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 you are here. How are we all? If I haven't told you all, I have a free class for you. It's called The Secret to Creating a Career You Love and it'll give you my three step roadmap that I use with my clients to help you get out of burnout, figure out what you wanna do and actually create that career kind of brick by brick. Uh, if you want that class completely for free, it's about 45 minutes long, you can go to quitter club.com/class and sign up for that.
Make sure you go and check that out. All right, if you didn't listen to last week's podcast episode, I would suggest going back and listening to that first, you can listen to this, they're standalone podcasts, but I think last week I did a podcast called The Paradox of Choice and it was all about how having too many choices is what leads to a lot of us to kind of be in this analysis paralysis, stuck place year after year because we don't know what the right one is and we don't know what we would like. And and we're gonna kind of continue on with that theme today for people who wanna get started on a path in their career but just don't know what they want to do. So I would suggest starting with that because I think that it lays the foundation so you can kind of understand what's happening with your brain when you're given too many choices and you can start seeing how many choices you really are making every single day and why so many of us have this decision fatigue and are exhausted and making really big life changing decisions just seems impossible at this point.
And it's funny because after I recorded that episode, you know like when you become aware of something, you just see it everywhere. Like I talk about this a lot, um, like you wanna buy that car and all of a sudden see, you see that car everywhere? Well that's been happening to me since the last week since I did that episode. I've just been noticing how many choices we have when we make a decision and how often we have to make decisions. And so this is just a piggyback to the episode last week. It may not make sense to you if you haven't listened, but I was going for a walk and I like to go for walks a lot because it gives me a chance obviously to get outside. I work at home and I rarely leave the house and to get fresh air and exercise all that.
But honestly, the reason I like doing it is because it gives me an hour of uninterrupted time to listen to my podcast or an audio book that I'm listening to that I wanna get through or whatnot. And since I don't commute, I don't really have that time to listen to it. And so I use it as an excuse to be able to listen to my books and stuff. But I realized even in that how often I'm like panicked because I don't know what I should listen to. 'cause there's so many choices and there's so many things I wanna get to. There's so many books I wanna listen to. And then my podcasts start piling up because I'm listening to books and then I start getting panicked of like, oh my God, I have this backlog of podcast and I realize how much anxiety it starts causing me.
And it's insane. It's absolutely insane. Like it's insane for me to get anxiety about that, to create anxiety. It's also insane. Like of course I'm never gonna get to all the books I wanna listen to or read. I'm never gonna listen to all the podcasts I wanna listen to. I'm never gonna learn all the things. There's just so many things and there's constantly more things. And one of the things I had to get really good at is like just being okay with not getting to it. Like being okay knowing that like good enough is good enough, picking one is good enough, just anyone. 'cause I would realize there would be times where I would like be outside of my door with my walking shoes on with everything ready, just paralyzed over my phone not knowing what to pick. Like reading between the podcast episode titles like between the like five podcasts I listened to, like which one should I listen to on this walk and like feeling this pressure.
And it was absurd obviously, but it was just another, you know, instance. Another example of just in every mundane thing, like even deciding do I go for a night walk now or do I sit and read a book or do I, you know, get some more work done or like just constant choices and a constant ability to decide what I'm gonna do, which is fantastic but can be paralyzing. So I just share that because I started noticing it. I started noticing it about all the options with like food and what you can eat and where we can order and where we could go and how we spend our time and what we watch and Netflix. And you know, there's like the memes now the jokes about scrolling Netflix for 30 minutes and then not picking anything. Like you spent so much time and you couldn't choose anything so you ended up like just picking up your phone.
This happens all over our lives. And so I want you to just become aware of that because I want you to see that it's a product of the environment that we live in and not you not being good at making decisions. It's just that humans in history never had to make this many decisions all the time. It was kind of outlined what you would do with your day and there wasn't that many choices and you kind of did the same thing and ate the same thing all the time and that was it. And you know, we're lucky that we don't have that. But anyways, it's been fascinating for me to observe. And so if you haven't, you know, I would suggest like observing yourself, like how many decisions are you making every day and how many choices do you have for that decision for that time?
