“I know I can’t stay in this job… but I have no idea what to do next.” Or maybe you’ve swung to the opposite problem: “There are so many things I could do – how do I choose?”
In this episode, Todd and Chris break down one of the biggest challenges in midlife career reinvention: going from stuck and trapped → to overwhelmed by possibilities → to actually choosing and testing your next move.
You’ll learn:
- Why most of us were never taught how to make good career decisions
- The two phases of reinvention: “I have no options” and “I have too many”
- How to use the Japanese concept of Ikigai:
- What you love
- What you’re good at
- What the world needs
- What you can get paid for
- A simple way to create a list of real options (usually 10-20, not 50+)
- How to run smart experiments instead of chasing the “one right answer”
- Why talking to real humans (not just Googling at 2am) speeds everything up
- How ego, shame, and perfectionism quietly block your reinvention
- The difference between a single-focus path and a portfolio career
- How to calm your nervous system so you can take bold but sane risks
If you’re in your 30s, 40s, or 50s thinking:
- “I want to reinvent my career but I don’t know where to start.”
- “I have all these ideas-how do I know which one to pursue?”
- “What if I choose wrong and regret it?”
…this episode will give you a practical framework and real-talk guidance to move from spinning in your head to taking clear, confident action toward your next chapter.
Episode Transcript
Todd: I’m ready to turn towards my reinvention. I’m ready to look out into the future and be like, all right, what are the things that I can do. Alright, Todd, so what are we talking about today? What’s going on? What’s on top of mind?
Well, man, today’s a really important topic because for people that are reinventing their career, one of the most common things that happens is that they look at into the future because they realize perhaps their trajectory of their past isn’t really in play anymore, and they look out and they’re like, all right, there’s so many different things that I can do.
this episode is all about understanding how to make good decisions about what reinvented ideas you need to look at. How do you navigate this new world out there? And how do you start to hone in on the things that you really need to do or want to do in your future. Okay? So what we’re gonna do is give you a really good framework for how to make good decisions and sift through ideas so that way you can reinvent faster.
And before we get to it, let’s just reiterate what the point of this podcast and this episode is, is to help people that are in career transition think about reinvention and get to success faster. What we believe, and Chris, you’re a professional reinventor, I always say that, but what we believe is that your next career can be your best one if you simply learn to marry it with what you really wanna do, what your talents are, and what you’re passionate about. And that’s what we’re helping people do, right, is just think about reinvention, not as stressful, but as opportunity. Let’s start there with talking about this notion of, there’s a lot that I could do in front of me.
How do I start making decisions? And I know this is something that you went through. So what are your initial thoughts when we talk about this?
Chris: Well, well the first thing that pumps up when you bring this up is just this idea of a lot of times pre reinvention, let’s say, or when we say, you know, you’re reinvention curious. You’re in this career that’s not working for you, and you start by thinking there’s no possibility.
You’re like, all I can do is stay on the track that I’m on. The thought process I had a million times was, ah, this sucks. I wanna do something different. But I have all this experience, like my resume translates so well to this and this only so you know, what am I gonna do? It just became this inevitability of like, there were no possibilities.
But then as we both see, when we start talking to people who are open to reinvention and they start to really go down this road and explore it. Then you go right to the other problem where it feels like there’s like infinite possibilities and you’re like, well what do I choose? What do I do?
Right? Maybe it’s the human brain’s infinite capacity for overwhelm is like the switch into the exact opposite problem and say, well, now there’s too many possibilities. Now what do I do? What do I spend my time on?
Todd: And how do I know what’s right?
Chris: That’s a loaded question, right?
That sounds like a throwaway, Todd, but that’s a loaded question because define right. I’m gonna put on my Jordan Peterson hat on for a second. Define, right. It depends what right is. If you’re gonna say what’s right, then what, what is right? It’s like one of those things of especially if you’re a corporate person and you’re used to being right all the time and your job is to be right. Now when you’re in a reinvention mode, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re exploring all these possibilities. And I think it’s really crippling to start with this idea of, I’ve gotta get it right.
