Pivoting with Purpose: The Hamster Wheel, the Rat Race, and Other Career Myths Holding You Back
{an excerpt from Melisa’s Best-Selling Book on Amazon — available for purchase here}
It was a dreary Monday morning. I spent the whole evening before, feeling the “Sunday Scaries.” You know those moments… that bittersweet feeling that the weekend is ending and the workweek is looming. I arrived early at my cubicle, before my boss- Human Resource’s version of Miranda Priestly in the Devil Wears Prada. Cutthroat. A beast in business. But also a total b*tch. I consider myself thick-skinned and not one to easily back down from confrontation. But working with this woman was a whole new ball game. She had this passive-aggressive way of belittling everyone she came into contact with, except of course those above her in role & position. The ultimate oozing of insecurity but in the most impolite manner.
I was making six figures. As a 28 year old. And every bone in my body hated it. Over those years I truly learned what “money doesn’t buy you happiness” means. So what did I do about it? Well, after miscarrying the child I was bearing with my fiancé, I decided to call it quits. But not just a mental health break on disability. Or a far-away resignation notice giving me time to find a new role. No- I did it the Melisa way and resigned that Monday in a fit of tears. Because if you’re gonna go out… go out with a bang.
Or so I thought. I had a side hustle running in the background (which I think everyone should have… and we’ll get into that later). So I quickly watched hundreds of YouTube videos on how to grow a business, subscribed to every entrepreneur podcast I could get my hands on, and filled out freebie worksheet after freebie worksheet in an attempt to get my proverbial sht together. I left my job December 1st and by January 1st I had a real, live, Limited Liability Company (more commonly referred to as an “LLC”). I called it Make SHT Happen and ordered a Doing Business As (DBA) along the name of Let’s Get You Organized, which is what my side hustle had been going by “under the table.” Follow your dream, they said. Listen to your heart, they said. Feel the fear and do it anyway, they said. It will be fun, they said. Two years later and a significant amount of money gone (*cough* my entire life savings)… I decided it was time to get a job, you know, before I incurred some like serious debt.
Being a small business owner was hard. But looking for a job after being out of the game for two years was harder. How do you explain that your boss was a twat so you left in a fiery fury of rage and launched a company with a swear word in the name, only to lose all your money and end up back where you started? Well, first off, you don’t. You ever-so-delicately explain that two-year gap on your resume and try to overemphasize why you’ll make a great employee even though you’ve had a taste of being your own boss. “Yes! I love taking direction!” “Oh, I’m totally good with being managed.” “For sure, I have a servant leadership mindset so I’m always here to help YOU.” and all that bullshit…
So that’s what this book is about. It’s for the burnt-out entrepreneurs that need the stability & security of a paycheck again. It’s for the normal people that had to take a few years off because life or kids or death happened. It’s how to re-enter a workforce that’s ever-changing.
Toto, we most definitely aren’t in Kansas anymore.
The world of work is a brand new frontier post-COVID and we’re here for it. Telecommuting aka working from home in your PJs (more likely with a messy bun & coffee stains than on a beach somewhere tropical living the #laptoplife…. let’s keep it real), your boss focused more on company culture & employee engagement than shiny suits and fancy titles, and a digital culture that honors results, commitment, and loyalty. Let’s cut the crap when it comes to looking for a job and get down to the real talk.
Twat boss lady changed my life. Those sayings “it was a blessing in disguise” and “hindsight is 20/20” totally made sense in this case. The Webster’s Dictionary definition of “catalyst” is a person or thing that precipitates an event.
cat·a·lyst /ˈkad(ə)ləst/ noun a person or thing that precipitates an event.
That cataclysmic event was quitting my job, starting a business, “finding myself,” and then re-entering the workforce as a better human being because of it. Thanks, twat boss. You’re a real pal.