It starts becoming really illuminating. And that is what leads me to talk about this. Honestly, the reason I wanted to do that episode is because I wanted to do this episode and I figured we needed kind of the foundation to talk about how too much choice is actually kind of ruining us and can be a bad thing. And how you have to limit yourself. And that comes because I coach so many people on this problem, one of the biggest problems I see is that people want to get started but don't know what they want to do. And that can manifest or show itself in different ways. For some people it's, I don't even know what I want. Like I wanna get started, but I have no idea, there's no interest. I have, I don't even know what's out there. There's so many things out there.
I don't know where to start. I don't know what industry to look at. I don't know where to even go. Or it can be, I have so many things I'm interested in. There's so many things I want to do. There's so many different career paths. I don't know which one to start with. I don't know where to go. Those are typically like the two camps that I see. It is either too much choice or not enough choice or like too many interests and not enough interest. Either way, it leaves us sort of paralyzed in the what do I do, right? Where do I start? What is the first step? And I always see people caught up in this because this decision hinges on this assumption of like there is a right decision. And this goes back and I've done a lot of episodes about decision making and how there is no right decision and how there is no final decision and how there is no easy decision.
You know when it comes to these things and how you still have to make the decision without knowing how it's gonna turn out. So you know, I'm not gonna get into the decision making aspect of it, but I think that for a lot of us, we think that there is one right path that's gonna be the answer to all of our problems and it's gonna lead to this great business or this new career that I'm gonna love and I'm gonna never regret it. And all of my happiness lies at the end of that. And if I don't choose that, then I'm gonna be stuck in the same kind of jumping from thing to thing. I'm gonna waste more time, I'm gonna get there and I'm not gonna like that. And then what? And people are gonna judge me and people are constantly gonna wonder what I'm doing.
And so of course if these are my kind of two options, I wanna pick the right one. But how can I know? How can I know which one it's gonna be, right? How do I know what is the right business for me to choose? How do I know what is the right career for me to go after? And so then we just stay stuck and we stay paralyzed. And I think the problem is that because there's so many choices because there's never, you know, it's not as though it's like hey these are your three choices of careers. You can either be a lawyer or doctor or or an engineer. It becomes easier when it's that and you're like, well I don't like blood so I guess I'm not gonna be a doctor and I can't stand math so I guess I'm not gonna be an engineer.
So I guess it's a lawyer, right? Like that becomes kind of an easier process of elimination, but that's not the case. And there's like you could be anything. My mom used to always say growing up, like in America you can make money doing anything. Like it truly is a place where you can make a business out of anything. There's so many different types of careers and that becomes paralyzing 'cause you don't even know what's out there. And when you tell yourself, I don't know what I don't know, like maybe there's something better. Maybe there's something I haven't thought of. Maybe there's something perfect for me and that keeps so many of you stuck year after year after year after year. And so I want you to start thinking about this decision differently. I want you to realize there isn't two doors, one to all of your dreams and happiness and rainbows and butterflies and the other to your demise and a life of hell.
Like that's not how it's gonna work ever. As you know, like one of the biggest concepts I preach all the time is that your life is 50 50. No matter what you do, you'll have the human experience, it'll be both good and bad. That is the most liberating news and also terrifying because we were sold some lie, some dream that like happiness is some destination you can get to. And once you figure it out and you get there, you can forego all the stress and anxiety and just live this like beautiful life. And while you can make yourself happy and you can find things that give you joy in your life, it's not a destination that you arrive at. It's like any other emotion that's gonna be fleeting, it's gonna come and go. Which is why it does not matter how much money you make.
It does not matter the title you have. It doesn't matter the work you do, it doesn't matter how passionate you are. Half the time you're still gonna not wanna do it. You're still gonna be too tired or annoyed by the people you have to deal with or things are gonna fall through or it's gonna cause stress or whatnot because that is what human emotions are. This is why you know, it's not like the richest, famous, beautiful people are just happy go lucky. A lot of them are the most tortured because it has nothing to do with those things. And I think that when you realize that like when you're hanging your hat on this, like I have to find the one thing, what you do is you forego all of the learning that you could be doing in that time. And so what I mean by that is for a lot of us, we look at it as if there are these two decisions and it's like these doors and you're like, I just gotta open the door and it's gonna be this straight path to where I wanna go.
