Episode 11: Finding Clarity In Your Life & Career
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We can all think back on certain times in our lives and careers when we felt stuck. Maybe something just felt off or all the way to pure misery and burnout. Sometimes it can be easier to identify what we don’t want and then we can start to get clearer on what we do want.
Today I’m sharing my own story of when I’ve been stuck in my life and career, and how I dug out of that and started building the life and career I wanted. But it didn’t happen overnight.
In this episode you'll learn:
How I went from miserable at my job to living the life I love
Why watching a show on HGTV inspired me to sell my house and almost everything I owned
Why perfect clarity isn’t the goal
5 questions to ask yourself if you don't know where to start with finding clarity
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00]
[00:01:05] Welcome back to the Upgraded Career podcast. I'm your host Nicole Case, and today we are talking about finding clarity and getting yourself unstuck. Now, I'm sure we can all think back on times in our lives and our careers where we felt stuck or maybe just felt like something was just off and you're like, this just isn't right.
[00:01:27] This isn't what I want anymore, and you, and you could have. , you know, totally pure misery and burnout. Or maybe it was just, you know, again, just something just felt off. And sometimes it can be easier to identify what we don't want, and then we can start to get clearer on what we do want. So today I am sharing my own story of when I've been stuck in my life and career and how I dug out.
[00:01:56] And just started building the life and career that I wanted, but it did not happen overnight. I'm sure if I was working with a coach at that time, I probably could have worked through this whole process a lot faster. But as you're gonna see, it took a couple of years to really figure out the type of life and career that I wanted and actually started moving towards that.
[00:02:18] But first I'll have to mention, and I think I've mentioned on here before that my husband and I are first generation college students. Our parents couldn't pay for our college or most of our wedding, and we ended up racking up over $248,000 in student loan debt between the two of us. And that wasn't just.
[00:02:38] Pure loans that we took out. Of course, that was also compounding interest over time, and what ended up happening was we had a $2,100 a month. Student loan payment, which obviously is enormous. And every time I tell this story, people just like gasp and horror and you know, end up falling off their chairs a lot of time.
[00:03:01] But, but yeah, that was the reality for us and it's honestly the reality for a lot of people. But of course we don't always know that that is what people are battling against because there's a lot of shame wrapped up. that I definitely had a lot of shame around how much student loan debt we had, that I felt like we were giant failures, that we were incredibly irresponsible, and how could we have let it happen that way?
[00:03:28] And, um, probably a story for another time, but we ended up working through that shame. But I'll tell you again, we did not share that information with anyone. The only people who knew that was my mom and my sister, and. The loan people and our financial advisor. And that was it. Like no one else knew the number.
[00:03:48] Um, but we were able in 2013 to scrounge up the tiniest of down payments, like a 5% down payment for, um, for a house here where we live in the Raleigh area. And in 2013, this is when it was kind of at the bottom of the market. After, you know, the oh eight oh. Crash, which by the way was when we graduated college.
[00:04:11] So that was fun trying to find a job during that last recession. Um, but you know, kind of 2013, you know, was the bottom of the market. Things were starting to pick back up from a housing perspective and we felt some pressure to like get into our own house before the prices started go up and interest rates started going up.
[00:04:29] So we found a found a. In a really safe neighborhood, a really great neighborhood, and it was a house that needed renovation and we, and we took our time, renovating it over, over several years. And because of that, that we prioritized that we really did not have much money left over. So, We didn't really travel hardly.
[00:04:51] Um, we didn't, certainly didn't drive the cars that we wanted. Um, we didn't have the, the material things that we wanted. Um, you know, even though we can all, you know, we can all agree that material things aren't the most important, but we definitely did not have a lot of the creature comforts that I think we probably would've liked.
[00:05:09] And definitely, like I said, we definitely were not. traveling and seeing the people that we would've wanted. We definitely missed out on weddings and baby showers and, and just other trips and other experiences that we would've absolutely wanted to have at that time because of mostly the student loan debt.