Todd: That’s a good point, brother. I appreciate that. Now I have to start doing ad hoc improv like you just did, you know, because you’re gonna be the funny one. But that I, I can live with that, but you know,
Chris: you’re bigger on, you’re bigger on TikTok and I’m the smaller window. So it’s, that’s the balance.
Todd: But I do think you are right.
That is setting us up for possible disappointment of thinking that I need to find the right thing when reinvention really is. And exploration. We talk a lot about the stages of reinvention, and I think you aptly named that first stage, which is, man, I’m really not that happy in this current trajectory, or it’s ending.
A lot of people are in there right now. I mean, with AI and everything that’s happening in the world, careers are changing. So a lot of people are being forced to think about, how am I gonna make money? How am I going to survive? How am I gonna create security for my family? Like this is very real right now.
So while you and I are very light. There is that first stage of oh my God, like deer in the headlights. What am I gonna do? And so if you found us, like breathe for a minute. Let’s just look at the problem for what it is and start to break it down tactically. And the way that I always help people in this stage is to think about, well, this is an opportunity.
And this is a chance for you to breathe for a second and think what would make me really happy? What would make me fulfilled? What type of career if I just get out of my old identity, you know, in my old trajectory, just for an exercise, what could I do that would be fun fulfilling enlightening? And I know there’s a concept that you love called Ikigai.
I think we want to talk about that a little bit,
Chris: and you’re immediately gonna throw me off ’cause I don’t have the diagram in front of me, so I’ll get the four quadrants wrong. But the idea is that it’s a balance of, your passions. It’s a balance of what you’re good at. It’s what the world needs. And I think in some cases it’s what you can get paid for.
Todd: You did it, man. Those are the four. Those are the four quadrants.
Chris: Yeah, did that sans diagram, so I’m pretty proud of myself for pulling that off. what I think is really cool about it is that honoring reality. While it’s leaving room for , the big dreaming that we talk about as being essential to the first stage of reinvention and the whole process of reinvention, right?
So it’s this area of what is your passion and knowing that that has to be a part of the conversation. But then ultimately looking at, I have constraints on my life, most of us do. So there has to be a reality meter that we put it through. And it’s a really nice balance, right? When I was considering reinventing, if you asked me solely what is my passion, you know, music or comedy or something like that.
Exceedingly difficult areas in which to make a living and actually not things that I want to make a living in because of the incredible grind that they entail. those are in the equation and those are things that I think about and the creative elements of what I do are being honored, right?
If I look at creating a podcast, co-creating with you and all of the work that we do together, my creative side is being honored in that. But it’s balanced with a practicality of something the world needs, which is reinvention. It’s balanced with what people will pay for coaching and as a service, right?
It’s balanced with what I’m good at, which is again, coaching, I think it’s a cool concept to keep in mind, and it really. Aligns nicely with what we talk about in reinvention all the time, which is that abundance and joy and excitement can all be a part of the picture. And I know for people who are at the very beginning, this is a moment where people might say, I don’t know, that doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
I’ve just been going along on this path, but we’re here to tell you, it absolutely is possible and that’s what’s so exciting about. Reinvention and this concept of Ikigai. I think that’s a really cool concept to bring in and really critical to bring in early.
Todd: And I’ve seen it like over and over again, right? That when you start to just look at your future from a very sober present standpoint, and you use a concept like Ikigai, and by the way, you did it perfectly well, so there’s four quadrants in it, right? So it’s what do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need and what can you get paid for? And when you look at it from the lens of those four angles, it takes away some of the immediate self-judgment of, well, yeah, of course I’d wanna be an author or write music or do all this stuff. Right? But I’m not gonna be able to do that because who can make money?
I’m not gonna be the next Beyonce. It brings in a sense of realism to this process of reinvention, and that’s why we’re doing this because I think a lot of people get lost in the, oh, is it just pie in the sky, dreamwork stuff? Like you guys talk a lot about getting clarity and like, what would you really love to do?
