If you’re in the middle of a career transition, you’ve probably felt this tug-of-war:
Part of you knows you need space… time to decompress, process what happened, and heal from the emotional toll of your old work life.
Another part of you feels intense pressure to move fast… to make money again, prove this wasn’t a mistake, and “figure it out” as quickly as possible.
In this episode, Todd and Chris unpack the real (and rarely discussed) dilemma: how to balance healing with forward momentum so you don’t get stuck in reflection…and you also don’t rush into the same patterns that created the burnout in the first place.
Inside the conversation:
- Why “push through” works, until it doesn’t
- The hidden cost of skipping the processing/healing phase
- How financial runway (and real-life situations) change the pace of ReInvention
- Why taking time to reflect often accelerates new successes instead of delaying them
- A practical way to build self-reflection into daily life while still moving forward
- What it looks like when your work finally feels integrated with who you are
This is an honest, human episode for anyone who’s trying to build what’s next without ignoring what the old chapter did to them.
If this conversation resonated with you, visit ReInvention.biz to explore our guided workbook and join a community of people just like you – people designing what’s next.
**Subscribe to the ReInvention Podcast to stay plugged into fresh ideas, frameworks, and real-world tools for navigating the future of your work and life.
Episode Transcript
Chris: Going through this healing process and really like the peeling back the layers to reveal who you are underneath that process is incredibly valuable.
I mean, it’s just valuable as a human being, but like it also can be valuable for your business or for your reinvented career in a very tactical way.
All right, my man, Todd, my man Todd, Jason, what are we talking about today, brother?
Todd: Well, Chris, this topic came up pretty fiercely on a recent community call, and I think we kind of looked at each other on Zoom and thought the same thing, podcast episode. Because one of the main challenges that you’re going to face as you’re reinventing your career, and even if you’re in those beginning stages and just starting to peek out into what life might be like with a new future, is the dichotomy between the need to take space and do some healing work on yourself and the need to push forward.
And this is one of those topics that almost no one talks about, but virtually everyone deals with because when you’re reinventing, there can be tremendous value in spending some time self-reflecting and undoing the repercussions of your previous career choices. Many people experience mental health challenges, which is why burnout is now officially a medical term, and we are 100% a stand for people to learn how to best heal themselves, so they can set the stage for a better future, and that’s why we talk a lot about mindset and healing techniques on this podcast.
And at the same time, Chris, I’ve coached thousands of people who are reinventing and it almost always comes with this pressure to reinvent fast and to create new success as quickly as possible.
So we need to address this dichotomy, and our goal today is to give you a series of ideas and even a framework that can help you navigate the healing work you may need to do as you’re simultaneously moving forward, and exploring new opportunities. And brother, man, I know that this one hits home for you as we were discussing it, so why don’t we start there?
Chris: Yeah, for sure. I mean, think about this idea of healing. Now, first of all, we’re in a coaching space here, right? And so maybe for me, five or seven years ago in a corporate mindset, I would’ve been like healing, uh, what? What are we talking about here? No, you just tough it out and you bang your head against the wall until the wall breaks, or you die, banging your head against the wall.
You know, I had that mentality basically for most of my corporate career. So I think first just. Acknowledging that is a paradigm that might not even land with certain people if they’re in that stage where they’re just starting to figure out that something ain’t right with their work situation. But I know more specifically for me, when I knew I was getting outta corporate and I knew I was going towards something that I was a, a reinvented version of something. I didn’t have these words for it. I didn’t know it would be coaching. I didn’t know a lot of things about it. I just knew, well, I gotta get out of this. fast because you know, I really wanna just flip a knife switch and basically we go from corporate career making a bunch of dollars to whatever’s next, making the exact amount of money and everything else is fine. And like, there’s no disruption to my life whatsoever at all. Which, you know, very practical and reasonable expectation when you’re making a giant, major life change with no map in front of you.
Just noticing that there’s some complexity to this and there’s going to probably be some major disruption to your life in one way or another. And I don’t say that to mean necessarily. It’s gonna be a bad thing, in fact, the people we work with and the concept of reinvention ultimately is like a really, really good thing for most people, right?
This is a great and exciting thing, but you’re gonna go through some disruptive and difficult times in the middle and you’re gonna feel a pressure, or at least I felt a pressure personally to just be like, just fix it. Just get to the next stage, whatever it is.