[00:05:27] And then again, we were prioritizing renovating that house. And yet, even though we didn't have a ton of money, I did, um, try to decorate the house as much as I could, um, with really cheap decor pieces from, you know, the clearance section of Home Goods, which there's nothing wrong with home goods, love me, some home goods, but I, I definitely was choosing things and picking things because I just w.
[00:05:51] didn't wanna look at blank walls anymore, and I thought that it was adult to have, you know, stuff on your walls and to have your house decorated and everything. But I, again, I ended up choosing things that I probably didn't really, I didn't really like and didn't really want, and everything was really piecemeal and there wasn't really cohesive style to anything just because I was just.
[00:06:12] Basically just going off of what could I afford in that moment. We also had a lot of thrifted and hand-me-down furniture. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it just, especially for that period of time, it's what we needed. And I think we all, again, kind of go through that a lot. A lot of times that, you know, we just kind of made do with what we had.
[00:06:30] Um, but I also, in my career, I was really, really starting to hit a wall. So by the time 2016 rolled around, um, I was in a role that really wasn't a good fit for me. It wasn't, it wasn't really utilizing my strengths, but. , I took it because I was bored and I wanted to try something different. Um, and I kept thinking about how I could make more money cuz I knew just the rate that we were going, we were not making a dent on, on any of our financial goals.
[00:06:58] And in the role that I was in, I was. Traveling a ton across country for that role. And that was just exhausting. I physically wasn't feeling well. I had gained a bunch of weight. I just wasn't feeling good. I wasn't feeling myself. And I had, I had been job searching really for a year to find something else that I liked and that paid way more than what I was making, cuz I was constantly feeling like I was in this, in this space.
[00:07:23] Just not being compensated for the value that I was bringing. And also too, that like I wanted, wanted to make more money so that we could again, pay down this student loan debt. But frankly, frankly, we just thought that we were gonna die with this student loan debt because you can't, um, actually even.
[00:07:42] Dismiss your student loans in bankruptcy and you can't dismiss it even when you die, it still goes to your next of kin. So we're just like, okay, we're just gonna have this there. We're just gonna have this forever. And that's just how it's gonna be. But, , I don't know if you remember back in 20 2016 that the, all the rage at the time was these tiny home shows.
[00:08:05] I mean, I was like way into hgtv. I definitely still am into home design stuff and everything, but definitely during that time, super into these tiny home shows. And um, and I remember one weekend very, very vividly, my husband and I were watching. Tiny Home Nation or something like that. And the premise of that episode was that these people lived in this beautiful house in the mountains, in the Rockies somewhere.
[00:08:35] I don't know if it was Colorado or what, but they were living in, in, in the mountains, in the Rockies and, you know, beautiful home, you know, in the mountains. And they could see, you know, for miles and miles and miles and. There was a wildfire that had started and it was coming towards their house and they could see it coming over, coming over the mountains, and they basically had 20 minutes to gather everything that they could put it in their little Toyota Prius and get outta there.
[00:09:07] And um, and the woman, I remember the interview with her, she was saying, she was like, you know, of course I'm in a panic and I'm grabbing the most random of things, like I'm grabbing my crock pot. And she's like, no, no, no, I don't need that. And you know, because you're just in a panic and you're not really thinking clearly.
[00:09:21] But she was just like, we grabbed what we could, tossed it in the car with the dogs and just had to get out of there. And unfortunately, they lost, lost their home. They lost everything, all of their possessions except for what they had had in their car. And so they decided, on that spot. Instead of rebuilding another large home, they decided to rebuild a tiny home because that experience really showed them that their material possessions really weren't worth anything and they could really make due with a lot less, which I'm sure we, a lot of us could, could do as well.
