[00:00]

People often ask, like, if money wasn’t an option, if you were rich, what would you spend your time doing? And growing up broke, I have a really hard time with that question because I can’t imagine having endless amounts of money. I can’t even fathom that. Maybe I have a really poor imagination, but for me, the question that really helps is, “if everything was free, what would you spend your time doing?” So your rent is free, and your groceries are free. You really don’t have to work to support all this stuff. It’s just being handed to you. But that’s the case. Gas is free, airplanes are free. You know what I mean? What do you spend your time doing?

[Intro]

Hello, and welcome to The Career Shake Up Podcast. I’m your host, Kristin Szalajko. I’m a certified professional career coach who specializes in career exploration. I believe everyone deserves a meaningful career they love. I know it can be hard to find that career, and that’s why I’m here. I’ve developed an easy formula to help you identify the right career path for you. Let’s shake up the way you view your career. I’m going to challenge you to look at careers in a brand-new way. Whether you’re stuck in a job you don’t like or just starting out on your path, my goal is to empower you, to take control of your career.

[01:20]

Hello and welcome back. I hope you’re having a great week. We are going to jump right in today. Today we’re going to be talking about the very first step in finding the right career for you. So there are key elements you need to have a great career, and we’re going to talk about those as we go through each of these podcasts. But before you get started, before I give you a map on how to get there, first you need a destination. You cannot get to where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re going.

Oftentimes in life, I think we’re so scared to commit to a choice, to make a decision, and so we sort of just choose not to decide. We sort of just let life happen to us as it comes. And quite frankly, millions of people live their lives that way. And you could too. But if you’re living that way because you’re scared to finally commit, you’re scared of failure, maybe. Whatever your fear may be, we’re going to help you get past that, right? You need a clear destination, and most of you are probably here because you don’t have one or you’re not sure how to choose a destination. And so, you know, we’re going to go through and talk about that. We’ll talk about how to get one.

You know, in Alice in Wonderland, if you’ve ever seen that movie. It’s a Disney movie. I actually looked at the quote to this, because if you recall, in Alice in Wonderland, Alice has somehow fallen through this, like, hole and left her, like, real world into this magical world, right? She finds herself walking down this path. It’s, like, strange and mystical, and she doesn’t understand what’s happening. So, she comes upon the Cheshire Cat. That’s difficult to say. But she says to the cat, “would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

She’s totally lost. The cat says to her, “Well, that depends a great deal on where you want to get to.” She responds, “I don’t care much where.” And the cat says, “Well, then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” And Alice says “So long as I get somewhere.” And the cat says, “Oh, you’re sure to do that if only you walk long enough.”

I don’t know if that strikes a nerve for you, but sometimes that’s just what we do with our careers. We’re not entirely sure what we do. We’re just going to kind of take whatever job comes and sort of let life play out unplanned. But the truth is if you want a really great career if you want a really awesome career… Alice could have wandered any path, right? And eventually, she could have found a really awesome one. She could have been lucky and gotten on a great path that took her somewhere awesome and had great adventures. But the opposite is true, right? She also could have chosen the wrong path that was dangerous and led to a lot of misery, and that’s how our careers are. So, you could take a gamble and hope that it just sort of works out, or you could choose to take control of your career. So, I want you here to take control of your career.

[04:37]

So, when I talk about your why, like, why are you doing this? I don’t mean to be, like, philosophical. I think we could sit and think about this and sit and ponder this forever. But that’s not my purpose. My purpose is to really give you a clear direction. And the reason that matters is because as opportunities come to you if you know what it is you want out of a career, you’ll know whether the opportunity is right for you or not.

So I want you to consider, what do you want out of a career? Maybe, truthfully, you just don’t really want to work. You wish you didn’t have to; you’re just doing it because you need the money, right? If that’s the case, if that’s what a career is to you, it’s just a means to make some cash, then your options are maybe a lot more open, right? You’re not as picky as what you’re taking and what you need to take because quite frankly, you just want something that pays the bills, right? So that opens up different options. And maybe one particular job will take a lot of work and effort to get into and you’re just not willing to do that because you just, quite frankly, you don’t care.

And there’s really no right or wrong, you just need to know where you are. And even if you just want a job that makes extra cash, I can teach you how to look for the right one that’s going to make you happy. If you have to do it, you might as well be happy while you’re doing it. But maybe a career to you when you picture, when I say to you, what is a career? Why does a career matter? Maybe you want a career that changes the world. Maybe you want to make a huge lasting impact so that at your funeral when people are talking about you, they’re talking about the impact you’ve made. That’s a whole different ball game than, I just looking for something to make some money, right?

So, if you want a career that’s making a huge impact now, you have to only choose opportunities that are going to allow you to achieve that. That’s going to sort of be like – we’re going to have this funnel as we go on each week to week. We’re going to talk about all the things you need in a career. Well, I’m starting at the top of the funnel, right? And the top of the funnel is wide and it’s big, so a lot of stuff can fall into there. And as we get down, you’re going to narrow down your options. Well, “your why” is your first funnel doesn’t even fit into what you want out of a career? If not, don’t even bother. Let’s move on to something else.

And like I said, there’s really no right or wrong, but you need to know the answer. You need to know what it is you want out of life because a lot of opportunities are going to come. And maybe you say yes to everything, maybe you say no to everything. But it’s going to be a lot easier to make the choice and make the decision when you know what it is you’re looking for.

[07:09]

So, I recently read a book by John Acuff, maybe some of you have heard him. He’s an author and a speaker and he’s quite comical, actually. But he wrote a book called Start. I don’t recall when it came out. It’s pretty old, I think. So, you may have heard of it, but I’m reading this. He tells a story about a preacher and this preacher wrote a book and to be able to promote the book, he was going to have to start traveling a lot. But in order to travel, that meant he wasn’t going to be able to be at home at his local church and preaching, right? And so, he was sort of torn. Like, he didn’t know whether he should stay home and preach or if he should take these opportunities to travel and to spread the word on the book.

