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Episode 80: How to Make Change Happen with Emilie Aries

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

There can be so much excitement with the beginning of a new year. And after the first of the month, after the first of the year, time passes, and life tries to pop up and get in our way and brings back old habits, old patterns, old commitments. Keeping our resolutions can be a really challenging thing. 

But if you’re here and you’re listening to the Career Clarity Show, you’re a striver. You want more, you want bigger, you want different. Maybe for you that means you want smaller, more intimate and quiet. Either way, you want to change. 

So today we are talking with Emilie Aries about what some of the obstacles can be to making your change happen, and how we can get the obstacles out of the way to make your goals, your resolutions and your dreams feel more achievable and more sustainable.

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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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, and welcome, clarity seekers. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis Miller, and I am so excited to have you with us today. Today’s topic on the podcast is going to be a really good refresher for most, if not all of you listening on what to do, and things have not panned out quite the way you thought or the way that you hoped. Knowing that we just got through the New Year knowing that there’s so much energy, and so much sort of temporal importance, which I think our guest is going to talk about here in a second, which I’m so excited about with the new year. And with using a moment to establish who you want to be how you want to show up what you want in your career, what you want to be stretching for and challenging yourself with where you want to be drawing new boundaries. There can be so much excitement with the beginning of a new year. And after the first of the month after the first of the year, time passes, and life tries to pop up and get in our way and bbls right old habits, old patterns, old commitments, people asking us for things, testing our boundaries, testing our will and our resolution can be a really challenging thing. But if you’re here and you’re listening to the Career Clarity Show, you’re a striver, right you want more you want bigger, you want different maybe you want smaller and more intimate and more quiet and more beautiful in that way. But you want to change. So today we are talking about what some of the obstacles can be to making your change happen, and how you can get out of your own way or how we can get the obstacles out of the way to make your goals, your resolutions and your dreams feel more achievable and more sustainable. Now, for today’s episode of the podcast, I am so delighted to have a guest for you who have wanted to bring on the podcast for so long. She’s so fabulous. We had a little bit of a false start with tech the first time we recorded but I’m very excited today to get to bring you the wonderful Emilie Aries. Emilie Aries is a speaker, published author and the founder of bossed up an award winning personal and professional development community where she helps women craft happy, healthy and sustainable career paths. Her book bossed up a grown Woman’s Guide to getting your shit together serve as a practical roadmap for women who want to set themselves up for sustainable, long term career success and step up as the boss in their lives. Emilie, welcome to the Career Clarity Show.

Emilie Aries  3:00  

Thanks so much for having me, Lisa. It’s great to be here.

Lisa Lewis Miller  3:03  

It is a delight to have you and I am particularly pleased with the timing on our episode is going to be coming out right after I think some of the initial momentum and energy and motivation that comes with setting new year’s resolutions might be starting to wane and fade. I know that listeners to the Career Clarity Show are dedicated, they are committed. They tend to be more driven than your average bear. But we’re also human. And it’s pretty natural and normal to dream big, have exciting aspirations, put them down on paper to have ways to make this year be the best year that it can be for you. And then to have things pop up and get in the way. And I know that one of the big things that you are brilliant at talking about is finding ways to set goals that allow you to thrive while you’re striving right now setting yourself up on a one way ticket to burnouts Ville, USA, but finding ways to make it all work together. So I feel like we’re diving in today. I’m curious why why in particular, this really stands out and speaks to you and why it’s so much a part of your mission.