But that's not what it is. That's not how you have to think about your life. The way I think about it, which , I dunno if this is helpful or not 'cause this is sometimes overwhelming, but I always like when I think about my business or anything is like I think of myself on the like edge of a forest and there's no path and I maybe have like a machete or something and I just have to walk through and I have to figure out where I'm going and it's disorienting. It's hard because it's like do I go left or right or do I go straight? How do I know? I mean there's some clues maybe I can listen for things, maybe I can hear if there's a creek up ahead, you know, maybe there's some things I can start learning about this landscape but it isn't as though I'm trying to find some well trodden path and just follow that.
And when I look at that where it's like there is no right answer and it's up to me to decide and I get to keep deciding and I get to keep learning and then I get to make new decisions and I get to pivot and I get to move on, the best thing you can do is just get started. And I know this feels terrifying for so many of us because we have been raised in a system that taught us that the path is laid out for you, you just fall along with someone else said. And there are easy steps or discernible steps that you have to follow and everybody just follows these steps and then you get to this dreamland. And for a lot of us, we did do that. You know, we went to school, we got the degrees, we took the tests, we got into graduate school, we got those degrees, we started working, we did the path that other people told us and look where that got a lot of us to a place we don't want to be.
And so yes, there are paths that are laid out but that often isn't the path that you want for your life. And so taking back that responsibility of like what is it that I want means that you have to start kind of figuring out what path makes sense for you instead of just going along with what other people have told you. But because we've been programmed to believe that there is some right path, we keep searching for that. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news to tell you, but there is none. There is none. But when you start looking at your life like as a series of experiments or chapters and that the way that you will kind of make your way through it is through experimentation, which means trying and failing and evaluating and pivoting, right? It means like taking a step, seeing what you like, seeing what you don't like, taking another step moving forward, like learning more about yourself, getting closer to kind of your north stars.
Seeing like, hey, what lights me up? What doesn't light me up? Moving in those directions like you'll get so much further faster doing that than you will sitting and waiting for someone to give you an answer, for you to have some like divine intervention that tells you, hey, this is what you should be doing with your life because that's not gonna come unfortunately. And so the biggest thing you can do is experiment. The biggest thing you can do is allow yourself to experiment, is to try things and to learn and to pay attention. I think what happens that ends up being really hurtful and as a pattern for a lot of us is because we were taught that we have to be perfect. We have to only do things we're good at. We can never fail. A lot of what we do is we try something or we attempt to try something and we're terrified of failing because if we do, we know that we're gonna make it mean that we're not good enough.
We're gonna start attaching all these stories. We're gonna call ourselves all the names in the book. We're gonna tell ourselves that we knew we couldn't trust ourselves. We're gonna make it so painful because it clearly means that there's something wrong with me and that I wasn't cut out and I'm not smart enough and I'm not good enough and that's why I failed and whatnot. And that's the only thing you have to work on is not doing that. Because if you can decide like I'm either gonna get the result I wanted, which means I'm gonna do it, it's gonna work out the way I wanted, I'm gonna be a success or I'm gonna get the lesson I needed, which means I'm gonna learn a lot from this. I'm gonna learn about myself, I'm gonna learn about this thing, I'm gonna learn about what is a good fit for me, what part isn't and that's gonna move me a step closer.
When you can start looking at it like that and not make it mean anything about you, you kind of open yourself up to this world of not only possibilities but a world of learning, of getting to know yourself better, of getting to know the world better, of getting to know what you like better, of letting yourself kind of naturally discover things and go into new chapters. But for so many of us we're just like at a standstill waiting at the end of this forest wanting someone to just give us the path and that never comes. So we just keep standing there year after year after year. And so I want to urge you, especially if you don't know what you should be doing, well if you do know, then you should of course get started. But if you don't know, just start taking action. I know that sounds backwards, but I'm telling you the clarity you want is a result of your actions.