Well he’s talking to John, actually. And John was trying to give him some advice. And John, the way he described it, he said, I kind of went on and on and talked and hoped that it was helpful. And then he got home and asked his wife, was explaining what had happened to his wife, and her response was so distinct and so beautiful. And she said, “Well, is he a preacher trying to be an author or is he an author trying to be a preacher?” And it’s funny, in the book, he’s like, curse you. You made it so simple, so easy.

And you know, there’s not a right or wrong to that question. He could be a preacher who just writes on the side, right? Or maybe he wants to be an author who preaches on the side. There really is no right or wrong, but what he wants is where he should spend his time. If he wants to be a preacher who’s also an author, then you stay home and you preach, and you just write the book and do what you can locally to promote the book. But if you want to be an author who also preaches, then you go travel, right? You go around promoting the book. And so, this is why it’s so critical to know “your why”, to know your destination. Because if you know that, all these decisions just become so much easier and you could make right choices to help you get there.

[09:14]

So some of the questions you could really ask yourself to help you identify “your why” are why are you listening to this podcast? I imagine something brought you here. What was that? Is there something you’re hoping to gain out of that? What is it you hope to get out of a career? What does a career mean to you? Why do you want to work? What are you looking for out of your career? What are you looking for out of life? If you were to think, you know, envision for a moment what your perfect life looks like. What are all those elements? And how does a career fit in? Or how can a career assist those elements?

People often ask, like, if money wasn’t an option, if you were rich, what would you spend your time doing? And growing up broke, I have a really hard time with that question because I can’t imagine having endless amounts of money. I can’t even fathom that. And so maybe I have a really poor imagination. But for me, the question that really helps is if everything was free, what would you spend your time doing? So, your rent is free, your groceries are free. You really don’t have to work to support all this stuff. It’s just being handed to you. If that’s the case, gas is free, airplanes are free. You know what I mean? What do you spend your time doing? What would you want to do? That might just give you some indicators on either careers that might fit that lifestyle or okay, I have a certain lifestyle that I want. Now, how do I craft something or find a career that just fits into that lifestyle?

So hopefully that makes sense. Let’s take a few examples. So, for me, I now have four children. They’re little right now. My oldest is ten, and my youngest is one and a half, so they take a lot of time, right? So, traveling the world right now is not very enticing because traveling with four kids, especially for two little ones, is just a lot of work and it’s just not something I want to do. But I do want to be able to take my kids on like, mini road trips or just local day fun, right? And I want flexibility where I could do that.

But I also want to make a difference. I want to help people. And it doesn’t have to be on a large scale. I like having these one-on-one interactions with people where I walk away feeling on a high because I made a difference in their life. That’s what I want, which is why I do this is why a podcast is why I career coach on the side.  Granted, there’s nothing wrong with my day job, right? But I certainly don’t get that euphoric feeling when I leave my job that I helped somebody. For heaven’s sake. We’re kicking people out. I mean, granted, they’re like big corporations, so you don’t feel quite as guilty, but I want to feel like I make a difference.

[12:14]

And so for you, again, there’s no right or wrong answer here. I want you to allow yourself to answer for you. Don’t answer for your spouse. Don’t answer for your kids. Don’t get the answer you think your parents expect you to have. I mean, a lot of us are raised in these households where our parents have drilled into us – you have to be a doctor, you’ve got to be able to make a lot of money. You need to support your family. That’s the only way it’s a success. And so we don’t even give ourselves permission to dream some other life, right?

And so I just want to give yourself permission for just a moment to really think, what is it you want out of life? What is it you want out of your career? And just come up with a destination. And once you get there, remember that’s just a top funnel, right? So, you don’t have to have all the answers for your career right now just yet, but this is the top part of your funnel, so anything we explore, you’re just going to kind of keep coming back to “your why”. Well, does that fit what I want to do?

For me, I work at an east coast company, but I live in Mountain Standard Time, so I actually get to work from 6:30 to 3:30, which is school hours, which is perfect. My oldest two are at school and they come home, and I clock out right when they’re getting home or just like 20 minutes after when they get home. Right? So, I don’t really miss much of their day at all, which fits my lifestyle because they are a top priority to me. But if I took a night job or if I took a job that required a lot of travel, I wouldn’t be able to be there for them, and so that wouldn’t fit. Right? So that would be really easy for me to filter out jobs that require a lot of travel. But that’s not to say that traveling jobs are bad. Your situation may be different, your priorities may be different. You just need to know what they are.

[14:05]

So hopefully I’ve made my point. I like to drive them home sometimes. Just to help you with this, I just made a short little worksheet. It’s like a one-page PDF that just gives you questions that you can answer about “your why” to kind of help you identify what it is you’re looking for so that you can start this journey of finding the right career for you. So, if you will go to my website, www.kristinszalajko.com/episode2, you’ll find it there. You’ll find a link to this PDF to help you figure out “your why”. I know my last name is tricky. Like I always say, just go to the description and it will show you my last name. Now you’re also welcome to sign up for my email list as these worksheets come out like the one that I have for today’s episode, I’ll send them to you, and also of course, I’ll email you any sort of new episodes as they come out. So that’s it for now. Have a great week.

[Outro]

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you’ve found value as you listened. If there’s anyone you feel can use this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. Also, you’re likely listening to this on the go. When you find a quiet moment, could you be so kind as to leave me a review that will help others find me as well? Be sure to come back next week for the next episode. Same time, same places. Have a great week.