Emilie Aries  4:11  

Yeah, that’s a great question. So when I started Boston up back in 2013, I had just undergone my own radical transformation, both personally and professionally. I had, frankly learn to recover from burnout at an early age after hitting the ground running, graduating in the height of the Great Recession, rising quickly as the youngest state director in the nation’s serving on behalf of the Obama campaign. I mean, all systems were a go until I I just completely flamed out, like spectacularly burnt out, due in part to just chronic overwork for years on end, which I was happy to volunteer for. I thought that’s what success look like. But also due to the fact that I had been living with it. very much in love with a man who, like millions of Americans, struggles with addiction and alcoholism. And so I was kind of waking up every day feeling like I needed to save the world by day, and save my boyfriend’s life by night. And I fell into what I described in my book as the martyrdom mindset. This idea that in order to be successful, you just have to sacrifice yourself, but you have to, you have to fall on the sword, especially as women in serving others, perfecting, performing and pleasing others is what gets us A’s in school. It’s what gets us accolades as being a great daughter, a caring wife and girlfriend and mother and sister. And so I had to learn the hard way that if I didn’t put up boundaries, as you’ve already mentioned, and if I didn’t protect my boundaries, and not just articulate what I wanted, but really advocate for myself, in a world that doesn’t, frankly, like women who dare to advocate for ourselves, then I was going to constantly be reacting to the demands on my time from others, instead of being the boss of my life, so I started bossed up in 2013, having undergone some pretty radical transformations, you know, leaving a state director job leaving that relationship, relocating from Providence, Rhode Island where I loved spending eight years of my life to Washington, DC, the city I always wanted to live in where I could pursue meaningful work on my own terms, leaving work each day at work, what a radical concept, right? And I started bossed up because I knew there were other women out there who struggled with the same self advocacy that I had struggled with for years. And big shout out to therapy, because hashtag therapy played a big role in my transformation. But I also became very fascinated and introspective around the science of long term goal attainment and how motivation theory intersects with gender politics in a very interesting way. And so I kind of became a geek when it came to goals, and the ambitious women who want to slay them.

Lisa Lewis Miller  7:12  

Well, I want to talk about both of those pieces, the motivation theory piece, the gender politics piece, how it all schmooze together, how we move forward through it. And so let’s start with ripping on the the motivation piece. Talk to us a little bit about the science and the background there.

Emilie Aries  7:27  

Sure. So there’s two big camps when it comes to psychology and cognitive science of goals. On that I kind of waded into when I was starting Boston I emailed an old cognitive science professor of mine because I had studied political science, you know, the the study of how we collectively make decisions in our society. But I also heavily studied cognitive science, the study of how you individually in your own mind make decisions. I’ve always been interested in that interplay and and so I emailed this professor mine and said, Hey, who’s studying gender and goals? And he said, I don’t know. Here’s a listserv, I’ll pass you know, your pitch along and I blind emailed 1000s of cognitive science researchers and scholars and got a few bites connected with now a longtime friend of mine and original boss, dup advisory board member, Dr. anastassia, put chips Butch up sova on this dusty approach up soba gauche who’s got not only a fantastic name, but also a fantastic story. She studied gender and goal attainment science at Yale, ultimately getting her PhD before becoming a professor of economics. And she and I kind of together pored over the research. And the two camps that exist are one is very much focused on habit formation. That’s where you get your Gretchen Reubens your happiness scholars, your atomic habits type studies, and that one didn’t interest me as much as the science of long term goal pursuit. So let’s say your listeners thinking my ultimate goal is to find a fulfilling career. Well, how the hell do you do that is that you can’t just check that off on a to do list one step at a time. It’s a multi step, multi faceted, tumultuous and uncertain and murky path to achieving this long term arduous goal, and the science of how to sustain your motivation throughout that tumultuous and iterative process is fascinating if I’m being honest, and what the biggest takeaway was when I was poring over the research without a fasciae, especially her original research is that women more so than men tend to generalize instead of specialize. I would argue that this has something to do with all the roles that we’re taught, we must play to others. So we’re not only great bakers, we’re great writers, we’re great podcasters and we feel like we have to be great homemakers and, you know the historic politics of a woman’s right role in the family in society has transitioned over the years. But it’s not like those roles have just dropped off. They’ve just piled on. And so there’s something in the research known as role overload, that feeling of being pulled in multiple directions. And different competing roles that you play, like mother, boss, employee, sr, daughter, are constantly in competition over your limited time, energy and resources. So women tend to tend to generalize, whereas their male counterparts tend to specialize. They say, No, I’m not going to be good at baking, I’m not going to be good at this, I’m not going to be good at that I’m gonna be a master of this my craft. And so when we look at these wildly ambitious women, right, I call us ambition. He says, when we look at what we’re up against, we’re up against higher expectations across multiple domains in our lives. And so the question becomes, how do you in a world that normalizes role overload for women in particular, how do you create focus, which, in my opinion, in today’s world is a better indicator of success than hard work and intelligence alone focus, which is a privilege, right? It’s a total privilege that we have to fight for, we have to advocate for that is not distributed equally, is in fact one of the deal breakers for whether or not you’re going to achieve your life’s wildest ambitions. As an author, you know, Lisa, how completely hard it is to carve out and arduously set boundaries, to focus on something like a huge endeavor, which is writing a book. So everyone has these these huge, lifelong goals, but getting them done. It’s hard in a world that’s constantly competing, especially for women’s time, energy and attention.

