Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. I, um, wanna do like a mid-year update on this episode. I usually do an update at the end of the year. I give you kind of like a year in review. This isn't gonna be like that. Um, but just to say, I don't normally kind of do an update in July. Right now we're in July, 2025. Um, but some things have happened and I've been sort of observing myself going through this transition period that I am in my life and it's a lot of what I coach my clients on, and I notice some of the things that I do differently that saves me a lot of the pain and suffering that I think other people going through this, um, tend to heap on themselves. And so I figured it might be helpful to relate kind of what I'm going through, um, what I'm doing and more importantly what I'm not doing because I think a lot of you might relate.

And I think a lot of us are likely going through very similar feelings as lots of things are happening in the world. Um, and so I figured I would just take an episode to talk to you about what's going on with me, and hopefully that helps you wherever you're at in your career or your life. So I, if you listened like a couple episodes ago, I had said that I was going to Banff with my family for three weeks. We, one of our dreams has been to live in other places and we knew that we weren't gonna be able to do that kind of full time with our kids in school and our community in California. And so we had just decided we're gonna try to work towards going places for the summer, renting a house, um, kind of having a slower travel, um, working from there.

My husband and I are both lucky enough that we can work remotely and so we do this kind of work play type situation. I think it's funny because I don't typically batch my content, my, um, podcasts and stuff. I don't like doing it. I've tried doing it. I get that it is helpful for the like, systems side of it. Like if you wanna create a system and you wanna make sure that you have, um, you know, a cushion in case something comes up and you don't have to constantly be making content every week, I understand the appeal of it. What I don't like about it is like I feel like I batched five episodes and then I went to Banff and the world went to hell. Um, not really. I mean, the world has kind of always been a dumpster fire, but a lot happened in that month and it felt very disjointed for me, even listening to my own podcast, which I don't listen to episodes, but seeing the episodes come out, I felt like all this stuff is happening and I'm just like talking about a random topic and I'm not talking about anything.

And so it felt weird for me. Um, but that is all to say like, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because a lot happened in that month for me. So I went to Banff, which was wonderful, and it was dreamy and it was amazing. But the day that I got to Banff was when, um, Israel bombed Iran. And again, as you, if you're a long time listener, then you know, I am Iranian. And you know, I recently went to Iran a couple months ago, and so obviously a lot of my trip, it couple of weeks was spent with a lot of, um, anxiety and a lot of checking the news and a lot of trying to check in with my family in Iran and trying to do what I could to kind of, um, spread information and help them and figure out where they were gonna be.

And a lot of them, some of them were leaving Tehran and some of them were staying and the internet was being cut. There was a lot happening and it was a very weird juxtaposition. It was a very strange time to sort of be on vacation and be in this really beautiful place and have a lot of this privilege and blessings and also hold space for my family who was experiencing a war and was, there was a lot of anxiety, there was a lot of fear. Um, there was a lot happening. And I do think that that is sort of a constant in our lives right now that's sort of happening all around for a lot of us where the world seems like it's burning down, um, you know, being a little dramatic, but like it does, you, you see all this stuff online and it's a lot of doom and doom scrolling and there's a lot of terrible things like actual terrible things happening with ice and immigration and you know, what was happening with Iran and even foreign policy and kind of the wars that the genocide in, in, um, Palestine and all of these things are happening and then we're just supposed to like move on with our lives and we're supposed to work and we have to pay bills and we have to keep things going.
And it feels very disjointed and it feels very like, well how do I hold these, these different parts of my life? How do I move on? How do I take my kids to soccer practice and um, you know, have a Friday night with friends when I am inundated with the terrible, terrible things that are happening, um, in the world? And I don't have an answer for that. Like, I, obviously, I think managing your mind is really helpful. I think learning how to manage those thoughts so that you don't burn yourself out. But I say it to say that like, I feel it just as much as I think anybody else. And I think that for a lot of us, it's not a wonder that this moment in history is also getting us to question like, what is it that I'm doing with my life and what should I be doing?

