136: Believing In Yourself with Smiley Poswolsky

On today’s episode of the podcast, I am bringing in an old acquaintance and somebody who I’ve looked up to for a long time in the career and personal development space, Smiley Poswolsky. Smiley has been a step ahead of me in my journey for a while now and I’m so excited to bring him on the podcast today to share his brilliance with you. Our conversation today is going to span and scan just about every topic, career, life, happiness, friendship, satisfaction, and workplace being millennials.

Smiley is a best selling author, internationally renowned keynote speaker, and a millennial workplace expert. Smiley helps companies attract, retain and engage top talent, increase employee engagement, and build intergenerational collaboration and belonging in the multi generational workplace. 

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

Show Notes:

• Friendship in the Age of Loneliness
• Invite Smiley to speak
• Smiley Poswolsky
• Instagram: @Whatsupsmiley
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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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 back to the Career Clarity Show everybody. This is your host, Lisa Miller and I am delighted that you are with us today. On today’s episode of the podcast, I am bringing in an old acquaintance and somebody who I’ve looked up to for a long time in the career and personal development space. He’s been a step ahead of me in my journey for a while now and I’m so excited to bring him on the podcast today to share his brilliance with you. Our conversation today is probably going to span and scan just about every topic, career, life, happiness, friendship, satisfaction, workplace being millennials, there could be a lot of ground that we cover. So if any of those topics are interesting and exciting to you, you’ll definitely want to stick around for today’s episode. My guest for today is Smiley Podolski Smiley is a best selling author, internationally renowned keynote speaker, and a millennial workplace expert. Smiley helps companies attract, retain and engage top talent, increase employee engagement, and build intergenerational collaboration and belonging in the multi generational workplace. Smiley’s helping companies foster belonging and human connection in a remote and hybrid workforce during the pandemic and beyond. Smiley speaks at the world’s top companies, associations, executive retreats, virtual meetings, leadership trainings, and business conferences. And Smiley is not just a best selling author, but he’s actually written several incredible books over the course of his career. So with that, Smiley, welcome to the Career Clarity Show.

Smiley Poswolsky  2:06  

Hi, Lisa, thank you so much for having me.

Lisa Lewis Miller  2:09  

I am delighted to have you. And listeners, by the way, if Smiley’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was featured in my books. If you haven’t picked up a copy of Career Clarity Show, you definitely should. But the reason that I asked Smiley to give some comments on the book is because of his incredible work in the space of career and satisfaction and life. So Smiley, I kind of want to have you start with walking our listeners through the the the bibliography of your professional career. When did you get your start in writing? How did you get your start in writing? And where are you today?