Lisa Lewis Miller  11:51  

Yeah, I feel like there’s so many things in what you just share that I want to peel apart. I think that that one of the important things that you talked about was when it comes to these two different camps of goal attainment and sort of that the research and the philosophical background, that I thought it was really interesting that the habit side didn’t particularly grab you. And I think that for a lot of people listening, that’ll probably resonate really well, because we know that the more sort of interesting and complex and hairy a goal is, the less you can sort of break it down into discrete habits, that compiling the habits by themselves alone will get you across the finish line, you know, as a as an author, yourself, too. I mean, you could probably appreciate that habits can help you with like the writing of the book. Totally. Sometimes they can help you with the editing of the book. But there is so much more that goes into the achievement of this long term goal that requires exactly that focus, exactly that ability to have the discernment to say, Okay, yeah, what I have to do today doesn’t have anything to do with habits, but it’s going to move me closer to what I need. Yeah. So I need to find a way to pull forward the energy, I need to find a way to pull forward, the resourcefulness, the creativity, the problem solving modality in my brain, to be able to make progress on that. 

Emilie Aries  13:11  

I’ve got a quick story that you just reminded me of that kind of reminds me of the interplay between habits, and long term goal attainment, because they definitely relate. I’m a very change oriented person, I get bored with the routine. I know that’s that I think people really do fall into two camps. Some folks really love habit and routine and need routine, and I am such a rebel in that category. So I think that’s part of my bias that I bring to the table. But I agree that habits connect with long term goals and a very distinct way back in 2013, when I was taking huge risks personally and professionally, like quitting my day job without knowing what the hell I was doing with a with a fledgling startup baztab, you know, quitting my pattern of chronically dating nothing but toxic men, that was a hard one to drop as well. I was also challenging myself athletically. So I’d gone from being a college volleyball player in the D one Ivy League Division, to not stepping foot in a gym for three years as I started my career off and rapidly burnt out. So when I relocated to DC, and kind of blew up my life, I said to myself, I’m gonna challenge myself to do something I’ve never done before, which is to run a race.

Emilie Aries  14:28  

And so that spring, I signed up for my first 5K, and I trained for it every morning I woke up I went for a little jog with my dog. I wasn’t very fast by any means. But I competed in my first ever 5K that spring. And then I said, Wow, that was really, like amazing. I didn’t think that was possible. So I set the goalposts a little further. I said, let’s do a 10K. And I did a turkey trot that fall back home and Connecticut, near Hartford, Connecticut, where I grew up, and I kind of roped my dad and sister into jogging along with me. And we achieve something I’ve never achieved before. I’ve never run double digit kilometers in my life. And then I found a meetup group in DC with other women who were who were signing up for the rock and roll DC half marathon I said a half marathon. I just ran 10K i have never run 10 miles much less 13 and a half or something miles, right. I’m not a runner. Like this is this is sort of a just a prank I was pulling on myself, but with their help. Every Saturday, we did our long run together and I pee yard every Saturday, every frickin week I was hitting a new personal record, right. And then every Monday and Wednesday, I would take my own little training run. And once I had a half marathon under my belt, that following summer, I signed up for an Olympic triathlon. Okay, and I’m not gonna lie that is the last and probably only Olympic triathlon I will ever do. But by breaking down into daily and weekly habits, and and really chunking these big, arduous, hairy, audacious goals down, I was able to achieve something I never thought possible before. And I’m not a runner to this day, I don’t really consider myself a runner, but I was able to push my expectations of what I thought was physically possible for myself. And that same confidence trickled over into my professional domain. I said, Listen, I’ve never started a business before. I’ve never learned accounting before. I’ve never really taken risks like this before. But if I can run an Olympic triathlon, right, biking, swimming, and running race all together and survive, that maybe I can do more audacious things in other domains of my life than I thought possible. And so yes, it is about the day to day it’s about breaking it down. The term cognitive chunking comes to mind right, taking this arduous, uncertain goal and sort of creating your own little Candyland out of it. What are the next couple of moves I need to make to get to the finish line? That’s key. Having an accountability community like my girlfriends who I still am tight with today, who I trained with, during the half marathon training, like having a community that expects you to show up, especially if you’re what Gretchen Rubin would call it obliger. And you’re more likely to show up for others, then you are for yourself. That’s key too. But what you hit upon is how do you maintain motivation when you don’t want to strap on the sneakers that morning? Like how do you remind yourself of the big picture when the day to day picture feels glitter, like grim and demotivating and quite frankly, boring, which is kind of reminds me of the past 12 months we’ve all had collectively, you know, that’s the hard part.

