hard time saying no to my boss too. And when you can watch someone else get coached, it does a couple things. Like I said, like one, it lets you really integrate and understand the concepts I think better than even being coached yourself. But two, I think we love to believe that our situation is so unique and that there's a reason that we can or can't do something. And when you start realizing that everybody has the same exact beliefs and the same exact fears, one it's validating. You start realizing like okay, this is the way the human brain works. There's nothing wrong with me. I don't need to feel embarrassed or beat myself up or whatever it is that we do. And two, we start realizing like how ridiculous these fears are. Like when you hear it from other people and you start seeing the same things, it just starts clicking that like oh yeah, if I would tell this person like of course you should go after that dream, right? Like of course you shouldn't stifle this creativity you have or whatever it is. Why do I say the same thing to myself? And so when you have a small group where you're working through the same things, everybody was in in the same place of unhappiness in their career and they don't really know how to make a change and we start working through this together, you become invested in each other's journeys. You have a small group of not only support but accountability, right? So we have accountability pods where you're supposed to check in every week so that you're doing the work so that you're showing up. So that you're talking about where you're getting stuck. So that you do our different challenges together. So we can start having like this system that will hold you accountable which has been proven in like every study ever that like increases your chances of hitting your goals by like 500%. Right? So you have this group that is not only invested in your success and you are invested in theirs and it makes you feel less alone. I just got this question on Instagram, someone said like how do you deal with the loneliness of changing a career? And I I'm assuming that question means because of like friends and family don't understand, your coworkers don't understand. And I've said this before, I did a podcast episode about like find your community. And that is my answer. Like don't do it alone. Why would you do it alone? It's so much more painful and it's so much harder to stay on track because your brain will trick you. Right? Like you'll start really thinking maybe I'm crazy for wanting to leave. Maybe this is irrational. Maybe my parents are right and I should stay in this safe job. And when you're around other people that are also saying like no, this ain't it. I'm not doing this for the rest of my life. I'm not gonna keep working in a job that undervalues me. And I have no nights and weekends to myself and I can't take a vacation until I'm ready to retire. That's insane. It'll gives you that motivation to do the thing that you're scared of doing, right? Like even when you take the step and you're gonna be terrified, when there's a group of people that are acting as a safety net for you, it is a lot easier to implement this work. So you have those group coaching calls to come and get the support you need and get the guidance you need and get the clarity you need and get to have my eyes on your path. Right? Like getting an understanding of what is your short-term goal? What are we working on in the next six months? What is your long-term goal? What are the things getting in your way? Is it a money situation? Is it a belief situation? Is it connections? Is it experimenting? What are we doing here? Right. Because I will say this too, we all have the best of intentions. Right? A lot of us know the things that we need to do. And then like I just said, life gets in the way. And so week after week goes by, month after month and we think I promise I'm gonna get to this. I really wanna start this side hustle. I really wanna figure out what it is I want. I’m really gonna read these self-help books and try to figure it out. And then the months go by and then the years go by and nothing changes. And part of what I think the power of this program is is that it provides you a container where you are committing to showing up every single week and doing this work. You're showing up every week. And it's like I am carving out this time for myself to figure out what it is the hell I wanna do and how to go after it. I'm going to start taking time every single week to think about these things that I keep putting off because I don't have the time. And when I do that, it actually speeds up the process so much more, right? Like the it doesn't take as long as we think it's gonna take but that's only because we're dedicating routine amounts of time to it. It's not like a one-time I'm gonna come home and go on a down a Google rabbit hole and I'm gonna search for all these different jobs that lawyers can do or teachers can do or whatever the Google search is. I'm gonna commit like this is a process and I'm gonna keep coming back to it week after week until I can figure out like yeah, what does light me up? What were the things that I've been ignoring? What are some things that I know deep down I want but I'm kind of suppressing cause I'm scared and I don't wanna admit it to myself. Only by doing that like introspection and giving yourself the time and space to do that are you gonna discover those answers. And that's what we do, right. Now, I've gotten questions about the timing of the calls. I pick a time each group and those will be the calls each day at that time. And I get some people saying like well, I can't make it that time. Now, I try to pick a time where it works for a lot of different time zones. Obviously, it's not gonna work for every time zone. And I apologize for that but there's nothing really I can do about that. But the question of like I can't make it at that time. I really want you to question that. Is it that you cannot make it absolutely? Or is it that it's just harder to put up boundaries to make it at that time? What I mean by that is there might be times where you really can't make it like if you are a nurse that's on call and coaching calls are Tuesdays at noon and you work on Tuesdays and there's no way for you to be at your computer. Yeah, you can't make those