Oh, you’re gonna do something entrepreneurial like, just get that up to the level where you’re making enough money and money’s a big factor here. You’re making enough money that no one can ask any questions about whether this was the right decision or whether you did the wrong thing or all of that stuff. And with that mentality, I think it just lent itself to not even considering the concept of healing or processing or even really sort of thinking through how did I get down that path in the first place how did I really let myself go that far down a road that wasn’t right for me from a career standpoint, and I have been processing that over the years, but it’s been a constant struggle for me back and forth with whenever I am sort of allowing myself to process that and to figure out, how we got there and move through that. There’s always a voice in my head that’s like, well, you should be working right now.
Todd: Right. Yeah. And that’s the dichotomy, right?
That’s what we’re talking about. And, and I think even just this conversation, is healing in a way, like just bringing it up. This idea that changing careers, especially for people that are in the middle of their lives or careers, is a daunting thing.
This is why we’re doing reinvention and even though you and I have a very clear lens around reinvention, that it’s an opportunity to look to look out into the future of the things that you would most want to have happen in your moneymaking, in your lifestyle, like all those things, it is an opportunity.
The truth is, is that almost everybody goes through a process of pain, of doubt, and of some internal suffering around making this change, right? Because we were on a trajectory and now that trajectory no longer exists or is coming to an end because of burnout, because of AI, because of other reasons. And then you meet guys like us that are like, oh, this is opportunity, right?
This is your opportunity to land your next career and do something that you love, like Chris is doing, right? Like I’m doing
Chris: and you’re like, shut up Shut up I don’t want to hear it
Todd: But that’s why we’re doing this episode, right? Which is healing work. And that came up, like I said in the beginning, with people in our community who are like, well, I’m pushing forward, I’m also realizing that there’s a lot of things that I need to self-reflect.
Right? And I think that’s part of the opportunity. So how do you then look at this in general and say, okay, like I’m at this point in my life, and you know, there are certain things that I wanna do in my career in front of me that could be very exciting and could be different, and I’m nervous, but excited.
But I’m also dealing with this old trajectory and this old identity, that has called me back in. And I think we wanna come up with, a framework here that allows people to look at both sides of the coin and say, yeah, I need to do that. Right? And so I think just starting with the idea that you’re gonna go through some self-reflection and healing work, okay.
And it doesn’t mean that you need to check out and go on a retreat for a year. Or do crazy stuff. I mean, for some people it does, but it doesn’t mean that you need to. It just means that you need to understand going in that this is part of the journey. Okay? It’s not just about creating that next thing that’s all exciting and moving it over because if you’re looking at it that way, you’re not actually getting the real value of this because the end of the day, this is a, an opportunity to look deep within yourself and ask yourself some bigger questions, and also heal those parts that were like, why did I make those decisions in the first place?
I’m curious what you over the years of doing this, ’cause you’re like six, seven years into this and for you you’re still looking back and like, wow, I made all these decisions and I had that career that you made great money and you had the title and you would go home for Christmas and the holidays and have a great story to tell your family, but it wasn’t really juicing you.
So I’m just curious, looking back now for you, what’s that been like?
Chris: Well, I will say that as is always our theme, I didn’t have a really clean construct as to this idea of that I would need to process or there would be a healing process or anything like that. Right. And I think it was something I muddled my way through and really figured out as I went along. And the interesting thing for me is I left corporate, when I went back in and then I left, I actually went on a mental health leave before I ended up leaving that role. So, you know, it was top of mind and it was something that I had been talked about and thought about for a long time there were mental health difficulties that were being caused in that setting. And luckily for me, when we removed that work, things felt a lot better, but it wasn’t an overnight magical, like everything solved. Right. And so I think that’s the part that was surprising to me, or maybe just wasn’t obvious to me was that I’d still have to reserve time and spend some time just really thinking through that. Right.
Thinking through the experiences of it. owning the regret of it, right.
There were some regret around allowing myself to go as long as I did in a certain setting in my career. And then I think also there’s a bit of saying like, but I also did what I had to do a few times, right? There were some choices I made that I think we’re the right choice in the moment retroactively and also being a little bit kinder to myself around the fact of I couldn’t making idealistic choices at every step along the way, you know, and I think that is a, a topic we have to talk about here, because when we talk about balancing healing versus pushing forward and working on your reinvented career, it’s gonna be different for different people because different people have different circumstances.
You know, for people who have more financial challenges, you might have a shorter runway and you still have to process this and go through this healing process, but you can’t go out on a sabbatical for two years and go up into the mountains and levitate slightly over the top of the mountain.