Lisa Lewis Miller  17:51  

Gosh, Well, again, there’s so many Nuggets to talk about in there. I feel like one thing that seems really important to highlight here is that when you started out this, this practice this habit of running. It wasn’t necessarily with the goal of I’m gonna go do an Olympic triathlon at some point it was it was just starting out with something that felt small, like a baby step totally achievable. something where you couldn’t fail. Like a five K is like not that not the longest scariest raise you could sign up for. So it’s a great starting point, to just prove to yourself, can I do this? Is this possible? And then the natural momentum of the habit and the enjoyment, you know that that sort of magic combination of plus positive emotion, allow for way more accomplishment and achievement in this domain than you had ever intended it ever sort of dreamed, which is a super cool piece of it.

Emilie Aries  18:52  

Yeah, Teresa modulae writes about this in the Harvard Business Review, she calls it the progress principle, the sensation of progress is inherently motivating. So whether or not you’re making real progress is another debatable story, but the mere feeling of and that’s why it’s so important to celebrate those smaller wins on the road to some unclear final destination, right? Like those small wins matter a lot because they are what give you the confidence, not that like bravado, chest thumping, like I can do it to other people Instagram confidence, but that deep internal well of maybe I can, maybe I can aim higher, maybe I can go bold or maybe I can live a little bigger. And capitalizing on the momentum that you get with those smaller wins is what allows you to dream a little bigger, a little bolder, a little more audaciously in the next round. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:51  

Totally well and to expand on that dreaming bigger and bolder piece. The other thing I love about your writing story is that the habit Bit of the exercise the movement, the expectation that you’re going to be using your body in that way, almost created like a foundational platform of I’ve accomplished something, I’ve challenged myself, I’ve stretched myself in one way. That’s, and I see this happen in my own life. So if I’m projecting stuff on you, it didn’t doesn’t feel true, you told me here, but when you got that foundation, it gives you a certain sense of more gas in the tank, to handle some of the non habit things, the things that are going to require decisions and energy, and more active thought and effort that you’re putting into, you know, the the habit of running the habit of the exercise. So there’s a kind of interesting way in which the habits can actually give you more ability to be able to pivot and be nimble and adaptive and to, to do the non habit behaviors to move you towards success. Then, if you were just maybe going after it alone, without sort of a foundation of habits to hold you.

Emilie Aries  21:01  

Yeah, I think there’s something to that, again, I’m not I’m not a habit guru by any means. I’m definitely more in the long term goal attainment camp with a clear destination with a singular destination. But I’ll tell you, what I found most surprising was by pursuing big goals that were personal, it kind of diversified my identity a little bit, right, because I’m no longer just an entrepreneur who’s trying to figure this out. And if I can’t figure this business thing out, I’m gonna fail, and I am a failure. Now, I’m an entrepreneur, but also kind of a competitive athlete, you know, or a runner. And when you have a little more diversification, your sense of self worth becomes a little less clinging to this one goal. Like I was failing a lot in those early years, I’m still failing, hopefully, more strategically, in my business these days, but like, part of pursuing long term goals means failing your way forward a little bit, because not every decision you make is going to be the right one. So the habit kind of creates that foundation where Well, today’s sucked at work, or this week was a bomb, like wow, that did not go how I thought it was gonna go, but I’m still gonna strap on my sneakers. And I have this constant in my life, that does provide me a sense of well, even when I can’t control that, at least I’m controlling this. And at least I’m making the right choice for myself today by putting on my sneakers and going for a run, I should be giving myself this pep talk right now, because I have not been working out very much right now. But you know, it is funny there’s there’s it kind of gives you more room to fail, because your whole identity is not hinting on this one goal going perfectly well. And I think it gives you a little sense of resilience gas in the tank, to use your term to weather the inevitable failures on the road to success. Because when you have an audacious goal, fulfilling career, writing a book, starting a business, that’s multifaceted multi year, you’re going to fail on some days, probably pretty regularly, more so than if you were not pursuing audacious things. So how do you get back up and brush yourself off and try it? Again? That’s That’s the question. It’s like the motivation. Science is there for us. It says, we need to hold on to the day to day in terms of knowing what our next move is focusing on breaking things down to create clarity. But we also need to hold tight to that vision, that ultimate goal, what is it that we’re doing this for? Why do I care about moving my body? Why do I care about this business and changing the world in a way that I want to? So there’s this interplay between short term and long term that’s really, frankly, tricky to balance. But that’s what makes us all human. You know, nobody’s born perfect at this stuff.

