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. I get asked a lot like what I would do differently or how I would approach my career change if I was gonna quit my job as a lawyer right now and I didn't know what I wanted to do. So for a brief background, I quit my job in 2014. I didn't know what I wanted to do and I floundered for a lot of years. You know, I stumbled through my way and figured out ultimately what I love.

And I started this podcast and I created a business, but that's like 10 years in the making and I now coach hundreds of people on how to make these career changes. And I look back and think like if I was gonna do it again with the knowledge that I have now, what would I do if I was where I was back in 2014 as a lawyer? Deeply unhappy. I knew I didn't wanna stay, but I had no idea what else I could do. I truly thought like I have no other skills or passions. I've spent my whole life coming to this point and you know, investing in school and becoming a lawyer and then working as a lawyer. And so I felt very much trapped and like, well, what do I do now? And so if I could go back and talk to my 2014 self and give myself advice, this is exactly what I would do.

It's four parts to this. The first part is that I would immediately get over the shame and the guilt that I had for leaving. I wasted so much time and I see so many of my clients waste so much time on this unnecessary misguided shame about starting over or starting something else. I really struggled with the idea that I couldn't hack it or that I failed somehow, or that really more that other people would judge me for failing, that other people would think I couldn't hack it. I kept thinking like I had worked so hard to get to this point and now I was gonna walk away and all these people were gonna see this failure. And I felt a lot of shame about that. I also felt a lot of guilt, like, who the hell am I to be this unhappy? Like I have a job that people would kill for.

I was making really good money. I was a quote unquote success. And so I felt really guilty about wanting more about it not being good enough. And it was so much wasted energy. It was so much wasted time. The amount of time I spent spinning in these thoughts is why it took me so long to figure out what I wanted to do because I spent years circling the drain. Really like raking myself over the coals, over this notion that I was doing something wrong. Now looking back and having done so much of this like thought work and mindset work, I see how ridiculous it was. Like, of course you wanna change, you're human being that grows and evolves. I wasn't the same person in my thirties that I was in my twenties. I had had a kid, I got married and my priorities changed. And the things that the law offered, which I didn't know before I went into it, um, which you know, they don't do a good job telling you before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Getting that degree were not things I wanted for my life, and that was okay. And it's okay to say this isn't what I want. I want something else. And I think that if I had realized that it meant nothing about my character or whether I could be successful or whether I was smart or anything else other than I tried something, it didn't work. It's not what I thought it was. I don't like it for whatever reason, and I wanna try something else. It could have been as simple as that. And I think if I allowed myself to just want what I want to know, like for whatever reason you're not happy here and forcing yourself to be happy because that somehow makes you more grateful is absurd. So let's just accept that you're not happy. Cut our losses and decide what we wanna do. So that's the first thing I would do.

And that's the first thing I would recommend for anybody else that is struggling with these thoughts. I promise you there's nothing wrong with you for wanting something different. There's nothing wrong with you for growing and evolving and there deciding you wanna try something else. There's nothing wrong with you for knowing that something is not a fit. There's nothing wrong with you for having a chapter in and be like, you know what? I'm ready for another chapter. All of that is not only normal, it's to be expected. It's simply that the way that our society has set up jobs, which are made up, our careers are all made up. We made up a society where we have these things called jobs where we trade money for, you know, our skills. We decided that like the marker of success was picking something at 18 or 20 or 22 and sticking to it for the rest of your life.

And that's just a made up random system that doesn't work for most people. And most people that do even stay are just extremely unhappy the whole time. And so I just decided my happiness was more important than trying to maintain face or to try to be a success in other people's eyes. So that's the first thing I would do because I would just save so much time where I could get on with it and actually make a plan for what I wanted to do. If I wasn't beating myself up for being a failure, the second thing that I would do is make a financial plan. And I realized how absurd, like how simple that sounds. Of course you need to know your finances, but it's something that I think so many people shy away from. So did I. It's like looking at your numbers is extremely scary.

