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. I am so excited you are here. My friends, we are getting close to opening the doors to Pave Your Path in June. I'm so excited and here is the thing I'm gonna have to tell you guys, I don't know when I'm gonna open this again. I'm not a hundred percent sure so I haven't wanted to announce anything but I've been having some inklings of changing some things up, which actually is so fitting for this episode, because we're gonna talk all about normalizing changing your mind. And after having run this program for a couple of years now, like six rounds, I wanna change some things up. I'm noticing what's working and what's not. And I wanna be able to help more of you. And I wanna do some fun things and maybe I'll do this again. Again, I am, as I'm gonna talk to you about, I am leaving things open because I really want to figure out what is the best way for me to serve you all, what is the best way for me to run a business, all of those things. And that's all to say I have something very exciting that I've been building on the back end that I want to focus on more and that I want to hopefully put out into the world by the end of this year at some point. It's all very vague at this point but the reason I wanna tell you all that is because I don't know if I'm gonna offer a small group program anymore. And so if you've been waiting to get in with me and have the time where I will have a lot of one-on-one interaction with you and be able to coach you specifically on your issues, on your thought process, on your career, all of that stuff, then now is the time to get into Pave Your Path. I'm gonna open doors in June, June 13th will be when doors will open, they're only open for a week. And if you want to do this work deeper, which you absolutely should, I want you to join me. I want you to get on the wait list at lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath to be the first to find out. It is a small group so if it will sell out and if you know this is for you, prepare yourself right now. Make the decision. Have the thought I'm gonna do this and then get on that wait list and join us. And let's do this work together for six months and change your life. No small feat. So yeah, go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath. And I hope that I see you in there. Okay, that actually leads perfectly to this topic. I wanted to talk about normalizing changing our mind. So obviously that's what the majority of this podcast is about. It's about changing your ideas about your career, your identity, all of the things and learning to be okay with pivoting. And the reason I picked the word quitter like quitting. The reason I picked this name Lessons From A Quitter was because I wanted to change the connotation that word has, right? It's really a negative term that we use in our society as kind of a bad label for basically just changing your mind. That's all it is, right? And yet we've all been fed a lot of these lies that the only marker of success is the length of which you stick to something. Which is absurd when you think about it, right? When you think about that as being any marker of success doesn't really make much sense. But when you think about really the messages that we've been given over and over again with everything, it's not about whether the decision was good or whether you're happy or whether it fulfills you. It's like can you stick it out? Can you tough it out? Right? When you think about marriages like if a marriage ends in divorce then it's considered a failed marriage. Even if the marriage ends beautifully and both parties are happier and both parties are, you know, great together, whatever the case may be or even friendships, right? Like let's say you have chapter in your life where people fit into that role and then the chapter ends and it could be a wonderful thing to move on. But we look at it as always bad. Like if it ends something has gone horribly wrong. We were harmed somehow, we harmed others somehow. As opposed to just like it ran its course. Obviously it's the same thing with changing your career. It just has this bad connotation. We have these like, you know, quitters never prosper. All these sayings we've been fed. And if it didn't have this bad connotation, all of us would do it. Right. We, and I think it is becoming more normalized, I think this generation is now seeing that the idea that you have to pick a career at 18 when your brain hasn't fully formed and then stick with that for the rest of your life is an absurd standard. So luckily it's changing. But if we didn't have this connotation then all of you would be doing it, right. There's a lot of you. Yes, there is the finances. Yes, there are the thoughts about what am I gonna do? But a lot of you are stuck because of what are other people gonna think? What is it gonna look like? I'm gonna be a failure, right? It's the identity of leaving a career that you know no longer serves you. Like you're clear on that fact. And yet we create these kind of cages for ourselves because well, I don't wanna be a quitter. I don't wanna be a failure. Whatever that means. Even changing your mind about ideas, think about like religion or politics. We're not often embracing people who get new information and decide that they're gonna change their mind. We call it flip-flopping, right? We make fun of people that do this stuff. Instead of looking at it as just