Episode #396 – Working toward your “what’s next”

This is episode 396 of the Brilliant Balance podcast. And today we’re talking about working toward your what’s next.

So today is really my chance to support you if you’re feeling like that inner tug toward change, but you haven’t named what it is yet.

I’m gonna help you recognize the signs that you might be ignoring. And I wanna really talk about the risks of staying put, um which is our tendency always. And I wanna help you begin to see that creating a vision for what’s next is not something that you have to figure out all alone.

So as we settle in for this episode, I want you to think about, have you ever felt that subtle, sometimes it’s really subtle, but maybe persistent feeling that like this just can’t be all that there is. There has to be something else or something more.

right Or maybe the way it shows up for you is like, this just isn’t working. I know it to my core, but I’m almost afraid to admit it or afraid to name it.

And I’m being purposefully nonspecific about what it is um because I think the thing that isn’t working or the thing that we know needs to change or the place where we’re being called forward takes a lot of different shapes, comes in a lot of different forms, and And you’ll know what it is for you.

And if you have had that experience, you’ve kind of felt that inner knowing or that nudge, I just want to remind you first that you are 100% not alone, um particularly if you’re in midlife, but regardless of where you are. And you’re certainly not broken. And it doesn’t mean like you’re doing it wrong.

What I think that means is that you’re evolving. Right? and that you’re being called forward to something that um is better for you.

So this episode is for the woman who feels like something has to shift. even if you can’t name what it is yet, right? You just know, you know that it cannot stay like this, whatever you know this is for you.

And so many of us get these nudges or these signs, but all too often we ignore them. you know They come in um sort of full force. We feel them very powerfully.

Sometimes. Sometimes they’re a little more subtle. And we just – we’re not ready to pay attention. It’s like it feels like it would be disruptive to heed that call, to do something about that shift. And I think there’s a few reasons that that happens. Yeah.

And these are, you know, they’re so common that I know they’re going to resonate, but I want to name them for you. Because in our crazy lives, right, with all the things that are happening in our lives, sometimes we don’t even pause to think about, like, why am I ignoring this knowingness, right, this subtle knowingness?

So the first reason is sort of rooted in that, which is that we’re just too busy. Right? Right. The signs are subtle and we’re drowning in logistics and to do lists and caretaking. And because of that, it runs at a low hum in our consciousness and it’s getting superseded by things that are louder and feel more urgent. Right.

right, when you are trying to manage carpools and homework and dinner plans and laundry and work projects, those low-grade dissatisfactions, the things that you know are like a call to change, it’s really easy to just push them down.

Right? So we’re just too busy to even pay attention. The second thing I think happens is we start to second guess that voice. um You know, who am I to want more?

Right? Maybe this is just a phase. Like, I have a pretty good life. I should be grateful for it. and Everything’s fine. It’s fine. I’m fine. Right? That kind of, we second guess the clarity, the knowingness of the voice.

And sometimes I think that’s because we want to minimize our dissatisfaction, right? We want to act like it’s not a big deal. It’s not bad enough to warrant a change, kind of back to the it’s fine, right?

um Or we feel guilty about feeling dissatisfied. And so we minimize that feeling. We almost invalidate our own experience, much less share it with anyone else, right?

and if it’s not those things, sometimes I think we’re afraid of the disruption that might be caused, right? Any kind of change is always like full stop is going to feel like a risk, right? Anything that requires us to change. And we’ve worked so hard to build what we already have that the fact that we would disrupt that to get something better can be um scary.

And so we’re afraid of that disruption and so we just ignore the voice. and maybe most importantly, i don’t know, they’re all important, but maybe most importantly is we just don’t see another way. We’re like, I can see this and I know that I don’t like it.

I know it’s not good enough, all the way from like it sucks completely to it’s irritating, it’s itching at me. But there’s no roadmap and we don’t have time to make one and we don’t really know how we would get from here to there.

So it’s easier to just ignore, right? To ignore that knowingness. And I want to remind you, like, just because you can tolerate something doesn’t mean you should keep living with it.

It doesn’t mean you should keep living with it. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And so sometimes we’re like, I can tolerate this. If I’ve told this story before, I think on the podcast that when I was in labor with my first child, the doctor came in to offer an epidural. And I was like, I don’t think I need it yet.

And she was like, um why exactly? Is there some pain threshold you have to reach before you’re willing to have this part of your birth plan? And I think it was like in the deep recesses of my brain was, well, this is still tolerable.

I can still tolerate this. And I have to be at a level where I can’t tolerate it. to accept that pain relief. And I think that’s just a big metaphor for how a lot of us are walking through life, right? Just because we can tolerate it, we’re like, okay, if I can tolerate it, I should keep going.

