The Inviting Shift Podcast
Embrace the authentic, confident you so you can feel good in your skin and have deeper relationships. The Inviting Shift Podcast focuses on how we step through this messy journey of life confidently so we can feel good about how we show up, have more connected relationships and connect to purpose and meaning. Or in short, how we manifest the lives we crave in practical, tangible ways.
The Inviting Shift Podcast
Episode #41: Is It Time to Stay or Go in That Career?
Is it time to stay or go?
Midlife is all about change and many of us get there thinking, I checked all the boxes and I'm still not happy.
If leaving a career that is not fulfilling can seem daunting - especially if you've put in a lot of effort, energy and years tuning into what we should do.
Our guest, Laurie Reynoldson (laurie.reynoldson), shares with us how she left her career in law after 20 years and the signs it was time to leave.
You'll hear:
- What High Performance Coaching is (1:12)
- When we think we'll be happy when we checked all the boxes (6:26)
- Who am I for myself? (14:52)
- The struggle with inner conflict (21:26)
- Why you'll never start at zero (27:49)
- About regrets (31:28)
- What would your future self do? (36:58)
ABOUT Laurie:
Laurie Reynoldson is a recovering attorney, and former box-checker, people-pleaser and achievement junkie. While she was damn good at practicing law, she decided at 45 that working another 20 years in a career where she was profoundly unfulfilled was riskier than making a change. So she quit the law.
In 2020, Laurie launched Act III Coaching and the School of MidlifeTM, offering programs, personal development and coaching courses for midlife women.
Laurie lives in Boise with her husband Mike and their very good boy Theo. She's a pretty decent cook who loves entertaining, a mid-pack runner who's completed ten marathons, one half-Ironman and the 29029 Everesting endurance challenge, and a mediocre tennis player with a killer forehand but a very inconsistent serve. She loves traveling to Europe, lying in the sun on a tropical beach, snow skiing in Sun Valley, and she has mad love for red wine, ice cream and all.the.carbs.
CONNECT with Laurie:
Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
FREE Gift from Laurie:
The Do What You Want Guide was made specifically for our audience to inspire you to do more of what you want. Get it here.
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THE MIDLIFE MOJO SUMMIT IS HERE!
June 18-22
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With 4 tracks around physical well-being, our inner wellness, relationships, and those big dreams, more purpose and meaning.
The best part? It's all free and virtual so it's in your price range and you can watch whenever it works for you.
Plus - there's prizes and free gifts.
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TUNE IN wherever you listen to podcasts:
Welcome back to the inviting chef Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm your host, Christina Smith. And today we are talking about working and jobs. And is it time to stay? Or is it time to go. And our guest today is Laurie Reynolds, and who is a recovering attorney and former box checker people pleaser and achievement junkie. She was practicing law for over 20 years, when she realized that she no longer was fulfilled by this position, and that it was riskier to stay where she was than to shift. And so she made a huge shift in her life, we're going to hear all about it, I want you to tune in, especially if you're feeling a little unhappy at your job. She might be giving you some tips that are going to help you decide if it's time to stay or if it's time to go. Well welcome Laurie to the inviting chef podcast. Thank you for being here.
Laurie Reynoldson:Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here. I love what you're doing with your audience and the messages that you put out. And I'm thrilled to be here.
Christina Smith:Awesome. Yes. And I love what we're going to be talking about today. Like, is it? Is it time to go or not time to go. But before we get into that, I want you to tell us a little bit more about yourself and what it is that you do.
Laurie Reynoldson:You bet I am a high performance coach to midlife women, who by and large have been crushing it in their day job, whether that's the CEO of a company or a C suite member, or even a stay at home mom who is just the CEO of her household, but she gets to midlife and things are going great in our professional life. And she's just trying to figure out why why the angst Why does she feel so adrift in her personal life? So we try and marry those two together and with with the idea in mind that we can give tools and mindset shifts to make midlife her best life with no midlife crisis require.
