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 and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. Before we jump into today's topic, which is a good one, I did wanna let you know that I'm having a, I'm having, I'm putting on a free class on April 23rd. It's called Stop Staying Stuck. One of the biggest things I hear from people is how stuck they feel in their job, in their relationships, in their life, in their health, how they don't think there's anywhere to go from here, that they've dug themselves into deep and they have no idea which way to turn.
And I just want you to know that that's a lie and that you are not stuck and that you have some difficult decisions to make and I wanna help you make them. And so this class is your guide at making tough decisions and learning how to really move forward when there doesn't seem like one right decision. So if that sounds like something you need, if you do feel stuck in your life, if you feel like I'm kind of just circling the same place and I'm not really making any forward progress, I want you to join me. You can go to quitterclub.com/stuck and sign up and you'll get the link. And you'll also get the replay if you can't make it live. So join us on the 23rd. Hope to see you there. All right, on to today's topic. Speaking of stuckness, people come to me for different reasons.
If you join the Quitter Club, you know that I have broken up the Quitter Club into different stages because people are in different stages in this journey. Some people are really in burnout, which we talked about last week. If you didn't check out that episode, you should. And they're really in a place of like, I can't even think about where I wanna go. I can't even think about what I wanna do next. Like I just have to survive right now. I am in a place where it is really survival, just how do I make it to the next week? And then we have people that work through that that get to a good place where we move you through to the next stage, which is like, well, what do I wanna do from here? Okay, like, I like it here. I even love it here. I can manage my mind here. I have boundaries. I have a pretty good life, but I want more. Which is actually a really exciting place to be by the way.
You can love where you're at and still want more, but what is the more that I want? And I think that a lot of people struggle with figuring out what it is that they wanna do for a lot of reasons, which we're gonna talk about today. And so I wanna give you a quick kind of guide on how to deal with that. Like if you're in this place, I'm gonna go ahead and apologize because it's probably not the advice you wanna hear. I think a lot of you might get upset about this because spoiler alert, there's no like magic key. There's no like secret code that I'm gonna give you that's gonna unlock your one true passion in life.
So we're gonna talk about it. All right? Okay. So we first have to understand why so many of us struggle with this question, this issue. Like what do I wanna do next? And it's a couple of things. One is that all of us being raised in the societies that we are raised have become extremely disconnected with who we are, okay? Some of us more than others, some of us have managed to retain some connection to who we were kind of before. We were told what we should be, what we should do. But for a lot of us, especially the ones who have kind of gone on those traditional paths, who did what we were told to do, who were lucky or unlucky enough to be good at school or to do well, to be able to succeed, to be able to play the game. For a lot of us, we stopped checking in and maybe we never even did it, but we never really looked at like, what is it that I want here?
What would sound fun to me, it was always like, this is what you do. And we were good at doing it. We were like, all right, gimme the task. I'm gonna knock it out of the park, right? And so for so many of us, we don't even know what we like. We don't even know who we are because we've spent so long doing what other people think we should do, acting in a way that we think we should act, chasing the elusive success that we think we should have. And so when we get there, when we've spent decades just basically living the way other people think we should and we look up and we're like, I actually don't like it here. I don't even wanna be here. We have no idea what we do like, right? Because we are not connected to that anymore for so many of us.
You can see a smaller example of this. We're disconnected from our bodies, right? For so many of us, it's so hard to be in our bodies. This is why it's so hard for us to feel negative emotion. Why we wanna escape it so much. If you think about everything that our society sort of trains us to do from when we are in school, when we are children, is to ignore the actual biological needs that you have and just do what we tell you to do. So it doesn't matter if you're hungry right now, you know, lunch isn't for another two hours or we don't even have time to eat lunch today 'cause you have to get to this deadline. Or it doesn't matter if you're tired, you know you have to be at school at 7:00 AM or you have to get up at this time and there's no time for naps and there's no time for rest.
