A LOT with Audra

Ep15
===

Audra Dinell: [00:00:00] Hey there. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for listening to a lot with Audra. Today I am revisiting an article I wrote in 2009. At that time in my life, as you will see, I had just landed a job that for the first time was super fulfilling and I got the opportunity to write for a website. It was called Ms.

Career Girl, and it's still up today, believe it or not. I will include the link in the show notes, but [00:01:00] the very first article I wrote for them was titled, I Urge You Don't Settle, and I'm revisiting this topic today because I still fiercely believe that we shouldn't settle in our careers in a career that's less fulfilling than we want it to be in a career that we're not interested in, in a career that may look successful on the outside to the world, but doesn't fill our cup internally.

Now, before I go down this road, I realize it's a hot take, right? People are saying that lately. So I really wanted to hot take, this is my hot take. You shouldn't settle. You should do something you're passionate about with your work. We've all heard the stats about how much time we spend at work in the mid portion of our life [00:02:00] versus on anything else, and it's just too big of a chunk of time to do something that we don't like to do.

Now, don't hear me wrong. Don't hear me say if you are super passionate about bowling, let's just say, I just made that up. If you're super passionate about bowling and that is your passion, you have to find a way to make money around it, and that's the only thing that you can do with your life. That's not what I'm saying.

I think we can find purpose and passion in a lot of different places. I don't even think the industry matters. I think it's what activates our gifts and our aptitudes, which we'll talk a little bit about today and more in the coming weeks. But I think the work that we choose to do with our life matters.

It matters for us, for our happiness and fulfillment and for the world. The way we get to show up and bring our gifts, I think it matters to the next [00:03:00] generations that they see us doing work maybe differently than some of the previous generations have chose to do it. So I just think this matters. This is my hot take.

You shouldn't settle. You should have a career that fulfills you on some level. Now I remember having this conversation with a friend long ago about are you a type of person that works to live or are you a type of person that lives to work? And I will say most of my life I've fallen in that second camp I have lived to work.

I found a lot of purpose and meaning and joy and worth from the work I do and from my career. However, not everyone is like that. And the older I get, I just turned 39 this week. The older I get the more I want my work to matter. And also I see that the people in my everyday life, my relationships, my family just the life I cultivate [00:04:00] matter so greatly.

And I would say I've never thought different than that, but I'm just like feeling even more at the almost. Halfway mark of an average life. I guess that I don't wanna be a person who lives to work, but I do wanna be a person who does work that I'm passionate about and that I'm good at. And I will talk more about this in this episode, but that's my hot take.

That's what this episode's about. I'm so excited you're here. Buckle up. Let's go.

Okay, I'm gonna start by reading this article I wrote that I'm gonna link in the show notes because I just think it's precious and it just shows where my head was at 16 years ago and my head is not far off of this still today.

Okay. I start out with this quote. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. [00:05:00] And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. Any guesses who said that quote? It was Steve Jobs.

The article goes on to say. When I graduated college in 2009 with a degree in marketing, I wasn't worried. The internship I had taken a year and a half before graduation had turned into a full-time job offer. I accepted and even began putting in a full 40 hours a week during my last semester of school.

My job was interesting, even exciting at times, but best of all, I worked with great people. As was all too common during this time period, the company that I was with did some reorganization and come spring 2010, we all became unemployed. This was a bit of shock for me, just one year post-graduation, not to mention three months before I [00:06:00] was set to walk down the aisle to say I do.

During this time, I did some major soul searching. I made lists. I set up meetings with any and every connection I had in industries that I had even the slightest interest in. I considered buying a flower shop. Five months post layoff. I decided to take a cushy corporate job complete with a baller expense account in one of the nicest offices I had ever seen.

I absolutely loved it. I loved feeling busy and by way important, I enjoyed the tasks I performed. I enjoyed the meetings I attended, and most of all, I enjoyed the travel. But after about three years, I started feeling the itch. This itch led me to take a similar job with a small business, promising me more flexibility, creative freedom, and thus a sense of ownership in my work.

About six weeks in, I found these promises to be empty, and I was pretty devastated. I felt like a failure. I had taken a risk and it didn't work out. [00:07:00] So I left this new job at my 90 day review. I left it for nothing, no plans, and less than three weeks later it happened.

A company that I had been interested in for over a year called me and offered me a job on the spot. A good but tough job, a job that continues to push me outta my comfort zone. It has been so worth the risks I took and the blind leaps of faith that it took to get here. I'm now engaged and immersed in my job because I feel like I'm doing great work.

My heart has told me that I found it. I no longer wake up, dress the part and go sit in an office. In fact, I work from home. I bust my butt at all hours of the day. I don't really check out when 5:00 PM rolls around. I do what has to be done, when it has to be done, and I love it. I chose not to settle. I've even had two of my former bosses reach out to tell me what a good fit I found for myself.

Whether you're the kind of person that dreads Monday mornings or the kind that sort of [00:08:00] goes through the motions, you must push yourself out of your comfort zone and begin living really living your life and your work is your life sister, at least a large part of it. So that was the article I wrote for Ms.

Career Girl back in 2009. And you know, some things have updated. I didn't have kids then, like I have kids now. I don't work at all hours of the day. I have found just a much healthier alignment and flow for me. But the one thing in that article that still rings true is that I really do believe you have to find a way to use your gifts, use your strengths, use the way you are wired

in your job and find fulfillment and enjoyment in it some way, somehow, we've all heard that Mary Oliver quote, right? What is it that you intend to do with your one wild and precious life? That has always been my favorite quote, and I just think it's so darling that 2009 version of Audra was really [00:09:00] starting to hit her stride and understand this.