Christina Smith:Oh, I love that because I think midlife is the best life but I am a little bit biased. I've done a lot of work to make sure it is that way. So
Laurie Reynoldson:hard work, right. A lot of heavy lifting.
Christina Smith:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I love when coaches are telling me that they empower other women. I'm like, I wish you could empower me like, I wish you could just hand me my power on a tray. And I would just pick it up. But unfortunately, it's a little bit more work than that. And it's so rewarding when you do the work. And so I really love this topic. Because I know for me, it took me a year of crying on my way to work before I was like maybe something needs to change. Maybe, maybe I'm not, it's not that I'm not being grateful enough or positive enough. But maybe it's actually time for a change. And I think that's where a lot of women get to when they're in midlife, right? There's, it could be in their marriage, it could be that their their kids are leaving home. There's all these big changes that are happening. And it helps us to start reimagining what our life could look like.
Laurie Reynoldson:Absolutely, this, this became front and center for me not that I was crying on my way to work. But a lot of a lot of days where I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing. I was a commercial real estate attorney for the first 20 years of my career. And I was on the precipice of joining another partnership. And they asked me a question at the end of my partnership interview and they said, How will your job change if you are lucky enough to be invited into the partnership? And I thought about it for a little bit. And I just responded with I don't think it's going to change that much. I mean, I'm already running your real estate department in this office, I chair your charitable giving arm for the boy, I'm in Boise so the Boise office. I mentor young attorneys, my job's not going to change that much. The only thing that's going to change is my title and the way I'm compensated. And the meeting is over. I keep thinking about it for a couple of weeks after that. And it finally occurred to me. Why is my job going to get any better if I am making more money and I have a different title. I'm still going to I'm going to actually have more political crap to deal with. And I just decided that spending another 20 3040 years of my life doing something that I didn't find terribly fulfilling. It just wasn't worth it. So I made a change at 45 and and scary deal. I will say that there is no up until up until really recently, when when women are sharing their stories about short stories and struggles about what they encountered in midlife. No one's really talked about this before. So there's been this kind of suffer in shame and silence. Because we just we have been doing everything that we thought we were supposed to do. And then you get you get to a certain point, you're like, This is it. I've worked my ass off for this. And this, this isn't what I thought I would feel like when I got here. When I when I made my change. I know, I typed in midlife women in a Google search bar. And literally the first thing that comes up is am I having a midlife crisis? And almost everything after that comes relates to having a midlife crisis. So I think that there's this interesting interplay between women who get to a certain age there a certain stage in their life, you know, that they're at the top of their career, their kids, maybe have moved out. They've been married for a long time, or maybe recently divorced. And they just they're trying to figure out what what comes next. And it's nice that now we are creating tools for women to figure out what it is they want to do in their next act.
Christina Smith:Yeah, I think I mean, I relate to all of that so much, because I remember, my mother always told me I'd be happy when. And then, you know, when I went to college, when I got a job when I got the family, but the and I checked all those boxes by 40. And I was like, is that it? I'm just supposed to be happy now. Now, what do I do for the next 40 years, it's almost as if like, there's this part for women where it's like, oh, you're just done. Now, you're just supposed to be grateful and positive for the rest of your life, and you have everything you need. And I felt really bad. Like, I almost felt ashamed because it was like, I work so hard to do all these things I grew up really poor. So to be able to pay all my bills and put money in savings was like, a major thing. And so I thought, like, I'm supposed to be happy, why am I not happy, and I really ignored my inner wisdom. I mean, I believe those tears on the way to work, even though my job wasn't bad, like, I just want to put that out there. And my job was okay. It was just like you said, it wasn't terribly fulfilling. And so every day going there, and marketing software just blew my mind. Like, I just felt like I was kind of trapped in this life. And then what I realized the big thing for me was that I felt trapped, because I was taking on all this external validation of like, what should be, you know, I should be happy now. And if you ask me, like, if I complain to one of my friends, even a lot of my friends would be like, Christina, what are you complaining about? Everything's fine, you have a great life. And I was be like, well, it doesn't feel that way. There's something else calling, you know,
Laurie Reynoldson:isn't that so interesting? How from the outside appearance, you know, the, the marriage, the the house, the career, the sports cars, or whatever the the designer handbag collection, it looks like you've got it all together. And then there's this incongruency between what it all looks like on the outside and what you actually feel like on the inside. I feel like a lot of that stems from this, this idea that we were raised to be, you know, be a good girl, you know, don't talk back, don't you know, sit still look pretty, you know, children are to be seen and not heard kind of a thing. And so we were conditioned to believe that we will be happy. After we go to schooling, we get the degree and after we get the job. And after we get the marriage and after we have the kids and we keep delaying this idea of happiness and fulfillment and satisfaction and success. And at the root of it. I believe it's that we've never actually figured out what success means to us. We're just trying to keep up with what we've been conditioned to want. And the problem with that is you can have all the things that you're supposed to have and you're supposed to want. But you don't feel any different on the inside you still there's this internal struggle that is so pervasive, especially in midlife, especially in transition.