Lisa Lewis Miller  23:52  

Well, and it sounds like a little bit of what you’re saying is that there’s a certain amount of the resilience that helps you to become anti fragile helps you to continue on after moments of failure. That’s sort of born from this diversification of the way that you’re thinking about. It’s like this paradox of having a long term focus is really good and important and motivational. And if you’re a single mindedly focused and just have your one thing, and that’s all you’re striving for all you’re achieving, you almost over index, your personality and your sense of self worth, on that one goal that can then ultimately end up creating fear, resistance or fragility that can undermine the accomplishment of the goal. 

Emilie Aries  24:42  

Yeah, or just like create a midlife crisis. You know, you look back at the data we talked about with men versus women. I just demonstrated how I’m not specializing I’m generalizing on purpose. I’m saying you know what, I’m going to try to run a or compete in a Olympic triathlon. I’m gonna try to start a business in the same year that is so typical woman goal, you know oriented as opposed to the guy who’s like, I will not eat, sleep, or exercise for the first year, because I’m changing the world with my, you know, like, economy disrupting startup that but but there’s a dark side to that, which is if it doesn’t go well, your life doesn’t go well. And I point you to the to the mental health statistics around men versus women to men are struggling. I know we’re all struggling, especially after this year. But men in particular, have higher rates of alcoholism, addiction suicide. And so it begs the question, you know, are we doing ourselves a disservice by focusing singularly as you’re saying? I don’t know, I don’t think there’s a singular answer. There’s, if you look for the science on either side of the debate, you’ll find it. But it’s a good reminder that I think diversification of your identity is good for your body and mind and soul. I think focus is critical for efficient goal pursuit. So I think sometimes there’s a cost to the ultimate efficiency, we can overdo it in either in either direction. So only you can really find the balance. And actually, the the science that we really run with that bosta that helps navigate this debate is called highlighting, highlighting is the temporary prioritization of one goal over another. So in our life tracker community, we have a life tracker planner that helps women really break down their goals across all domains in life, we say at the top of every month, pick one area of your life that you’re going to prioritize over the rest this month. And because it’s temporary, that difficult decision of saying, you know what, I’m going to let my relationships take precedent over my work goals this month, that can feel painful to make a decision like that of prioritization, but it doesn’t last, it’s just one month. Or you can even take that a step further and say, just this week or this day, which identity is going to take the front seat and which are going to take the backseat, and by prioritizing proactively, we mitigate the guilt that inevitably arrives when life forces us to put one over the other. So you have to set your priorities or life will set them for you. And I’m a big believer in highlighting as a form of temporarily prioritizing one goal over the other That to me is the balance between specializing and generalizing.

Lisa Lewis Miller  27:33  

Well, it feels like even the whole sort of ethos and mantra of bossed up around striving and thriving happening together, right? That you don’t want to have one without the other because it’s going to feel flat, it’s going to feel incomplete. It’s going to set you on an unhealthy path feels important. And then this, I love highlighting I remember when I first heard you speak about highlighting and thinking, Oh my gosh, like what an easy way to minimize the psychological costs of prioritization? Because I mean, there, you’re absolutely right, that there are real psychological costs to feeling like you are making a decision making a trade off, especially if that trade off is not just Who are we going to put in the backseat of the car? But who are we kicking out of the car?

Emilie Aries  28:19  

Yeah.

Lisa Lewis Miller  28:19  

feels like in order to accomplish something, you have to exercise parts of yourself and get them out of the car entirely. It would make complete sense why we would self sabotage why we would stall, why we would you turn on things that we say that we want. So using highlighting as a strategy to say, just this week, just this month, just this quarter, just this whenever you know, picking a nice sort of length of temporal certainty you want to go with there. Yeah, I’m highlighting this prioritizing this moving this into the driver’s seat is a beautiful way to blend and navigate the focus P Yeah. With the generalist piece.