being a mature decision-maker, like yes, of course I learned more. I grew, I reassessed and now I've come to a different conclusion. Now, part of it evolutionary, your mind is sort of created to do this. Like we all have these confirmation biases and we look for things that confirm our own views. And all these studies have shown that when you are shown evidence to the contrary, you tend to dig your heels in deeper. We all do this. So by default, that's what we have done. And it has also served society. There's a reason that we've created these made-up rules is because it served our society. Like it kept people in professions to make sure that the work happens in our society. It kept people in family units which fulfilled certain things that were good for our society, right? So there's a reason that it's pushed on people, whether that's through religion, through politics, through whatever it is that like once you're in some kind of a tribe, you can't change your mind. This is what you have to do forever. But one, it's not the way the world actually works. It's not the way that like mother nature and real life work and I'll explain that a minute. And two, it's just extremely detrimental, right? It's okay to now realize like of course, as I grow, as I learn, I'm gonna change my mind. I'm gonna decide that this no longer fits in my life. I'm gonna decide that that chapter ended. And now I'm gonna try something else. Right? I want you to think about science, stick with me for a second. Look at the entire study of science. It is based on the fact, well, this is the definition. The dictionary definition is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Okay? So we all know this. Like we accepted in science that even though the vast majority of what we have learned, what we have uncovered as a species, what we have created in our civilizations has been based on science, right? All of our medical advances, a lot of our technology, a lot of this stuff is based on this like we have a hypothesis, we test it out. And then when we find something else, we change that hypothesis. Right? So we're not even talking about art and we're not talking about things that are even more nebulous. We're talking about science. Imagine if our approach was nope, once you decide something, that's it. Once you decide that bloodletting is the way to cure a disease, that's the only way we get we're allowed to do it. You have to drain people of their blood, right? You have to put leeches on them. I mean, whatever it was that we thought we knew a hundred years ago about medicine has drastically changed and it will continue to drastically change. And yet we don't look at that and be like ugh, what a bunch of quitters. Why don't you just stick with that whole lobotomy thing for mental illness? That's what you decided. That's what you should go with. Right? It sounds so ludicrous obviously. But just imagine if we like that's what we do with everything else. And imagine if we did that with other things though, like I was thinking about, cause I was thinking about our careers and how we choose this in college. And like what have they told you? You know, the people that you hung out in high school with or in college are the only people you're allowed to hang out with for the rest of your life. Because you liked them. You said you liked them. You guys had a friendship. You have to hang out with them. Or the places that you went to eat, the bars that you partied at, the places that you frequented in college are the only places you're allowed to go. Even when you're older. I don't care if you're 50 and you have kids, you go to that dive bar because you liked it at one point. So that's the only place you're allowed to go. Like you can't change your food. No, you said mac and cheese is your favorite food at 12. That has to be your favorite food. You're not allowed to change that. Like I know it sounds absurd but like that's literally what we do. It sounds crazy because it is. And yet we all, so many of us, think like well I picked this career when I was 22 or 25 or 35. I don't even care when you did it. And of course, you're not the same person that you were in your twenties as you are in your thirties or your forties or your fifties. You change, you grow. Hopefully hopefully that's happening for every one of us. Your interests change. You start wanting other things. Your priorities change, right? How many people have we heard say like I didn't think I wanted this but then I had kids and like everything shifted for me. There's no way to anticipate that. Like there's no way to anticipate the life-altering things that happen in our lives. Getting married, having children, losing loved ones, going through tragedy, moving states, countries, whatever. Like all of those things have massive impacts on our lives. The amount that you learn by putting yourself in those situations. And so of course you grow, of course your perspective changes. Of course your view of the world changes and you start wanting other things. Nothing has gone wrong here. This is what I want you to see. There is no problem. We only create a problem because we think oh no, I shouldn't change my mind. I shouldn't want something else. I shouldn't go after another career. I should just be happy. I should just suck it up. Why? Why should you? Even with relationships, I mean obviously this isn't about relationships, this podcast but right. If we stopped thinking