Smiley Poswolsky  2:44  

Sure. I’ll start I suppose, in 2012. So I currently live in San Francisco, California. But back in 2012, I was almost 30 years old. And I was living in Washington, DC at the time, I was working a job at the United States Peace Corps, which is a government organization, government agency. I had worked on the Obama campaign in 2008. And that brought me to DC. And I had what many people would say is a great job. You know, on paper, I was making a good salary and had health care and benefits and job security. And everything was kind of perfect, especially to the outside world and to my parents. But I kind of felt the sense that, hey, Peace Corps is great. There’s some great people here working for the government is interesting. Again, there’s some great federal servants. But this is not for me. It’s just not the place I want to be the seas, not where I want to be. And this work, although great on paper, and great in theory, and maybe great on LinkedIn isn’t what I want to be doing. And I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to be doing. I knew I wanted to be doing more writing. I knew I wanted to write books, I knew I wanted to do more creative work. I knew I didn’t want to wear a suit and tie every day, I knew I wanted to move to California and live in the Bay Area and try something different. But I didn’t really know how to get there. So I went to this program called starting block, which is the starting block Institute for Social Innovation. It’s kind of a leadership development boot camp. For Jen’s ears and millennials and anyone interested in social change. And it’s starting block, I met believers, I met people that were kind of pushing me outside my comfort zone and saying, you know, I had this conversation with my friend Evan Walden. And he said, Smiley, why would you be doing anything less than reaching your full potential in life? Such a simple question. No one had ever asked me that. I was almost 30 years old. I think a lot of people go their entire lives and no one asked them that question. But luckily, I had this friend Evan, who we were sitting on top of this hotel, rooftop drinking a beer and he says Why would you be doing anything less than reaching your full full potential in life and that was kind of the moment almost 30 years old, in 2012, where I was like, You know what, this is a good job. but it’s not the job for me. And it’s okay to have a job that everyone else thinks is great and is great, right and not feel guilty about quitting or trying something new. And it was this transformational moment. And just to be clear out there to everyone listening, like, it’s not like I went home and quit my job immediately or called my boss in that moment, I still worked another six or eight months to save up money and transition and close out everything I was working on and respect my colleagues and, you know, make sure that they found someone to replace me in an important job and to kind of get my plan set up for what was next. But that was the moment where I was like, Okay, I am going to make this leap. I’m going to do it. Right. So I moved out to California, and started this new life. And I knew it was going to involve writing, I didn’t exactly know how I didn’t know how exactly I was going to make a living. Because as people no writing obviously doesn’t always pay the bills for folks. So I had saved up some money, I moved out to San Francisco, and I started blogging about my experience, I started blogging about what I call my quarter life crisis. You know, and I know a lot of people out there might have a quarterlife crisis if you’re in your 30s like I am, or like a third life crisis, or midlife crisis. So I started writing about it on my WordPress blog, which a WordPress blog at the time cost $18 a year. And a few people were reading it and they kind of were like, hey, smile, this is great stuff. You should write a book and I was like, Yeah, I’m gonna write a book. And they’re like, No, you really should, you should do it. I was like, okay, maybe I will write a book. And so I decided to write a book about my own quarter life crisis, as I call it, the quarter life breakthrough, my experience of finding meaning and what I wanted to do in the world, and interviewing other young people kind of going through this same transition. And I ended up self publishing the book, and the book sold 10,000 copies on Amazon, which is really amazing for you know, writing and you know, writing a book is hard selling book is very hard.

That’s actually the most sales of any of my books, I’ve, since then. So just kind of shows that, hey, if you put something out there that people are really excited about, you know, you might get incredible response. And you don’t necessarily need a publisher to do that. So the book sold very well demonstrated that other people were kind of going through this, you know, search for purpose and meaning in the world. And that ended up kind of Springboarding my career for both writing and speaking my very first, you know, speaking gig, which is now how I make a living was writing was was speaking about my self published book, I was doing an Indiegogo campaign, which is a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to do this book. And I actually rented out the back of a bookstore in San Francisco. So I paid for my own speaking gig, I didn’t get paid, I paid somebody else to rent the space, I got to buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s and want and crackers. And that was the beginning of me speaking about, hey, this is why you should support this project. This is why you should support this book. So you know, my my journey is really kind of about believing in yourself is about trying new things is about the search for meaning and realizing that if you’re going through something other people out, there probably are too. So with that I kind of it’s spring, it kind of sparked this whole new career in San Francisco around personal development, career change, meaning and purpose. And I found that it wasn’t that just that young people, changing their jobs, or interested in my work was actually companies that were interested in attracting and retaining millennials and young people in the workplace, because there’s so much turnover among young people. So that was actually where I built my business was in speaking and consulting with companies about how they can attract and retain young talent and increase engagement among young people. So that’s, that’s kind of the work that I that I still almost that I still do, in many ways to this day. That was all sparked by, you know, deciding that I was going to make a career change at the age of 30. So that was the first project quarter life breakthrough, I ended up doing a published version of that book. And then maybe if you want to stop there, if you have any questions, and then I can go into my next couple projects.