[00:09:56] And I remember my husband turned and looked at me and he said, quick, you have 10 minutes. The house is on fire. You have 10 minutes. Well, what do you grab? And I was, and I immediately just said, , you and the cats. There's nothing in this house that I would wanna save. And so that just really got me thinking about my gosh, what am I spending my money on?
[00:10:16] What am I spending my energy on? Being so concerned about decorating this house or fill in this house with stuff, you know, it, it, again, it just really sent me down this path of reading books and blogs on simplicity and living a life of, of simplicity and minimalism. And things like that. Like I really kind of went down, down this rabbit hole on, on these ideas and it just, and it really felt good.
[00:10:41] Like, it felt really comforting to feel like, wow, I can, I can live a really rich life in a really simple way. That doesn't mean that I don't still want to achieve and, and strive in my career, but like the other things, in in life. Like it just really, really didn't matter. So then I really started just kind of going through the house, clearing out the house, clearing out these extra bedrooms that we had that we weren't doing anything with that just really just became junk rooms.
[00:11:08] I don't know if anyone can relate to that, that if you just have like a space or a room in your house that you don't really have a use for, you're not really sure how to use it or it's just kind of. You know, just not maybe organized in the most, right, in the most, the great greatest way to like, make sense for you and your family that it ends up being kind of just a junk room.
[00:11:26] Right? And, and the moment you start putting junk in a, in a space, it just, I swear it's like a magnet. It just kind of junk, just magnetizes and multiplies more junk. And so I just, again, I just kind of started down this path of kind of going through the house. Clearing out the house and around this time, I, I ended up landing a new job after a probably a year, year and a half of job searching.
[00:11:53] I finally landed a new job in a completely different industry. And, um, I was excited about it cuz it was, it was new and it was something that I knew it was gonna lend to my skills. It was exactly what I was looking for in terms of the type of role. But I was bummed because I ended up having to take a pay cut to go there.
[00:12:10] So again, I've just, I was so focused on trying to make more money, trying to make more money, and I ended up taking a role that, that I ended up having to take a pay cut to go to go to, um, which I don't regret at all. And it was an amazing experience and, and all of that. But at the moment it, it kind of sucked.
[00:12:25] And so again, this is January of 2017. At this point, it's two weeks after I started my new job. and the car that I had paid five grand for in cash a few years prior died on me and. We were like looking at our finances, trying to figure out what we were gonna do because my commute was now almost 30 minutes on a busy highway in the opposite direction of my husband's work.
[00:12:50] So it's not like, like, could we have easily shared, like one of us dropped off the other or something like, yeah, we could have, we could have totally made that work, of course, if we needed to, but we were just like, okay, we, we gotta get a second car. How are we gonna handle that? How are we gonna do. . And so I was looking at our student loans and you know, just kind of just figuring out payments and stuff like that.
[00:13:10] And I realized that the largest student loan that I had, that I had been paying on for years, I was only paying interest on it. meaning I hadn't made a dent in the principal at all. And I remember just having just a breakdown around like, we are not making any progress on this at all. Like, how are we ever gonna retire?
[00:13:32] How are we ever going to, again, to have experiences or take vacations like we so wanted to. and it was just, it was, I was just a mess that day. Um, but I remember though, again, we, we talked to, um, one of our really good friends who at the time worked in u we worked in used car sales and just kind of asked his advice on, on what we should be getting.
[00:13:53] and we ended up actually buying a brand new Toyota Camry, which I, I didn't like the car. It's not what I wanted. It looked super boring, but it was clean and new and I knew it was gonna last me a long time. And so we just kind of looked at it as a really. As a good investment in terms of, um, of obviously like cars are never a good investment, but we just looked at it as, hey, we have like one solid, really good car that we know we can count on for the next 10 years.
[00:14:22] And so we felt that it was, it, it was, it was a good investment from that standpoint. So that's what we, that's what we bought. And then a couple weeks later, again, in February of 7 20 17, we were like pulling together all of our tax stuff together. And um, and my husband comes upstairs and he was just acting all kind of funny.
