Michelle Ward, Career Coach

When Michelle decided to stop performing, she the first thing she did was get a bridge job. She took a job that while allowing her to pay her bills (important, right?), didn't take much out of her so she had energy to build her business. I think it's important to stress that a bridge job doesn't need to fuel your creativity, in fact, a job like that may drain your energy for building your business. For Michelle, her bridge job was as an executive assistant at a financial firm. That's quite a 180 from musical theatre, and worth thinking on for you too.

We all have an inner voice that pops up and tries to let us know what is right or wrong for us. Only, many of us have spent years, if not decades ignoring that voice. For Michelle, that voice was trying to give her a bit of course correction, saying "you don't want to do this anymore for your job, for your career. You don't want to go to Idaho and be in Peter Pan for $300." Think about what your inner voice has been telling you. What would listening to it mean for you?

Michelle said it best, so here it is, "I call that my Oh Crap Balls Moment, because it's not, I think there is such a fallacy in society where when you find the job you're supposed to be doing or the career you're supposed to be doing in the business are supposed to be running, the angels sing and you feel like Snow White in the forest with the animals and everything is wonderful in the rose-colored glasses are on all the time. (And, i)t is not the case in the vast majority of my clients, it was not the case for me. It was more of a slow burn of like, well, this sounds ridiculous and this feels really hard. But, I guess now I'm going to be a life coach of all weird, crazy things." Follow your weird, follow your difficult, follow your fulfillment. It's worth it.

For full links and show notes visit compassopod.com/010