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:24  

Well, I think that the the courage that it takes to hear a really bold question, and then to not just kind of write it off and say like, yeah, and then whatever, like, nobody lives up to their full potential, or like this is just what adulthood is right? The fact that you sat with that question and let it wash over you and let it start to alter the trajectory of your life is very cool. And very courageous. You know, I think that for so many people who are not feeling as satisfied as they want to in their careers, it’s really easy to rationalize your way out of it. Right, we have all these intellectual coping mechanisms to try to keep ourselves safe and stable and stay where we are. And the willingness to take the leap and say, I am going to stay at my job for the short term, but I’m going to use that time really intentionally and strategically to build up my little nest egg. So that I can go and try new things and have a freedom Fund is a really cool thing to see someone do. So thank you for sharing that part of your story. Because I think that’s so inspiring. And I think that the combination of the bravery plus the planning is a really important thing for people to hear to that it wasn’t just like, I’m about to set fire to this building, and walk out, you know, with cars exploding in the background, but I’m going to be thoughtful and careful and intentional about it makes it feel so much more doable and possible for any of us. But I want to keep going in your professional trajectory. Because I think that sometimes people believe that you, when you’re unhappy in your career, all you have to do is find the one right career for you, you just have to figure it out, you just have to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. And then you’ll make the change into that one other thing. And then you’ll be able to kind of kick up your heels, and Coast out the rest of your career in that one trajectory. And I know from what I’ve seen in my clients, that is absolutely not the case, that those of us who are motivated by learning and growing, and being challenged, will rarely find one career path that’s going to work for you for all the rest of your days, or one area of expertise to double down on for 20 3040 years. So I’m curious if you’ll share a little bit more about the story of where your life in your career has taken you. And its twists and turns since the quarter life breakthrough was published.

Smiley Poswolsky  12:02  

Yeah, so I think first and foremost, you know, in the, you know, I kind of set out, okay, I’m going to be a writer, right, I kind of said, you know, that’s my thing. That’s what I’m going to be doing. And in many ways, that is part of my work, and I love to write. But I very quickly realized, as many people will do that it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible to make a living, just writing, especially on your own effort. Actually, frankly, even if you’re a journalist or working with another publication at this point, the it’s just very hard. There’s not a lot of money in writing and in publishing. So I quickly learned that I was going to have to, to pivot that and make some changes there. But then I realized, hey, it’s not just the writing, it’s what I’m writing about. That’s really exciting to me, right, it’s helping people find meaning and purpose in their lives, it’s helping people meet more engaged at work, it’s helping organizations figure out how to get their employees more excited, and more aligned with their organization’s purpose. Now, that can be done through writing, but it can also be done through speaking and kind of doing motivational talks. So that was kind of the first change I made. And I still was writing and of course, writing blog posts and articles, and putting my work out there. But how I was making a living in terms of my career was speaking. And so that kind of led to a speaking career, I started speaking, you know, kind of people’s meetups and panels here and there, which turned into speaking at, you know, fortune 500 companies and traveling all over the world. I’ve now spoken in over 25 countries. And it turns out that a lot of people were interested in future of work and millennials and Gen Z and meaning and purpose and work. And I’d really kind of, you know, found something that was exciting. I think that’s, you know, people often think, Oh, if you have an idea, that’s all you need, it’s actually not true, you need to have an idea that other people are excited about specifically people that are have money, or in a position to invest in the idea and that the idea really matters, and it’s adding value to other people. Right? I think oftentimes, especially in the career world, you know, the word passion gets thrown a lot around, frankly, too much of what am I passionate about? What are you passionate about? You know, it is important to know who you are and what you’re passionate about. Don’t get me wrong, like you need to know yourself. Self awareness and self discovery is an essential part of being a happy and thriving human being. But I think more important and less talked about is what can you give to others? And what service are you providing to others and thinking of your of your career as coming from a place of love and service and showing up for other people and how are you going to do that? Like how are you going to add value to other people, and so called please look, can