[00:14:42] I was like, what is up with you right now? And I, cause I was already in bed, but you know, he come up and he was just like, you know, be in kind of weird. And I just looked at him like, what, what, what are you doing? What's, what's going on? And he goes, he just said one question. He goes, what would you do to be debt free?
[00:14:57] And I. Anything, you know that. And he goes, would you sell this house and move to a one bedroom apartment for four years? And I was like, yeah, without hesitation. Yeah, definitely. And he didn't think I would say yes to that. He was like, oh, oh, okay. He was like, well, you know, I was pulling the tax stuff together and I realized that we now make too much money to now even claim the student loan interest on our taxes.
[00:15:22] And he was like, so I just started running some numbers. Figured out that if we, you know, sold the house, we moved to a one bedroom apartment and saved money in that way, in about four years, we could pay off all of our student loans if we just got really, really focused and like really, really pounded on it.
[00:15:39] And I was like, . Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Like I didn't think that it would only take us four years. I was like, that's, that's amazing. Um, so like it was, again, it was so funny cuz this was like late at night when we were having this conversation in bed and then we couldn't sleep. So we got up and went downstairs and again ran the numbers again together.
[00:15:57] You know, I was kind of trying to estimate what our house would sell for. I was looking at some apartments to see what that would cost and again, just kind of running the numbers. And that night I. , oh my gosh. If we truly can get debt free in just a few years, then I could start my own business. I've always wanted to have my own business.
[00:16:16] I wanted, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. My parents are entrepreneurs, but I just never felt like I could do it because of the student loan debt. Like I, I would have to put so much pressure on myself to make a certain amount every month. So I was just like, yeah, this will never happen for.
[00:16:33] Until that night, I was like, wow, that's, that's the life that I wanna live. I wanna live a life of entrepreneurship and supporting, um, women in their careers in the best way that I can. Like this is what I wanna do. And so we again, started down this path of, um, selling our house. We sold our house. Three weeks later, we sold most of our possessions and we moved to a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment.
[00:16:58] Um, heavy emphasis on the one bathroom , which. Interesting. And we ended up living in that apartment for three years. We actually paid off our student loans earlier than what we thought, and we were able to save enough for a 20% down payment on a brand new house that we built and moved into in March of.
[00:17:21] 2020. So it was great timing, right? So if we had to, um, you know, quarantine in, um, anywhere, luckily we were able to do it in our, in our brand new house. But throughout this whole time, again, I was just like, am I living the life I want to live? And if not, what does that look like? Again, like I said before, like so.
[00:17:44] Just recognizing that what you are, what you currently have, or the life that you're currently living that's clearly not working. It's clearly not what you want. Maybe it worked for you for a little while. But now things have changed and it's no longer working for you, and it can just really be really, really hard though to kind of move beyond that piece of like, yeah, I, I know I don't like what I have, but how do you actually get clarity around what you do want?
[00:18:11] And it's really hard to do that sometimes, right? Because one, we don't always know what's possible. , um, if that's not been modeled before or demonstrated before you, for you before, like you just don't know what's possible. And this is why they say why representation matters, right? Because if you can see yourself in, you know, being.
[00:18:34] Represented, you know, in the media or in movies or whatever, you know, living a particular life. If you can see yourself in that, then you can actually say, oh yeah, that's, that's actually possible for me. So that's one reason why it can be really hard to get clarity. Another is, Again, for me, it, I was in so much debt that I just never thought it would be possible for me to, to, to come out of that in any way.
[00:19:01] And really how we were able to make that work was by selling our house and making a really big profit. on selling our house. And that was able, that enabled us to make a really big dent in the amount of debt we had. We, we made a hundred thousand dollars on the sale, sale of that house, and immediately it went towards our student loan.