What do I want to be doing? And, um, I think a lot of people are in this moment of reevaluating, um, what they want their futures to look like, what they want their work to look like, where they want to live, all of these questions because really so much is coming. I think so much is just, it's not that it, the world has always kind of been a dumpster fire. I think we have access to a lot more information and I think a lot of us have access to information outside of mainstream media. And so we get to see things in ways that maybe we didn't see before. And that changes your perspective. And so I know for me already going into that month, I had been going through a transition period. I had sp I've spoken about how I made the decision to shut down my membership.

So I had the Quitter Club, which was my, um, monthly yearly membership that helped people create the careers and lives that they wanted. And I have been doing that for about three years. And I made the decision in March to shut that down at the end of this year. So it's currently still running. I am loving being in there with the people that are in the club, but I made the conscious choice not to grow it anymore, not to let new people in, not to do launches. And I sort of had this decision that like it was time to end that container, but I didn't really know what I was gonna do next. Um, and I sort of allowed myself like, okay, I will, I will figure that out as I go. Like this is, I just know that this is the right decision. I, it was a really big decision for me.

And so I made that decision and then I spent April and May doing my last launch for that group before I was gonna shut it down and then doing all of kind of the backend stuff of shutting it down. And so I think June was also the first time where I could just not be doing all the time. And I went on vacation and it allowed me time to think like, huh, okay, what now? And I've had this feeling for a while where there's this feeling of transition or a feeling of, I don't know, you can call it what you want, growth chapters ending. Um, I don't exactly know 'cause I don't know what what lies ahead, but there's just been, I think I've been doing this podcast and this group for, um, and this type of coaching for almost going on seven years, which is wild to say, but you know, you know, shy of a decade, like a very long time at this point.

And for a long time it was very like, blinders on, this is what we're doing. And I was all in and I still am, but I think I've sort of come to this place of like, but what else? And the reason I want to, to talk, I wanted to do this episode and I wanna like talk about it. And if you're in the club, you know, like I'm constantly talking about my own journey, what I'm struggling with, all the mistakes I make, how I have no idea what, you know, what my future holds or what I'm doing, how nobody does, and how we're all kind of figuring this out. And so I wanted to bring it to the podcast because I don't know if I do it as much on the podcast, um, but I want to share you guys with you guys kind of in real time as I go through this kind of transition about how I am giving myself space to explore all this, to figure all this out and to sit with this unsettled feeling, this unmoored.

Like I'm very much in a place of like, what's the opposite of grounded. Like, there is no ground underneath my feet and, um, previous me that would freak me out like nothing else. Like I needed control and I needed to know what I was doing and I needed to know the plan. And I'm watching myself kind of in this chapter, in this position of like, fluidity of like, I don't know. I don't know what the next thing is. I don't know where this goes. I don't know what I wanna do, and can I be okay with that without having the answer? And so that's sort of where I've been in the last month. I, I will say like a month and a half has been like partly resting and not thinking about anything and just really leaning into joy and like doing things that I love, partly worried about the world and constantly glued to my phone and figuring out, um, what is happening and what I can do in real time to help.

And so that doesn't leave a lot of time to kind of figure out, well, what's the next move? But there is some time to figure that out. And so that's really what I wanna kind of go over. Um, if you're feeling that way, if you're feeling like, I don't know, I think there's another chapter for me. I think there's another evolution for me. I think I should be doing something different. Um, I think there's more I can do. I think there's just this, this thing that I loved. Maybe I don't love it anymore or maybe it's not serving me anymore. Maybe I wanna just try something different. And so if you find yourself in that sort of place of transition, then I'm just going to tell you how I've sort of been thinking about it, um, as I go through with it. Okay? I feel like maybe it's easier if I start with what I I'm not doing and then I'll give you the opposite of what I am doing because I look back at when I had this period of transition when I left the law, it looked very different than what it looks like now.

And I'm just so grateful to my past self for like doing all of this thought work because it makes this transition so much more pleasant, so much easier, so much, um, less suffering. So, okay, here's what I'm not doing. One thing I'm not doing is I'm not making it a problem. I'm not making it as if like I should, I should just be happy. I should just be grateful. I have this great business. I should just launch the next thing I should, um, you know, stop making waves. You can never be, you know, you're always gonna jump from thing to thing. What's wrong with you? Whatever. Like, I'm not allowing those thoughts in there just is no room also because it's just, I've realized now that it's all bs that like I am forever a changing and growing and evolving person. And that will continue to create new versions of me.

