How To Find A Career You Genuinely Love (That Works Around Your Children)

0:01Welcome to Motherkind with me Zoe Blaskey. We are proudly supported by Wild Nutrition's Women's Supplements and I am so happy that you are here. I am someone who completely changed careers in motherhood, not just jobs, not just industry, but a completely new career. I did three major changes. I became a podcaster with zero experience. I retrained as a coach and I started a career in transformational coaching specialising in working with mothers and then down the line I became an author and I know that so many of you want to change careers you want to find something that works better around your family that fulfills you more that feels more aligned to who you are now and your purpose so in this episode I'm going to share how I did it and the coaching framework that is going to help you find clarity if you feel stuck okay let's just name it first things first it is totally normal to want to change career in motherhood there's nothing wrong with you for wanting that you are different your time is different your capacity is different and your priorities are different and here's the thing the average person will have five to seven careers not jobs careers in their lifetime totally different careers and 48 % of mothers say they want to change jobs after having children.

1:27So you are not alone if you are struggling with this, thinking about it, wanting about it. So if you know that your old career or your old job just doesn't work anymore and you want to change it but you have no idea where to start, here are three tools that I used that genuinely helped me figure out how I going to change my career okay the first tool is about energy and I call it the energy audit and it's really about what energizes you this kind of advice about follow your passion I don't think that's helpful because I didn't have a passion for podcasting but I knew that I had an energy for speaking to people I knew that I had an energy of curiosity so energy is actually your most honest kind of career compass especially when you're kind of raising children and your time is finite you know this idea of a passion might just feel completely abstract but I think this idea of what energizes you is really realistic so track what is it if you're in paid work what is it are there tiny little things in your job that do energize you what drains you and if you're not in paid work then notice what content what podcasts what conversations give you energy what you're consuming will give you so many clues.

2:46So you can start to ask yourself, when do I feel most like myself? What feels kind of most fun and easy to me? And this is how I first started considering a career in coaching because I kept getting the feedback in my corporate jobs. The thing that I was best at was coaching the team and it energized me so much. I was someone who would sort of look forward to one-to-ones because I would want to help my team. I was just obsessed with helping people grow and that's what coaching is. So there will be elements of what you're currently doing that will give you very clear clues about what to do next.

3:21You just need to sort of learn to look for them. All right, so the second tool is to redefine success and I talk about this a lot because your definition of success is meant to change in motherhood, right? I think one of the biggest drivers of career dissatisfaction post-motherhood is kind of chasing this outdated definition of success. And I used to value it by my title, my salary, my company car. I had a very nice one. Now success to me is flexibility and impact. It is completely different. And if I'm honest, there's no way I'd go back to a nine to five now because it probably wouldn't give me what is top of my success ranking, which is flexibility.

4:06So I want you to ask yourself, what does success look like in this season? Not forever, but in this season, what do you want more of every week? What are you no longer willing to sacrifice? Are you no longer willing to sacrifice your evenings or early mornings doing a long commute? What is it? Because the truth is, is that once you get clear about what that North star of your success is, obviously it's not going to give you the answer, but it's going to start guiding you towards what might work for you. All right. And the third thing, and I did this so much, is kind of this future self-visioning, is being clear of where do I want to get to.

4:50So if you imagine in three years time, your work feels aligned, it's kind of not perfect, but it feels aligned. I want you to think about what are you doing? And I did this. This was probably the most useful thing that I did when I was making this massive career change with a one year old. I actually wrote out my dream day and I remember I wish I could find it for you. I remember writing out, I want to spend my day surrounded by women, having powerful conversations. and then it became sort of obvious then a podcast would help me do that so I want you to think about you know what is that dream day what are you doing day to day so many people think about a career in x but don't break down what is it day to day do you want to be working at home do you want to be traveling do you need to be in an office do you need to be around others what hours are you working who are you working with what does that work look like is it sort of screen based or are with people is that you know there are so many things that you can start to think about and using that energy audit that you've already done this is where it's all going to start to link up right important to say some of those answers might feel unrealistic you might be like well I see myself you know working a couple of days a week surrounded by amazing people and you you might get this voice that says that's impossible you'd never cover your costs doing that you've got child care but this isn't about sort of clicking our fingers and making the perfect career change fall out the sky it doesn't happen about that but this is about clarity and getting that direction so just try and hold that negative voice for a minute while you think about this sort of dream day your ideal day all right so the next question that I want you to think about and this is where we are going to start to distill it down a little bit is what skills do I have?