[00:19:24] So like we almost immediately cut our debt, um, almost in half. Made things so much more manageable when we were trying to pay down the rest of it. But again, if we didn't, we hadn't realized that we could make that happen. I was never going to get my brain to the place of thinking that it would be possible for me to be an entrepreneur or to just, just really just, again, live the life that I wanted to.
[00:19:52] Um, but also our biases and our limiting beliefs can get in the way of us seeing what's, what's possible. And, you know, we are all ingrained with different biases and limiting beliefs. And again, it, the, the first step is just kind of identifying what those are so that we can start working on getting out of our own.
[00:20:12] with those. So again, I thought that we would always be in debt. Like I, like literally we had done the math and we were like, okay, well we will be in our, in our, in our mid to late fifties by the time we pay off this debt. And then what? Right? Like, we're so late to the retirement game, you know? So I really just honestly just never let myself think about the life that I really wanted because I was just like, what's the point?
[00:20:37] Because. I don't know what I don't know, or I don't know what I, what I don't realize, and I just didn't even let myself go there a lot of times and just be disappointed. Also, it can be really hard to gain clarity because frankly, life is complex. There's lots of variables at play, and most of those variables we don't control.
[00:20:56] So it can be really hard to gain clarity on what you want and how to make that happen because it's. As simple as, um, you know, what is the life that I wanna live and what are the steps? You know, it's, while that's where you definitely should start it, recognizing that our privilege and just the. The head starts or not, or, or not getting a head start in life can, can absolutely, um, play into that.
[00:21:27] And again, there's just life's complex, so we just have to recognize that it's not going to be a perfect straight path on this journey to, again, living, living the life and having the career that you truly want. also, there's just lots of noise out there about what we should want and what we should want to, to do with our lives and in our careers.
[00:21:48] And you know, people are saying, well, you should want this or you should do that. And so sometimes what we actually want, what our own ideas are, what that looks like for us can just get really clouded because again, we've got so many other messages and so many other things coming our way, telling us what we should and should not.
[00:22:07] Want for our lives and careers. And frankly, it's scary. It's scary to try to gain clarity around this because one, it's an unknown. So if you know at, at the, at the stage of the game where you're just trying to get the clarity, , we don't know what, what you might uncover about what we truly want. You know what if we uncover this really wild dream that people would think is weird or people are gonna question us about, or again, we just don't know what it is.
[00:22:38] And anything that's unknown is gonna be scary, right? And also, what if we fail? What if. Dream up this dream or we get clarity about what we really want and then we go after it and then we fail or we don't get close enough to it. Or we get there and we realize actually this wasn't what I wanted, or things changed.
[00:23:00] Cuz like I said, life's complex and so things changed and then it just isn't working for us anymore. And that's. That's devastating as well. I remember in my career thinking, oh, I want this type of experience in my career. I wanna go work for a startup. I want the startup experience. Like I like had a checkbox of all the things that I wanted, and I got that job.
[00:23:23] I got that experience, and it was awful. It was terrible. And I just remember that part being even more so devastating because it was like, I thought this is what I wanted and. Wasn't, or it didn't turn out the way that I thought it would, and I think that part was even more devastating than not getting the clarity or being stuck where I was previously.
[00:23:49] So I get it, like gaining clarity can be really, really hard and we want to get the answers super quickly. We wanna get, we want to get to the end. We like wanna skip all of that messy parts and we wanna skip all the uncomfortable parts and we just really, and we just wanna get to the end. Right. And that's, And that's just frankly not, not how it works, and, but if you are trying to figure out like what's next for you or you're like, you know what?
[00:24:16] I know my life and my CL career, it's just not clicking for me anymore. Or it's just not working anymore. Again, maybe it did for a period of time, but you just know that. , it's not any longer, and you need to do, to do something different. Here are some simple questions on how you can get started figuring out what that life and career can look like for you.
[00:24:37] So first, just kind of start asking yourself, you know, what is your ideal day? What does that look like? Who are you interacting with? Where are you physically in your, are you in an office? Are you at home? Are you on the road, you know, traveling a bunch for, for your. are, um, do you have the flexibility to kind of do a couple of those things at the same time?