Christina Smith:Yeah, and that's what I learned that if you want to be happy when you get there, you might want to be bring the happy with you. Instead of sacrificing. Say that yeah, because I think that like we were all waiting for this big Disney Princess kind of happily ever after. And it was like, but we were following other people's instructions, you know, and and I think, you know, culturally, you know, it's good to have a job, especially if it's got a 401k and benefits, right, it's great to have a great husband and all these things and, and that I don't think that that was necessarily what we all needed, you know, and some, maybe some people figure it out earlier. Or maybe it's just that I think a lot of us, we wanted all those things, but the kids grow up and they go away, like, and in the meantime, we stay so busy that we let go, you know, of our relationship a little bit sometimes. And we start disconnecting from that, you know, partner that we've had, and we get, we start re questioning, you know, we, I think we just want more fulfillment, you know, we like we want to feel fulfilled. And what I know about that is the only way we can do that is if we do the internal work, right? If we actually start looking within ourselves, and asking ourselves, Well, what is it that I actually want? And I remember the first time somebody asked me that, I think I was like, 30, between 35 and 38, I think it was probably a therapist or something. And I was like, What do you mean, what do I want? I have all the things that I want. So no. And she was like, Yeah, but you want something else, or else you wouldn't be here. And so I really took me years to figure that out, you know, to start cracking that nut open and really, really being open to seeing it, you know, and being challenged more. And I'm so glad I did. And I'm glad I went to the therapist, because it really, really supported me. But today we're going to talk about go or stay when is it time? And so tell me a little bit about this and what what the steps are for you or how you enroll it.
Laurie Reynoldson:Yeah. I it really starts with this kind of pervasive feeling that we feel in transition. And it happens a lot at midlife. It's it's interesting, I do work with women almost exclusively in midlife, but I feel like the the generation behind us, they've they've got this figured out a little bit quicker than we do, because they're starting to have these what I would consider more midlife questions about life earlier, right? They don't want to spend a bunch of time they're looking for work life balance, which is a whole nother issue that we don't have time to get into today. But they're not as willing to spend all this time putting in all of this work with no no fulfillment or satisfaction on the other side. So when when I talk about this, this pervasive feeling and transition, it's, it's, you know, you've climbed to the top of the ladder, the corporate ladder, and you looked around and you realize you don't like the view, or your kids, you know, like you mentioned are, they're grown up, they are out of the house, your identity has been tied to either being their mother or someone's wife, and all of a sudden, you might not have that as your identity anymore. Even you know, even if you're not a stay at home mom, if you've worked outside of the house, you're facing potentially some interesting challenges with your spouse, because you spent all of this time and energy trying to raise humans and keep them alive. And all of a sudden, you're like, who are you? I mean, I know we've been married a while I know you're my husband. But gosh, what do we have in common anymore? And so I feel like women start having these questions about what do I want to do next? Around midlife, because there's just and sometimes we have some ailing parents, right? So we're getting it. We've got a lot of different changes that are happening in our life, and we're just not really sure where we want to go. We just know that we don't feel exactly the same way that we expected the field when we would get there. So transition for women. The women that I work with, it's interesting, because a lot of them know that they feel something. They sometimes don't want to say it out loud because they feel guilty. They've got all the things that they should like, who am I to want for more so and so has it so much worse than I do, or I've got a much better life than most people. I'm living the dream. So they don't even want to admit that they want something more.
