Part 2 of My Journey Starting a New Career in My 40’s: "Taking The Leap"

This series all about changing careers in my 40's, how I made the decision and the fears and obstacles I faced along the way. In Part 1 of this series I talked about unsubscribing from long held beliefs as a starting point in the journey. Here in Part 2 I'll unpack how I realized what change to make, how I prepared and when I knew it was finally time to take the leap.

After I left my role at Meta, many people asked how I knew leadership coaching was the right move for me and how I worked towards that career change. The short (and maybe surprising) answer is I didn't always know, and certainly not at the start of this journey. It may be hard to believe, but even when I enrolled in a year long coaches training program in 2019 I didn't have the goal of becoming a full time coach. I was simply pursuing a passion and investing in my lateral growth. Getting to this decision took time and I had to experiment and learn a great deal before I knew it was the right decision. Across the many lessons I learned in this process, I'm sharing three takeaways that helped me feel ready take the leap.

1.????Follow the Whole Body Yes – My mentors Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman (co-founders of the Conscious Leadership Group) taught me a life changing concept: “The path to genius is following the whole body yes”. Genius, by their definition, is when we are in our flow state and most connected to our sense of purpose. According to “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” when you’re in your genius, you’re doing something you love so much it doesn’t feel like work. The whole body yes, which was developed by Kathlyn Hendricks, is when all three centers of intelligence (mind – IQ, heart – EQ and body – BQ) are aligned in a unanimous yes that creates an embodied sense of well-being. You can learn all about the whole body yes here. Before I learned about the whole body yes, I tended to make career decisions with only a third of my intelligence – my IQ. When a new job opportunity arose I would consider comp, benefits, team, and make a calculated decision around the logical next step for my career. While there is nothing wrong with this kind of decision making, when used alone it can overlook important knowing from our other intelligence centers. As I more intentionally integrated emotional and somatic intelligence into my decision making, I realized there was a wealth of information I had unknowingly been blocking out for years. At Meta, I noticed anytime I was working on social impact initiatives, managing the health and careers of my team or facilitating Conscious Leadership circles (an internal program I started in 2018) my energy would go way up. After meetings on these topics I would feel compelled to move my body – jump up and down, do a little dance in my chair, excitedly share with someone else – and that energy would carry me throughout the day. In my heart center, anytime I worked on these things I had a feeling of authentic joy and peace. By tuning into all three centers of intelligence to make decisions rather than just one, I started to feel happier, more energized and my light started to shine brighter. In coaches training I found myself practically glowing! I believe this light attracted others, and resulted in valuable feedback that would eventually shape the direction I took.

2.????There Isn’t One “Aha Moment” – Many people think they have to quit their jobs to find or focus on what they love to do, and this wasn’t my experience. As I leaned into the whole body yes within my existing role I used a test and learn model to guide my growth. Following your whole body yes is a first step, but if there isn’t some positive impact on the world around, you may have blind spots or more to learn before you bring your gifts into the world in a bigger way. This was definitely the case for me, and why I looked to my peers and a coach (yes even coaches need a coach!) to assess if my passion was aligning to my purpose. At Meta, I had opportunities to speak about DE&I and Conscious Leadership with large audiences. Preparing for these events helped me hone my voice and improved my public speaking. Because everything at Meta is measured, I saw in survey data that my messages were landing and that my words could inspire. This strengthened my confidence to speak about what I believed could build a better world. I understood through interviews and team health surveys (which were FAR from perfect by the way) that the Conscious Leadership commitments my leads and I were implementing were not just retaining employees – they were attracting new talent too! This got my energy way up. As a business leader I really began to understand how bringing consciousness into business is both effective and sustainable. I experienced firsthand different ways to solve for the challenges my coaching clients face every day. I also used surveys to improve the Conscious Leadership circles I was facilitating within the company. I learned the circles weren’t just improving the quality of participants experience of work, it was also improving their personal lives. It wasn't long before we had waitlists for the 18-hour course. And the feedback just kept coming! In coaches training I blossomed through constant (and oftentimes uncomfortable) feedback from master coaches and peers. In screenwriting classes, my growth was steady but slower. Based on the feedback of my instructors I understood I still had a lot to learn so I kept going. Across all these experiments, I used my whole body yes as a north star and relied on feedback to refine and steer my expansion. I looked at every opportunity in my "now" to inform and build towards my "later". There wasn’t one aha moment, and I did not have to quit my job to do any of this. Slowly and steadily, I integrated what I wanted to learn within the hours I had in my week. Due to the nature of my role and other life commitments, this took a few years. I wasn't amazing at everything and certainly wasn't at the beginning. And before you think I’m some kind of a zen monk, I often found myself impatient and would hit walls where I’d beat myself up for not “moving fast enough”. A wake up moment was when my coach Deb Katz reflected that I was so focused on jumping from point A to Z that I was becoming blind to the richness of change occurring during my journey. I slowed down and started to trust that I was learning and exactly where I need to be. Over time the requests for coaching and facilitation increased, and eventually the scales began to tip in one direction.?All my trial, error and learning revealed a new reality where I was emboldened to let go of my previous role and step forward into the unknown.