Lisa Lewis Miller  14:46  

we can we riff on that first, because the distinction that you’re drawing is so important, between passion for engagement or interest and Why would call and you let me know if you agree with this label? Meaning, yeah, like doing things for others being of service, not that it has to be big service, like I have solved world hunger single handedly. But doing things that make an impact on somebody else’s life in a positive way, be they big or small. I think there’s such a conflation that can happen between passion and being of service. And, and meaning that can create so much pressure and stress on can I find that one true, perfect thing that’s gonna be, you know, the band aid that the world needs. And being able to parse those two apart, and think about like, Well, what do I like to engage with in the way that you were talking about your own path of man, I really actually like the subject matter. I like writing, but I like becoming the subject matter expert. And then that sense of meaning, and an impact and contribution and service through how can I use that subject matter expertise in a way that’s going to benefit others? The really helpful mental model and a distinction to use to make the process of making career decisions a little bit less pressured, and a little bit more step by step or pragmatic, I think,

Smiley Poswolsky  16:20  

and not only that, but the science shows a science of how the science of how we are as human beings that we’re going to get way more fulfillment, when we show up from a place of love of service of compassion, that actually makes us feel better than just being like, I’m so happy, I want to do whatever I want. It’s like that actually doesn’t do that much for us. But where we really feel something is where we’re saying, Oh, I gave to somebody else, right? I showed up for somebody else I’m in service, I’m, I’m creating an impact that actually, as what you know, really drives meaning and in the sense that you matter in the world. And, you know, employees who derive meaning from their work are 170% more engaged, they’re nearly three times as likely to stay with their company or stay with the project that they’re working on. It’s the single biggest factor that determines employee engagement, his purpose, the sense of meaning, whether you work for yourself, or your work for another organization. And so yeah, that was a big kind of realization for me, and understanding kind of how I could show up for for companies in that way, and how I could show up for other people. So I did a lot of speaking. So my second book that I wrote was called the breakthrough breakthrough speaker, because I’m really kind of, I think the theme for me in my work is I want to discover things and that and then let other people know, I kind of want to break down the walls, the gates, the, you know, the things that no one talks about the things that no one shares, right for the quarter life breakthrough is like I wrote the book I wish I had when I was going through my quarter life crisis. Here are things I wish I knew here are kind of practical tips. Here are lessons that I wish I had in 2010 2011. When I was kind of like, wow, I’m 30 years old, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. And I feel like it’s all over. I’m kind of given up, maybe I should just, you know, say hey, what, you know, suck it up, this is my job, you’re not supposed to like your job, you just do it. And here’s the book I wish I had that I could that I didn’t feel existed for me to kind of give me that pep talk. And then I wrote a book of kind of, hey, you’re starting out and the kind of as an expert, you’re trying to make money you’re trying to break through on the speaking circuit, there’s really not much there to help you write besides, Okay, watch a TED talk. Okay, great. I wanted to write a book that was gonna help me several years ago, when I was just starting my speaking business. So I wrote this really practical book called The breakthrough speaker, which was kind of a guide for people breaking into the speaking industry, basically 60 lessons that I’ve learned, in my, you know, five or six years of being on the speaker circuit, with an emphasis on also kind of trying to increase speaker diversity and speaker inclusion in the speaking world, which is tends to be a very male and white and white male dominated industry. And so that was that book of kind of here are some tips and things I’ve learned and lessons I’ve learned along the way, in the speaking industry. This is my craft, this is my business. And then my third project kind of came out of this sense of, you know, you were talking about how you think that there’s always one answer. One thing. One lesson I’ve learned in my career is that actually, if you want to stay engaged, you constantly have to be reinventing yourself and trying new things, and frankly, just being curious. Right? Yeah, the

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:39  

amount of pressure free curiosity that then becomes your plan B and your plan C and your safety net is incredible. And I think that that ability to allow yourself space to explore and be a beginner without immediately having that voice in the back of your head saying like, well, what’s the ROI on this? You know how Gonna be monetizable is such a paradoxical exercise, but it’s so critically important for your future self health and happiness and optionality in your career.