It's not, you think you have to get clear and then take action, but you take action in order to get clear. The more action you take, the clearer you become. The more you learn about yourself, the more you start like figuring out where you want to go from here. I talk about this, I haven't talked about it in a while, but the best thing I did for myself in this journey when I quit my law degree was start a business when I knew before I started it that that business was not something I was passionate about, was not something that I wanted to do long term. So when I left the law, um, I was lost for a couple of years. Well, I mean I was raising my son, I was kind of searching for a business, I was doing a lot of networking, I was trying to figure out what I, I thought I was gonna get another job.
Um, I was doing a lot of like mindset work. I was doing a lot of things but I didn't know what I was gonna start. And I'd kind of gotten to this place where like I really wanted to start a business but I didn't know what business. And so I started going down that path of learning more about business and going to entrepreneurial events and talking to people in startups and looking at different types of businesses. And I had gone down the path of like two or three businesses before realizing like they weren't for me, it wasn't something I could do. It was a little too much for my like expertise at the time. And I ended up stumbling on this idea for a photo booth business. Um, I've give told the story a lot so I'm not gonna like go into it, but it was, you know, born out of the need of creating a photo booth for my son's first birthday.
And um, that sort of started me down this road of talking to my husband about building this contraption. At the time there was no like iPad photo booths. This was 10 years ago now. Um, and so I started like thinking about creating one for myself and then I was like, I think I could rent this. I think I could sell this. And I remember at the time thinking about starting this business and really grappling with this idea of like, okay, but this is not something I love. Like I'm not like super passionate about photo booths. I'm not excited every day to like learn about the photo booth industry or to do a rental business. There was a lot of reasons why I shouldn't do it. I didn't want something that tied me to like nights and weekends where I would have to be at events because of my son.
I didn't want, I didn't really care about like the event industry. Like I wasn't like I wanted to be, you know, working with wedding planners, things like that. Like it's not like that kind of stuff excited me. I didn't really care about hardware or software that much. I was more interested in software. I had thought about doing some other software companies but like I really wasn't interested in manufacturing hardware, which is what I was gonna be doing. Um, and learning about manufacturing. But what I was excited about was learning about business. And what I started realizing was I was, I had been like even toying with the idea of going to business school and I was like, well if I like business then maybe I should go back to school. 'cause I feel like that's the default for everybody that is good at school or like felt comfort in school or feels validated by having some degree.
I thought, well if I don't know what I want, I might as well go get another degree. And I realized at the time, like I think the business school I was looking at was like 80 K or something like that. And I was like, I'm willing to take out loans and go $80,000 in debt to potentially learn about business that I may or may not wanna do and like kind of groom me more to be in the c-suite, which is not really what I wanna do. And I really wanted to do entrepreneurship. And so I remember at the time being like, you know what? I can invest a fraction of that into my own business and just have this be my learning ground. So like I went forward knowing I don't love this, it won't be my passion for the rest of my life. It likely will not be something that I continue 10 years down the line.
I didn't know how long I would do it, but I was like, I can give the next two years to this. I can get this off the ground. I know I'll learn a lot, I'll learn a lot about manufacturing, I'll learn a lot about software. I'll learn a lot about sales and marketing about the backend of a business. I'll learn about the event industry. Maybe that will spark another idea, maybe that will lead me to another business. And so that's how I started the photo booth business. And I can say like of all the things that I'm proud of myself for, that is probably one of the highest things that I really am so grateful to my past self for because it was an unbelievable learning ground for me. Like the amount I learned in those two years about myself, about business was unmatched. And I would not be here, I would not have started the podcast if I hadn't done that.
If I hadn't started with that, I wouldn't have found the confidence to start the podcast. Even though I felt very like self-conscious when I still started the podcast. And I was very scared had I not put myself out there with another business. Like I had to deal with all of my fears about who am I to start this business? What are people gonna think? I don't know anything about a photo booth industry, people are gonna judge me. Like I had to deal with all that. So like by the time I got to the podcast, it was actually a lot easier to deal with. I mean I was still terrified, but it was like, well I've already done it once. You know, if people judge me, they've already judged me. I might as well like try something else. It sort of weirdly liberated me to try other things.