Because here’s the thing… life happens. At one point or another, we all go through some sht. And the hope is that we become stronger, more resilient, and diamond-like because of those hardships. If you’re looking at your resume going “How the eff am I going to get a job in this city with all this competition in my field?” or “How can I explain this job gap and still make myself sound like the best candidate?” or “Wtf do I even actually want to do? I’ve hated my past few jobs!”… then keep reading.
See, we’re all products of trauma. We’ve all gone through the wringer in one way or another. Childhood leaves us with battle wounds. Relationships leave us with broken hearts. Failure leaves us with regret. Consider this your golden Willy Wonka ticket to get. the. eff. over. it.
We all remember those cheesy posters in 7th-grade science class full of sea turtles and kittens with words like Persistence and Resilience on them… corny af but at the end of the day, those messages do hold some weight. If you’ve ever read any self-help book ever, then you know that. But that isn’t what we’re going to explore together in this book. If you’re ready to move on from playing victim and truly own your sht and circumstance (no pomp and circumstance here) then let’s go!
Stories.
They’re more than just what kids read before bed. They are also what our brain makes up 24/7 (yes, even in our dreams in our sleep). Constantly judging. Constantly criticizing. Constantly singing old 90s boy band songs. And constantly trying to make sense of the realities of the environment we are in at every given moment. So we write stories. About our family, our friends, our boss, our coworkers, our cashier at the grocery store, the crow cawing at us on our walk, the dog barking at us at the park, the asshole that cut us off in traffic… it’s all one big story that our brain has made up for us. Oh, and for those that suffer from insomnia, y’all get extra special bedtime stories that keep your mind racing and your coffee bill growing.
The first step to bucking up and getting over your trauma is to rewrite those stories that are keeping you tied down. Too scared to apply for that job in Digital Marketing because you’ve never had that formal title and want to ‘follow the rules’ because your brain said you have to? Apply to 15 of them with your awesome, personally branded resume. On the fence about reaching out to that old coworker that lurks on your LinkedIn and has your dream job because you’re worried that he’ll ignore you, ghost you, or write you off? Send the message and be genuine about your current state in life and why you’re reaching out. Chances are, your brain wrote a story that people couldn’t possibly want to help you. Rewrite that sht NOW.
For about 30 years, I mostly believed the stories my brain told me. That I had a horrible childhood and I was wounded so I was allowed to be an ass to most everyone and that I was an “introvert” so that meant I didn’t have to get close to people or keep jobs longer than a year. Do you think any of that served me? Do you think any of those thinking patterns contributed to my happiness? Hell no.
This is why I started the book here for you- the importance of understanding that you have the power to rewrite your stories whenever you want, wherever you want, is KEY.
Get out that pen & paper or digital whatever and start writing down all the stories you’ve been telling yourself. All the “I can’ts” or “I shouldn’ts”. Believe me when I say they aren’t getting you ANYWHERE!
If you want to go a step further you can watch some YouTube videos or download a Udemy course or two about Neuro-linguistic Programming. Before you call me a narcissistic sales snake or cult leader, just know that NLP changed my life for good once I understood the actual chemical activity in the brain that contributes to our successes (and failures) in life. Understanding leads to knowledge and knowledge gives you the power to observe what’s going on day-to-day so that you can change your behavior accordingly. Cue the “More You Know” rainbow…
Quieting the Doubters
Okay so now that we know our brains write stories about anything and everything, can we talk about other people? Other people write them too. About you. What you wear, how you talk, where you hang out, what you drive, how you write your emails, how slow you type, the crappy town you’re from, what lame music you listen to, what weird shows you watch, and on and on and on and on. Before you go into a hissy fit… newsflash: it’s natural and human and you do it too.
Back in the day I filmed a video and wrote an article for a large SaaS company called Keap by Infusionsoft. It was all about how I came from an immigrant family and as a first-generation American I was taught to live the American dream by going to school, getting good grades, graduating college, and getting a good corporate job before settling down to start a family.