times. Fine. But for a lot of us, it's because it's difficult. It's because I have to talk to my boss about maybe moving my lunch hour or actually taking a lunch hour. I have to talk to my spouse about watching the kids during that time. I have to ask for help. I have to carve out time that I normally wouldn't that isn't budgeted into my schedule and that's difficult. And this is your first piece of coaching is where are you turning away from doing things because it's just easier not to? Of course it's easier, right? Like people telling me like, you know, of course you don't have the time because you haven't scheduled this in. It's not like randomly gonna pop up. Like we're all so used to being so busy all the time. And we're all so used to just like being available to our employers all the time and never asking for anything that we need. I just want you to check in and really think like can I not do that time or am I just not willing to make the accommodations? Am I not willing to have the tough conversation with my boss that says like hey, at 3:00 PM to four on Tuesdays, I'm not gonna be available. I can stay late those days. I can come early, whatever you need but I'm not gonna be available at those times and see what happens. And so I just want you to check in on like what it is for you. It's gonna be different for every person. Several other group programs, myself as a student and I see people who sign up for the program and they have to get up in the middle of the night for the call cuz they're in other countries where the time zones obviously don't match. Now, there has to be the desire to want to do that call. Right. There has to be the desire to want think that that group is going to help me enough that it is worth me waking up at 3:00 AM in order to do the call. I'm not saying that's the level of commitment you have to have. If you don't think it's worth it, that's fine. But I would question the thought I can't because oftentimes we can, we just don't want to and that's fine too but let's be honest with ourselves, right? Like I probably could, I just don't wanna make that much effort. Okay. That's a different thing than like oh see yeah, I can't make that time. I'm letting myself off the hook a little bit cuz like gosh, you picked a time I just can't do it. If you're that unhappy in your career and you want something to change and you don't wanna wait and suffer for another six months, can you figure out the call schedule? That's all I'm gonna say. Another one for time that I get is like how much time does the program take? So I will say that what I ask is that you have two to three hours a week for it. One hour’s for the coaching call, one hour’s to do the coursework and the worksheets and another hour to reflect, to do more self-coaching, to uh really give yourself time to do whatever comes up. Three hours a week is not that much time, my friends. If you cannot find three hours a week for yourself, some rearranging and rescheduling needs to happen. Some boundaries need to be put up. Okay. So I understand that we are all stretched for time or are we? Think we are all used to being stretched for time. We are all used to having to do everything. I have to do all of these millions of things. And part of the work that we do in this qu in the program is like do you really though? Do you really have to be the all-star parent, worker, sister, mother, daughter, son, husband? Do you? Or can you ask for help? Or can you drop some balls? Or can you say no to things like I'm not available for that? Or can you tell your kids like we can't be in 14 different sports because I'm not gonna chauffeur you around? We can pick one, right? Like there's a lot of uh decisions that we have to make that are oftentimes hard but are in our own best interests so that we don't become resentful and angry when we've said yes to everything except for ourselves. Okay. The other question that I get a lot is some version of like what if it doesn't work for me? Right. They don't say it in that way but it's like well, I'm so scared about trying to change jobs or to go after another job because what if it doesn't work? What if I go on this exploration and I don't find the thing that I wanna be doing? So the first thing I wanna say to that is that your dreams are possible even if you don't know what your dreams are. Okay. And I wanna start there because I think that a lot of us don't realize how much we shut ourselves down just by believing the lie that like it's not possible for me. Like oh yeah, there's all these people doing it. There's people on Instagram living a life that I potentially would want but they had some other circumstance, which maybe they did, they had some other circumstance that made it easier for them or whatnot. That's fine. But it doesn't mean that it's not available for you. Almost every single person that is coming to me has not had some insane dream. It's very do-able. If somebody else is doing it, it is possible for you. And the reason I say that is because you have to believe that as the first step. A lot of us want to wait to see evidence in order to believe, right? It's like I have to know it's possible somehow before I can actually let myself believe because I wanna try to preserve. It's like self-preservation. I don't wanna get hurt. I don't wanna believe something is possible and then what if I fail? But if you don't believe, you will never try something new. It's like the prerequisite, right? The Henry Ford quote, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. If you've already told yourself it's not possible, you're not crazy. Why would you go after it if you think it's not possible. Right? And I'm not saying this in like a woo woo rah of course you can do anything. I'm saying like there's literally probably thousands of examples of people that are doing the thing you wanna do. If there's someone doing that, you can do it too. There's no reason why you can't. Maybe there's a a gap in your skills that you have to fill. Maybe there's some experience or some connections you have to make, fine but you can do it. And the only way to start going after something that you've never done is to have a sort of blind faith that it is possible for me. So like let me lend that to you if you don't have it for yourself. I'm not telling you this because I just wanna be a