And those new versions of me will want different things and the world will call for new things and I will answer that call in different ways. And so I don't subscribe to this idea that, you know, you choose one thing and you stick with it. Or you, as you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it and just stick with what you're doing because it's good enough. Okay? I am simply listening to like, there is a voice within me that is saying like, Hey, something needs to be shifting. Something needs to change. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the way you deliver it. Maybe it's the type of containers, maybe it's the type of work. Maybe you coach different people, maybe you coach in a different way. Maybe you don't do coaching. Maybe. I don't know. I haven't figured out what that answer is.
I just know that at this point, like when it was with the membership and what I was doing right now is just not, um, enough anymore for me. It's not the thing that I wanna be doing. And so I'm allowing myself to be in that knowing without having that answer and without making it a problem. So it's not an issue that I'm in this space. Like I'm not freaking out about it. I'm not like, and we're gonna get to the other stuff, but like, it's not, um, yeah, it's just not a problem. It is what it is. Like this is okay, we're going through this kind of shift, whether it's kind of globally, we're all going through a shift, which it seems to be like a lot of people are having these feelings, or if it's just me, like, okay, this is the shift I'm going through right now.

Um, and I think that that has helped me like accept what is like I feel this way. Okay, now what, instead of spending so much time on like, oh, why do I always make waves and why can't I just be happy with this? And why don't I just like do the thing I said I was gonna do or whatnot? Um, the other thing that I I'm not doing is, um, I don't make this mean like anything about my purpose in life or I'm not making it like my one purpose. Like I need to figure out like one big answer. Like I need to figure out the next thing is gonna be the thing I have to do for the rest of my life. Like, I'm not putting that kind of pressure on myself. I don't even know what this transit, it might be a blip.
It might be a very small, you might listen to this in six months and be like, she actually didn't transition at all into anything. It's the same thing maybe. Um, but I'm sort of allowing myself to really just sit with the thought of like, what do I want right now? What do I want more of in my life? What do I want my life to look like? What do I, how do I wanna contribute? What do I want to add to in this world? And I'm just letting myself sit with those questions without it needing to be my one purpose. The one big thing I'm gonna do the, you know, next thing that's gonna be everything. I think that taking off the pressure of realizing like maybe next year I'll wanna do a completely different thing. Maybe in five years I'll scrap it all. Who knows?

I don't have to answer those questions. Sorry, I don't have to answer those questions right now. I just have to answer like, what is the next thing I wanna do? And I think, again, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. I don't subscribe to the fact that like, you have to have a purpose in your life, quote unquote, in the sense of like, the way that we talk about it in our society. I think in our society oftentimes people get, um, they get, they start this like sort of chase for this elusive purpose where they think they have to find this one thing that they have to do and then that's gonna make their lives fulfilled. I don't buy that. I think you can have a million different purposes. I think your purpose changes as you, um, grow. I think that just like any other animal, you know, I've always had this like analogy, like what's a whale's purpose?

What's a monkey's purpose? Like, we get this one life and we get to choose what we want to do with it, and we get to decide, um, what we wanna experience. And that might be that you choose to find something that feels more purposeful or feels more fulfilling, right? You might look for something that like, hey, I wanna feel as though I'm contributing in some way or giving back in some way, or helping in some way. That's great. I don't think that's my one purpose in life. But I will say that like in a time like this, when there does seem to be, um, a level of turmoil within this country and with in the world, even for me, I've kind of come to like, okay, well how do I wanna show up in this moment? How do I want to give back more? How do I wanna create more community?
How do I wanna feel more fulfilled? How do I wanna feel as though what I am doing is making a dent or helping? And whether that means in my business or in my personal life, I'm just allowing myself to sit with questions like that, to let myself like come up with different answers at different times to explore different things, um, and not make it mean like, is it gonna be my whole life? Is it gonna be the one thing I do? Is it gonna be this one purpose that I have to follow? Is it gonna be like a big part? You know, it could be a small part of my life. Like I'm sort of just exploring this. Um, the one major difference that I've noticed that it makes this transition so much easier for me than it did when I was a lawyer, is that I, my worth is no longer attached to what I'm doing.