Puke. No. Thank You. Always the black sheep, I went on that entrepreneur detour and now I speak on stages and write books and do other cool sht with my time that actually LIGHTS ME UP and doesn’t make me feel like I’m rotting away in a cubicle. Do you think if I stayed stuck in caring about all the millions of stories people had made up about me in their lil old brains that I would have made any of those moves? Nope. I would’ve stayed stuck in the gray cubicle crying about the twat boss and just wanting to please my parents by playing it safe and staying in the box they had allotted to me.
It’s time to quiet the doubters. They’re never going to stop thinking about those things or stop judging you. But YOU can control your level of attention to it. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Want to move across the country to get out of the bubble you’ve always grown up in? Do it. Want to dye your hair black and start wearing red lipstick? Go for it. Want to start an Instagram account for your secret love of Pokemon? I’m sure there’s a niche for that. I know you’ve heard it in all those self-help books before, but seriously life’s too short to not do the things you want and to try on all the different identities that are available to you within this lifetime. Get out there and do the damn thing. Oh, and rewrite your stories and quiet the doubters while you’re at it.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” The most asked question of our childhood… or maybe a close-second behind “Where’s the remote?” Every single one of us has natural skills, abilities, talents, and gifts to monetize and share during this lifetime. And no, I’m not going to tell you that you’re a pretty little special snowflake. On stage, I speak on productivity. Do you know how many other keynote speakers that are out there, speaking on this topic globally? THOUSANDS. I am in no way a unique (or fragile) snowflake. Honestly, we all pretty much talk about the same sht. But I know with every cell in my body that I’m meant to speak, teach, train, motivate and inspire. That’s my gift and it took me 30 years to find it. It’s time to find your magic. There’s room for you, I promise.
When was the last time you actually asked yourself “What do I want?” And I don’t mean a glass of wine, or a flatter tummy, or a Louis Vuitton bag, or a hot boyfriend. Like, what do you WANT? Out of life? Out of legacy? What do you want to leave behind on this earth? Your true timestamp of living? What is it for you? This is a powerful effing question and one that I hid from for all of my teenage years and most of my young adult life. The magic started happening when I finally dove into it.
Did I WANT to work in HR or was I doing it day after 9 am-5 pm day just because it was a “good job” (said with my dad’s heavy Middle Eastern accent)? Did I WANT to work in a gray ass cubicle spouting off phrases like “let’s circle back” and “we should chat offline”? Did I WANT to drink 5 cups of coffee in the morning and 5 glasses of wine at night just to self-soothe enough to keep me off antidepressants? HELL NO. I was living a shell of a life because I’d never answered that one, most powerful, question.
Start small. At the moment you are reading this right now, ask yourself a few simple questions. Are you thirsty? Hungry? Tired? Need to use the restroom? Sure it sounds silly, but quick pulse checks like this throughout the day can become an excellent practice for tapping into what you actually need and want. Build up bigger with practice to ask yourself if you are committing to calendar obligations that you don’t actually want to attend, calls you actually don’t want to hold, or projects you actually don’t want to say yes to. Eventually with enough reflection, journaling, meditation, or whatever your thing happens to be (I am not in the hippie-dippie yoga-loving crowd at ALL if you can’t tell by now but I definitely love a good journaling sesh with a cup of tea and some ambient music in the background…. you do you boo), you’ll start to see a few shimmers and glimmers of your vision and purpose.
Without purpose, you can’t have hope. I realized this after I spiraled into a deep depression right before I found my dream job. I felt completely purposeless. Like I’d failed at my career in Human Resources and like I’d failed in my business. Nowhere to go, no one to hire me, wine and Netflix were my only friends. I was NOT turning out to be a healthy job seeker. It was like there was nothing to look forward to, only rejection after rejection. And no self-help book or free guided meditation or mantra written in lipstick on my bathroom mirror was going to fix that. I had to figure out my purpose. I always knew I was meant for more. Meant for something bigger. Like I’d only scratched the surface on my life’s potential. And if you’re anything like me, then I’m sure you’re feeling that way too.