What you love is only just part of it. The other parts are really important. What are you good? You’re a perfect example ’cause you really are a great coach and you really are great at talking about developmental concepts. So you took that together with what you love to do and then you went ahead and you got trained, right?
You went to NYU and got certified in coaching. Really smart because. You can get paid for that. That’s actually a real career. And does the world need people to help them through transitions? The fourth aspect of Ikigai? Uh, yeah, I think so. We are inundated with people who are in this moment in time thinking about the future that are feeling really lost. So the Ikigai for you really worked. we’re helping people to tactically identify those four components so that way they can start to make again, like sober decisions about what I can do. And a lot of this is actually breaking out of this past identity and this past trajectory in the shell where you aren’t currently in a situation marrying these four components.
Let’s just be honest. For the most part, almost everybody’s career has come from a trajectory that really had nothing to do with looking at it this way. That’s why reinvention is an opportunity, right? This is your moment to say, all right, what could I do? And guess what? You know on the other side, and I’ve seen this so many times, the future’s pretty bright.
once you find that thing or that series of things, things start happening, right? And then all of a sudden, boom, like you’re in this flow and you’ve met the right people, and these new projects come alive. And that’s what we’re looking for in reinvention. And so when you’re in that first stage, you gotta get through that fear and doubt and judgment that something like this is real or real for you.
And start doing the work to explore, to think differently, to explore what you really wanna do. So that way some of these lines can come alive.
Chris: Yeah. now let’s maybe accept the premise that we’re talking to people who are open to this possibility and that are starting to see. Okay, let me think about this concept of Ikigai. Let me bring in my passion. Let me bring in the four quadrants. We might do it slightly differently as we work with people one-on-one, but like essentially what you start to do is kind of help people build a list, right?
Build a list of possibilities of things that they’re thinking of. Maybe, a very common one for people who come from a corporate background is to say, well, I could do what I was doing, but in a consultative manner, right? I could hang a shingle and I could sell my services as an individual. But then maybe there’s also something that’s a little bit more passion aligned where they’re not necessarily gonna be a pro basketball player or a musician or whatever it is. Somebody I spoke to they wanted to do a kennel, right? Taking care of people’s dogs and cats and stuff like that, right? So a new business, that’s kind of an interesting thing that’s more aligned with what their passion is.
And then maybe there’s just like pure entrepreneurial, creation. I wanna do a startup, start from scratch. A lot of things start to come up. People start to put their list together. I think a lot of people are shocked actually. The people who think there’s no possibilities when you press them, they can come up with like 20, then they’re, they’re like surprised as each one comes out, they’re like, oh, oh, oh.
Could that be something? So now what do we do with the people when we get them into this phase where they’re open and they have all these possibilities and they’re kind of starting to splash them down? How do we help those people? Maybe just choose a couple threads to pull. You got thoughts on that, Todd?
Todd: Here’s what actually happens. I had a client recently that was like, there’s like 50 things I wanna do. Alright, I’m excited. You got me excited. I see the future. I see there’s new things that I can do, but there’s so many. I’m like, well, what are they?
He’s like, well, there’s just so many, you know. It just kind of kept saying the same thing. And then I was like, look, let’s get strategic around this. I want you to start writing down. The future possible careers with no limitation about what you could do for the next 50 years of your life.
Just start writing things down, in all four categories of Ikigai, things that you love, things that you’re good at, things that are also using your past trajectory. This person was a sales professional. I’m like, don’t go away from sales. Okay, let’s talk about what you could do in sales. Right?
So just starting to get really tactical. About the various things that you could do and what this particular person found and what almost everybody finds is that there aren’t 50 things. There’s usually like between 10 and 20. When you start to get tactical, like, all right, what could I do? Some of them are like very creative and very different from where you came from.