Whereas for people who maybe have a bit more runway, and I was blessed to have a bit more runway I think. You can say, Hey, I’m gonna take some real time to actually process this and compartmentalize it, and then maybe move on to the next step when I feel like I’ve got a clean and clear understanding of what I actually want from this life. Right. I actually I think I had the runway to do something like that, but that’s not the way I did it because I just wasn’t really cognizant of how much processing that this would entail and that this was even really a thing.
Todd: Yeah, I mean, most people don’t know is my experience and you know, I haven’t worked in corporate like you did. I’ve been coaching, I’ve been doing this kind of work, and so I’ve been that guy that people get on a Zoom call like this and tell me all this stuff and I’m like, Hey, we have to build a framework around how you’re going to move forward and how you’re going to heal your past.
And so most people just don’t have that framework. And I think what you said is really wise right there, which is. it’s not just this pie in the sky thing, it’s also about understanding what your unique situation is. Everyone is different, right? And so that’s why we’re doing this podcast and slicing and dicing reinvention in all these different ways.
And we did an episode, on financial runway, which you kind of led that, and emotional runway, all these things matter when you’re looking at an issue like this, which is, well, how much time do I need to spend healing? How much time do I actually have? Because if you have two months left in your account, you know, and you need to actually pay rent or pay your mortgage.
It’s very different than having two years or longer of money in your bank account, right? So this is why. going through our workbook or coming into our community and starting to get tactical around what do you have in front of you? What is your actual situation from a comprehensive standpoint?
And then working into something that is a little bit more ephemeral like this, well, how much time do I need to spend healing myself because it’s gray, right? healing, can happen in a big chunk like doing a retreat, but healing can also happen in the day-to-day, like building in time for self-reflection, going into nature, doing things differently, building in a mindfulness practice and just doing things where you are now grounding in a new, more self-reflective version of yourself on the day-to-day while you’re then going ahead and building.
So there’s a lot of different ways that this can go, and we can’t prescribe just one thing for everybody, but what we can do is name it pretty clearly that when you’re reinventing, you are going to need to heal and you are going to need to self-reflect and build that into a day-to-day and potentially something that you take on in a chunk or chunks along the way.
And that’s awesome, that’s your opportunity. And what I would argue of doing this as a coach for so long is that that work of healing and self-reflection is the very thing that will lead to creativity and will lead to the ideas about what you should and can do in the future. You’re a great example, right?
I think probably in your healing journey, the idea of coaching and giving back and helping others who are in the process of leaving corporate or soon to be leaving, and that you could be a guide for that came out of your healing journey, right? And I think most people don’t understand that, that they’re tied.
You don’t just go ahead and create the next thing. Even though your past trajectory is telling you that you need to do that, and you feel the pressure to do that, it’s actually in the space, in the silence even where you get these new ideas and then you allow those seeds to emerge and create the new life for yourself.
Right? And I think that’s part of what you experienced.
Chris: Well, listen, I think for coaching, for me it’s a pretty direct tie, right? Because really I have this mission now where I want to find people who are feeling the way I felt seven to 10 years ago and help them get out and help them find the next step faster. I mean, that’s really a reason for being for me. But also there’s people we work with in our community and some of the people we coach one-on-one. It’s not necessarily that direct, but it is the work they’re doing generally, as they come through a career reinvention is more centered in who they are. It’s really more revealing who they are than the old work that they were doing. And so then going through that healing process. And really, I think a big part of that is understanding who you are and understanding why you didn’t feel good in that place five, 10 years ago or whatever it was. And what’s different about you and what was expected of you or what was projected or what persona or identity that you thought you had to have there. That understanding can drive not only clarity on what it is that you wanna do, but also just even in the way you communicate. You know, we have people who are building these businesses and it’s the way they communicate and market and brand their business. We encourage them and most of them lean into it.
We encourage ’em to to inject theirselves into it, right? Because we’ve said this a bunch of times. Sometimes people have this idea, especially if they’re entrepreneurs, that they have to come up with this totally unique idea, unique invention, right? I’ve been guilty of this too, Todd. We’ve talked about this, but the truth is it’s that you can do a business that a million other people are doing, but it’s your version of it.
That’s what makes it unique and that’s what makes it sing to certain people. Your people will find you, you’ll market, you’ll speak to the people that resonate with you and who you are. You and I. This happens for both of us and us collectively. So like you said, going through this healing process and the creativity and the openness and really like the peeling back the layers to reveal who you are underneath that process is incredibly valuable.
I mean, it’s just valuable as a human being, but like it also can be valuable for your business or for your reinvented career in a very tactical way.