The one thing I wanna point out is we'll talk more and more about maybe like how you do this. If you're in a situation that is not bringing you fulfillment, how do you take that next step? How do you figure out why? How do you find work that does, whether that be launching your own business or moving to a new role in your organization, trying something totally new and out of your comfort zone completely finding a different organization.

Just choosing even to switch your mindset and your perspective and choosing to find purpose and fulfillment where you are. It's so important, and I always get really excited when I hear the stories about different celebrities or people who, have done things late in life. We've all heard, like Vera Wang opened up her bridal gown design [00:10:00] business in her forties and different celebrities that we know their names, we know their brands, and we hear that they didn't start until later.

I just think that's so encouraging and so exciting because, well, we probably maybe all wish we could come out of college and know what we wanna do with our life and start walking that path right away. It doesn't always happen like that for us, and I feel like there's a lie that we're told saying that it should, who at 18 years old knows what they wanna do with their life?

Not very many of us. There are a few, my best friend's, a doctor, and she's wanted to be a doctor her whole life. She is one of the only people I know in this life who knew from the beginning what she wanted us to do and walked that path. Most of us have to have lots of starts and stops and get curious and experiment, and that costs time and that costs potential income that we could be having if we just took the job and accepted the path and kept [00:11:00] marching along.

I overheard today someone talking in our thread community that they have created this whole world and role for themselves that is very lucrative and great titles and great exposure to great people, but they're afraid that they climb to the wrong ladder. It's just never too late. So don't believe that lie that it's too late for you.

There's always time in ways, even if it doesn't mean you just completely starting over because maybe you can't really do that. But there are always times and ways where you can start to get curious and you can carve and create, cultivate a career that you can be excited about. So keep going. Here's what we're gonna talk about in the coming weeks.

We are going to be talking about aptitudes. So we're gonna invite on a guest that I have worked with and that my team has worked with, and [00:12:00] we're gonna talk all about aptitudes and what does that mean? In my layman's terms, aptitudes means the way that we are wired, the way that our brains work. It's not our preferences, it's

a way that we can show up in the world that feels most natural to us. Many of us grew up in the era where, you know, we heard you can do anything and be anything well aptitude shows us what we're more likely to find, not easy, but kind of easy I guess, and again, I'm saying this in layman's terms, but

aptitudes, show us what we're wired to do. So one of the aptitudes I learned about myself, and again, we'll talk more about this in the coming episodes, but one of the aptitudes I learned about myself is that I'm a super high ideator, so I come up with ideas all of the time. Working in a marketing [00:13:00] agency for me was awesome because it demands creativity and ideas often.

Working in any company that uses the language. Well, this is the way things have always been, would not be a fit for me because my ideas would just get bottlenecked. My head might literally burst. You know, when I was working in marketing, I was pretty good at it. Like I would give myself a b. B level good at marketing.

I worked in marketing for 10 careers. I climbed my way off that ladder. Truly starting to work at agencies was exciting and passionate and fulfilling for me. And at some point I looked over at my colleague. I had a colleague at the first marketing agency I worked at, and I was in awe of her. This woman was a [00:14:00] boss.

She was a few years younger than me and she had been at the company a few years longer than me. She was senior, my position, and she just was someone that I looked at and I am like, she is living in her gifts. And it was so interesting to experience that because I never compared, at least to my memory, I never compared the two of us.

I was simply inspired by her living in her lane, like. You've met those people, right? Who you're like, you are just doing what you're put on this earth to do. That is awesome. And while I'm not saying that this podcast series we're rolling out is gonna walk you through how to do what you are put on this earth to do, I am saying, y'all don't give up.

Don't settle. I don't have all the answers of how you can find that they're within you, but I'm going to give you through this podcast series some ideas of where to start digging and looking, [00:15:00] because I just think we should all be that person. I think that we should all be doing work that is so in our zone of genius.

Maybe not all the time, but like the majority of our work should be. I'm using should, and I hate using that word. I think what could the world be if we were all living and working that way, working on projects. We're excited and passionate about projects that used our natural wiring, our aptitudes, so that we could truly shine.

So that's what we're gonna be talking about on this podcast series. I hope today was just fun and a little inspiring. And I know I'm not giving you any tips or how we're gonna do this just yet. That will come. But I wanted to kick us off by just revisiting 2009 Audra and the article I wrote and really reminding myself even that this has been a conviction that I have had [00:16:00] since.

Excuse me, since I started my career and now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, that article says it was published in 2009, but I'm like, was it 2000? Oh my gosh, y'all, this was 2014, so let's correct that. Every time I said 2009, I meant 2014 Audra, so it was 11 years ago. But still, I just think this is something that has, has been on my heart and been a thread, if you will, a constant

in my life and in my work, and it's something that I am passionate about. I wanna help you find work that lights you up, work that works for your life, work that uses your natural abilities to allow you to shine and flow and live in alignment. And I just think it's important. I think it's important work, and it's not easy and it's not clean.

It's quite messy. You could be doing, work you love and making no money, that's not gonna work, right? That's not sustainable. You could have a passion [00:17:00] that's not marketable. You could be a person who, you're probably not listening to this podcast if you're this person, but you could be a person who just wants to clock in and clock out and super soak in their life outside of work.

Work is a paycheck. To some, and that's okay too. Although, like I said, I seriously doubt you're listening if that is you. But anyways, that's what we're gonna be talking about. Thank you for listening. I love doing this. If this episode or any of our other episodes have connected with you, would you share?

Would you just share on social media or share with a friend? You can go and in Apple, click on the episode. You can copy the link, you can just send it to a friend. You can hit share and it'll go on your social media. That would really help me as we're continuing to build this podcast and do the thing we love.

So thank y'all. Have a great week, and I can't wait to be back with you next week. [00:18:00]