Some of them are using your current skillset and just applying it in different ways. Some of them are, a mix of both. Some of them are purely creative, right? And then you start to see, all right, there’s a universe of possibility in front of me. There’s a bunch of different avenues that my professional life can go.
Now I wanna start going to a level deeper of, okay, well what do I actually do? How do I start exploring some of these things? The first step is the most important to create lists. It’s what you said earlier. You gotta start getting this down on paper. You gotta start getting it out of you and looking at it where you can actually start to reflect and be like, all right, what are the possibilities in front of me?
Which is why in our community, right, we have people write stuff down a lot and take notes, like ideas come. But for us to reinvent successfully, you’ve gotta be smart, right? Like at some point you do make decisions. And just to future pace this a little bit at some point. You’re gonna be confronted with this idea that one or several of these ideas, could be it you need to put that one a little bit to the forefront and actually go for it a little bit more. So there’s a process of reinvention here, right? And so you gotta start taking that wide funnel or even that ambiguous funnel of, I don’t know, there’s just so much, like this is language that people have, or, oh, there’s so many things I could do.
Like no, there isn’t. Let’s write it down. Let’s start to look at it almost like a scientist, just as an observer. Here are the things that I could do. Let’s do that work. All right? And then what do you do? Then we start doing, what you say is you start making smart experimentations, right?
You start reaching out to people. So why don’t we talk a little bit about that of, okay, so once you have this list of things that are a little bit clearer. What do you do next, Chris? What are the next things that you help people do as they’re starting to explore some of these reinventions?
Chris: Spoiler alert. You just gave one away, but I think it’s really great, right? I was talking to somebody, who is in this process of building their side hustle and just in talking through, just trying to brainstorm what are the possibilities of how can you learn more about this?
It came up like, oh, my sister-in-law. Does something kind of similar. I think it was like a yoga studio versus a gym or personal training. And I was like, oh, well, have you sat down with your sister-in-law? You not really. We kind of talk about it, whatever. I’m like, oh, well let’s go get a coffee with her.
Like let’s go have a deep conversation with her and let’s go dig into that because you know that’s a lucky scenario. We don’t all necessarily have a family member who is doing a thing adjacent to what we wanna do, but it really is exploring the possibility of okay, so does someone in your neighborhood do a similar thing to you? Is there some tertiary connection that you have on, I hate to say it. I’m sorry to say it. I apologize everyone. LinkedIn , Is there some connection you have on LinkedIn that you can go talk to and connect about and interview a little bit around what are they doing and what have they done?
Because I think one of the things that people get intimidated by in this process is thinking that everyone is hoarding their gold and doesn’t want to share it with you and isn’t gonna share it with you. And we’re here to tell you this is our orientation, but it’s also the orientation I think of most people.
Most people who are successful enough for you to know that they’re even doing the thing. Want to share their learnings and don’t want other people to go through the same pitfalls as them and are glad to share. I mean, if you’re like, I wanna open a gym next door to your gym, that might not be the right person to have that conversation with.
But in general, people are willing to share what they’ve been through. And so some of this is about just having these social courage to commit to the few things that you are going to explore and do smart experiments around, and then start talking about it to people and really just start to pick people’s brains who can tell you what you couldn’t possibly know.
I mean, that’s the whole premise of reinvention, right? Todd, for me is it’s I’m kind of that person with the neighborhood storefront. Waiting for someone to come to me and say, Hey, let me help you reinvent your career in less than seven or 10 years, or whatever you would say. It took me, I’m excited to share that.
That’s a huge part of the reason why I’m here.
Todd: You know what stops people? That I found is ego. The ego of, oh, I am now looking and having these conversations. That’s embarrassing. Or I’m shameful because my identity to the world is that I have this career over here. And now I have to kind of have conversations with people I’m just talking about the real stuff right now.
I’ve just been behind closed doors with people who were big time corporate people and I’ve given this recommendation and they’re like, what am I gonna do? Go to a party and start talking to my friend’s friend who works in a completely different industry and say, I want to take you out to coffee, and learn more about what you do.
