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Episode 28: How to find joy in your career when there’s pain in your life with Brian Newkirk

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you! 

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” 

Viktor Frankl, the renowned Holocaust concentration camp survivor and influential writer of Man’s Search for Meaning, became famous for this profound idea.

Viktor survived horrors most of us will only imagine. His writing is one way he used his experience to prevent others from going through the same thing ever again. 

One of the hallmarks of people like Voktor who give great advice is this: they’ve been through some serious shit, and they want to use their pain to be in service of others’ struggles. They don’t want their own suffering to have been in vain. 

That willingness to draw from experience is a huge sign of integrityand compassion. 

Phenomenal leaders say: “If my suffering can find a purpose, and can prevent even just one person from experiencing the pain that I felt, then it’s my duty to share it with the world.”

Once you decide to share your story of grief (even if your own story is much, much milder than Viktor’s), it becomes part of your identity. You can’t *help* but share it and try to support people.

Brian Newkirk knows a thing or two about grief. He’s a certified grief coach, and he comes by his wisdom here honestly. When his youngest son was 7 weeks old, his wife unexpectedly and suddenly passed away. 

To cope with the overwhelming loss, he dove headfirst into work to manage the pain. But, as he shares on The Career Clarity Show podcast, when you throw yourself into work that you don’t love and create your entire identity around work, it ends up hurting you more than helping you and you hit a breaking point. Not just a breaking point for you, but a breaking point for your family and loved ones.

That breaking point is what led Brian to career coaching, and to discovering that his interests, connections, relationships, and heart could help him create a soul-centered career path that worked for his family and felt more like him.  

Brian now specializes in helping people who’ve been through pain or loss reconnect with who they truly are, so they can find work that fits them and may give them a safe-haven in the face of hard times.  

He’s not Pollyanna about it Brian experienced unhappy parts of his own career path starting at a young age. When talking about one of his first jobs after college, he said his thoughts were: “I could do this. I don’t necessarily want to do this, or like it, but I have the ability to do this.”

So many people (particularly (1) high achievers and (2) parents or individuals who care for others) get sucked into this thinking trap that “could” means “should” when it comes to career decisions. (Especially when you have pressure on you to provide for your family.) 

But this exact belief is what gets people stuck in careers where they are desperately unhappy. It’s a jail of your own creation: you chose pleasing others, the safe track, a predictable path with predictable pay increases, or something that “made sense” over what you want (and like) to do.

We all do this and have good reasons for it. Sometimes it’s all we know. Sometimes we’ve been conditioned by our families and friends to believe that work has to suck. 

One of the biggest limiting beliefs that Brian absorbed from his environment was: “You go to work to take care of yourself and your family. It doesn’t have to be anything you love.”

The truth is: work doesn’t *have* to be a necessary evil. You can authentically, legitimately enjoy your work day to day.

But don’t just take my word for it – look at the data. 

While 70% of employees are disengaged from their work, according to Gallup, that means 30% deeply engage with their jobs. And, hitting a 20-year high this year, The Conference Board reports that almost 54% of people are satisfied with their jobs. 

If the Bureau of Labor Statistics is right that the American workforce is roughly 157 million people, that means that the most conservative estimate is at least 47 MILLION humans in the U.S. alone are engaged and satisfied in their work.

That’s a HUGE number of people! (That’s more than the entire population of Spain or Argentina or South Korea.)

And even better news: YOU COULD BE ONE OF THEM. 

You don’t have to be a martyr at work for the next three decades. You could legitimately like – and maybe even love – your job. 

But here’s the trick: the thinking and conditioning that led you to your current career pickle won’t usually help you get out of it. That’s where pulling in a career coach (like Brian) is a great idea. 

Coaches can help you undo the years of conditioning and thinking traps that led you away from yourself. They help you learn how to release the coping mechanisms (like denial or minimization) that keep you stuck, and they can even help you identify if you’re in the 5 stages of grief with your career

Neither Brian nor I want you to have to go through heartbreak like hi to realize that you deserve a life that feels great and work that feels good.  

You can turn your suffering, frustration, and discontent into the fuel to make a change in your life right now.

And, if you start this journey of self-discovery today, you could find yourself working in a job you love…or even using what you’ve learned to pivot into a career that helps others pursue a more blissful path, too. You can become the rising tide that lifts all boats. 

As Brian says, “The work is never done.” So, maybe it’s time to get started. 

Learn more about working with career and grief coach Brian here. 

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

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About the Author Lisa Lewis

Lisa is a career change coach helping individuals feeling stuck to find work that fits. She helps people clarify who they are, what they want most, and what a great job for them looks like so they can make their transition as easily as possible. Lisa completed coaching training in Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method, Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions, Kate Swoboda's Courageous Living Coaching Certification, and the World Coaches Institute. In addition to that, she apprenticed with the top career coaches in the country so she can do the best possible work with — and for — you. She's helped more than 500 individuals move into more fulfilling, yummy careers and would be honored to get to serve you next!

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