Smiley Poswolsky  20:12  

Right, exactly. So I think a lot of people were saying, oh, cool, you should write another career advice book. That’s what you’re doing. Right, right, another career advice book for millennials. And I said, Well, I already wrote a career advice book for millennials. I said, what I wanted to say, I’m actually really interested in the topic of loneliness, and connection in the digital age, I had been, you know, experiencing a lot of loneliness myself, and many millennials that I’ve actually been friends with and talking to and coaching and working with, we’re also experiencing that. So it’s not like I abandon kind of, you know, the, the population I was interested in or researching, I just wanted to focus on something else I wanted to write about something other than careers. And I decided to write a book called friendship in the age of loneliness, which kind of was born out of my own experiences of, of being an extroverted social person that also experiences loneliness. Right? Lonely, extroverted people can be lonely too. Loneliness is kind of the subjective perception of loneliness, it’s the gap between, you know, where we want to be in terms of our connection, where we actually are, and writing about how a lot of people maybe have a ton of social media connections and followers or fans, but really feel like they have a gap when it comes to deep friendship. So especially young people, Gen Z and millennials. So that was my third book, friendship in the age of loneliness, which came out last year, I started actually writing most of it prior to the pandemic, and then had to rewrite a lot of it, because a lot of the book, I needed to kind of write about a write about how friendship was taking, being being changed in many ways by the virtual landscape, the fact that we couldn’t, in many ways see each other in person all the time, like we used to. So I think, you know, some lessons from my career are, there’s definitely a thread of, of, of being really interested in young people and meaning and navigating kind of what what does quality of life mean, and the search for purpose. And this idea that purpose is both your work and your work life and the people you surround yourself with. But also being open to new challenges, new experiences, new ideas, I think that that’s really important, especially for the creatives out there and entrepreneurs, that if you box yourself in too much, you’re gonna get bored. And you need to kind of constantly be thinking about new interests and new ideas, and how and how you can kind of evolve your work with the times. And now I speak about millennials, but I’m also speaking about a completely new topic, belonging and connection in the remote and hybrid workforce, which is a very timely subject, again, very value added in terms of what organizations and companies are struggling with right now. So it all kind of blends together. And I think that the lesson I’ve learned is if you’re continue to add value, you’re going to be in high demand, whether you’re looking for a new job, whether you’re trying to get promoted, whether you’re building your own business, whatever you’re doing, if you are able to align your your gifts and your strains and things that you’re excited about, with a huge need, with a major issue that people are struggling with, you’re going to be in good shape, and you’re going to most importantly be changing people’s lives and creating lots of impact.

Lisa Lewis Miller  23:28  

I love that. And I want to take us in the direction of jamming a little bit more on the loneliness piece and the intersection point with career. Because you know, one of the things that I see is when people are feeling really dissatisfied with their work, sometimes it’s really difficult to put their finger on the why, like, what is it that has gone off the rails. And we Smiley as you know, because you read the book, we have the four pillars of career fulfillment methodology that we help people use to parse through that, and you got the strength piece and you’ve got the interest piece. But the piece that oftentimes is under weighted or under appreciated, but can often have an outsized impact on your sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, is the personality pillar. Which brings up the question of do you feel like you can be more of your full self at work? Do you feel like you are valued and appreciated and respected and included? And do you feel a sense of belonging at work, and when you feel lonely, or when you feel isolated, because that one pillar has such a big impact on your sense of happiness? Sometimes a misalignment there can make you feel like you need to flip the table on your entire life. You need to start at a new organization, you need to go into a new industry, you need to start doing a new job role. And sometimes it’s just that you’re lonely and feeling disconnected. And I’m wondering You know, in the writing of your book, as you were exploring the topic of loneliness, where did you see some of the intersection points with professional lives? And maybe some of the rest of your body of work?