And I think oftentimes we like to believe like, oh, I can't quit because we can't swing it financially. Mostly because we're all again programmed with the idea that you have to stay in the thing that you've chosen and that you have to have a paycheck every two weeks. And if you don't have that, then there's something wrong with you or that you're at huge risk. And I wasted a lot of time not really understanding my own financials. So I would do that immediately. I would know our expenses. How much debt do we have? What is our income? You know, what would we need to cover our expenses? How much do we have in savings? I would really kind of get an understanding of what is my runway? Like, how long do I have in order to cover my expenses with our savings without me needing to work? Because one, I think for some people we'll offer you a lot of security. Like it'll calm you down a little bit to realize like maybe you're in a good position. And for other people it might just make things clear like maybe you can't quit. Okay, good to know, right? Maybe I have to do whatever I'm gonna do on the side or on the weekends, or I'm gonna have to kind of take it slow as I do this thing because I need to have this income. Or maybe I need to save for a year and create that runway before I quit. Whatever it is, it's like you can't make a plan for what you're gonna do until you understand your finances. And I think for a lot of us, we just make the jump. We're so scared to look at it, and then we get so burned out that we just quit.

And you're putting yourself in a worse position. I know it can be scary to look at your numbers, but I promise you it is the best thing that you can do. And I really wish I had done that sooner because I held off on quitting for a long time and I held myself in this place of like, oh, I can never work for myself. I have to get another job. 'cause we needed the money and it was kind of a lie. That wasn't really what our financials reflected. It was really more my fears about finances. It was really a lot of the programming around money and scarcity that I had, and I wish I had just looked sooner. So then again, I could just get on with what the plan was gonna be. So the financial plan is the second thing. The third thing I would have done differently is that I would give myself a certain amount of time to just explore.
When you don't know what you wanna do, oftentimes the reason is that you don't really even know who you are anymore. For so many of us, in order to become a quote unquote success, you were forced to basically suppress everything that is you. You suppress your own needs, your own desires, your body's needs, right? Like you work and study as much as you needed to. You followed a path that somebody else told you. And so for a lot of us, we lost a lot of our curiosity along the way. We lost the things that we were interested in because we were so singularly focused on the path we were trying to climb. And there is benefit to that. It is a huge skill to be able to do that. And that's one of the reasons that you likely are successful. And it was one of the reasons I was successful as a lawyer.

But what happens is that by the time I wanted to leave, I truly had no idea who I was. I really didn't understand like if I wasn't doing it for anybody else, if I wasn't trying to make everybody else happy or do the things that I thought society would say is a success or I wasn't, you know, like being the perfect whatever, employee, daughter, lawyer, what do I even want to do? Who even am I? What is it that I even like? Like I truly didn't know the answers to that. And a quick test for a lot of you is like, I didn't even know what I wanted to eat. If people would ask me like, where do you wanna go for dinner? I had no opinion. I was just like, oh, whatever everybody else wants, you know? And listen, there's one thing to be easygoing and there's another to literally have no idea what your own wants and desires are.

And so you have to give yourself time to reconnect to that part. And you have to give yourself time for that to come up. I promise you it's there for every one of you. Human beings are curious creatures. Our brains are designed for growth. You never see a kid that isn't curious. It's sort of beaten out of us in society, but it's there. And so you need to tap into that. You need to really think like, what am I curious about? What are things I like working on? What are things I like learning about talking about? And what I didn't do at the time is I didn't give myself enough space to explore. I think I was so panicked of like, I need to find the next thing. I need to find the thing I'm gonna do that I would give myself short spurts. But I really wish I had given myself a longer period of time to just like take classes and read books and go to meetups and talk to different people about what they did and learn about what else is out there and get a better idea of what really piques my interests.

And do that without the pressure of like, I need to decide this right now and I need to know if the next thing is gonna be the thing that I'm gonna do for work. Which like so many of us put that pressure on. I needed it to be more of like, who am I? And what do I like and what do I wanna learn about? And I feel like there's so many ways to parlay that into careers, into jobs, into businesses. But a lot of us don't spend the time doing that now. I did that over the years. I think over the last 10 years I have spent a lot of time cultivating who I am and what I like and what really like piques my interest and what excites me. But I wish I'd done it given myself more time in the beginning to do that work.
And it's not something that you have to do like full hour. It's like you have to quit your job and give yourself a year to just explore. You can do it while you're working you, but you have to like set aside time, you know, on the weekends at nights where you're spending that time really digging deeper into the things that spark your interest and spark your curiosity and that give you life and that don't drain your energy. And the more you come back to that, I promise you there's tons of different careers that you'll likely find in that area, in that industry. But you have to know that first. So I would give myself a timeframe, maybe a year, to just explore things without the pressure of like having to figure out what the career is gonna be. Um, and then the last thing I would do is kind of the opposite of that.