Like. Yes,
Chris: Yes
Todd: That’s exactly saying. So. That’s exactly what you’re gonna do. And the funny thing about this is that the most successful people on this planet, and I’ve been around a lot of them, have that mindset all the time. They’re constantly curious. It doesn’t mean that you have to tell this person your whole life story and that you’re in a reinvention right now and you don’t know what to do and that you’re feeling confused and emotional, like you pick your times to process emotions and other things, right?
You pick the people to really share some of the deeper stuff that you need to go through as a reinventor, but what you do is you go out there and you be fearless and you have conversations and you wear the lens of curiosity. You’re open-minded. You’re just having conversations with people about different things and you’re finding data, like data is what drives reinvention more than anything else.
Having conversations with people that are doing different things gives you the ability to understand what it’s really like to potentially do that type of work or to potentially make that type of shift. And so you need to start having those conversations. And a lot of that courage to be able to do that comes internal where you’re like, how am I gonna frame this?
You gotta learn to frame it in a way that you feel comfortable with. But I’ll tell you that once you start having those conversations, you’re gonna see there’s thousands of people that you could talk to today, like literally today, you could talk to people that will enlighten you, good or bad, to send you on a direction that’s honing in on what your future reinvention can most be.
And so that’s why isolation is the enemy to reinvention. This is the time to let go of that ego. This is the time to let go of looking bad and just be like, all right, world. I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna have conversations and I’m gonna have fun with it. I’m gonna be light around it.
I’m gonna talk to guys like Chris and Todd. I’m gonna talk to people around this whole concept and I’m gonna find my thing because I know that I have value and I know that I’ve worked, and I know that in front of me is a future that could be fricking awesome if I would just allow myself to go through this process of shifting my previous identity to the new one.
Right?
Chris: perfectly well said. I love that, Todd, because I think part of it too, that you touched on is the idea of, you got these 50 ideas of possibilities that you might explore. You’ve narrowed it down. Maybe there’s three, maybe there’s one, you’re gonna have these conversations with, you’re steeling your nerves to go have this conversation where you feel like you might be this really successful corporate person or whatever it is, and now you’re sort of deferent tail between your legs going up to somebody like, I don’t know anything about this.
And you’re asking them this question. You don’t have to get it right. You don’t even know what it’s gonna look like a year or 18 months or whatever it is down the road. You might not even be barking up the right tree right now. That’s the beauty of this is you come up with these things that draw you, you down select, you start doing some experiments, but you do it with what we call loose attachment, right?
I like to say don’t white knuckle the steering wheel. Loose attachment to this idea and you’re going in this direction because, I mean, not to belabor it and retell the story again, but if we talk about my reinvention, the first things I did out the gate from corporate are not what I’m doing now. They’re things that I kind of put down on the list of possibilities and started to explore and through a little bit of bouncing around and getting a little bit from this and a little bit from that. I made my way to coaching and found that, ooh, that really, really pulls me. But it, wasn’t really on my first laundry list of things that I wrote down when I was like, I gotta figure out a way to get outta corporate.
So I want people to understand that nuance of this here is that. It’s not like you make your list of 50 and you down select, and that’s the thing. And if you get that thing wrong, well, sorry you failed. Go back, you know, whatever. It’s just not gonna work for you. It is not that at all. That process, that courage of taking action and experimenting, that in itself is part of the process of figuring out what the hell it is that draws you and that you wanna do.
Todd: Yeah, I can’t agree with that more. I mean, the isolation and just staying in your own head, lying awake at night, Googling stuff, right? And then maybe having conversations with chat about what to do. All Okay. All part of the process, but the fastest way to reinvent is to have conversations.
Okay? It’s literally to start looking at your network, which is vast by the way. It’s not just LinkedIn, you have a network of people. And this is your moment to look out into the world and start having honest conversations with people. And as I’ve coached so many people to do this, it’s always the same thing.