But the reality is it can be so much better. And we’re not going to get the chance at it being so much better if we are staying stuck. So this notion of knowing what’s next for you, whatever area of life you’re feeling you know called to change,

If you stay where you are, it’s not innocuous. It’s not benevolent, right? There are real risks to staying in a place that you are not meant to be, that is not good enough for what’s possible, to ignoring that voice.

And I want to talk about a couple of them. Because I want you to really, you have to think about the other side, right? If there are risks to changing and to moving forward, we have to think about what are the risks of staying where we are.

And one of the biggest ones is that we start to suffer. We are not our best selves, right? We become like a shadow of ourselves. We’re just going through the motions of life. If you are waking up in the morning and you’re like, I don’t even want to get out of bed.

you know, how many times can I snooze? And then you’re just dragging yourself to caffeine and then sort of going through the motions of getting ready. I just have to get through this day, right? And then I’m coming home and I’m not looking forward to it and I’m just tired at night and I’m trying to numb out.

That is like, that is not a life. That is not what we wanna be in. And we wanna stay connected to the fact that there is a much higher level of life available to us if we have descended to the point where we’re just going through the motions.

Because not only do we suffer where we’re like this shadow of our former self, but our health suffers, our relationships suffer, our work suffers, you know our creativity suffers. It’s like our life force is just being drained out of us when we’re not heeding that call to something more.

And then we start looking at the people around us who are part of this situation, our family, our colleagues at work, our boss, as you know our community, and we’re like, there’s resentment that starts to creep in.

And resentment is so toxic. So if you can assess yourself, just kind of check in with yourself right now as you’re listening. If you have fallen into a pattern of resentment with the people around you, where you are starting to feel like it’s their fault that your life is this hard or this compromised,

That is a really serious call to change. Because the faster you can move yourself out of resentment, the faster like the lights turn back on in your life, okay? And we definitely do not wanna model this for the people around us.

So when we stay in a life that’s below the level we wanna live, any area, career, relationship, our home, our health, that that, you know, we are teaching people around us, especially our children, that settling, you know, it is what it is, is normal.

And it’s not, it does not have to be normal, but we have to pay attention to these signs that we are evolving and we are being pulled in a direction of something more.

And that the cost of staying stuck is actually often higher than the cost of making a change. The cost of resentment, of being a shadow of your former self, of your health and your relationship suffering, those are real costs.

And yeah, change and growth has a cost, right? There’s some fear associated with that. There’s some things we have to do to get there. But it’s not very often as high as the cost of staying in places that we don’t belong.

I have had a couple of chapters in my life where I had to look at my career, for example, and while it was good and it was working and I was being rewarded, I had to look at it and say, this no longer feels aligned.

with where I feel called to be. right So I left a corporate career after 15 years, of a very successful, very lucrative corporate career path that I was on in a company I could have stayed at for another 25 and retired.

And I had to make that bold choice to say this no longer feels aligned. And then I started my first business, and I was about five years in, and I liked a lot of things about that business. And I had to, I just, that nudge came in again, and it came in very clearly.

this isn’t it. There’s another turn in the road here. You got to go on the next leg of the journey. And I was like, wait a minute. I just built this thing. I’m only five years in. we What do you mean? But that voice, that nudge was so clear.

Like, it’s not this. And I took some time, almost a year, really, to sort out how to shut down that business and on-ramp to the next one. And that chapter became what is today Brilliant Balance. And it’s, you know, I keep steering my way through Brilliant Balance to make sure that I am staying aligned. What is the program that I want to be supporting? Who are the kinds of women that I want to be coaching? What kind of a team do I want to have, right?

How much do I want to work? So there’s big changes, like I’m going to leave my corporate career to be an entrepreneur. And then there are smaller changes. What are the offerings? What is the pattern within this chapter?

And in either of those is still kind of a call to something more. And I think what I’ve learned both through my own experience and in my years at Brilliant Balance, right, ah advising women all over the country, is that you won’t figure out your next chapter by powering through the one you’re in.

right You won’t. You can’t just put your head down on the chapter you’re in and like double down on your efforts to be successful because then all of your available energy is going to this chapter that you know is coming to a close.

What you have to do is bring things to a purposeful pause in order to think. There has to be space to think, to plot, to plan, to discern. Right?

right And often, um that does not mean you have to, let’s take a career change. It doesn’t mean you have to quit your job. But it means you have to have a container in which you’re doing that thinking and you’re doing that planning.

and If you’re making a relationship change, it’s probably not a knee-jerk reaction. There is space required, though. You might need a little distance in order to really get clarity about your thoughts.