So there's like the explore stage, but you have to get to a place where you start taking action. 'cause you could explore forever because there is no one right thing. There are so many things you would likely find interesting. There are so many avenues that you could pursue. And I think one of the biggest disservices we do is like we try to find the quote unquote right next career. We think there's just like one passion, one thing that's gonna make me so fulfilled and we end up wasting so much time spinning because we don't know which one is the right one. And there isn't a right one. There's tons of different ones. There's tons of different things you could do and make yourself fulfilled in. And there comes a point where you have to force yourself to take action. 'cause otherwise you're just too afraid to ever do it.
You're too afraid of getting it wrong. You're too afraid of failing, you're too afraid of wasting time. All of the things. And I think that for me, I would set like a deadline maybe like after a year where regardless of what it is, I have to start taking action. I have to start on one path and see where that goes. Because I promise you, even failing of that path will take you further where you can pivot than standing and kind of spinning in place. Ever will I sort of ended up doing this? It's one of the things I'm most proud of myself for doing. When I decided to start my first business, which was a photo booth business, I knew that it wasn't something I was passionate about. I knew that it wasn't the end all be all. I knew it wasn't gonna be something where I'm like, this is gonna be the best thing that ever happens to me.

But I was so sick of waiting, I was so sick of not knowing what to start at that point kind of decided I wanted to start a business. And I just decided like, you know what? This is gonna be my education and business. Instead of going back and getting an MBA and spending $80,000 there, I'm just gonna spend my time and energy on this business and I'm gonna learn a hell of a lot. I'm gonna learn sales and marketing and the backend, and I'm gonna learn manufacturing and software and hardware and all this other stuff. And I'm so glad I did because ultimately that business is no longer like I don't run it anymore. But it was the best like three or four years of education I could have gotten. And it absolutely set me up for this business, which ended up being what I do love.

And it led me to this business. It led me to seeing what I liked about business. It required me to work on my mindset, which is what kind of got me involved in a lot of this. And so I say this now, also, seeing so many other people, it's very rare that you see people where they're like, I quit this. I picked this other thing. It's a huge success. It's the love of my life. It's all I ever want to do. Usually it's people like, especially if they don't know what they wanna do, is I picked this, I started now on this path. I liked this about it. I didn't like this. I, you know, learned about another job from this other person that I met through this job. I pivoted to that. Then I tried this. Now I, and then it's like step after step, right?
Like you kind of go on this path and you're like, okay, I like this, I don't like this. I'm gonna keep pivoting. And then you're getting closer and closer to your own north star, to the thing that lights you up. You know, not the one thing, but just one of many things that you actually do love. And so I wouldn't waste as much time waiting for the quote unquote right thing. And I would just set a deadline of like, we have to then take action. We're either gonna start the business, we're gonna get another job, we're gonna network, we're gonna see how this works. We're gonna be really aware and conscious of like, what do I like about this? What do I not, how is this gonna set me up for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing? So that's what I would do.

I would get over the guilt and shame. I would make a financial plan. I would give myself time to explore, and then I would force myself to take action and I would learn from those actions and I would keep pivoting. And I think I could have sped up my process by five years probably. But you know, this is my journey and I love it. And it's led me here and it's been fine. But I want for you to know that it doesn't have to take you as long as it took me. If you spend the time doing these things, if you get outta your own way, you get outta your own head, you stop beating yourself up. You let yourself explore and then you take action. So that's what I would do if I was gonna quit today. And if you want help in those stages, it's funny because that's how my program is built.

We have an exploration stage, we have an action stage because I know how to get you from where you are, where you don't know what you wanna do, to figuring out who you are and what those big dreams that have been buried are and how to actually get into action and implement. You can join me in my membership, the Quitter Club at lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub, and we can do this work in depth. I would love to have you in there. And if not, then I'll catch you next time for another podcast 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 wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.