And we have to work and you have to not be lazy. And so for a lot of us, we've gotten really good at just ignoring everything. Our body and our minds say like anything they want, we're really great at actually suppressing it and being like, no, it doesn't matter that you're bored, that you're tired, that you're hungry, that you're sleep deprived, that you're having anxiety, that you're breaking out in rashes. Just treat it quickly. Put on a cream, eat this pill, suck it up, drink some more coffee and get on with it. And so for a lot of us, we find ourselves in these places where we don't even know the littlest things about ourselves. Like we don't even know what we like to eat. I mean, we're not even gonna brush on the topic. I talk about this a lot about like the patriarchy and how women in general are very much socialized to like not have any needs and to defer to everybody else and to not make waves and to never have an opinion and to always like what you know your spouse or your partner likes.
And so a lot of us like have really difficult times even deciding what we wanna eat. Like what would I eat if nobody else was here? It's always like, oh, whatever you want. I'm easy going. And so all of this stuff, it's not like one or two things, but all of it kind of compounds to create within us this sense of lostness of like, I have no idea where I wanna be, right? And what I should be doing, I don't know where I wanna go. And when you couple that with the fact that we've also been really programmed to believe that there is a right decision, there is a right path. Like we were told for so long, like this is the quote unquote right path, this is the successful path. You put your head down, you go, you take these tests, you get these grades, you go to this school and you become successful.
And nobody told you like you do that and you might be successful and you might be miserable. And so when you're trying to chart your own path, when you're like trying to figure out, okay, well what do I wanna do when I'm not doing what everybody else told me to do? It can feel very scary because we're still looking for that quote unquote right path, right? When you couple that, that's one reason why it's really hard. Another reason is that we've been sold this idea, especially in western culture, that there is some passion or purpose that we're supposed to have, that our calling is supposed to be what we do every day, and that it is supposed to light us up and it is supposed to be the most exciting. And it's what keeps us invigorated and we feel fulfilled. And even beyond that, we have so many messages that this passion needs to be this very big, grandiose thing.
We we're saving the world, we're creating the next, you know, tech company. We're creating a nonprofit that's going to cure hunger. I mean some ridiculous thing. And so for a lot of us, when we're not on the path to doing these great things or just doing regular jobs, we constantly have these beliefs that like, this can't be it. It should be bigger than this. I should be doing more than this. I should be doing something grand and I should be doing something that lights me up, that fulfills me. That's the most amazing thing I've ever done. And I think really dispelling that is probably one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Some people, yes, find something that they can turn into their work and they're passionate about it. And that's great. And if that's you, congratulations. You're in a small percentage of people.
And that's wonderful for the vast majority of us. If you haven't found your quote unquote passion, if you don't have this one thing already, it doesn't exist. And I don't mean to say that you cannot be passionate about the work that you do. You absolutely can. And the kicker is you can be passionate about pretty much anything about a lot of things. We're so multifaceted, there's so many things that you are curious about that can light you up, that you can learn to create a love for, that you can learn to find passion in. But when we are telling ourselves like, no, it should just be this spark that ignites in me and makes me me so happy. And we, you know, hear these things where it's like you get into flow and you don't even know what time it is and you wanna work all the time.
Such. Can you be in flown once in a while? Yeah, sure. But there's nothing wrong if you are not. And for most things, most things, even if you love it, when you start doing it consistently all the time, it'll start being 50 50. And maybe it's exciting for a little while and then it's frustrating and there's stress and there's another level to it. And so this idea that somehow this thing has to come and it's gonna be rainbows and butterflies doesn't exist. I talk about this a lot in my community. I truly feel like found what I was supposed to be doing at this juncture in my life. I found something that allows me to help people, that allows me to talk about something I love that allows me to learn about something I love. And I hate it 50% of the time. Like half the time the stuff I wanna, I don't wanna do it.