6:44Don't be thinking that a career change means starting again. You're not starting again. You're not 21. You are not starting from scratch. You are starting from experience. And I've really seen this, right? I had this career, 12 years in marketing, and I thought I don't want to do it anymore. And I thought, on my worst days, I've sort of wasted those 12 years. Absolutely not. The skills that I got in those jobs has what enabled me to grow motherkind. So I want you to think about if you're in paid work and you think, look back on your career, what are the skills that I have developed? If you're not in paid work, what are the skills that putting your family first and being the primary carer has given you?

7:27There are so many. In fact, I have done a full episode on that. So I'm going to link it in the show notes below. I want you to remember that every single experience you've had in your career to date and all the skills that you've gained in your life inside and outside work it's that that is gonna make your next phase of your career so successful there is never anything wasted I believe this so deeply nothing is ever wasted you can use every experience every job that you've hated even a terrible boss you can use that I'm never gonna be like that but we only get those insights by reflecting. So you have to do the reflecting.

8:12Okay. The next step and the final step is what small actions can I take? This is really the gold from this whole episode is that clarity. I promised you clarity in the title and I'm going to give it to you, but clarity doesn't come from overthinking. It comes from taking action. So instead of thinking, I just don't know what career to do I don't know what to do I want you to think what is one tiny experiment that I could do this week or this month that is going to give me more information about what might work for me this is such an easy way to test different ideas or careers that you want to do so this is embarrassing but fun fact I used to interview my husband when we were on long car journeys when our little one would be asleep and her car seat in the back as a way of sort of practicing like do I enjoy this how does it feel to interview and I realized I loved it and that's what gave me the courage okay maybe I should start a podcast had I hated that experience I probably wouldn't have started the podcast so you've got to think if you've got an idea or you want to go into a new career what is a really simple way you can test whether it works with you.

9:26If you want to start coaching, could you find someone who does it and ask for a 10 minute chat with them? Could you ask a friend? Could I just practice coaching through with you? On YouTube, there are tons of kind of coaching sessions filmed. Watch those. How do you feel watching that? There are so many ways that you can give yourself that clarity. At one point, I thought I wanted to be a yoga teacher. I actually trained in pregnancy yoga when I was pregnant, which was another clue, right? I knew I wanted to do something around mothers. So I taught a small group of friends and I realized I actually didn't want it to be my job.

10:04I loved learning about the yoga and I loved doing the exams and I loved to train. I loved the training. My God, it was incredible, but I actually didn't like being at the front of the class and teaching people. So that was great. I just got that information really quickly. Now, what I didn't do was start dreaming about opening my own studio or designing a logo or choosing a url before i'd actually checked and tested do i like doing this thing so you have to run these tiny experiments and use it as data to guide you onto your next experiment okay and it's gonna give you so much clarity and i have to say it has never been easier in this day and age to do this so just think about a tiny way within the constraints that we've all got but even if it's an hour a month it's going to move you forward and remember career change it rarely happens in one step it's often what's called a parallel change where you keep doing your old job or career while building up the new one so if that's how you're doing it you're not failing you're not doing it wrong that's actually how I did it and that's how most people in our community have done it okay so I hope that gave you clarity think about what energizes you think about your version of success think about the tiny actions that you can take to bring that clarity final thought it's all going to work out as it's meant to okay did that help do you want more episodes like this every Monday I'm releasing a new solo episode so tell me in the comments on Instagram or YouTube what you want me to cover next week and I will see you soon.