Emilie Aries  28:59  

Totally. And I feel like there’s a really fascinating Freakonomics podcast, I would point people to called the upside of quitting. It’s a couple years old now. But sometimes you do have to decide is this goal like we have to reevaluate the goal? Is this goal still something I want to pursue? And and if it’s not to kick them out of the car in a mindful, conscious way, a loving way said, right? Yeah. Yeah. Preferably, not literally. But, you know, deciding who’s not coming with you into this next chapter of your life, person, goal, place thing, whatever it might be. It’s kind of like the Marie Kondo assessment of is this goal still serving me or am I just doing this out of habit? And that’s where habits I think, can have a dark side, but you know reevaluating at different stages of your life, how your goals have evolved, how your goals have changed, and freeing yourself to quit some shit like I’m constantly encouraging women, to not feel like quitting in and of itself is a failure because Because for all of us, regardless of gender, strategically quitting is sometimes the best choice for freeing up more opportunities. Otherwise, as the economics principle goes, you you encounter opportunity cost, because you’re missing out on something else, by continuing to pursue this goal, that it’s no longer really bringing you joy, or no longer really serving you. So it’s Yeah, it’s about consciousness and creating a place and a time and a space where you can check in with yourself and ask yourself, Is this still working for me? You know, I get that in my therapist, virtual office these days, you might get that in a planner that you use, like our life tracker planner really creates that kind of momentum around self reflection, but only you as Smokey the Bear might say, right, only you are the boss of deciding which goals are still serving you and which are not. So it’s a hard, um, you know, responsibility. But you have to take responsibility for your ultimate happiness. And pursuing goals is not about checking a checkbox on your planner, it’s about the constant experiment of here’s my theory, I think that having this is going to make me happy, I think that this career change is going to be more sustainable and fulfilling for me, go do it, pursue your heart out, right? Make it happen. And then when you get there, ask yourself, was I right? And if the answer is no, that’s not a bad thing, it means you’re back in the experimental design process, you’ve got to come up with a new, a new theory to test right and seeing life as one big learning opportunity, sometimes harder than others. But, you know, seeing it as one grand experiment about self actualization can put you in the mindset of conscious goal pursuit, not just blind, you know, productivity, goal crushing kind of mantras, which are so popular around January?

Lisa Lewis Miller  32:03  

Well, and the other thing that’s tricky about those productivity mantras is that effectively, what they do is like, they’re just enablement of the worker, right, they just allow you to take on more and more and more and more, and they are typically not executed or sort of presented through the lens of, you’re using productivity, to work less, you’re using productivity to honor your boundaries better, it can oftentimes end up in a really toxic place there. 

Emilie Aries  32:31  

Totally that late stage capitalism for the for the women, because it I mean, there are some, if you look at this, the political science and the goal attainment, science, and our pursuit of productivity over the years, it’s very American. Right, Henry Ford, how do we get more out of people like even Dale Carnegie and the whole, like, the whole self development space, which we are unapologetically in, you know, it is not imbued with social justice and feminism and racial justice underpinning it, it really like ignores some of the privilege that we try to talk more about, which is not everybody has the privilege of focus if you’re working three jobs and raising children, and still can’t make ends meet, because that, why is that even a thing in our world. So as someone who started my career off in politics, I try to come to these conversations with a lens of justice. And it is a fucking radical act, to reject society’s prescription of what your success should look like, and to write it write your own prescription for yourself, right and say, you know, what, maybe not working more is gonna work best for me, maybe, you know, having that sign of success, and being deeply in debt is not actually the American dream for me, you know, really self analysis and critical thinking around what is the theory behind your pursuit of happiness? Or is not is the pursuit of happiness? notic because there’s, there’s debates about that these days. So, yeah, I think we are forced fed a productivity. You know, productivity equals personal worth, is as American as apple pie. And I wrestle with that when I talk about the martyrdom mindset in the opening chapters of my book, because the first step to being the boss of your own career, is understanding where those messages may have come from originally around what you think of as success, and then reevaluating if that’s true for you today, and starting from there.