about things like oh, I should because I decided I I was supposed to love this person or I was supposed to be friends with this person then for the next 30 years, 40 years, I just have to, even though I'm completely different, they're completely different. I just like want you to start considering like what if we're allowed to change our mind and we get to then be intentional about what it is we wanna do. We get to keep re-deciding no, I want to be in this relationship. No, I still choose this over other things. I'm not doing it because I'm stuck. I'm not doing it because I have to. I'm not doing it because I'm a victim and I feel like I have no other choice and I'm waiting for somebody else to come save me or tell me it's okay and give me permission. I'm choosing it every year. Every year I'm being intentional with who I wanna be, who I wanna surround myself with, what friends I wanna have, what activities I wanna do, the career I want. Like how different would our lives be if we took that responsibility and were active participants in the things that we did instead of just doing it because that's the way that we've always done it. And I don't wanna be a quitter. I don't wanna be wishy-washy. I don't wanna flip flop. Now, I'm gonna say a caveat because I know I'm gonna get some some messages, as I always do. If you have to stay in your career for like financial reasons or because you want to climb some kind of ladder, you want to use it as a jumping off point, I don't care whatever the reason, that's totally fine too. That's exactly what I'm talking about. And like you can be intentional about it. You can decide hey, my short-term goal is to be in this career for another 1, 2, 5 years while I save money, while I network, while I build out my business on the side whatever. Great, that's a fantastic mature decision. And I love it. And we could alleviate so much of the unnecessary suffering that comes from but I don't wanna be here. I just have to stay. What is everyone gonna say? It's like no, I'm making this choice. I'm making this choice that with the good and bad, the 50/50, I'm gonna stay. Right. It becomes so much easier than to actually deal with the bad when it's intentional, as opposed to, a lot of us end up playing kind of the victims in our lives where it's like this sucks. I hate it but I have to do it cuz it's the only degree I got and I can't try anything else cuz what will everyone say? And I don't want my degree to go to waste and I don't wanna waste all these years. So I'm just gonna ruminate and I'm gonna hate it the whole time and I'm gonna become bitter and I'm gonna complain and that's not gonna be fun for anybody. Right? So like I'm not saying that you have to like decide this and then just quit immediately or you have to end your marriage or you have to stop friendships. Like I'm you don't have to do any of those things. I'm just saying like what if we just decided that there are chapters in our lives, there are seasons. That when a chapter ends that doesn't mean that you are a quitter or that something has failed or that it didn't go the way it was supposed to go or that there needs to be all this shame around it. What if it's just like that chapter's over, I'll take the lessons that I wanted from it, that I needed, that are gonna help me and I will apply it to the next thing. Right? I'm not starting from zero. I'm starting from experience. I'm gonna look at like what was working in this? What was not? How was I showing up in this? What did I hate about this? What did I love? What lit me up? Like that will give you so much more information as you're going forward. As opposed to spending all of your time trying to keep something going that you don't actually want just because we have all decided in our society to make up a rule that once you choose something you have to stick with it. And I want you to understand also like I'm not talking about having to wait a long time before you change your mind. Right? A lot of you might justify this where it's like okay, I gave it a shot. I was in this career for 10 years or I've been married for this many years. That's enough. Like I've really tried. And that's one way of doing it. I'm not saying you don't have to try, you can. But you can also change your mind immediately. I see this a lot with people in my program and I see this this type of thinking really impacts the decisions you make going forward, right? This all or nothing thinking where like okay, once I make this decision, well of course, if there's the pressure is that this is the thing. This has to be the next thing for the rest of my life. I can't keep changing. Then that puts so much pressure on making the the next decision. And so I see a lot of people who maybe wanna go for another job or they go interview and they get the job. And then they're paralyzed about what decision to make because they're operating under this old paradigm of like well, if I take this job and I jump into this career or into this job or into this field then that's gonna be it. And I was like no, not at all. You can take that job and, in a month, decide oh actually I I don't like this. This is not for me. Great, now we know. It's another data point. We just learned something about ourselves, right? If we don't make it mean like there's something wrong with me. I'm terrible at decision making. I'll just never be happy. Whatever other BS we like to tell ourselves, it becomes very easy