Smiley Poswolsky  25:13  

Yeah. So I mean, I think it’s interesting employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more engaged at work. Right? So employees, and you know, in, first of all, just to kind of set the big picture here, why this matters? You know, loneliness is an epidemic in the United States. And globally, the average American hasn’t made a new friend in the last five years, loneliness is actually as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Like it kills you. Yeah. There’s a correlation between loneliness and increased rates of stress and heart disease, even early onset Alzheimer’s, like, it’s actually this isn’t just like, oh, loneliness, want to be nice if everyone was happy and had friends now, this is actually, you know, a major thing talking about how to live a fulfilling and long life. And on the flip side of that, having strong connections in your life, it could increase your chance of survival by 50%. Right. So there’s a direct correlation between having a strong social life and having friends in your life and, and being a healthy adult and living a good healthy life. So this is big stuff. You know, this is, this is this is I think, probably one of the most fundamental things of living a healthy life is, you know, Harvard did a study, they kind of found that that people that had the most fulfilling lives at the age of 80, had the most satisfying relationships at the age of 50. So it had nothing to do with how much money they had, or success in terms of their professional careers, what their job title was their bank account, any of that had to do with the strength of their social relationships as adults, that was the biggest kind of predictor of adult happiness.

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:59  

And you know, what’s so interesting about that is that for so many of us, when we’re considering career change in some form, it’s because there’s a way that we want to feel that we don’t currently feel like we’re chasing a feeling state, we’re chasing a value, or we’re chasing a desired future version of yourself. And thinking about the kinds of feelings that are associated with connection, community friendship, having a best friend at work, I think really highlights how there are a lot of different ways in our lives to get the feelings that we so desire and crave. And that career might be a really important one. For some of us, it might be a lot more important than for others of us to find friendship in that space to help us work as a way to facilitate those feelings. But I think it’s also just a really interesting reflection question. For you listening to sit with and think about, hmm, like, am I investing enough intentionality and thoughtfulness into how I’m creating connection and friendship? Across my life writ large?

Smiley Poswolsky  28:11  

Right, and I think, you know, it’s a lot of people say, Well, I have a lot of friendships outside of work, I don’t need them at work. I think that’s fair. Right? The point is, you have the connection, what happens though, it’s that there seems to be a correlation with is, if you don’t have friendships at work, you’re also probably not that likely to be having them outside of work, right. And if you don’t have them out, not outside of work, if you don’t have them outside of work, you probably don’t have them at work. So the point is, you need connection in your life. And I think a lot of times, you mentioned this idea of, you know, if you’re struggling, you know, do you throw it all away and start over or actually maybe, you know, a simple actions that would be to say, Hey, I’m going to try to go deeper with a few friends I already have or make some new friends in the next couple of months, because that might solve a lot of the things that are going on. And this idea that, hey, you know, it might not be this existential crisis, you think it is, it might be I just need to spend some quality time with some people I really care about, or I just need to find some people that I truly love that kind of support me. And amazing thing happens. I mean, that was what was so big for me at starting block, which was kind of finding these believers, as I call them, find, I call it, you know, finding people that believe in the beauty of your dreams, because there’s so many people out there that you kind of say, oh, I want to do something different, or I’m thinking about doing launching a podcast or writing a book or, you know, becoming a therapist or or starting a new job or starting a new career and they kind of roll their eyes and say, Yeah, whatever, you’re never gonna do it. Or everyone’s switching. Everyone’s resigning right now great resignation, whatever. They kind of just roll their eyes and, you know, take a take a drink of a sip of wine or sip of beer and kind of ignore you. Well, cool, like, let those people be. What you want to find are the believers, the people that say, oh, Tell me more. Or better yet, how can I? How can I help? Right? Who can I connect you with? How can I support you? Who can I nominate to be a guest on your podcast? Who can I introduce you to that’s already written a book or published a book, you know, who do I know that works at that company that you’re interested in working at? Those are the people you want to find. And if you don’t have a lot of those people in your life, it is going to be very hard to do much of anything meaningful in this world.