It’s like, oh my God. All these new lines open up that weren’t there previously, but they were always there. You just didn’t have the courage or the coaching or the motivation to go out and have these conversations. And when you said that where you end up in reinvention is always different than maybe where you were when you started.
I agree with that, but I also think that. I can see it in people’s eyes when I’m talking to them around this idea of reinventing people get motivated. It’s like, alright, yeah. My next career could be great. My next career could make a lot of money and I could be doing what I love. And there’s a lot of people that are already doing that.
Right? And that’s the other thing that’s really humbling around this is that when you start thinking about these reinvented ideas and you’re like, oh my God, there’s so many possibilities. Start having conversations. with people who are successful in those lines of work, there’s a lot of them virtually. Like anything that you’re thinking about doing next, somebody or thousands of people are already doing it right now, like successfully.
Learn to model people, learn to learn from them. This was the big game changer for me, and I’ve talked a lot about this, that I was so in my own bubble for so long, like not sharing, and it was, as soon as I let go of that, I was like, oh my God, there’s people already so successful doing what I wanna do, that I became a student.
I was like, oh, I need to learn from them. I need to buy their courses. I need to be around them. That’s what everything changed for me because then I started to see that there was things that I needed to learn how to do that I didn’t know before because I was so egoic in my own thinking, oh, like I’m just gonna make this happen by myself.
Reinvention is a call to let of ego in a lot of ways, isn’t it,
Chris: Well, it’s funny, Todd, ’cause when we were preparing for this, that was not front of mind for me. The idea of that, the ego, but the more you’re saying it, the more we’re talking about this man, that ego jumps in and it really makes this a difficult process for some people. Right? I mean for me, we could do a whole episode and we probably should of like Chris versus Chris’s ego. The journey. Right. Because once I was able to let go and get over that, and it’s still a process, it’s iterative, of being able to be the novice, wear the white belt, be the beginner, be comfortable having a conversation where I tell somebody, here’s the new thing I’m trying In the beginning, it’s like, I have no credentials, I have no experience, I have no clients. I have none of the things that would normally validate it externally in my eyes for someone else. But being able to learn how to express that confidently nonetheless, because that’s what I’m going towards.
And then also in this context of someone who’s gonna go have a conversation with someone and sort of be, admitting in the moment, oh, you’re very successful in this area. And I don’t know a damn thing about it. It’s not only being able to just be open to that dynamic, but also to the possibility that you don’t have to be a unique snowflake that no one else is doing anything similar to you at all in order to be successful. I’m not sure if we’ve said it on the podcast, but we’ve definitely said it in our community, there’s 8 billion people on earth. if you’re running a new business, how many of them do you think you need to be your client?
probably less than 4 billion of them. Right? Probably a thousand of them. I don’t know. So the idea that you could only have a unique idea that no one’s ever had before. It’s like no, your are doing your version of this thing and your uniqueness and this is really what makes, I think reinvention.
It’s bigger than just a career concept. It’s a life concept is your uniqueness that you tap into through this process. And we think about this concept of Ikigai tapping into your passions, even if they do not become the core of the work itself. Your uniqueness is what makes your product or your service or your business or whatever it is you’re doing unique.
And it doesn’t matter that it’s a gym it’s your version of it, and it’s what do you bring to the table that’s unique and new and different. That’s your differentiator.
Todd: so true. I’m glad we got here because they even look at us two talking about career transitions, how unique. Right. But if you’ve gotten to this point of listening to this, like Chris and I have a unique way of thinking about this, and we partnered up, ’cause we had resonance around the way that we shared this and we love jamming about it.
And new stuff comes up when we do it. And that’s why we created a partnership. And you’re here because, obviously to some extent you like the way that we think about this and talk about it, and so there’s uniqueness and something that isn’t that unique, right? We’re talking about career and life transitions and and strategies and tools, and so you have to apply that to yourself.