And so I'm not making this mean anything about my identity or my worth. Like whether I decide to shut everything down or whether I keep doing exactly what I'm doing. Um, there is no more negotiating about what my self worth is or whether I'm worthy as a person regardless of what I do. And so that makes it a lot easier to explore different avenues. I remember when I was leaving the law, so much of my identity was wrapped up in my work and who I was and like I was this quote unquote successful person and who am I if I'm not doing this and blah, blah, blah, all this other stuff. And so one of the fears, like the biggest thing that kept me stuck there was like, what are people gonna think? What are people gonna say about me? Who am I if I'm not this lawyer?
You know, who am I if I'm not doing this like thing that other people consider prestigious? And listen, detaching that self-worth has taken a while and it has taken a lot of inner work and it has taken a lot of mindset work and it's the best thing I could have done because now everything is so much more playful. Like when I think about what I could do, there's so much more excitement because it is not attached to how I get to feel about myself. It is not attached to what other people think about me. It is not attached to, um, whether I get to like rest or whether I get to feel worthy or whether I get to love myself. Like all of that is non-negotiable for me at this point. So it's like, this is just what do I wanna spend my time doing?

What do I want to, you know, put my energy into? And I've just noticed, like, I think for a lot of people, if you're so scared to quit your job, I think one of the biggest reasons to do it is to kind of go through this ego death that forces you to strip your identity from that work. Because once you do it, once it becomes a lot easier the next time. 'cause you're like, oh, I've done this. I've ripped the bandaid off. I no longer identify myself as a lawyer or a doctor or engineer or teacher, or whatever it is. Like I'm no longer good because I do that work. Like I've now had to reconcile how do I feel about myself when I don't do that work? So then it opens me up the rest of my life when I go through these changes, when I go through these seasons to simply be like, what do I wanna be now in this chapter?

How do I wanna show up in this chapter? What is the work I want to do? And so I've realized even though I love this business, and even though I've had such a blast like growing this podcast and hearing people's stories and helping people, I don't identify my own like worthiness or how, how I get to feel about myself based on how well this business is doing or whether I have this business or not. So like, if I decide tomorrow to close it down, I don't then nothing to base my self-esteem on, right? Like I can decide, I'm just gonna try something else because I wanna try it. And so I highly recommend if what is stopping you from trying something new is this idea of like, but who am I if I don't do X? That's the reason to stop it to, I was actually just talking to, um, my aunt who has been very successful and has worked unbelievably hard, a little too hard, um, if you ask me.

And she is, uh, I think close to 70 maybe I wanna say we had her 70th birthday terrible of me not to know. But um, no, no, no, she's not. She has mid sixties anyways. But she was just saying like, I had done a podcast and she responded to one of my Instagram posts and she was saying that she is just dealing with this, which a lot of people do like in retirement, when they're gonna retire, when they're getting to the end of their career, is like I, my entire identity has been been built around this career that I've put everything into. So who do I become when I'm not that person? And that is a really hard thing to deal with and you're gonna have to deal with it at some time. So like, why not deal with it in your thirties or your forties or your fifties instead of letting yourself deal with it when you know you're sixties, seventies and you don't have as much opportunity for reinvention or you're at a point where, um, there it becomes harder once you've been ingrained in this identity for many more decades.

So I, I would say that that is the biggest change of watching myself go through this is like, the stakes aren't as higher. I'm like, yeah, I could choose to do this. I could choose not to. I could choose to do something else, but it's never about myself worth anymore. Um, the other thing that I have allowed myself to do is to really allow it to be an open-ended question. Like what I'm not doing is setting some arbitrary timeline that's like, you have to figure this out in the next month. You, you have the next six months and you have to know exactly what you're gonna do. And I think this is one of the hardest things for a lot of us to do because again, we sort of wanna bypass the negative feelings and just get to the place where we feel good and we think like, if I just give myself six months and then I figure it out, then I can, then I can have another goal to work towards.