And stillness and solitude are really important here, right? And the idea of like not having a thousand voices in the mix, you know, you’re gonna have parents and partners and kids and friends and lots of people who wanna kind of have a voice in the mix, but getting into stillness and inviting in just the chosen few to provide perspective where they really have the though lived experience to do that, the wisdom to pour into you,

That is where our best decisions get made. and you want to be reflecting on questions like, where in my life do I feel stagnant?

Right, where do I feel resentment building? Where do I feel like I’m not growing? um And conversely, like where do I feel energized? right What kinds of things that maybe I’m doing in small doses are making me feel the most energized or the most alive or the most like myself?

What am I no longer willing to settle for? And what do I want instead? right Questions like, who have I been? How am I showing up? What is this? If somebody met me today, what version of me are they meeting?

And then, who am I becoming? Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? And you don’t need to have all the answers today, but you do need to start asking better questions.

right If you want to get from a life that’s just good enough to a next chapter that really turns you on, that you’re so excited to wake up and enter, you have to start asking better questions. um What would have to be true for me to have this future version of my vision become my reality?

right What would have to be true is my favorite question ever to ask. I ask it all the time with the women who I’m coaching. Because we can have a vision and an idea and we think, oh, this is what I want. And then what happens next?

Immediately, all of these objections start flinging themselves into our mind. right we can. We can think so easily of all the reasons that it won’t work or that we can’t have it or we can’t do it.

And we need to pause those questions, those kind of um the habituated response. And we have to start asking, okay, wait, but what would have to be true if I really do want that?

How can I steer toward it? um And it is shocking what kinds of opportunities and avenues open up when we start asking. So this kind of work, this figuring out what’s next and moving yourself toward it doesn’t lend itself very well to being like a DIY project.

And I think this is the mistake that a lot of us make if we think, I’m going to figure this out alone. And we get stuck in a cycle of thinking without taking action.

Right. We’re we’re we might think a lot. We might journal. We might um talk out loud to ourselves or, um you know, we’re just kind of running around with this running in the background in our minds.

But that cycle of thinking instead of acting doesn’t actually get us there. And often the missing link is we need sounding boards. Right. We need thought partners, right? We need guides. We need structure to actually move from where we are to where we want to be.

You wouldn’t build a house without an architect, right? So we don’t want to try to build our future without the same level of design support, right? And having personalized guidance, having a framework that you can follow, being in community with other people who are doing that same kind of design work can really shortcut the time that it takes to get clarity and to build momentum, right? And I just think sometimes we think it’s weak to ask for help, but it’s not weak.

It’s wise, right? It’s wise to ask for help because we know that it’s an accelerator, right? Change doesn’t happen all at once. We don’t just get, you know, we’re not clear like, oh, I don’t like this part of my life, and then boom, I have a vision for the next level, and then the next day I’m in the next phase.

But it does start with the first courageous step where you admit this part of my life isn’t working, and I’m gonna have to figure out what I want instead.

And once you do, and you figure out what feels more aligned, what gives you more energy, more presence, right? More joy, what all the things that we want more of, more freedom, then we can start taking the steps toward making that our reality.

So you don’t have to do this alone. And honestly, you probably shouldn’t, right? It can be a foggy place when you’re in this what’s next world. And I just want you to know I help women like you with this every single day, right? You don’t have to figure this out alone.

um In fact, coming up soon, and Thursday, June 5th, I am hosting a free live workshop um to really help get you on your path. It’s like the first step you can take completely free.

to come in and I’ll share a bit of a framework about how you get started. And then I will tell you how you can get ongoing support if you want that. So I’ll put it in the show notes, but if you go to the Brilliant Balance site, brilliant-balance.com, and then put forward slash clarity, that’s the page to get signed up for the workshop.

And yes, there will be a replay, but it’s always better live. So if you can come live, that’s perfect. If you can’t, there will be a replay. Share it with a friend who maybe you know is in transition or needs to be, someone who’s mulling some of these same kinds of questions.

That I have been talking about today because I think so many of us know that there is a next thing waiting for us and we just can’t seem to get the time and the focus and the steps lined up to actually get there. And so we spin and we stay where we are when everything in us is yearning to move to this next level.

So my challenge for you today as we kind of wrap up this episode is I want you, when you close this episode, to ask yourself, where do I already know I need to make a change?

What am I ignoring that I know is true about a place where I need to move forward? And am I willing to take a free, simple first step by signing myself up for that workshop, right?

Showing up live and seeing if I can use that to get momentum to just get in motion, to start the process of moving me toward the future that I actually deserve.

All right, share this episode with a friend, bring somebody with you to the workshop. I am really looking forward to taking you through this framework and seeing if I can get you on your journey. um And who knows, it could be the day that is like the first day of the rest of your life where everything changes on the other side of that simple decision.

That’s all for today, my friends. Till next time, let’s be brilliant.