Christina Smith:I just thought there was something wrong with me. I was like what's wrong with me that I can't be grateful for all of this that I have like this is When I was a teenager, I would have thought this is the perfect life. Right? So like, for me, it was like a lot of self shaming. And, you know, until I started seeing it as what you're saying, is this inner conflict that's going on about, about who am I versus, versus who am I to everybody else, like I think in midlife is the first time that I started defining who I was from who I was not who I was for someone else.
Laurie Reynoldson:Absolutely. And did you also find that it was kind of one of the first times in your life that you sat down and thought, what is it I want? Yes. And I asked that, because I'm changing the rules on you. I'm going to start asking the question. That's right, go ahead. But that's so that happens all the time, where we, we know we want something different. And it's much easier to say, I don't want this or I don't want that actually sat with it to figure out what is it I want. And that's one of the just kind of the core struggles that I see women in midlife have is that they know they don't want, what they have or what they think they should want. But they don't know what it is. I will say, I think a lot of times we know exactly what we want. But we're a little terrified to say it out loud, because it's so different than what we are supposed to want. It's so different than the life that if we were looking back that we had imagined for ourselves, or that our parents wanted us to have or even that our spouse wants us to have. So admitting that to ourselves is it can sometimes be scary because that once you say it out loud, once you admit it to yourself, it's like then what do I do with this?
Christina Smith:I think it's also a survival versus thriving thing, like we're really good at survival. And survival to me is like not this, right? Like, I'm running away from something that I don't want or maybe not running, but I'm dealing with something that I don't want to deal with. Right, as opposed to thriving, which is like, that's what I want. And I want to go towards it. And that's a much different feeling if we're chasing something that we want, or running away from something that we don't, but I think I think you're correct. Every client I think I've ever had the first conversation with was like, Well, what do you want? Not this? Not that, not this? Yep. It's like, yeah, I get that. But what would it look like if it if it was how you wanted it? And so like, I always have to encourage them, I call it you know, going beyond shore. Because when we're drowning, we just weren't sure. But like when we're dreaming, we're like thinking castles and stars. Right? Like that's, that's where I want women to go. But yes, it always, it always starts with a knot this. So if you're listening, and you're like, but I start with the not this I'm like, Yes, that's that's a normal first step, I think.
Laurie Reynoldson:Absolutely. And you know, you mentioned dreaming and for high achieving women. They don't even they don't allow themselves the luxury of dreaming. I mean, they they were on this. And then I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to do this this path, you know, getting the checks, the checkboxes checked off and getting the accolades earned. And so if you ask them, you know, what do you dream about? It's, they have no idea because that feels very foreign to them.