[00:25:02] Do you have the ability to work from home, but also go into an office when you want? Um, How are you feeling? How are you physically feeling and mentally feeling? How are you showing up for yourself and, and for others? So like, even if you can just start in some of these really small questions, you can start to kind of uncover again what it is that you're, you might be looking for next.
[00:25:27] And just you can. Trying to figure out the small changes to slowly start moving yourself in that direction. What are those small changes you can make? Can you make some of these changes where you are currently, you know, maybe, maybe the, the, the company or the work that you're doing today? Maybe you can make these changes.
[00:25:48] Um, I think so. We feel like we can't ask to work remote or ask to be switched to a different team or ask to start your day a little bit later or whatever it is, cuz you're like, oh, well, you know, I can't ask for that. I can't ask my boss for that. Well, . I challenge you to think differently about that. I challenge you to be like, Hey, you know what, it would just, it would, it would really make my experience here better if I could show up at nine o'clock instead of eight o'clock or whatever that is, right?
[00:26:21] Or it would really make a big difference if I didn't travel every week and I traveled every other week. And you know, maybe you have to negotiate that a little bit and there's gonna be some give and take there, but maybe. There's a couple of changes that you can make where you currently are and that makes, can make all the difference and you can feel really good about that or maybe those small changes you can make.
[00:26:44] Now knowing that, okay, longer term, there's an exit strategy for me here, that, you know, I do need to move on to something, a different company or a different role altogether, and that's okay, but in the meantime, you know, some of these small changes can at least make things a little bit. as I'm looking for that or as I'm trying to figure out what that next step.
[00:27:06] But again, finding clarity is hard and it, it just doesn't happen overnight. So I don't want you to put so much pressure on yourself to just like, sit down in one journaling session or one coaching session with your coach and just have it all figured out. Although journaling and having, having a coach definitely can, can make this process go faster.
[00:27:27] I've definitely experienced that with my own coach and I've definitely experienced that with me coaching other clients, but, . But again, don't put pressure on yourself to have this all figured out overnight, even, even though you want to. Um, so, so badly. But now, I mean, even myself, like I know now exactly what I want my life to look like in this season, but I'm still trying to figure out the specific steps I need to take to actually.
[00:27:56] Make that happen. I'm still continuing to refine and I'm con still continuing to experiment
[00:28:02] So again, I might get to that place finally of like perfect clarity and execution on that, on, on that clarity, on that ideal life and career that I want. And then I'll probably be like, okay, it's now time, now time to switch it up again. You know, seasonal life has changed or my priorities are different, and now I'm, I'm have to kind of start the process over again.
[00:28:25] And I just, I totally believe that that's, Part of all, all of it, right? I don't believe you're always supposed to have perfect clarity. I mean, I think we, we do things, we live our lives, we get stuck, we figure out how to get unstuck, and then we continue to live our lives. And it's that ebb and flow that just makes life interesting, and that's honestly where, where the growth happens.
[00:28:47] So again, finding clarity is hard and it doesn't happen overnight. And also don't put so much pressure on yourself to have perfect clarity. all the time. That's again, how we just experience different things in life, and I think that's, I think that's beautiful. Okay. So that's what I have for you today. I hope this was helpful, just getting you thinking about, you know, what it is that you want out of your life and your career, and just a, a couple of steps that you can take to start working yourself towards that, towards that, without also putting a ton of pressure on yourself to.
[00:29:25] Perfect. So if you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you'd go over to my website@nicolekspeaks.com and sign up for my newsletter. I create, um, things like this all the time for my, my newsletter, subs, um, subscribers. I have free resources and just additional insights and support that I provide over there in my email newsletter.
[00:29:51] I'd love for you to go and subscribe and.
[00:29:54] So again, thanks for hanging out with me today. And remember until next time, your career deserves an upgrade.
