12 - Show up and Shine - How we think about occupational and vocational wellness

Welcome back to I Wanna Be Me When I Grow Up. My name is Kara.

My American listeners know that one of the most common questions American's ask one another on meeting is "what do you do?" We put a lot of stock in this country and culture on productivity - but what happens when your identify shifts in a day? Today, I'm sharing Vital Area 2 - Productivity or what I call Show Up and Shine

I wasn't sure what I'd share with you today but since I'm coming up on the one year anniversary of this moment, it's time to start talking about it publicly. On January 14, 2021, just after I'd wrapped up a group broadcast in our organizational Town Hall to about 800 of my fellow employees, one of the HR team members showed up in my doorway and told me my boss wanted to see me.

"Am I being fired?" I asked him. He didn't answer and just asked me to come with him. That was all the answer I needed.

Within 30 minutes I was exiting an organization I'd given 23+ years of my life to for the last time.

In the aftermath of that moment, I had to transform my identity around "what do you do?". Today, when someone asks me, I say I'm a Consultant, Coach, and Content Creator. More importantly to me, I'm building the life I want to live every day surrounded by the people that I love and want to spend time with. Instead of meetings and an overwhelming number of emails and way too much time in the car, my life is now filled with creating, publishing, and facilitating discoveries by others.

Part of what I think made this transition easier is that my "work" identity was not tied up in my job title but in this idea that whatever I do in life I'm going to show up and shine - whether that is volunteering, helping friends, being with my family, creating content, working with clients or what I did for those first 20+ years - leading a large college. I am not a title or a job description - I am me and I'm trying to be a better version of me every single day.

So, as we did yesterday, each of these episodes include a brief journaling exercise. Journal just by thinking about the questions, by writing, by typing, or by dictating text to speech...or discuss these with someone you trust. Do what works for you. Here are today's questions to consider: 

1. What are all of the roles you have in life? (For example, just to name a few, I am a daughter, sister, aunt, dog mom, educator, writer, business owner, and the list goes on...) 

2. When someone asks you "What do you do?" what do you say? 

3. How does what you answer to that question encompass ALL of your roles? If it doesn't, how would you rewrite it to be more encompassing of your whole self? 

4. What word or phrase might be useful to you to encompass how you think about being productive in your life?

If you answer any of these questions, I'd love for you to drop me a note and let me know what you discovered. You can email me at kara at iwannabemewhenigrowup.com or you can go to anchor.fm/iwannabeme and leave a voice mail message.

Something I realized as I went through this experience is - from a professional standpoint ALL of us, except through death which is less than ideal, will experience a day where you are in a professional role followed by a moment immediately after where you are not - whether through retirement, leaving for another job, or having your job ended for you like I did. That's why I prefer to put more energy in relationship development and building which is what we'll talk about tomorrow.

Don't forget to like, rate, review and share this podcast if it was valuable to you. Do you want to make sure you get every episode as well as everything else I publish? If so, then subscribe to my newsletter at https://iwannabemewhenigrowup.substack.com/. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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