Todd: Yeah, exactly. And you know, let’s get into a little bit of kind of the secret sauce that you and I like to talk about in our magic word of clarity. That probably comes up in every call. And for me, right way to do this, right, to actually start looking at, well, how am I going to heal?
How am I gonna decide what to do? And this is a little bit different, it’s a little bit of a different approach, but over the years I found this to be very effective is to, at the beginning of the process, is to start thinking about well, what would be an amazing life? What would be some amazing work for me to do?
Let’s go for that North Star, start spending some time doing the practice of envisioning your life and your work, playing out to the most amazing future that you can possibly imagine. Not because you’re living in pie in the sky, but just as an exercise to use your imagination and your creativity to start to dream again.
Okay? Reinvention starts with dreaming. Okay? And, and no matter where you are in your life, you’re listening to this, you can do this. I’ve trained people to do this at 70 years old, okay? And then all of a sudden, new trajectories have been created. But this idea of using this clarity, like getting clarity about what you want. And in our program, we have this clarity course and we have people write their own eulogy. We can get into that practice we want, but, there’s things that you can do to start to train your mind, to get out of the doldrums and to start thinking really big and imaginative again.
Right? And what that does is it literally starts to drive you forward towards a future that in my opinion and my experience, can accelerate the healing process. And I’ll give you a really good example of this, right? So we had somebody in our community that I was coaching one-on-one actually before I met you, Chris, and I was telling him, I’m like, I want you to create that life vision.
I want you to write that eulogy. And like he would get on the phone with me and yell at me. I don’t know what it is. You keep pushing me to ask this question. I don’t know. Like so frustrated. And he said at one point, I’ll never forget this. He goes, I feel dead inside. That is what he said to me on the call, man.
I remember sitting there like, all right, we were in it, and he was really upset, you know? And I just, I get the chills, even when I said that, you know? And he started to cry a little bit and I started to cry a little bit with him. You know? I was like, I’m like, all right, like, here we are. We’re in the place. You have no idea what you wanna do in your future. You just ended a 20 plus year career. That was pretty awesome in a bunch of ways, but it’s not there any longer, and you’re scared and we’re in this place, and you have this guy pushing you to think about your future that’s healing.
Because what happened in that moment? We just got really honest with each other and he had a moment of, okay, I don’t really know. And it was letting go of this need to know, this need to have an answer that is just embedded in our culture, especially for people that went through corporate.
It’s like so solution oriented, so prefrontal cortex, analytical, mind focused. But this dude needed to have a moment of, I don’t really know. And what that led him down towards in this case was he needed to go and spend a couple weeks out in the mountains and do some writing and like let go of trying to push and force a square peg through a round hole and making sure his next career move was the right one.
He actually needed the space. He didn’t get that. And it was that push for clarity that got him frustrated enough and this sometimes this is how it happens where he just had to let go, right? And actually surrender and just be like, oh my God. Like I don’t know what I want and like you keep pushing me, but I don’t know.
But this is why I like using clarity and having people start to try to visualize. And by the way, Chris, for some people it’s pretty easy for them. Not everybody goes down the rabbit hole, the example I just mentioned. For some people, like they can see that future and they get really excited and then they’re in action and the healing part of the journey becomes a little bit different.
But this idea of reinventing with the process and clarity, being at the center of it to me is what gets people to results faster.
You know, this is why everything we talk about, has a framework associated with it. Reinvention, you went through it without having any structure, but there is structure and when you have it, it can get you to some results faster.
So I’m curious, like when I share that, what comes up for you on that?
Chris: Maybe I’m having a little bit of a corporate trauma flashback as you talk about it,
right? Because I can, I can feel that, yeah, exactly. I don’t wanna make things, but it does make me think about this fact, man I remember at the end of every year you’d be like setting your goals for the next year in corporate. It was the, most excruciating exercise for me every year. ‘ I would just be like, I don’t, I don’t freaking know. We just have to make more money and spend less money and just like who cares?
So, you know, the clarity exercise, I can understand why it is so jarring to people who have come from that environment because it was like, I don’t know, I pick things up and I put ’em down and I go and the conveyor belt and then money comes.
It’s like, you’re in such a small way of thinking, this is now we’re in the segment where I’m picking on corporate and I’ll do my segment later where I pick on LinkedIn.
But you in all seriousness, I think that that clarity that we spend a lot of time encouraging everybody we work with to start from is a place that most people don’t even go Especially when you’re in this corporate machine there’s no time and there’s no space to allow that. And I would posit that that’s by design, because if you really let people get into a place where they imagine how beautiful their life could be. They’re probably not gonna wanna go report to the sludge factory again on Monday at nine.