Lisa Lewis Miller  30:27  

This Smiley, as I’m listening to, you paint the picture about this kind of a friend and this kind of a connection. It sounds amazing, and wonderful and life giving. And I’m guessing, I wouldn’t be alone in saying that, you know, you’re you describe that kind of relationship. Maybe I met a sub optimal level of friendship in my life. And there probably lots of different reasons for that for lots of different individuals, you know, from becoming too busy that you just don’t think about it to feeling like you’re burnt out or suffering from depression. And you feel like you just can’t get the energy and the motivation to reach out to potentially feeling like you’ve been burned in sharing with people and being vulnerable. And then having them not support your dreams and ambitions and hopes and finding the pain from that was so profound, that it makes it a little gun shy to put yourself back out there and to try to create these, these relationships afresh, or to rekindle ones that might have existed in the past. So what kind of advice do you give for folks who are saying, Alright, Smiley, I am at a sub optimal level of friendship in my life. And I feel a little bit lost or scared on how to begin to cultivate that.

Smiley Poswolsky  31:48  

Yeah, I think and that’s, first of all, I would say, I feel you, you’re not alone. That’s totally a reasonable way to feel especially right now. I mean, one of the big things that, you know, I learned the book is two thirds of Americans are lonely, including 80% of Gen Z and 70% of millennials. So this is not something if you’re feeling it, that you, you know, you’ve you’re an anomaly. You’re, it’s actually everyone’s feeling it, we just don’t talk about it that much. I think we’re talking about it a little bit more in the context of the pandemic, which is maybe a good silver lining. But I would say that kind of the biggest thing I would say is starting small, right? I think that, you know, we often think, Okay, that’s it, I’m throwing out all my friends, I’m starting over, right, I gotta rebuild my social circle. It’s like, Okay, how about just committing to going to one new event, or attending a virtual meetup, or, you know, a book club, a cooking class, you know, a meet up around people that share similar interests as you just kind of making that one intention. And adding something to the calendar, I think is a step in the right direction. And it’s not, it’s something attainable, right? It’s something that you can actually do, and it’s not overwhelming. That would be I think, a great place to start. The other would be kind of thinking about existing relationships you already have. I think we often breeze over those and assume, Oh, yeah, those people, but actually, maybe that’s a conversation you can have with people that you do care about saying, hey, you know, this is something that really means a lot to me, are you available to go deeper? Or hey, you know, how do you think we could support each other more in our career pursuits, that type of thing. And you’re kind of naming it, you’re putting it out there you’re communicating your needs. And if you communicate your needs, likely someone’s going to see you in a new light.

Lisa Lewis Miller  33:34  

Okay, but listen, Smiley, everything that you are suggesting requires vulnerability. Yes, it does, requires putting yourself out there, it requires taking the first step where there is not necessarily a guaranteed positive response on the other side of

Smiley Poswolsky  33:50  

that. No, but that’s part of life. You know, I I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, I I’m not saying it’s easy, believe me, I’m not saying vulnerability is easy. But I think it’s, it’s, it’s part of being a part of putting yourself out there. And it’s part of achieving your goals and, and living a meaningful life is to is to put yourself out there and let people know who you are and what you’re looking for, and how you can support them and they can support you. And we have to take that risk. You know, that’s that’s the thing is friendship, and connection, like everything in life is an investment. You know, it doesn’t just come I think that that’s a you know, especially for young people we’ve grown up, especially people that are even younger than us and maybe in their you know, teenagers and in their early 20s. We’ve grown up in a world where it seems very easy to connect, and on the surface it is it requires two clicks. One click, it requires swiping right. It requires a double tap, maybe a simple DM an emoji, right. Gotcha. Yes, like amazing. Cool. Yeah, be there too. Yeah. But actually As we all know, as we get older, it requires a lot more. It requires presence and patience and time. And sometimes confusion and disagreement and tension and pain, right. And those are emotions that we have to experience if we’re going to experience true friendship, right. And it’s not bad to experience negative emotions, that’s part of life that actually is where sometimes the best stuff happens and where the growth happens, and where the most connection happens, because you get to the other side, and you remember, Oh, wow, we really struggled through that in our relationship, or we, you know, we had, we had a fight, or we disagreed, and we let each other speak. And now we learn to love and respect each other even more, right? Because we know who we are, we know what happens when one of us hurts one another. You know, so that’s the good stuff. So I would say kind of leaning into the, the challenging stuff would be the, the takeaway there.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:04  