It's frustrating, it's annoying. It's part of the business is me doing the things I wanna do. And part of it is doing a bunch of stuff. I don't wanna do a bunch of stuff I don't even wanna learn, right? And if I was telling myself like, oh, there's something wrong here 'cause I should wake up jumping outta bed and feeling so fulfilled and feeling so incredible and feeling so passionate every day about helping people, then I would think there's something wrong with me and I would think that this business is wrong. And I would think I would need to go find something else. And I would put myself on this never ending quest to find this thing that lights me up. And luckily for me, I just know that that doesn't exist. I know that this thing I have, I can be very passionate about and I cannot love it 50% of the time.
And nothing has gone wrong. It's totally fine, right? And so I want you to like let go of this idea of this one passion and purpose for a lot of you, like your job may just become the thing that it invests in your life. It gives you a paycheck, it's fantastic. And you can have a really fulfilling life outside of work. And you can even like work, but it's not gonna be the end all be all. For a lot of you, you are gonna wanna find something that really speaks to you and that you like doing every day. That's great. But you can also know that that is something that you can develop. Like if you have a curiosity or an interest in something, let's say you like writing and you wanna become a copywriter or something, it doesn't mean that you have to have this big old passion for it from the beginning.
It can mean like, hey, I am gonna kind of follow this breadcrumb for my curiosity and see what I like. And that can lead to a deepening understanding of the subject, more excitement, more learning, and like develop the passion that I want for this thing. But this idea of having like one soul purpose or having something that is like buried under a rock somewhere that you have to go find is absurd. Okay? It's not there. It's very western cultish, it's very individualistic. It's very much in line with what capitalism wants you to believe. 'cause it increases your output, it increases your productivity, it increases you killing yourself, it increases you like trying to innovate. All of those things are great for capitalism, but they're not great for you, right? And I think when you look in other cultures and other societies where really the focus has always been on community and it has never been on like being this sole top dog or the hero or the savior, there's a lot less pressure.
Like I think Elizabeth Gilbert, I, I saw a quote from her, I haven't read it, but I think she was saying something like that. You know, how much pressure is that on 8 billion people to be the ones that like save the world? You know? It's just a ridiculous thing. And so I think when you can take the pressure off of that, it's like the thing that you want to do or figure out what you wanna do does not have to be the end all, be all, does not have to be this one big passion project that you're gonna stick to for the rest of your life, right? Which actually gets us to the next point is again, when we go back to this idea of like there is one right, one wrong, and for so many of us, we thought we were doing the right thing.
I thought being a lawyer was the right path and then it wasn't. Lo and behold, it was not the right path. So for a lot of you that thought you were doing the right thing and you ended up somewhere where you're like, huh, this isn't what I want. I want that to be a lesson moving forward. That the next thing also doesn't have to be that. What I mean by that is for so many of you, we have this belief of like, I'm behind and if I pick something, like it has to be the right thing. What if there just is no right thing? What if you could have 10 different careers? What if it was normal for us to only be in a career for seven years and then you switch careers? Like if that was the norm of our culture, we wouldn't grapple with these existential crises of like, oh, what does it all mean?
I don't wanna do this anymore. I used to love it and now I don't. It's like, okay, that chapter was over. Now our culture isn't set up that way. And in our culture it is more beneficial to capitalism and hustle culture to get you to stay in one thing forever. But that doesn't mean that you have to accept it, right? And so I think when we can learn about humans and about the human condition is that we'll always grow, we'll always change. And so I don't know what the next thing for the rest of my life is. Like, I love what I'm doing now. I can't tell you what I'm gonna be doing in five years. It might be this might morph into something else, it might lead me to something else. It might be a completely different thing. And all of that's okay, right?
I know we need to pay our bills, and that's a different topic. I understand that. But oftentimes I think we also just get so tied in this identity and this wanting to be right and feeling ashamed because I wanna change my mind as opposed to realizing like that's what should happen as humans. You know, if we were working with our brains, our brains get bored. We want growth, we want new things. We change who we are, we change our beliefs, we change the things we're interested in. Nothing has gone wrong if we don't make it seen like something has gone wrong, right? If we don't believe something has gone wrong. And so for a lot of you, I think when you're trying to figure out what you want to do, what you get hung up on is that you want some like divine intervention, some sign from the gods that like this is the thing that you need to be doing for the rest of your life.
