104: UNLOCK YOUR NEXT CHAPTER: A Guide to Fulfilling Work

"It's not about how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between 9 to 5. It's whether or not the work fulfills us." --Malcom Gladwell

In this episode of Surviving to Thriving we are getting down to the nitty-gritty of your skills and superpowers and discussing the difference between finding a job and discovering a role that is made for YOU. I'm sharing a fantastic exercise straight from my 8-week ignitHER program. It's like a spotlight on your talents, unique knowledge, and what makes you truly special in minutes. Trust me, it's a game-changer.

Let's dive into:

• Why it's crucial to know and leverage your skills and superpowers.
• Simple steps to uncovering what makes you shine and what drives you.
• How this exercise can fast-track your journey to finding a fulfilling career or role.

If you're itching to step into your greatness and align your skills with your purpose, this episode is for you. Tune in for insights, inspiration, and practical exercises to unlock your full potential.

You are ready to uncover your superpowers and find your why aren't you?

What to listen to next:
Episode 100: RISK TAKERS: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Reward
Episode 96: CAREER MAGIC: Transforming Your Journey with Transferable Skills
Episode 90: DREAMS: 3 Exercises to Ignite Your Next Chapter

Ready to ignite your next chapter? Wondering if ignitHER is for you? Book a free 30-minute laser coaching call for us to discover what you need next! https://bit.ly/4chLQDQ

Join my FREE ignitHER campfire community for ongoing support and empowerment! https://bit.ly/3v4cr6a

Don't forget to like and share the podcast with those who need this message!

Have questions or an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at jennessa@jennessadurrani.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to Surviving to Thriving, the weekly podcast for women ready to move beyond just getting by and into the realm of thriving.

Speaker 1: 0:21

I'm Janessa Durrani, a life coach who's empowered countless women to design lives they truly love. And my mission To help every woman on earth carve out a role they adore, one that's fulfilling and provides them the rewards they're seeking. Now, if the idea of that both excites and terrifies you, then you're in the right place, my friend. Each week, I share my strategies, frameworks and a few stories along the way for you to put into immediate application, guiding you through incremental changes on your transformative journey. Gain the confidence, competence and clarity needed to design your life now. I'm so thrilled you've joined us. Welcome to our journey together. Let's go.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Hello, my friends, I was talking to a potential client the other day who is like so many of us. She is a mom and she, after high school, went on to beauty school and has worked in a salon on and off throughout her mothering years and is now the mom of two tweens, tween teens and is wanting to kind of move more fully into a completely new direction. Loves, loves, loves doing hair, but it isn't tapping into all of what she wants to give to the world and it also is not giving her the income that she is wanting. So I asked her a million and a half questions, because that is my favorite part of my job I'm really digging into. What do people love about the work they do or have done, what do they not enjoy about it, what is their intention for moving forward, what's their intention for changing direction, and so forth. So I asked her 9 million questions and then I was like you know what? I have talked you up one side and down the other. What is a question that you have for me? And she said so how do you work exactly? Do you just find women jobs? And it made me think of no, nope, that isn't actually what I do.

Speaker 1: 3:02

I am a career coach and while the end result is in the women getting a job and not just getting any job, but getting a job that fills them up, that they look forward to, where they feel valued and where they feel useful, because that is the common thread, my friend, through every single woman that I work with, is that they just want to be useful. They want to be able to be valued and adored for the work that they do. So I said no, actually I don't. I said what I do is I help you realize just how freaking amazing you are right now, with all the skills, superpowers and loves that you have, without having to go and get a new certification or go back to school and do all the things and do tons of studying and figuring out. I hold a mirror to you so that you can see how freaking amazing you are right now and at the end of it then we develop a package that puts it all together so that you can go out into the world and confidently see yourself and pitch yourself in this new way. And I was thinking my Igniter program is an eight-week program and I was counting. There are about 25 different exercises at least that we go through throughout the course of the whole time.

Speaker 1: 4:56

That just keeps pulling all of your fabulousness out. Pulling all of your fabulousness out and pulling all your fabulousness out Because this is what's happening out. And pulling all your fabulousness out because this is what's happening when we're little. We are messy, little, dreamy girls who don't have any adulting inhibitions. We don't know that there's orthodontics bills, we don't know what a mortgage is and we just see something that we love and we want to go do that, but as we get older, everyone's like, oh, it's time to stop playing, get your head out of the clouds, it's time to go and be an adult.