And a lot of this is really owning that and having the confidence and the understanding that whatever it is that you choose to do in this reinvention, and as we’re whittling it down and getting clearer and clearer, and getting those 50 options down to 10, down to five, and making these spark experimentations, at some point what happens, and we will do episodes on this, you will be confronted with going for it. Like, all right, I’m gonna go for that gym, or I’m gonna go for that kennel, or I’m gonna go for that consulting gig, or whatever it is, that you really wanna do. And that’s where you need to really embody that self-confidence that I can do this, you know that I do have the skills because here’s what I say to people all the time, right?
And I said this before a little bit, but no matter what career you wanna reinvent towards or what you wanna do with your future, there’s already a lot of people doing it and doing it really well and making a lot of money doing it, and they’re probably a lot worse than you are. Less talent, right? You know, less background and so why are they doing it and doing successfully?
It’s because they followed this process. They literally got clarity. They made smart experiments. They talked to a lot of people. They took action. They did what they needed to do to get there. And now, wherever you are in your journey, you gotta be humbled, be like, all right, this is where I’m at right now, but these guys are right.
I’m ready to turn towards my reinvention. I’m ready to look out into the future and be like, all right, what are the things that I can do. And if there are 50 options on the plate right now, fine. Let there be 50, but write them down. Okay. And then start to really sift through them systematically, and then start taking experiments, and then start talking to people.
Do the things that we said in this episode. Because what you’re gonna find on that process is that like the rest of us, you’re on a journey. You’re on a journey, and you wanna make that journey exciting and extraordinary. And I think that’s what the seeds of reinvention hold.
Chris: And I think it is a good sign, you know, if you’re having trouble whittling your list down, is that when you start to think about Todd you just said around experimentation and taking action, right? All the most successful people are gonna tell you, they ran a lot of reps. They tried a lot of different times.
They tried a lot of different iterations of things. So when you’re looking at your list of 50, this arbitrary number we chose by the way, but your big list of possibilities, one way to help you whittle it down is if you start to look at, well, where can I design experiments here? Which one of these lends itself to, or which few of these lend themselves to something testable?
That I can go have a conversation with somebody that I know, or there’s a business that looks like this that I can imitate, or I can do a little bit of, trial prototyping or whatever it is, depending on what the product or service or possibility is. In the absence of anything else, in terms of like a really strong pull to one versus the other, the idea that you can actually design and experiment around something or a few experiments around something to me is an indicator that, okay, your brain is ready.
You’re thinking about this in a way that’s going to be constructive and tactical and actionable. So go build that. Go try that, Because I think there are some things, and by design we push people to come up with some things on this list that are bigger pie in the sky, maybe you might say, or maybe just more a little bit fantastic.
A little bit further out there. That’s all part of the process and we want that to be honored and we wanna not really suppress anything through the process of coming up with the possibilities are, for me, it’s hard for me to design the experiment about being, the prima ballerina in the New York Ballet, right?
So I don’t really know how I go about doing that. I guess I could buy the shoes at Capezio in Times Square. But you know, it’s like one of those things when it’s really pie in the sky and there’s no chance that you’re gonna possibly get there, well start with what’s a little more concrete.
This is a different conversation entirely, but it is related your nervous system when you’re going from what you considered a very stable environment to like this new experimental area. The more structure you can give yourself as you start to build experiments and take action, the more you’re gonna soothe that uncomfortable nervous system feeling. And so I think that’s part of the balance of this is to give yourself some structure and to say, okay, I gotta plan around this. I mean, I’m thinking of somebody specific in our community right now, Todd, where it’s like, if we can lay out for the next four weeks, here’s what I’m gonna do. My little mini business plan for my new business side hustle experiment write it out and make it clear. That way you’re not constantly decisioning it and re questioning is this the right thing to be doing? Should I go down this path? Oh my God. You have to do a little bit of structural work to quell that nervous mind because you know, for most of us that naysayer or that fear mongerer, who’s kind of like hovering in the back of our mind is just waiting for the door to be cracked a little bit to come in and say, oh, no, stop. Go run. Back to the other thing
Todd: Yeah, I mean, right on man. You know, The nervous system stuff, the internal work, and we’re both coaches, right? So we know that behind closed doors, people come in, executive people come in, oh, I need to help, leadership, on my team, communication, all these like buzzwords.