Like, and that's why we're so focused on finding a passion or a purpose because we think when I know that, then I'll feel certain about this path I'm gonna go on. And then that will make it feel less scary for me to make this transition, to make this jump. But it won't because there will always be doubt. You can't know how it's gonna turn out. You can't know what's gonna happen. And so as soon as you think even with things where you're like, I'm really passionate about it, you will still have a ton of doubt of like, but should I really switch to this? Is this really gonna work? What if I don't like it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right on and on and on. And so I think when we just accept those truths that like there is no passion, one passion or one purpose, that it doesn't have to be the quote unquote right decision that I can't know where it's gonna lead me or what I'm gonna do next, but I can know what's the next thing I wanna work on.
I can't know what I'm gonna do in 10 years, but I can know what interests me now, right? And so how do we know that? How do we start uncovering? So when I was talking about earlier about how so many of us are disconnected, it does not mean that those things aren't there. That those parts of you, what you actually like, what lights you up, all of that stuff is there. It's just buried. It's just buried in decades of programming of like what you should be doing. And your job is to uncover that. And so this is what I was talking about, how it's not gonna be the advice that you want to hear. For so many of you that come to me or want to find what you should do, you're in such a rush in like such a frantic, panicked way of like, I need to figure this out now because I think if I figure this thing out, then I can finally be on my way and I cannot be behind in all this other BS that we believe about where we're at.
But the truth is, is that it cannot be rushed. It cannot be something that you just do a bunch of exercises, you take an assessment online and then it tells you what you should do. This work is in getting back in touch with who you are and what you want outside of everybody else's voices, outside of all the noise that's in your family and your religion and your culture and society. It's how do we figure out, no, but who am I and what would I do if I could do anything? And if I could make money from it, what are the things I would try, right? And allowing myself to try em and allowing myself to see if it actually lights me up and doing like little mini experiments, which I have a whole section on in the Quitter club. But my advice to most people and my advice to you is to give yourself an entire year to figure out who you are.
And again, I know people don't wanna hear that. And I'm not saying you have to quit your job. You could do it while you're still at the job. I'm not saying you can't change your job in the meantime, if you want to, you don't need my permission, you're more than welcome to change your job. But I want you to just shift the way that you think about how long it's gonna take you to figure out who you are. Because what has happened is that you have to kind of spend the time these baby steps in a lot of different aspects, not just in your work, but in like really getting back to like elemental. Like really basic, what do I want today? What do I want to eat? What do I like doing anymore? What brings me joy for so many of us, we don't even know the answers to those questions.
And so the reason I tell people to give themselves a year, maybe it won't take you a year, maybe it takes you three months, great. You figure it out quickly. Maybe you have that flash of brilliance and it comes to you. I hope that happens for you, but it doesn't, for a lot of us and for so many people, we're so in a rush, we're so in a rush that we don't wanna slow down. And what that does is it just creates year after year of you spinning for so many of you, like you're such in a rush that you're like, I'm just gonna take this assessment, or I'm gonna, you know, do what this person says and I'm gonna go get this job. And then you just jump from job to job because you haven't taken the time to figure out like, but who am I and what do I want?
And what does that vision I want for my life? And how do I know that? And I feel like when you give yourself an entire year, it can lower the pressure to have to get everything done this month to have to take all the classes and know all the things. It's just like getting to know somebody else, right? Like oftentimes, yes, if you spend a lot of time together, maybe you get to know them a little bit faster, but I feel like then that just puts pressure on the getting to know someone, right? Certain relationships, certain friendships they have to develop over time as you get to know the person through a million different ways of hanging out with them. Well, the same is true with you. You are re getting to know yourself, you're reacquainting with yourself. And it doesn't happen overnight for a lot of us.