Speaker 1: 5:44

And this starts as early as middle school. I feel like we are like you got to figure out what you're wanting to do, you got to work on those grades, you got to stay focused and we squelch any bit of dreaming we have left in us. Now, all right, you come into middle school when you're 11. Think of where we're at in our 50s. It's like Janessa, I am not a dreamer. I have bills to pay. I got to be sensible and responsible. I need security and I get that, and this is where that comes from. Right, I've talked about this before. My dad had the same job his entire life. That's what you do.

Speaker 1: 6:35

You leave school and you say this is what I'm going to become. You go to a trade school, you go to a college. You do whatever the case is. You start that first job and then you go and find a little bit better, a little bit better, and you might veer off. Like you know, I was saying to a group of women that I was with today that I graduated with 35 women in well, no, they were not all women. I graduated with 32 women and three boys in my interior design program in 1994. And I would say less than five of them are still doing interior design, but a lot of them are working in the periphery right. They've gone into sales, they've gone into facilities management. They are kind of doing their own kind of side thing. That's creative, and others have just done something completely different. So we rarely leave our lane and we can't see outside of our lane and we are trying to be responsible and sensible and doing all the things.

Speaker 1: 7:55

And I did a podcast, probably a month ago, on transferable skills and I'll put that link as one of the follow-ons from this week on this whole idea of calling up all of your skills that you can put into a box, pick up and take anywhere you go. Now if someone came to me and said, janessa, I really want to be a dentist, I really want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer, all right, girl, you're going to have to go back to school, but for everything else you've got what it takes. So again, I hold a mirror to my clients to help them see, and I do that through a million different interactive, what I call structured dreaming, and one of those exercises actually three of those exercises I shared in a podcast again about a month and a half ago. I shared in a podcast again about a month and a half ago, and I will add that one, because those two and this one perfect, perfect combination if you're trying to like, really start looking about what you want to do next. So here is another exercise that we do in Igniter that will help you pull out of you your awesomeness. Okay.

Speaker 1: 9:28

So, when you have a minute, when you're not driving, folding your laundry or walking the dog, I want you to write down five jobs. It could be your last five. It could be five of your favorite Matters, not to me. These are roles that you have held in the world. So this could be volunteer, this could be paid work, this could be your job as a mom. Okay, so five. I want you to have five roles in some capacity. For each one of them, I want you to write down what is the unique knowledge that you developed, utilized and or honed in that role.

Speaker 1: 10:26

Okay, so, for example, I my first job, as you know well, not my first job. My first professional job was as an interior designer corporate interior designer so in that job I learned how to do construction documents and specifications and vendor solicitation and change management and I did construction management and project management and written communications and I learned about building codes. I learned about we worked primarily all in corporate, so I learned a lot about how financial services and insurance companies, how they worked and how they needed to be organized and so forth. This is just top level, just off the top of my head. So get out of you all of the things, all of the things from emotional intelligence to I mean, let's go to soft skills active listening, empathy, to actually germane, to the trade and or just some of those problem solving, critical thinking, written communication, verbal communication, presentation skills. I was like you know, you can be like I'm the queen of PowerPoint. I can do pivot tables in my sleep, whatever they were. It does not matter how long ago it was, it doesn't matter right now if you like it or not. It is a skill that you used.