And then I can feel good and I can feel productive 'cause I'm working towards this. And all of that's a lie because it just doesn't work that way. That's not the way your brain works. That's not the way your body works. That's not the way, like you overcome trauma. That's not none of it. You know, healing isn't linear. Like your life just is not linear. You're never like, you know what, just winning, growing all the time, always going up. Everything is going smooth. It's, it's, you know, bumps in the road. It's ups and downs. And so I think for me, one of the things that I have really been doing in this time is just allowing it to be an open-ended question. Just allowing it to be like, okay, we're kind of in this unmoored, ungrounded place and that's okay. Let's, you know, wrestle with these questions.

Let's ask ourselves, let's talk to people. Let's read books. Let's, I I I spend a lot of time doing things that just bring me joy because that is the time where like I can, I've realized be the quietest and I can really tap in more into like, what is it that I love? What do I want for my life? What do I want it to look like? And so it may not look as though I'm doing something, quote unquote, but it is the most, I think restorative and, um, uh, fertile ground for me to figure out what I'm doing. So I spend a lot of time doing like painting and embroidery and going on walks and doing things that just like really calm me down reading my books. Um, and so I've just allowed it to be like, we are in this chapter. This chapter might last a month, it might last six months, it might last a year, it might last three years.

Who knows? And it might continuously change. I might decide like, Hey, I've sort of figured it out. I'm gonna do this. And then I might do that thing and then find myself a month or two later being like, Nope, that wasn't the thing I wanna do either. I wanna like re-examine this. But I think not allowing there to be the pressure that like there has to be a deadline and you have to figure it out, has allowed me to experiment more. It's allowed me to even be able to move on and say, okay, what's the next thing? I'm just gonna try something and see, is this where I want to line? Is this the kind of work I wanna be doing? And I'm gonna let myself through action, find that clarity and get more clear on how I wanna show up and who I want to be and what do I wanna do?

And I have some really exciting ideas. I have some things that really have sparked like, oh my God, that sounds amazing and that sounds like how I wanna show up. And that sounds like I do have those unique set of skills and gifts that I could bring to the world by doing this. And I've been kind of mulling over certain ideas of like, where's my skillset? What are the things I want to do? And how does that overlap? And how do I wanna spend my time? And so I definitely have a lot of things that I've sort of been percolating that are gonna come out hopefully in the next couple of months. Um, but I don't even know, the reason I say this is that it's not to say that when I put that out, it's like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing for the rest of my life.

This is the thing that's gonna make me happiest. It's like, okay, this is the next thing I'm gonna try. This is the thing. I'm gonna learn more about myself. I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna see how I feel. I'm gonna see what it like, you know, what result it creates in the world. I'm gonna see, um, if I want to grow this, if I don't. And I'm gonna constantly allow myself to pivot and change. And I think allowing it to be this open-ended question, allowing it to just be sort of how I'm navigating my life and this chapter until I find something. Like when I found the podcast, when I decided to do the podcast, there was a very definitive, this is what I'm going to do and this is what I wanna do. I'm so excited. I'm so obsessed. Like I cannot think about anything else that is a very beautiful gift to have, but it's rare.

Like, I don't know that I have felt that since then, you know? So I feel like maybe that comes again. Maybe I find something and it's like, this is it goalie. We're going all in on this for the next five to 10 years. And maybe there isn't. Maybe it's just like, hey, you're in midlife and things are gonna constantly change and you kids are getting older and you're gonna have more time and then you know, there's gonna be family problems and then you're gonna go back and forth and the world is gonna need you and you're gonna, you know, you're just gonna figure it out as you go along. All of it's okay, I'm here for all of it. I would say the the final thing that I am that has made this transition period less anxiety inducing and less panicky and more just like, huh, all right, this is what we're going through is that I, I'm okay with the uncertainty.

I'm okay with the negative emotion. Like I don't need to add more to it. What I mean by that is that obviously we all love certainty. Of course, I would love to feel happy and great and know exactly what I should do and know what I'm gonna work on and feel really focused. But in the absence of that, when I'm in this place of like unmoored, ungrounded, I just allow it to be, I don't need to get rid of it. I think a lot of times we get super anxious that like, oh God, I'm not feeling great about this, or I'm not feeling super happy about it all the time, or I'm not feeling, you know, like, this is the path in my life. I need to fix this. I need to find the answer. I need to do all this stuff. And like we become this like chicken with our head cut off, running around trying to make things better.