But at the end of the day, it’s a lot of nervous system regulation. When you’re reinventing. So that’s why if you’re listening to this episode, you got to this point make sure that you follow us along and also explore some of the work that Chris and I are doing off platform, ’cause we are helping a lot of people go through this process. And a lot of it is that level of support, emotional support, mental support, nervous system support.
The other thing that comes up with this topic that we started on as we close out this episode is this idea of well self-awareness of understanding, what kind of person am I when I am most thriving in my career, and specifically around this idea of having a lot of options and then whittling them down to one or a few.
What I found, and we’ll do an episode on this specifically is, are you the kind of person that needs one thing to work on and go all in on it? Or are you somebody that can thrive in having what we call a portfolio career? And having multiple streams of income. And so these are the types of things that you start to know about yourself as you’re reinventing and taking action in the ways that we described today.
And what we want you to know is that this is a process, okay? You’re not gonna just reinvent and hit replacement income for what you had before doing something completely new or relatively new, in a week. Okay? You can get there and we can help you get there, but it takes. It takes understanding that there’s a process here that has internal mechanisms and external mechanisms.
Okay. And so in all of our conversations, what I love about talking with you about this, Chris, is that we just toggle back and forth between the practical, tactical things to do and then also the real deeper work that needs to happen as we’re reinventing. And I think that’s what makes the way that we talk about this a little bit unique, right? You know, that we’re dealing with the real fact that we’re just human and we’re limited and we’re trying, and it’s hard at times, but we can get there if we just kind of put our heads down, get the support we need and take action. And I think that’s the takeaway from me.
Chris: A hundred percent. Anyone who’s sort of listening to this, and maybe you’re feeling stuck and you’re feeling skeptical because again, Todd and I are coaches, right? So of course we’re gonna be super positive about the possibilities and whatever, but we’re seeing it.
I mean, we’re talking to people in our own community and we’re talking to the people that we coach, when we talk about this concept of reinvention to, anybody, it really resonates because I think it’s something that is on the pulse of the culture right now, but like there’s so many cases of people who in their forties, in their fifties, in their sixties. Sort of woke up one day and said, this is actually not working for me and there’s something different that I want to do. Like you can find lots of stories out there. And we work with lots of people who actually do make these big changes, and it starts with really just belief. And starting to take some action and it starts small.
Todd, you’ve said it a bunch of times here. It’s true, it’s iterative. It’s not a magic pill. It’s not something that you just wake up and you get replacement income or whatever it is. But it does start with taking action and maybe doing something a little bit uncomfortable.
And, that’s what we specialize in is pushing the people in our community to just go a little bit further with a nice gentle nudge to just maybe put themselves in a little bit of an uncomfortable place to move that needle forward. I just want to encourage people that this is possible.
We see it all the time.
Todd: We give you permission to reinvent. I think a lot of people don’t feel permission to reinvent. You are so not alone. None of us are alone in this right now. The world we’re living in is hectic.
Okay? It is crazy. Like we all know that coming together, finding community, having conversations like this. Getting real advice that has some level of predictable outcome, which these things that we talked about today do will make your life easier, and have you feel secure. So definitely follow us along we’re gonna be doing episodes all the time.
Just follow Chris and I along because this is our life right now. Is helping people reinvent. And my brother, man, it’s always just a pleasure and an honor to be doing this with you, man. It’s fun. Like we always go off into areas that I wasn’t expecting, you know?
Which is what I think part of the fun of it is, for both of us. And just grateful to be here with you.
Chris: Same man. Absolutely. This is the best. Love it. Thanks
Todd: All right. We’ll see you all the next episode. Thank you for tuning in.