Christina Smith:They're so caught up in the every day and what they're doing. I also find that some women in midlife want to stop dreaming, because they have been sacrificing themselves for these will, you'll be happy when. And so they've, you know, exhausted themselves have goals, because before because they've pushed so hard. They didn't enjoy the journey on the way to the goals. They just did the thing, right. And so sometimes they're like, I'm not even sure that I want goals. And I'm like, I'm sure you do. You just, you want them to feel better. You want them to feel good as you're going and because we were following somebody else's instructions. We were doing somebody else's path, which means that it was feeling hard for us. I mean, at least for me, it was feeling really hard. Like did I work really hard? Of course I did. I was a great worker. And I was so good of a worker that I really robbed myself. Like I realized that when I start owning my own business that it was me the whole time that was pushing myself so hard. It wasn't my bosses. Because I was like, Well, why can't I take a day off? And I'm like, I'm the boss. I could do that. No, you can't I
Laurie Reynoldson:can totally relate to that. There. There is this inner boss or inner struggle that we have that you know, unless we're achieving or Allah As we're showing up, then we're somehow not enough I, you know, I, when I, when I decided to that I needed to leave the law, I've, one of the things that I realized is I was working in, you know, I'd get to the office at probably about eight o'clock every morning, and I would work until 630 Or seven o'clock at night, and then I would get home and make dinner. And then oftentimes, I would work a little after that. And I have this set of bed sheets there, they were brand new at the time, kind of a white damask stripe, white on white, some ridiculous thread count that, at the time felt really stupid to buy expensive sheets like that. But for some reason, I felt like maybe I deserved it. And I wanted to, to buy these really expensive sheets. And I, about two days after I put them on the bed for the first time, I had taken work to bed with me that night, and I woke up with my book in one hand, my laptop, on the other end, this blue pen stain on these brand new shoes. That's about the size of a dime. And I was just, I was so pissed off at myself, right? Because i How could I have fallen asleep with my pen? And then, and then it took a little while but then I was like, Why do I think it's so important? I mean, why am I upset about the pen stain? Why am I not upset about the fact that I've already billed, you know, 12 hours today? And for some reason, I feel like I've got to work until I'm going to make myself fall asleep. That's, that's not good. That's not a good position to be in. At all. Yeah.
Christina Smith:So what I'm hearing is this first step is like, we start feeling this inner conflict. And I can completely relate with that. I mean, it took me a year to get that message, right. But after I did get the message, then it was like, Oh, my God, what am I what am I gonna do? Like, can I stay here? Do I need a different position in my job? Do I? You know, am I even interested in anything else? I mean, I and I grew up with immigrant parents. So the idea of building my own business or working for myself was not something that it was really foreign to them. It was more like, you know, you go work for somebody, they pay really good, they give you benefits, that's what you do. You just get promotions, or you move to different jobs, but going out, like my mom was sending me want ads for like four years after I opened my business, because it was so foreign. So like for me to start even imagining that like, What do you mean, quit my job and not get a steady paycheck? Like that sounded so scary to me. And I thought, How do I even do this? Right?
Laurie Reynoldson:Yeah, absolutely. There, there's a three step framework that I work through with my coaching clients. And it's just a way to help. It's putting a framework around decision making. And the first question is, why did you make the decision to begin with, I think a lot of us end up in a position because, you know, our parents said, we should go into the law or the medicine or a teacher said, you'd be really good at arguing or, you know, you're you're very good speaker or something. So you had this validation at a young age, when you were very impressionable, and it made a lot of sense. And you liked the way it felt when you were doing something that you were good at, especially when somebody acknowledged it. That's one of the reasons that that we initially do something another is, you know, maybe you thought it was going to give you something that you wanted a steady paycheck, maybe it was some prestige. Maybe, maybe your dad was a doctor, and you didn't have a very good relationship with him. But at one point around the dinner table, you just mentioned that you were thinking about going into medicine and becoming a doctor and then all of a sudden, you could see a change in the way he was dealing with you. So you kind of liked that ability to repair the relationship in that way. And so you started yourself on this path, for some reason that if you look back on it, maybe it wasn't your decision really, to begin with. So number one, why did you make that decision to begin with? And then once once you answer that question, then number two is if you could go back 20 3040 years ago, to the point where you first made the decision that puts you on And the path that led you to where you are today? Would you make the same decision? And I know that that gets really hard when you start talking about, oh, I would have never married this person, but then I wouldn't have had my kids. And I'm not necessarily talking about that. Let's take it in the context of marriage. Kids aside, obviously, there they are a beautiful outcome of the marriage. But if any
Christina Smith:marriage right?
