Do you have a job that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning? One that makes you feel ready to take on the world? Or are you stuck in a career that makes you chronically stressed and feeling the Sunday Blues? Before your health unravels, listen to these real life stories about how to make a change and uplevel your life.
Related links:
- Learn about becoming a health coach at http://shesgotpower.com/becomeacoach
- Get Michelle’s free Stress Assessment Quiz at http://shesgotpower.com/free
Your career does one of two things:
It either it feeds you, gives you a reason to leap out of bed in the morning, and makes you feel good in your body and life.
Or…it drains you. It sucks the life out of you. It gives you the Sunday Blues, week after week.
Which reminds me of Kim
I work privately with a lot of go-getter, high achievers who are burning out and feeling the negative effects on their health. Kim was one of them – a classic client of mine — very Type A, very on the ball, a total perfectionist who had a hard time going easy on herself. And a brilliant woman, a PhD, a mother, an athlete. (I mean, she does all the things.)
But her health was slowly going down the toilet. Weird stuff. Rashes. Food intolerances. Weight gain.
And time and time again, our conversations circled back to her dissatisfaction with her job. Co-worker problems, boss problems, schedule problems. So eventually, I asked Kim:
What would be your ideal job scenario?
And I’ll ask that of you, as you’re reading right now. What would be YOUR ideal job scenario?
The first thing that probably popped into your head, as it did for Kim, are all the reasons that your job is good enough and all the reasons you can’t leave it.
I know. Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting you up and quit tomorrow. So set that stuff aside and just…
Dream.
What would make you really, really happy? (Don’t worry about the logistics or how you would get from here to there. Just answer the question, ok?)
Kim said that she needed to keep making the same amount of money. And she only wanted to work part-time hours so she could be home with her daughter after school. And then we both laughed and laughed…because who goes from a full-time position to a part-time position without a pay cut?
She had all sorts of ideas for how she’d spend her extra time — taking walks, working out, a lot of alone time to repair and restore herself. She pictured and described it all to me.
Forget the “how.” Just visualize.
What sort of job setup would you really like? What would it look like? Who would you be in that scenario? What would you feel like?
I talked to Kim two weeks later and she said, “Michelle, you’re never going to believe this. My old boss (from her previous job) called up out of the blue and offered for me to come back part-time. And the salary is the same as what I’m making now.”
HOLY MACKEREL. We made that happen.
Talk about manifesting something fierce. And you won’t often hear me use the term “manifesting.” I’m not usually into the woo woo stuff. But Kim had been so undeniably clear about what she wanted and willing to speak it out loud…
Someone or something was listening and delivered exactly what she needed.
She took the job. Life got better.
Mostly, we are asleep in our lives.
We go through the motions, holding onto expectations put on us by our parents and society. This was me in my first career when I worked in advertising.
We carry around the pressure of having to do it all, saying yes to everything. Not to mention the extra weight and stress. It keeps us living in a box. We’ve got the same few neural pathways firing, again and again, every day, the exact same things until we think that’s all life has to offer.
But when we start to change (and for most of my clients we start with food, but however you start to change) you make so much space for possibilities.
Suddenly, you have the energy to not just dream about a new career, but take a step towards it.
When I first heard about IIN or the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I thought, “Eh, that’s crazy. That’s not even a real school.” If I was going to go back to school for nutrition, I figured I’d go back and get a master’s degree and become a registered dietitian.
But it kept showing up. I met graduates from IIN. That’s synchronicity at work. And about a year later, I knew I had to sign up. I had no clue how it was going to work or how I’d ever transition from advertising to working as a coach.
Yet here I am, 12 years later.
Loving what I do. Being fed by my work instead of it draining the life out of me.
Can you take that small step?
Even if you don’t know exactly what that first step is…you can start dreaming and verbalizing and maybe journaling or talking to someone about what you want.
Ahem. If you don’t know what you want, how will you ever get it?
By the way, if you have a similar interest in nutrition and are curious about the school I went to, I have a free resource for you here. It goes into more detail about my journey and will help you on your way.
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