Speaker 1: 12:11

And think about your unique knowledge, okay. So again I have a current igniter who has a child with special needs. What she knows about navigating, and this has actually been several of my igniters their ability to navigate the IEP system, to advocating for their child, working through school systems, finding programs. You know what, my friend? That is valuable. There are people in the world that need to know. So some of these things it's what we went through is what we have to offer to someone else. That is two steps behind us. We have to offer to someone else. That is two steps behind us. Okay, so now we have the five roles and we have all of your unique knowledge and all of your skills. Keep dumping them out. Keep dumping them out, and if you have overlap, that's fine.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Then what were you known for in that role? What did everyone come to you for? Were you the connector? Were you the peacemaker? Were you the doer? Were you the organizer? Were you the queen of logistics? Were you the organizer? Were you the queen of logistics? What was it that? When you left, they were like there is a hole in this organization as a result of you leaving. How are we ever going to fill this part of what you did, something that was beyond just a regular skill and so forth? This is your superpower, okay, and different superpowers come up in different roles. So what was your superpower, maybe more than one for that role.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Then, for each role, I want you to write down everything you loved about that role, everything from I loved interacting with the people. I love the customer service. You know, when I was talking to the woman who is a stylist, she's like I love helping people feel better, I love talking to them, I love hearing their problems. Okay, so if I said that someone's kind of skill and love is that they love helping people, making them feel better and helping understand their problems, that could be 17 different roles, my friend, and not necessarily are you going to say, oh, hairdresser, okay. So this is where I need you to see that strip away. Okay.

Speaker 1: 15:20

So first, all the things that you loved, and then what are the things you did not love, what are the things that sucked you dry from that job? If anything, and it could just be, I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, it's just the meh. Okay, once we have your unique knowledge, all of your skills, what you loved about it, what you didn't love about it and what your superpowers were, this is gold. Okay, this gives you all the things. So now I want you to just erase what the job was Erase what the role was. It doesn't matter if you were the CEO or if you were the CEO of your family or if you it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it was. A race cross out doesn't matter, because now you have all the things. You have all the skills that you have to share. You know what your new job, from all the loves take, from all the loves, this is what this new role needs to be able to provide me. These are my superpowers and this is what I want to move forward with. This is how I get filled up.

Speaker 1: 16:54

And then all of the things that you did not love. We're going to make sure that you don't go in a direction that makes you have to do those things on the regular. Every job has something that's not so great that you have to do. It's like my podcast from a few weeks ago First ecstasy, then dishes. Everything has a downside, but we want to play up the good side so that it out balances the things that are like, eh okay. The things that are like, eh okay, this is gold. My friend, I want you to just play in this place, even if you freaking love your job right now. I want you to do this. I want you to do this so you can see what you have to offer and what you should be valued for. Two of the women that just went through my last igniter came to the end and were like I think I want to stay at my company, but now I see my value. Now I want to talk to them about leveling up, about using my skills and superpowers to make the organization even better. It gave them this whole new perspective, this clear clarity of how freaking amazing they were and how they wanted to do more for their company and thus be valued for that. So anyone can utilize this, if you have.

Speaker 1: 18:42

I am working with a college student right now. We've done this exact same exercise for all of his jobs that he's had so far. He is unclear as to where, what he wants to major with. He needs to now declare and point in a direction, and we've done something very similar. You can do this with each of your kids. What is it that you love? What are the things you're like? I don't really like that. I don't want to do that. What do all of their friends come to them for? What are they known for at school? What in all of the roles that they've had and it doesn't have to be a paid again.

Speaker 1: 19:27

My oldest was a spirit captain and the marching band he was a trombone leader. He is kind of the HR. He's the conduit between me and the robotics team and so forth. It is very clear when we did this exercise for him that he is always about bringing two groups together. He is the glue that brings them together. So last year, when we did this exercise for him, along with the assessments and so forth that I use, we realized that peacekeeping, peacekeeping is his jam. We realized that peacekeeping, peacekeeping is his jam. So he is at least pointing in the direction of international relations, diplomacy and peacekeeping because we did this exercise, this exercise. I'm just getting goosebumps because this exercise is so freaking simple but gives you everything you need.

Speaker 1: 20:30

I don't help women get jobs. I help women realize how freaking amazing they are so that they can realize what the role they want to have next. And then we help them, I help them, they get the job. Then we help them, I help them, they get the job. You have everything you need right now to find a role that you love and it's right there on that piece of paper, my friend, I hope you have a freaking amazing week. I appreciate your staying power and thank you for joining me until the very end. You're recreating your life, my friend, and I am so incredibly proud of you. If you found this episode helpful, please share, subscribe and leave a review. It means the world to me. Your support helps more women discover it. Reach out anytime, as I'm here to support you. My email is in the show notes and you can find me at JanessaDurranicom. And until next week, remember, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can wash, rinse and repeat, one intentional step at a time. You've got this, my friend.