Laurie Reynoldson:Were there red flags to begin with? I mean, did you have was was your spouse quick to anger? I mean, did you actually have things in common? What is it that? Why did you fall in love with that person? And if you can't really come up with an idea, or there were there were some red flags, then then maybe just be happy that the relationship has been what it has? And maybe it's time to move on? Maybe not? We'll talk about that in just a sec. And then going to the job or career that you chose, you know, would you go back and make the same decision? Again, what is it that you were hoping you would get out of this job or career? Is it the prestige is it you are good at it, you are trying to repair that relationship. But I think it's also very important for us to realize that just because you made a job decision 2030 years ago, doesn't mean you have to stick with that you were of the generation, you know that a lot of our parents, they worked at the same job for 50 years, 60 years. They retire with a pension, right. And so they're just like your mom who's sending you classified, make sure you can put food on the table, this whole idea that the you can make a change, that's very foreign, that's very foreign to them. And that, you know, they, they want to make sure that that you're taken care of so that it's different for them. It's different for you, it's different for them. And just because you made a decision 2030 years ago, and it was right at that, at that time doesn't mean that it has to be right for forever. I, before we move on to the third step, I will say that a lot of the women that I work with, they fear transition, because of this idea that they think that they're starting back from zero, you know, like they're too old, they make too much money. They've invested so much time and energy, their parents would be so upset that they weren't using the degree that they paid for
Christina Smith:it might feel like giving up.
Laurie Reynoldson:Absolutely. But you are never starting back at zero, you've got so much life experience. And and they have just not only life experience, but those skills are translatable, I will say I might have left the law a little sooner than I did. But I definitely fell into the camp of I make too much money to leave. It's it's secure. It's too much. I can't do it. I was in commercial real estate for 10 months. Before i i closed one deal that my gross commission was more than I had ever made one year of practicing law. Now, I'm not going to do that every, you know, once we wish, I absolutely wish. But it's a good reminder that there are a bunch of ways to make money. And just because you've been making it in one, one at one job or one career doesn't mean that those skills aren't translatable.
Christina Smith:Yeah. And I can tell you that, like I my previous career was well. So to follow your your examples. I went to college because I didn't think I had another choice. It was basically I was going to be the first one that graduates in my family. And that's just the way it is because you're a smart chick. And you're gonna just do this. You're smart. You're smart, right? And, you know, in my mother's mind, it was doctor or lawyer. One of those had to be the one right. So we choices we had maybe a teacher or nurse or a lawyer. Yeah, so I went to pre law. I have a political science degree. But the money fairy never came for law school. And even when I thought about taking out loans, I was just like, Is this really what I want to do? And there was a part of me I could have listened to many years ago that said, hey, look, you actually want to like teach and mentor and I didn't listen to that part. I was like, Well, I just have to go get a job. So I have to go be an assistant or get into marketing or something that pays the bills, right? And so that's That's where I went after that. And then once I was paying the bills, it was like, it was really scary to think about doing anything else. And what really changed me was my health got really, really bad. During that year of crying on the way to work every day, my health got really, really bad. And I went to health coaching school just to solve my own problems, but it was like this whole new idea that you could go be a coach, like, people just want to listen to your advice, or like, what what is that like, and it started opening my eyes to all these people that actually do work for themselves. So I had to figure that out on my own. So I'm not ungrateful because College helped me with how to socialize, how to think about things, new perspectives, my marketing career, I still use today, because if you're in business for yourself, marketing is a big thing. So like, all I wasn't really starting from zero, I actually had a lot more marketing and business skills than a lot of people who were in business for themselves. So I love that you, you make that out, because that is so important. I think that we forget that, you know, there's a lot of things that qualify us to do something new, we just haven't explored how we can, how we can apply all of our life experience all of our education, everything towards something different, but I definitely use all of those previous paths. In my business today.
Laurie Reynoldson:It's It's beautiful, how it all ties together, isn't it? I you know, I think as women too, we have this tendency to, well, I made that decision. So I'm going to stick with it. You know, we're going to stick this out. It's kind of like that. Make you made your bed now you have to lie in it. And I always like to go back to Yeah, but you can buy a new duvet cover or buy a new set of sheets,
Christina Smith:right, you know, a new set of mattress?