3.????Naming your most exquisite life – Upon graduating from my year-long coaches training, I revealed to The Conscious Leadership Group (CLG) founders that I hoped to work with them in some capacity in the future. As with my other experiments, I didn't get too attached to the outcome. I simply put it out in the universe to see what might come back. When the leadership team eventually approached me about working with them, they asked me to describe my most exquisite life. Naming your most exquisite life, or the life you most want when you are in a place of trust, curiosity and acceptance, is a practice we use at The Conscious Leadership Group. It’s also something I learned through reading “Becoming Supernatural – How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon” and attending a workshop with the author Dr. Joe Dispenza. Naming your most exquisite life is an act of courage because it requires main character energy. In screenwriting a protagonist is defined by having a proactive goal, and that character is in relentless pursuit of that goal. In the latter part of my career as Head of Production, I often felt I was a supporting character in my own life. In my unconscious quest to gain external approval, I had become overly focused on supporting the goals of others (whether it was company, leader, or manager). I got so caught up in this cycle of outsourcing my self worth and “achieving” that I lost sight of my purpose and became increasingly disconnected from my authentic joy and fulfillment. In The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, the authors talk about how ALL humans are hardwired to want approval, security and control in order to survive. I learned even more around this subject by studying The Sedona Method with Hale Dwoskin and began to understand how a lifetime of sourcing security, control and approval from outside of myself (vs realizing all those things already existed within me) unconsciously made me a supporting character in my own life. As I began to imagine my most exquisite life, for the first time in my adulthood I rotated my attention inward rather that outward. I made sure that my vision was grounded in a few key beliefs that I learned from CLG and The Sedona Method. First, believing that as the main character of my life I am whole, perfect and complete just the way I am. Second, knowing that everything worth controlling is already in my control, and that I can dance and improvise with the rest as it shows up. And third, understanding that my safety and survival are guaranteed and there is no real threat occurring to me, even when my ego gets triggered and reactive. By the time I was asked this question, I was more than ready to answer. My most exquisite life looked like writing or creating 2-3 hours a day, coaching and facilitating Conscious Leadership, having healthy work life balance, and doing all this while being able to provide for myself and my family. I named the kind of hours I wanted to work, my purpose and my desire to one day tell consciousness stories at scale through film. My most exquisite life had nothing to do with a title, being at the "top" of a department or industry, and was not created to ensure others would approve of my choices. One thing I will say again and cannot over emphasize - when I did this for myself and when I do this work with clients - it is so important to name your most exquisite life from a place of sufficiency, trust, and curiosity. If you do this from a mindset of lack/scarcity, fear and righteousness – you aren’t aligning to your highest self nor are you available to dream to your fullest potential. The result can be a contracted vision that doesn’t reflect your highest contribution to the world. I also know many of you reading this who are considering a change will go on to be self-employed or work for very different companies. Please also know that unlike my story it’s not important to have an employer who has this practice. What’s important is that you have a vision of your most exquisite life and the courage to speak it out loud. Embody the belief that you are the source of your approval, control and security. From that place, know your most exquisite life can happen and that it is already happening just by naming it. I say this as someone who just completed three hours of writing on a weekday morning and will be coaching for the rest of the afternoon. It took some time, but that main character energy feels pretty damn good.

Thank you for reading, and please join me in the next post where I’ll unpack overcoming my fears, particularly around financial security and career identity, as well as some of the obstacles I faced during the transition.

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