Lisa Lewis Miller  34:44  

I love that. I feel like that could be a mic drop moment, and we could end the broadcast right there. But I want to bring us back to this idea of getting back up and picking yourself up. When you’ve created a goal. You’ve created a revolution you’ve created A thing, and you’re a month or two into your execution or you’re a month or two into your intention. And you’re noticing that you’re not where you want to be. Either you’re off pace, maybe you’ve decided it’s not important, maybe you’ve accidentally thrown it out of the car as they’re putting it in the backseat. And you’re having a beautiful moment of introspection and reflection and decision on how you can set yourself up for better success, better focus better habits that are the whole shebang, to achieve these ambitions to allow to allow yourself describe in a way that feels good and sustainable and thriving. Right, though, right? What advice do you have for people who are finding themselves at that Crossroads?

Emilie Aries  35:43  

Is this the most February question ever? And I love it. Because if you feel like you’re identifying with this question, you are very much not alone. I think we all find ourselves there, especially in February. So the first thing I would say is, and see Bernie brown For more on this. But the difference between guilt and shame is really important here. If you’re feeling shame, because you wrote down goals, or you created a vision board in January that you have not looked at since then. We need to disentangle your personal worthiness from your goal pursuit for a second, right? It’s okay to feel guilt. Guilt means I feel bad about what I did or did not do. Shame means I’m bad, right? So if we’re if we’re really bundled up in shame, it’s going to be really hard to move forward shame. The shame spiral kind of puts you in a de motivational funk that’s hard to get out of because you see your traits as fixed. That could honestly Lisa be a 90 minute masterclass, but I’ll leave it at that. For now. Knowing that guilt versus shame is really important. We have to say, you know what I didn’t do well, last month, but I’m not a bad person, I can get back up and try again. So first, lean into guilt, and away from shame if you’re going to feel one of those things. And then from there, I would say three quick things, community clarity, and co indulgence. Okay, community, what does that mean? We are not designed as human beings to pursue hard things alone. So if you’re one of those people who quietly secretly writes in your journal, what you really want in life and never articulate it to anyone else, because it’s some kind of secret, you don’t want to jinx yourself. And if you say it out loud, you might never achieve it. And then you’ll feel bad. We got to we got to walk that way back right away, because there are folks out there who are quietly secretly pursuing pretty awesome things that if their friends and loved ones and community members knew about they would help them with. So make sure you are surrounding yourself mindfully with a community that’s going to reinforce your goals. If that means talking to your partner about the behaviors that they have that are not reinforcing, you are making it harder for you to pursue your healthy nutrition plan. Because Brad the BU in my household brings home family size pack of double stuffed Oreos, every time he goes grocery shopping, you know, those are the boundary setting combos to have if it’s knowing that you want to start, I don’t know, double dutch competition, again, asking around to find double dutch communities near you, you know, seeking community is key for accountability and for just enjoying the journey. So much better when you’re pursuing goals and community. Clarity means we’ve got to make sure the next step is crystal clear. Part of the reason we set out to achieve big goals and then make no progress is because when you look at your to do list, it says something very bundled up like research careers I might love. You’re like, well, what the hell does that mean? We’ve got to chunk them down a little bit. We’ve got to disentangle them and really break them down into their component parts. That means I want to talk to Lisa Lewis and have a session with her to help clarify what the hell I want and need and desire. That means I gotta reach out to my career crush, you know, my old colleague, Megan, who I haven’t talked to in 10 years, who is doing really cool things on Instagram and it seems like I would love her life and I’m gonna reach out to her and reconnect with her. It might mean shadowing your cousin’s sisters, father’s friends, uncle, whatever at their place of work, like really get clear on what research means. and break it down into its component parts or it’s not going to happen. And then the final key for moving forward is something known in the research is co indulgence. It’s kind of a combination of community and clarity. Because co indulgence is the act of kind of cheating on your goals with someone else. So hear me out for a second. If I’m trying to eat healthier and I have a big sweet tooth. So this is always somewhere around my goals list in January. If I am trying to eat a little healthier and maybe not have dessert after every single meal. I might feel a craving coming around maybe that time of the month, maybe I need some chocolate, you know, if you know, you know, right. And so if I’m feeling like, Okay, I’m on a mission to get me some chocolate softserve somewhere, I can personally individually go get myself that ice cream cone, enjoy the hell out of it. But then I might feel that kind of guilt hangover afterwards of Tam, I really, I didn’t do what I said I was going to do today. Now contrast that with me texting my girlfriend or my sister who lives nearby and saying, Izzy I’m in, I’m on a quest for a chocolate soft serve right now. And I’m done. I know, I’m supposed to be eating healthier, but will you and I, you know, any interest in joining me on this little indulgence mission. And if she and I collectively indulge together, two things are likely to happen. According to the research, one, I will experience less guilt to, I am more likely to get back on track faster. Instead of saying to myself, Oh, well, the day is shot, I’ll try again tomorrow, and I’m just gonna eat chocolate for the rest of the day, I’m more likely to get back on track right away. And then, you know, you’ll experience less psychological pain along the way and be more motivated to get back on track. So if you find yourself in a slump, make sure you’ve got community and seek it out actively make sure you’ve got clarity, you know, if you’ve got bundled task items on your to do list, you know, disentangle them. And three, if you’re gonna indulge, do it with less guilt by indulging with someone else. Those are my three tips for navigating the fails that come with February. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  41:37  