Laurie Reynoldson:On the canopy bed, you buy the canopy bed? Yeah, absolutely. Second, third question in the framework is, I think it's important to ask yourself, if you do nothing, if you stay the course, if you stay exactly where you are. And you get 20 3040 years down the road, and you've done nothing. Are you going to have any regrets? And I know that regrets are I most of the time, I don't like to look at regrets because I don't look back and feel like any I don't regret anything. It's all a series of lessons and was the timing right for me to learn the lesson. But I feel like you can look forward and kind of look at where you could potentially have regrets looking forward. And if if that little feeling that little voice, something inside of you is telling you, it's time to do something different than I think you have to listen to it, even if it's just a tiny, tiny whisper. One of the ways that I like to break this down is you know, trying to figure out looking forward, what I have any regrets is there are two sides of this. There's the objective side, which is so for me, practicing law, do I actually want to work 60 hours a week for the next 2030 years of my life. And I did it because when I sat down and I envisioned what my best life look like it's it's, it's a little rom kami I guess. But you know, I see myself spending parts of the year in Paris, dry, you're riding my little bike on the street with the basket in the front and the the fresh baguette and the beautiful flowers hanging out, you know, and I'm on my way to pick up a nice bottle of wine and some cheese. And that's what we're gonna have for dinner, and working 30 hours a week, or excuse me 60 hours a week for the next 30 years. That's not conducive to how I want to spend my life. And then the subjective piece of that. Whether it is you know, if you're trying to make a decision on your job or your marriage or ending a friendship, I encourage my clients to whatever it is that they're looking at before they make a big decision. Every day, write down five good things about your spouse or your job or that friendship. Just so that you can change your focus a little bit because you know, we our brain is wired so that we are it's going to show us exactly what it is that we are looking for. So if we are telling it, I hate my job I need to change. It is going to give us all sorts of good information to support our decision that this is the worst job we absolutely need to get out of it. And that might be the case but it also So maybe we just need to change our perspective a little bit.
Christina Smith:Yeah, it could be like one area of it that's really struggling. And then I know that my brain can go into doomsday and get hyper focused on the that one thing. And then I'm like, oh, that's the whole world, it all stinks right like, and suddenly, it's like, the whole thing. I'm just gonna go quit right now. And I didn't do that, by the way I did. I did take a year, after my crying year and figuring it out. I went to health coaching. It was a couple years before I left, but just the fact that I was I was making, I was taking action to do something different, really shifted my attitude about my job, because it was an I wasn't so hyper focused on it. I was like, doing this new thing that I was excited about, I was still doing the job and getting all the stuff done. But it was like, like you said, it gave my brain something different and more exciting to think about. And that was just me. I'm not saying that everybody needs to leave their job. But I realized going through health coaching school that I was like, this actually sounds kind of exciting and good. And so I was really falling in line with that feeling of like, actually, this feels really good. How could it? How could I expand my perspective how this might be possible?
Laurie Reynoldson:And we spend so much time at our jobs? That isn't it nice to have something that's exciting, that feels good?
Christina Smith:We wake up and we smile instead of crying.
Laurie Reynoldson:spend all day Sunday thinking?
Christina Smith:I'll take the worst feeling right? Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. So just repeat the three questions again, so that we have this summary. And people can really work on these because I think that these are really important questions. And I love how you these can apply to anything, any part of our life so that we can look a little deeper. So those three questions.
Laurie Reynoldson:Yep, you bet. Number one, why did you make the decision to begin with? Number two, if you could go back? However long ago, it was to the point when you originally made the decision, would you make the same decision? And number three, if you do nothing? Looking forward, if you just stay the course, will you have any regrets?
Christina Smith:I love that last question, too. Because now like you have me thinking, I'm like, Okay, well, where I am right now, because I think in midlife, we should always be like rethinking and going deeper, and what is I want more. But when I think about the life that I'm building, now, I think my seven year old or eight year old self would be really, really happy that I no longer am crying on the way to work or asking myself what's wrong with me because I want something different than I had made plans for my entire life. But I mean, at 40 We're only halfway like, I mean, we might even be less than that. My husband wants to live till he's 110. I'm like, I think 80 would be
Laurie Reynoldson:that's the other thing is, I mean, none of us know how much time we have. Yeah, it could be. We could be halfway, we could be less, we could be more. But we've got to stop waiting until you know, you mentioned it a number of times, you'll all be happy when this happens. Well, if you just keep waiting, then you're just gonna keep waiting.