to make decisions. It's like of how could I know if I like this work until I do it? How could I know I like this company? I don't know how they act on a day-to-day basis. I don't know the relationship they have with their employees. I don't know the work hours. People tell me one thing in an interview but there's no way for me to know until I work there. So why would I use that as a reason to beat myself up if I start working there and realize hey, this isn't for me either. But we have these preconceived notions of what's allowed and what's not. And can't jump too many times. You can't have too many jobs on my resume. Why? Who said? Like have you talked to recruiters and they told you this? Like I know tons of people who've jumped a lot and they do they keep jumping and they do more well each time and they get more money and they create a a career that they actually want. It's like how much is that fear of well, what does it mean if I keep jumping about me? What are all these things that I'm attaching to it that aren't actually there? Bevin Farrand, who was on this podcast, she had posted recently a quote that her dad had told her when she was trying to decide where to go to college I think it was and it was such a beautiful quote. And so I wanted to share it. He he had said to her like you're gonna make the best decision that you can with the information you have at hand and if in six months or six weeks or six days you make a different decision, it's not because the decision is wrong. It's because you have more information and you're making the best decision you can with the information you have at hand. That's so profound. You will constantly be getting more information. That's life, right? You're getting in more input. And if you, instead of spending all of your time beating yourself up, like this is what we do instead of trying to learn from it. Instead of like mining it for all of the gold that is there, right? Thinking about the step and being like you know what went right here? What went wrong? What lights me up? What doesn’t? What was I missing? What red flags was I not paying attention to when I took this job? What was I hoping it would be? Right. Where did I maybe get misled by this shiny object or whatever it is. At least then I learned for the next time. But instead, I'm just gonna spend the time tell like in shame and telling myself how terrible I am and how I'll never be happy. And I don't know how to make decisions and I can't trust myself and all this other BS. And then I won't actually even learn from it. I'll just wallow. And I'll put on all of that baggage on me and I'll just carry it around for the rest of my life. Like that seems like a productive way to live my life. And yet that's the way most of us are. And this is why decision making becomes so hard for us because of course, when the stakes are so high with every decision, when the stakes become like my God, if I make a wrong decision here and I can never change my mind, of course that's paralyzing. So how could you ever make a decision if you have to be able to somehow predict the future and know how you're gonna feel and know how everything's gonna turn out and know that you're gonna love it and never give yourself the freedom to pivot and change your mind. It becomes debilitating. It's literally impossible to make a decision. I just recently had a student that is in my program and she had come in with the idea of changing her career, as a lot of people do. And she had sort of decided that she was done with the career that she had been for almost 20 years. And she was certain that she wanted to leave. And then in, you know, the first we’re in like the first two months of the program and she's learning a lot of the mindset tools and she's learning how to start managing her mind and she's feeling a lot better. And she got an interview in her current career and she was really like thinking about it differently. It was exciting her. And she was thinking about taking it. And then she was overcome with a lot of shame and guilt. And she was saying things like well, I don't know, I can't take this job because I came here to change my career. And I really wanted to dedicate this six months of this program to change my career. And it was it's just so fascinating. So when when we coached through it, I was like why are we creating a problem when there isn't one? Right. Okay, you came in with some notion but then you learned tools that you didn't have and you now realize like I actually might like this career. This career actually isn't as bad when I can manage my stress and all of my emotions around it. Why is that a problem? I've just changed my mind. I've just decided hey actually maybe I wanna give this career another shot. And yet, I see so many people like create so much shame for themselves when it's really like I got more information. I learned a tool I didn't know. Now I can manage some of my stress. Now I actually wanna stay, which is, you know, it's funny because it's just funny for me to watch people's thought processes because that's how I advertise the program. I don't say like you're gonna come and you're gonna quit. Everyone's gonna come quit. I want people to come and find clarity around their career. That might mean you start finding like oh, I actually like this place and once I can control my own emotions, it's not as bad. That's just as much of a success as deciding like no, I'm done with this