I love it. That last one feels a little bit like the combination of like enabling like a kind of associating the indulgence with somebody else. But also compartmentalization that oh, this only happens with this person or under these conditions. So therefore, it can sort of limit the temptation or limit the the perceived availability of whatever that, you know, potentially not 100% on mission, choice or activity might be.

Emilie Aries  42:07  

Yeah, I would feel like when we say enabling, now we’re getting closer to linking that bad behavior with a singular person over and over again, which is not ideal, you know. But I would say it’s about mitigating shame. Because silence brings shame. So if I’m going to eat half a sleeve of Oreos on my own on my couch, which I am want to do on occasion, I’m going to feel pretty bad about myself afterwards, I might hide the evidence, right, I might take steps to, you know, cover my tracks, that’s, that’s a sign of shame induced cover up, and that’s not good. And that’s not going to get me back on track better. That’s gonna make me feel like a bad person. So if we say fuck it, I’m accepting that I’m imperfect. I am, I refuse the shame, I reject the shame. I’m just going to lean into the fact that I’m imperfect. And I’m going to cheat on this goal right now. I will not do it alone, I will not do it in silence, I will not do it. You know, in secrecy, then we we bring light to what could otherwise be a very dark and shameful place. And that means radically accepting our imperfections with someone else who says, I see that you’re imperfect, and I love you. And I respect you. And I, you know, I find camaraderie in that. So that i think it’s it’s not something to do with the same person over and over again. Now we’re talking about an affair of some kind. But it’s like, it’s like it’s rejecting the secrecy around cheating on your goals. And that’s what Instagram makes so hard because it’s just one big highlight reel. So imagine of Instagram like, imagine if we all posted not only the progress of us, you know, eating the green drinking the green smoothie, and making progress on our goals and the peloton app screenshots that people share. Imagine if we also said here’s the ice cream cone I’m having today because I’m awesome and I deserve this and I don’t care and it doesn’t mean that my peloton or whatever pursuit is any less valid. Like that would be the cool world I would like to live in.

Lisa Lewis Miller  44:09  

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Well, Emilie, thank you for this masterclass on goal science, on habit formation on figuring out how to best set yourself up for success. If you have fallen down on a goal that’s important to you. This has been a wonderful conversation. And if somebody’s listening to this, and they are thinking I need more Emily areas in my life, where should they go?

Emilie Aries  44:35  

Thank you for the question. I produced two episodes a week of the Bossed Up podcast. So wherever you’re listening to this fantastic podcast, go search Bossed Up that’s b o s s Ed, and then up and subscribe now so you’ll never miss an episode we cover all things, goal related career development, personal and professional development. And if you go to bossup.org and sign up for our emails. You’ll also stay in the loop for all of our upcoming programming around leadership accelerators, job search accelerators, and really incredible, both virtual and in person opportunities to get bossed up together. Thanks, Lisa.

Lisa Lewis Miller  45:13  

Lovely. Well, Emily, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all kinds of good tips on how people can step into more Boston energy in the new year. And that’s a wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests and topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity Show finally finds the work that fits your values and lifestyle. For the link to order it go to GetCareerClarity.com/book. And don’t forget to get your other tools resources and helpful goodies at GetCareerClarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the Career Clarity Show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.

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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