But I will say like I just took a lot of that knowledge now, not all of it. Like I don't do anything with hardware and software now. So it's not like, it's like I learned how to like use that in my next business. But I did learn that I can figure things out. You know, these are two different types of industries that were very difficult in my mind. Like I thought, I have no idea what it is. And I realized like it actually didn't take that much to learn about them. It didn't take that much networking, it didn't take that much digging, it didn't take that much research. And I learned a hell of a lot and I made a lot of connections and I learned how to get photo booths made and I started manufacturing them and I got software built and I dealt with a lot of ups and downs in that and I learned a lot about whether I was gonna do that in India or locally and how much money it costs and all this other stuff.
And it just helped me gain that confidence in myself that like, hey, I've dealt with obstacles that I have no idea how to overcome and I've overcome them so I'm sure I can do it. When I was coming to the podcast, I knew that I could overcome whatever was gonna come up with this. I just say that to say like I think that it taught me about business, but it also really taught me about myself. And the more I got into it, the more I learned about what lit me up and what didn't and what parts of it I wanted to do and what parts I didn't. And that's what sort of made it more clear to me that I wanted to do more of like an like an online business and I wanted to be more front facing with clients. And I wanted to have something where it was more service based and it wasn't like a product based business.
I mean I learned all these things because I did the other thing. Like I did a product based business and I was like, huh, this has a lot of problems I don't wanna deal with. And I would rather put my time and energy into something that is me helping people. Like I was getting really excited about mindset work. But the thing is, is like even when I started the podcast, I wasn't certain this was gonna work. I didn't even know, I honestly didn't start the podcast thinking I was gonna be a coach. In fact, I said I would never be a coach and I didn't think that the business was gonna turn out this way. I thought I was gonna have a podcast business, quote unquote. Like I would have sponsors and I would just do interviews and that kind of stuff. And even that I had to get started without knowing what it was gonna be, without knowing what the choices were and like how I was gonna grow it.
And so I think that one of the things that I've seen with a lot of people and so many people that I coach, I look at the difference between the ones that are quote unquote successful. And I'm not trying to say successful in like the monetary sense or I, I guess however we wanna kind of like track it. But what I mean is like they're getting closer to the thing they wanna do. They feel more lit up, they're doing work that they want. And it's always the people that are willing to constantly try and veil at things until they figure it out. I rarely ever see people say like, I quit this, I got this other job and it's perfect and it's the best thing I've ever done and it solves all of my problems. And it's amazing. And I'm sorry if that's like bad news.
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I also don't wanna like set you up for failure and I don't want you to think that there's something wrong with you. And I don't want you to think that if you jump and you go to one other job and it's not the thing that you want, then that means that you can't be happy anywhere. 'cause none of that's true either. What I've noticed is that the people that go on this journey have to start kind of at the beginning of learning more about themselves. And that takes time and that takes experimentation and that takes the learning and that takes trying and that takes failing and that, you know, and you have to sort of be willing to go on that journey in order to figure out that career that you want, that like dream career that you have for yourself.
And I tell people to think of it in that way. Think of it as a chapter. Like you don't think of it as like, what is the best business I can come up with that I can start? What is the business that's gonna be my passion project that's gonna be the best thing that I ever do? Like that's too much pressure. And you may not want that for your first business because you may end up hating it, right? You may end up hating business and maybe you don't wanna like bring something that's so near and dear to your heart into that. But like what could you do now? Right? What could you start now while you're figuring it out, what could you use as like an experimentation ground as a place to learn about yourself, to learn other skills, to figure out what you need, what you don't need?