Like we want to force it. You know, it's sort of like if you look at, think of an analogy of dating, like, I wanna get married, so I need to know within the first two dates if this person's the person I'm gonna marry. Well, how's that gonna work out for you? Probably not that. Well, you know, it's not to say that you can't have a really strong connection or you can't kind of know, but you don't get to know someone in that way in such a short period of time. And when you put that pressure on, you make it that much harder to actually get to know that person, which is what happens with so many of you. It's like, I need to know right now and I'm gonna like put this pressure on. I have to pick something. And it, there's no wonder that so many of us feel so stuck and paralyzed because the amount of pressure we've put ourselves to like figure something out immediately makes us freeze.
And the solution to that is to like relaxing your grip a little bit on this idea of having everything figured out right now is to give yourself a little bit more time. Because the reality is that time is going to pass. I want you to think about like a lot of us, like you, you see, you know the memes every year, every month. Like I can't believe February's done. I can't believe we're at the end of March. I can't believe summer's here. I can't believe it's New Year's, right? I can't believe 2023 ended. And for a lot of us, when you look back, like it seems as though the year flies by, and for so many of us, we don't make any change because we stay stuck in this kind of, well, I don't know what the right choice is, like spin cycle and then we don't make any choice.
And so I just would recommend like what if you put that on pause for one year? Give yourself a year of figuring out who you are. And that doesn't mean even in business or in work, it means in your life outside of work really like spend some time intentionally like actually carved out time doing things to see if it lights you up, to see what you think about it, to see if you still have those same passions, to see if you develop new ones. You will learn so much more in a year of experimenting, in a year of getting to know yourself more, you will create so much more clarity than you trying to force some decision, some fake decision in order to feel better that you have like some path right now. You'll have so much more understanding. And listen, if nothing else, you just have more joy.
You just figure out yourself more. You know what you like more. And like that in and of itself is worth it, right? Even if you don't figure out your career, but so much stems from it, so much becomes clearer when you realize what do you putting up with it you don't wanna put up with anymore. What do you want in your relationships that you maybe don't have? What kind of communities do you wanna be a part of? What kind of things light you up? What do you wanna do on your off time? And so if you're really struggling with not knowing what you wanna do next, I highly recommend you take a year and do that. And again, maybe you figure it out in three months and you don't have to do the whole year, great. But like give yourself the gift of slowing down and like allowing it to be a year, if that's how long it takes of not needing to be all, not to spend your whole time doing it, giving yourself, you know, an hour here and there to do this work.
And like really evaluating and really being conscious of it. And that's how you start figuring out what you wanna do. I promise you. Like when you start really tapping into what do I want in my life? So many of you know what you want, you're just afraid to admit it to yourself. You're afraid because it goes against what your family wants or what society told you or what you should want. And so you keep telling yourself you don't know, but you do. And you just have to take the time to like listen to those whispers, listen to those things that are buried. And sometimes that takes time for you to build up that trust with yourself to let that come out. But it's the best work you can do. It makes everything so much clearer. And so that's my recommendation and that's what I recommend to the people in the club.
And if you wanna join us, I would love to have you in the club to help you go through that year to help you sift through all the confusion to help you work on this self-trust that you have to gain when you're doing this kind of work to help you experiment without feeling rushed, to help you know it's okay, even when you're confused and you're still spinning out and you don't know what you wanna do. This is the work that we do and I, I really would encourage you to give yourself a whole year of doing this work and doing thought work alongside with it so you don't spin out so you don't drive yourself crazy. But like see what can happen in one year, one year's time that can set you up for the next couple of decades to know yourself better, to know how to check in, to know how to do this work.
I'm gonna be opening up the doors to the Quitter Club next week and we're gonna be having a sale on the annual price. So if you wanna join the Quitter Club for a year and you wanna get it at the cheapest price you're gonna get, I want you to sign up at lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub. You can get on the waitlist and come do this work. Come figure out who you are, come tap into what you actually want, stop feeling stuck and lost and know yourself so you can know exactly where you wanna go from here and what the next step is gonna be. And I would love to help you do that. So join us in the club lessons from quitter.com/quitter club and I'll see you next week for another episode.
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 lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.