career, I'm gonna leave. And just knowing that, finding that clarity is what is important. Not which way you go, not what decision you make and knowing that you can change that decision again. You can decide no, I'm gonna stay and take a new job. And then in six months or three months or one month, I don't even care, a week, be like oh no no, I got sidetracked. I don't actually wanna stay. I wanna change it again. Also not a problem. The more you can learn to start changing your mind, the more freedom you will allow yourself in your life to try things, to experiment, to learn, which is really the only way in the world. That is all life is is constantly learning, experimenting, trying, learning more about yourself, repeating ad nauseam until you die. Like truly it doesn't end. It's not like oh, now there's no more growth. I've now hit this age and that's it. I'm locked into this personality. I'm never gonna change. I mean, it never works like that. So as long as your personality is changing, as long as your perspectives are changing, as long as your experiences are changing, your mind is gonna change. Your thoughts are gonna change. The things you want are gonna change. That's not a problem. That's the way it should be. It is only a problem because that is what we've been told. What we've been told is like just suck it up, stick through it. Life isn't all fun. Just do the hard thing. And we confuse that with meaning like okay, I just have to suffer through because I pick something at some point and I wanna be a success. It's like hilarious. Like how is that successful? How is that what we're defining a success? Right? You see so many people in marriages where they're absolutely miserable or careers they know they hate it. They make every day miserable for themselves. Their years pass by, their life passes by, nothing changes. And like that's what we're determining as a success? Just the longevity like oh, I I suffered through it for 30 years. It's really something to celebrate. I think the more that we can start understanding that these rules were just created for other purposes that don't serve our needs. Right? Maybe it helps society. Maybe it helps, you know, the market, whatever it is, but it's not fundamentally the way humans work. It's not the way the world works and there's nothing wrong. One of the my favorite questions when I get in a lot of coaching is like why is this a problem? Right? Because oftentimes with a lot of things that we do, there is no problem other than our thought that we shouldn't do it, that I shouldn't be this way. And when you question that like why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I want something different? Why shouldn't I try something new? Why shouldn't I, you know, whatever, have new experiences and a new path? You start realizing like there's no problem here. Everything is exactly the way it should be. And that chapter just ended. And another one is starting and how fun and exciting could that be right? Where it's like I'm just embarking on a new chapter. I can't wait to see what this one is. And the next one and the next one, right? This isn't the last chapter. This isn't the last thing I'm gonna do. As long as I'm alive and kickin, there’s gonna be another one and another one. And I get to decide when one ends and I get to decide how I'm gonna treat myself through it. And I get to decide what I'm gonna learn from it and how much I'm gonna have my own back. That's what I get to decide. And I get to decide it's like write the story of my life that I want. If it's we just continue with this analogy, right? If I'm gonna create this book of my life, I determine when the chapter ends. I determine when I wanna move on to something else and not everyone's gonna understand. And that's okay, they're on their own chapters. They don't need to understand what I'm doing. Right. I just have to do it. So I want you guys, if you're struggling with something where you know it's not for you anymore and you know there, you wanna make a change, just consider maybe that chapter is just over and you're ready to start a new one. And how exciting could it be to figure out what's gonna be in that chapter? Like let the excitement of that pull you towards your future rather than focusing on the dread of having to end the chapter before. Yes, there's pain from ending stuff. And yes, we process that negative emotion but there's also so much excitement waiting in that unknown, in that uncertainty. There's so much possibility. So my friends, you decide when the chapters end and when they begin and when you're ready for the next one. And if you want help crafting those, figuring out what the next chapter is for you, deciding when this one ends and to stop making it a problem that you're ending it, I want you to join me in Pave Your Path. We're gonna do this work deeply together over six months. We're gonna figure out what you want that next chapter to look like, what's important to you and what's not. We're gonna drown out the noise of everybody else. We're gonna turn down that inner critic that's telling you that you can't quit, that you can't change your mind. And so we can start figuring out like how do I create a chapter that's gonna blow my mind. And I would love to have you in there. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath and join me for the next round. Alright y'all, I'll see you 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.