And then when it doesn't work, we add on more. Like, why don't I just feel better? Why can't I just be grateful? Why, you know, all of these, like, whys that add more shame that, add more guilt, that add panic? And I am just sort of letting it float on the surface. I'm just like, all right, there's gonna be uncertainty. There's gonna be some anxiety, there's gonna be unknown, there's gonna be more failure. There's gonna be figuring things out. There's gonna be scary steps. There's gonna be maybe big decisions. Let it all come. I can be with it. I don't need to be happy all the time. I don't need to be in this state where everything feels great. It's really just more of like, can I get quiet enough and let that all be there and kind of listen to myself and figure out like, okay, outside of what everybody else saying, what outside of what the world thinks, what do you want?

And so I have sort of been in that chapter, and if you are in that chapter, I welcome you to join me in just allowing yourself to be in that chapter and to, and allowing yourself to like, hear all the noise from the world, but to get quiet a little bit and to figure out like, okay, what do I want right now? What would it look like if I just let myself be in this place of unknown? If I allowed myself to kind of let go of certain things, to close certain chapters to figure out what the next step is without knowing what the whole path looks like. Um, what would that look like to like do it from a soft place to do it with as an open-ended question, to not need the answers, to let uncertainty be the kind of guide, like let it allow me to see what all the possibilities are.

Like what's everything on the table, right? Like I have given myself to explore all of it. Do I wanna shut it all down? Do I wanna go a hundred percent in and scale? Do I want to do something in the middle? Do I wanna add in different things? Do I wanna take away things? Do I wanna make a hard pivot? I mean, there's just all I am I'm constantly like, how does this feel? I think about it and I'm like, eh, that doesn't really feel like me. That's not something I really like. Or, yeah, this kind of is exciting. I don't know. When I think about this, it feels kind of exciting. And so you have to kind of give yourself that space to like, let it all come up and let yourself like trust that inner voice to guide you towards what it is that you wanna do, what it is that best serves you, what is is that you can do.
Um, and so that's where I'm at. I figured I would check in and let you guys know. That's sort of the decisions I've been making. I have been thinking about what I wanna do with respect to the business. Um, and so hopefully I will announce that soon. Um, but for now, I'm just allowing it to be fluid. I'm allowing myself time to kind of explore different aspects of it. And I'm not saying I, I I'm, don't get the impression that I'm like loving it. This is not a great feeling when I say like, I'm allowing these negative feelings. There is a lot of, like I said, anxiety and uncertainty and it's just there. So it's not as though I'm like, this feels great. Uh, I I kind of vacillate between, you know, the world is burning. What do I do right now to like slowing myself down to constantly calming myself down to be like, Hey, we don't have to say the world today.

We're now have to save the world by ourselves. We just have to figure out like how we wanna show up. And so it's not to say that this is like the happiest time of my life. It isn't. It's again, a a moment of like a lot of turmoil within me, but it's just such a calmer way of dealing with that turmoil. I feel like it's like sitting on waves, like instead of drowning in the waves, like I'm just sitting on a lifeboat and I'm, you know, slowly kind of riding these waves and figuring out where I'm going. And so hopefully that helps you maybe thinking about your own situation and thinking about how you wanna look at it, how you wanna navigate it, how you wanna let yourself kind of just be in it without adding a lot of the pressure and the panic and anxiety and the shame and the guilt and all of that unnecessary negative emotion that doesn't need to be there.

And just dealing with what is. So I hope this was helpful in any way. I hope that it gives you a little bit of insight into, I think all of us, even when you, you know, I don't know, seeing like you know what you're doing or you have these tools or you have an established business. I think it's just natural for all of us to go through this. There's just nobody that's like, doesn't change and just stays in one thing and wants to stay in that. They might stay in it because they've been programmed to be in that. But most human beings will change throughout their lives and that should cause change in their life as well if they allow it to come up, if they allow it to kind of lead them. And so I guess this is my urge to you that if that is coming up for you, just see where it takes you. All right, my friends, I hope this is helpful and I will see you next week for another episode.