Christina Smith:Right? You got to bring that happy with you got to infuse it yourself, or else you're gonna be miserable just. And what I found was I was just chasing goal after goal after goal. And when I got there, it wasn't feeling good. Because I was like, Oh, I put on this huge conference. That's great. Oh, I did this big thing. Oh, that's great. And I wasn't really even excited about the big things. And I was like, Wow, is this really how I want to live? Like, I'm just it's so it was so stressful for me. And I think that it can be very stressful when we're not enjoying what we're doing or we don't have a positive perspective on that. And that's again, not about throwing positivity on it. Like because that felt really fake to me. When I was miserable to be like, Oh, no, here's the silver lining. And I'm like, eff that silver lining. I'm miserable right now.
Laurie Reynoldson:I am not I'm not a huge affirmation person, because I'm also very it just doesn't compute to me, like, my brain will say, okay, that's you're saying that and you're looking at yourself in the mirror, but you don't actually mean that. You rightly feel that so? Yeah, you've got to figure out what's going on inside what's going to create that happiness. What's gonna create that fulfillment? Like you said, bring the happiness with you because it doesn't matter what you do on the outside if it's not feeling good on the inside.
Christina Smith:eautiful? Well, those were three great questions. I think that everybody is going to take those away, I hope that everybody will take those away and really start asking themselves, I mean, you don't have to have the perfect answer today. But just even, like starting to cycle those questions through your brain, giving yourself some time to really think about it, and, and, you know, I always believe, like, I too, am against affirmations that we don't believe in. Because like, I can sit there and go, I'm so strong and beautiful. But if I'm not feeling strong or beautiful, that can be really hard. I always like to start with, I'm open to seeing how I could be strong and beautiful. That way, at least my brains going in the right direction, even but I don't have to lie to myself, right? I don't have to lie to myself so that we can just crack it open a little bit, I'm open to seeing it, oh, I see a little bit there. And it's just about collecting new evidence that this could be and I mean, it's the same way as like, just throwing those questions around in our brain, I think is going to be really good for a lot of us, I'm still gonna throw them around. I feel great about my life. And I'm still gonna think about those questions, because I think that they're really great questions. So thank you so much for for being here. I know that you have a little freebie that you're going to be offering as well. With the outline of this right little course, I will. Absolutely fantastic so that you can download that you can go see Laurie on all of her channels, all the connections are below. So make sure that you go connect with her, because she's got some really great information, especially on her social and whatnot. So go check her out. Thank you so much for being here. This was such a great conversation. I feel like we could have talked all day.
Laurie Reynoldson:It's been my pleasure. I like you. I've I've had a great time. And I feel like we could talk all day.
Christina Smith:Yeah, and thank you listeners for tuning in. Y'all if you enjoy this talk, then you need to sign up for the midlife Mojo Summit. We have over 25 speakers that are focused on mid life, women, all of the sessions are all the things that we need in midlife, from relationships to physical health, in our wellness, to all those big dreams and purposes. We have over 25 speakers that are offering you their insight, their formulas, their ways to start moving forward so that we can make midlife the best life and the second half the better half. And I truly believe this is possible. That's why I've hand picked 27 speakers 27. Experts, authors coaches, in order for you to get the information that you need in midlife to make it the best life. Go sign up midlife Mojo summit.com Hey, one more thing. When we are all more confident and full of self love, we can act more intentionally and mindfully. What would a world like that look like? I wanna know. One way that you can help me with this vision is to subscribe rate and review our podcast wherever you listen to it. It helps more than you know and it's just a few clicks to help me create a more beautiful world. And as always, remember to be gentle with your humaneness.