That’s where I go back to the question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It can sound so trivial but stick with me here. It’s probable that the reason why you wanted to be a veterinarian when you were little is simply that you loved animals, or the reason you wanted to be a flight attendant is that you wanted to travel around going on adventures, or the reason you wanted to be a doctor is that you wanted to help people (or you were a boss at the game ‘Operation’ and thought you could monetize your talents like the true hustler that you are… either way).
Can we get back to that level of simplicity? Why have we all made choosing happiness SO complicated as adults? Instead, we toil and grind away in jobs we hate with people we hate at companies we hate in cities we hate. Because mediocrity has become the norm. A life that’s just “good enough” has become the norm.
Glimmers of a vision.
I was alphabetizing the magazines in my older brother’s orthodontist office while he was in headgear appointments when I was 5 years old. Alphabetizing. Magazines. That was around the age when I told my mom I wanted to be a “cleaning lady” when I grew up. I launched Let’s Get You Organized in 2011 where my specialty was cleaning out, decluttering, and organizing pantries, garages, and closets. Dreams do come true. Even for cleaning ladies.
For several years after that, I deeply wanted to be a teacher. I was the sassy little girl bossing all of her friends around, standing at the front of the “classroom” and creating little homework packets for them at night, writing “lesson plans” on my easel in the garage until my mom made me go to bed. And now I’m a keynote speaker and workshop leader. See? It’s simple. That was my vision. And it always has been.
What is the vision you have for your life? When you close your eyes and imagine the one or two things that give you energy, motivate you like no other, and absolutely LIGHT YOU UP?
It’s an easy way out to say “well, I don’t feel that way about anything.” Sorry sister, but we’re not meant to live mundane, boring, vanilla, bland, “good enough” lives. You are meant for more. We both know you’re better than that excuse. What is it? Cooking? Baking? Gardening? Aerial arts? Crossfit? Surfing? Composting? Coding? Copywriting? Tarot reading? Ceramic pottery art? Crocheting? I could ramble on but it’s probably better if you hit up the Googs and search ‘hobbies’, check out an app like Groupon to see what you could try in your area, or poke around on Pinterest and whip up some ideas. Upon first look, it might be a slight, tentative, nod toward “yea… I guess that’s fine and I kinda like doing that” but I urge you to dig deeper! When you find it, you’ll feel it.
“But Melisa, what do you mean feel it? Like how we’re supposed to feel it when we meet our soulmate?” Let me explain.
At my twat boss lady job, I had one tiny glimmering moment of my purpose. I was tasked with helping organize a Leadership Retreat for all of our C-Level Executives and Directors with cross-functional teams throughout our giant Fortune 500 company. The first day of the retreat came and the MC (did you know that meant Master of Ceremonies? Because I didn’t know that until I was like 28 years old..) didn’t show up.
I stepped up to the plate, grabbed the mic, and legitimately had a Harry-Potter-holding-his-wand-for-the-first-time moment. The world made sense with a microphone in my hand. The words coming out of my mouth in my signature, high-energy way. No shaking, no faltering. All out confidence and excitement that I got to have all eyes on me. Call me selfish, call me a brag, call me an attention whore, but you know what? For the very first time in my entire adult life, I felt true joy that day. And even though it took several years for me to feel that again on stage (because as you know, sometimes we forget and life happens), that was the first step.
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
-debatably by Pablo Picasso but no one really knows, believe me I Googled it and everything
I want you to find your gift. I want you to share your gift. And obvs this book is about finding a job so it can definitely be a side hustle if it’s not something you can monetize full time yet. But if it’s anything like my vision, there are PLENTY of jobs that correlate- if sht hit the fan, I could apply for hundreds, if not thousands of Leadership Trainer, Executive Coach, Professor, or Teacher’s Assistant roles across the globe.