cheerleader. I'm telling you because I've seen it over and over again. And I see so much opportunity out there. So many possibilities of ways to make money and replace our salaries. And we just want to believe that it's not possible for us because it's easier than believing like it is and I'm not just not doing it. Like it's just too hard and I don't wanna do a hard thing. And I want you to know that like it has to start from believing that it's possible. So it is. And I also want you to know that because I want you to be excited. I want you to go after that biggest life. I want you to know it's possible to have a life where you make good money and you don't have to kill yourself where like you get to wake up and not hate your job every single day, where you don't have to like count down the minutes until Friday. That life is possible. It is out there. You have to start working towards it. So that's first. But whenever I get this question like and I I I hear people asking me this like what if I go off and explore and I don't figure out the thing I wanna do? My question's always like what's your alternative? Just stay in a job that you already know you hate? Just keep doing it so that you don't get disappointed potentially because you don't figure out the thing that lights you up? I mean, one, I don't buy that you won't find it. I know you will but let's just even go with it. I'll give it to you. Let's say you don't find it. And maybe you won't find it in that timeline that you want. Maybe you don't find it in three months or whatever. Maybe it takes you a while longer to really make the connections of what it's gonna be. Maybe you have to experiment and explore a lot more. Okay. What is the alternative? You tell me. Just day after day, month after month, year after year, stay in a job I hate cuz at least it's safe. At least I know this, right. Better the devil I know than the devil I don't. No and like that's the way our brains are wired. Sure, right? We like certainty. They call it the comfort zone but it's not comfortable. It's familiar. It's the familiar zone. We will stay in that familiar zone as long as possible until we use our prefrontal cortex to be like hey, this isn't all that comfortable. This ain't great. Okay. So like your brain is wired to keep you safe by doing what you've done. And it requires your own active thought to say like my brain thinks I'm unsafe. I am not unsafe. Going out and finding a different career does not make me unsafe. I have to actively choose to take that first step. Right? You are the youngest today that you will ever be in your life. I want you to think about that. Do not waste any more time waiting, hoping that somebody else is gonna come save you, hoping that something magically is going to change. It's not. You have so much left in your life to experience and to live. And if you want something different, if you know like this isn't it, what I'm doing isn't working. I just don't know how else to do it. I don't know the how of getting to a different place where I am happier, where I do like my career, where I find more fulfillment, where I do things that light me up, where I experiment and I let myself show up as a full human. I don't know how to get there. That's where I come in. That's where Pave Your Path comes in. That is what I teach you. I teach you the step by step process that you will go through as many times as you need it. And by the way, you have lifetime access to your course. So even after our six months is up, you can just repeat the process as many times as you need to get more clear on what it is that you want, to gain that clarity, to gain the confidence to go after it, to start changing your paradigm, to stop being so afraid of failure all the time, to let yourself be a full human and to create the career of your dreams, to create the life of your dreams and to do it not out of desperation, not out of a quick scheme like get rich quick scheme, to love where you're at while you keep creating the life that you want while you make it better and better and better. And this work, the reason I like, you know, shout it from the rooftops is because this work compounds on itself. Like when you learn to manage your mind, when you learn to manage your life, when you learn to manage your career, think about the ripple effects. Think about how that affects how you show up at home, how you show up in your relationships, how you show up for yourself. Think about being able to put yourself first, how that impacts the rest of your life, your health, your fun, right? Your activities. Think about all of the things that you will get to experience in and outside of your career when you learn that taking risks is not as scary as you're making it in your head and failing is not some kind of a death sentence. It's a natural and important part of life and that your negative emotions aren't something to be feared. When you can truly learn these things and embody them and learn to practice them and learn within a container where you can keep failing and coming back and saying like hey, this didn't work, what am I doing wrong? How should I implement this? Or you have that guidance. Just think about the ripple effect in your life. It changes everything, my friends. So I want you to join me in Pave Your Path. I want you to stop putting off your happiness. I want you to stop suffering. I want you to stop living this groundhogs day of like getting up every day and hating your job and being miserable and complaining to your coworkers and then to your spouse and coming home and being stressed and thinking about everything you have to do the next day and not being present at night and getting up the next day and doing it all again. It doesn't have to be that way. It can be so much easier and I want to help you. So if you wanna join me, I would love to have you in the program. You can go to www.lessonsfromquitter.com/paveyourpath. And I hope to see you there. Alright my friends, I'll see you all next week.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, share it with someone else. I promise you know somebody who also hates their job and wants to quit, so why not share the love? And if you want to come follow along for more, come join me on Instagram at LessonsFromAQuitter and make sure you say hi. I'll see you next week for another episode.