What can you just start in order to get started and then you know, take other baby steps. You're gonna have to take a million baby steps. And so my, I guess message to you on this is for so many of us, we get so paralyzed because we think we don't know the right one. There's so many choices and there's so much to get started on. And you're right, there is and there is no right one. How can anyone tell you? Like nobody could have told me. I had no idea what was gonna happen with the photo booth business to be honest with you. I could have stuck with it. I could have raised money, I could have done a lot of things with it. I just chose to pivot when I sort of discovered this desire to start this podcast and this business. And I'm glad I did.
But it's not as though I could have predicted how it would've gone. And I could have never predicted when I started that that I was gonna start a podcast about like mindset and careers and how to transition. And so I think if you're waiting for that clarity, if you're waiting for this one true answer, the one best answer you're gonna have, and you're gonna be happy and nothing ever bad's gonna happen, you're gonna be paralyzed forever. You're gonna get stay stuck forever because that answer is not gonna just reveal itself even as you're going through it. There will constantly be doubt, even at my business now that I love and I've been doing for five years, there's constantly doubt, am I doing the right thing? Should I keep doing this? Should I do something else? Should I add something else? Should I be helping people in a different way?
Should I structure this differently? Should I offer a different product? Right? It's not as though it's like, oh, this is exactly what I should do and I know exactly how to do it. I don't, and that's okay. And I've sort of become comfortable with the unknown, with the uncertainty, with the fact that there is no right answer with the fact that I just making this all up as I go and I can keep making it up and I can change my mind. And you have to get comfortable with that. Like we are really terrible at that because we want certainty. People will often give us this false certainty, like our society will tell us like, okay, check these off and you'll be happy. Get the promotion, get this type of job, make this much money, buy the house, get the picket fence, get married, have kids.
That's what you need to be happy. And we've all done it and we all know like, oh, well that didn't do it. I mean, maybe it did ill certain things, but there's more. And the more you start to kind of start realizing like, how do I pave my own path? How do I decide? What's the next step for me? How do I just take one step and learn and evaluate and pivot? That is how you start finding your own North star and using your own compass and going towards the thing that's gonna light you up. And even within that, I wanna tell you, like we talked about it in the last episode, there isn't just one thing for any of us humans in general are multi-passionate, multi-car beings. You'll never see a kid that only is curious about one thing, like they might be more curious about some things.
But a lot of our curiosity and our drive for growth and for learning is stamped out in our society as we become adults. And that's fine, there's certain things that we have to take care of, but for a lot of us that can't access it, it is because it's been buried. But once you start kind of listening to yourself and moving forward and taking steps, you start uncovering, it starts coming back up. You start realizing like, oh, I could be interested in X, Y, and Z and it's true. Like there's 10 other things I could do right now that I sure I would love. And part of that requires the restraint. Part of that requires for me to limit my own choices and say like right now, for the next couple of years, this chapter for me is here and I'm gonna stick with this and I'm gonna still pay attention.
I'm still gonna listen to myself and like, what is it about this that lights me up? What other things could I do? How could I incorporate things? You know, as you do that, like you have to sort of listen to these things that help you decide what path you wanna be on, but know that there's no one answer. That there will always be like these shiny objects that are gonna distract you, that are gonna tell you like, oh, it's better here. You should have probably picked this. And you get to decide when you're gonna pivot if you are gonna jump to something. It's not to say that you shouldn't, it's just to say that there's so many opportunities, there's so many choices, and you have to learn how to constrain and you have to learn how to take action. And you have to learn how to pick one thing and put other things on the back burner so that you can finally start taking those steps to figure out what it is that you wanna do.
So my friends, I want you to just figure out, even if you don't know what you wanna do, what is one thing you can do to get started? Maybe that's just going to a networking event. Maybe that's, recall reaching out to someone on LinkedIn for an informational interview to ask them about their job. Maybe that's shadowing someone that you're interested in their job and they're your friend and you've wanted to see what their day-to-day looks like. I don't know. What's one thing you can do instead of sitting and just spinning about what is the right decision or the best decision or what's gonna answer all of your problems because that answer's not coming. All right, my friend. So pick one thing, take a step, take action. I promise you clarity will come from that. I hope you found this helpful, and I'll be back next week with 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.