I feel like that’s your mic drop moment. It’s vulnerability, and it’s showing up. And those two things sound so simple. They’re such easy concepts to grasp, and yet they’re so tricky to step into and live and embody fully in your day to day life. And they’re the key, like, that’s the cheat code. The cheat code is there is no cheat. The cheat code is like, buckle up and strap in and sit there through the heart and the weird and the messy, because the fruit on the other side of that will be so so sweet. That’s right. Well, as we wrap up our conversation today, Smiley, what’s one thing that when you were writing your most recent book, really struck you, or really caught you by surprise, about friendship and connection and loneliness?

Smiley Poswolsky  37:08  

You know, I think one thing that that really, that really struck me was just how widespread this problem is, you know, I thought, okay, maybe this is something that I’m just experiencing, maybe this is just something that is a San Francisco thing, or something like that. And, you know, because it’s, we live, and I live in, you know, Silicon Valley, and everyone’s so addicted to technology. And maybe these are the lonely people, because we’re, you know, spending so much time on apps and social media. But I started to realize that actually, this is a global problem. It’s a problem that affects young people pretty much all around the world. And it’s been on the rise for many years, it was it was skyrocketing, prior to the pandemic, loneliness was prior to a year of social distancing, and lockdown and quarantine. And that I don’t think we’re talking about it enough. So that was, I think the biggest realization was, Wow, this is a huge issue that affects kind of, frankly, the quality of our lives and our health. And it’s not something that is getting as much attention as it deserves. That was probably the thing that that that most surprised me of just how deep this this ran, you know that it wasn’t just, you know, the Bay Area, it wasn’t just the United States, it wasn’t just, you know, millennials or Gen Z, this is a global issue. You know, the UK now has a minister for loneliness. Japan has a minister for loneliness. Other countries are considering it. You know, it’s something that I actually believe in now that we’re shifting as, you know, we’re shifting many companies, so many companies are moving to hybrid workforce. And that’s not going not going away, regardless of you know, when the pandemic is finally over remote and hybrid work are going to be part of the new normal, even if people are going back to the office a few days here a few days there, hybrid work is part of the future, we have to design for connection. And as technology becomes more and more a part of our lives, I think that we’ll see that the companies, organizations, people that figure out how to put connection and friendship at the center of their lives are going to be the happiest and most successful folks. And people that kind of just say, Oh yeah, whatever, it’s going to be really hard. And that actually, hopefully, as a society, we have to create those containers for connection or we’re gonna see you know, a lot more mental health challenges than we already are. We’re already seeing a bunch but people are going to be we need that to make sure that people are healthy and happy in this world.

Lisa Lewis Miller  39:57  

Oh, what a good takeaway for us to end on central your life and your decisions around connection and friendship and you will not be disappointed. Smiley for anybody who has been eating this conversation up and they want to hear more about your books and your work and the impact that you’re making the way you’re serving through your career, what are the best ways for them to get in touch with you?

Smiley Poswolsky  40:21  

Sure, well, you can reach out to me and check out my work on my website, Smiley, small city calm, I have a substack newsletter so you can sign up for that. Check out my books, wherever you like to buy books. They are available. The quarter life breakthrough the breakthrough speaker and friendship in the age of loneliness. And you can follow me on all the social media channels on LinkedIn on Instagram, Twitter, I’m out there. What’s up Smiley?

Lisa Lewis Miller  40:46  

Smiley, thank you so much for coming on, like Career Clarity Show and sharing your brilliance across all the topics where you’re a subject matter expert.

Smiley Poswolsky  40:55  

Thanks so much for having me, Lisa. Great to hear.

Lisa Lewis Miller  41:04  

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 word to 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.