So. I totally felt that in that moment. You know, I, I got, got chills a little bit as you were talking about that story because that, that felt really right to me. And listen I never really went through the exercise of like, let me immerse and find clarity when I came outta corporate and I was reinventing myself, I kind of got there over time. And I don’t think that that’s invalid. I think that’s fine and I think many people have done that before, but that’s also why this reinvention and what we’re doing with the podcast and with the community is like, so core to my mission is I’d love to make people have that discomfort a little bit more acutely and faster and in a focused way right away, like right when you’re getting started on this process. Let’s go into that and let’s put you in that kind of maybe jarring for some, maybe it’s easier for others space where we actually make you think big like that and that’s just gonna accelerate it’s it’s gonna save you years compared to the process that I went through.
Todd: Yeah, it’s so true man. And like some of the people in our community found us on LinkedIn. okay, I guess I’m gonna do a little LinkedIn picking on, but there’s these, you know, areas in LinkedIn where people are helping other people find the next job. okay, like I got laid off, I’m completely burned out, AI’s coming in and erased my division, and now I need to go find that other job.
And there’s support groups for that. Just getting another job. And then, some of those folks found us, right? They found reinvention and I’ve talked to them specifically and they said, well, what you’re doing is totally different because you’re allowing me to come into a room, an environment, and these calls that you run twice a week, three times a week, whatever we do, you know, and then I go into a breakout and I’m actually talking with people around, like the real stuff that I’m dealing with. And I’ve, the word that I’ve heard is that I have permission to share what’s really going on, you know, so I’m not just like some corporate drone looking for the next job.
Chris: Networking, right? Where it’s just like present yourself and let’s see how we can get a partnership. I mean, that can come from this, but it’s deeper than that. It’s much more human than that.
Todd: Yeah, like, you know what Chris, when we’re running our calls, I’ve told you this, the magic of those calls doesn’t happen. When you and I get up, you know, in the beginning and we talk for 10, 15 minutes, it happens when we break people out into rooms and they find someone else like them. Where they talk about, yeah, like, I’m going through a tough time, you know, and I’m, and I’m in this healing part of my journey and it’s really confusing for me, you know, and I’m glad that I found this group because that’s okay here, we give permission, to heal, it’s a very specific prescription that we have around it, because we don’t want to have people just stuck in a healing process. I mean, for me, working in the personal growth industry for as long as I have, I’ve seen that where people get like stuck in a healing process forever and they’re never moving forward. And then that has its own set of issues that happen along the way.
But for us, healing is absolutely okay. But we are also here to create our next level lifestyle, our next level career. Like this life is short, let’s go for it. Let’s have fulfillment be something that we’re actually shooting for. And healing’s a part of that. And so is creation, right? So is next level creation, right?
So at our framework it’s like, yeah, let’s get clarity. Let’s give you accountability. Let’s give you a space to talk with some other people that are just in your same boat. It’s amazing to me that there aren’t just a million more groups like what we’re doing because I just watched the healing happen on the calls.
They come in from a breakout and they’re like, oh my God. That was really amazing, you know? ’cause you’re hearing from someone else that’s going through a similar thing. So I think accountability is a big part of this.
Chris: Yeah. And by the way, we don’t want a bunch of people to start other groups like ours. Our group is the best and we don’t need any other groups like it. And it’s fine. It’s,
yeah, we’re number one. The podcast took a turn where we just started talking about how great our group was every episode. You know what comes up for me as we talk about this a little bit, Todd, and this is you know, as men, right? I think we’re talking about healing a lot, and especially you think about your traditional corporate man, there’s plenty of women who have this paradigm as well. But I think it’s predominantly sort of coded as a masculine thing. Healing, Ugh.
Like what are we talking about? Like what is this mumbo jumbo. You don’t heal. Like I said at the outset of the conversation, me being strong, man, just kind of running to the wall over and over again until man shaped hole in wall and it’s like that’s a vivid image. We
can, we’ll put that on. That’ll be the cover of this episode. But it is one of those things where it’s like, yeah we’re gonna make you confront this stuff, right? You listen to this podcast, you join our community, we coach you. We’re gonna make you confront this stuff.
’cause I think this is how you got into this mess.
How did you get 20, 25 years into a career doing stuff that you dislike or have no interest in, that kind of makes you feel quote unquote dead inside? It’s because you just stoically, stomached it and just ran straight into it and didn’t give yourself the chance to be fully open and in touch with the emotional and mental experience that you were having.
’cause you were just being dutiful and you were just like, oh, well this is what you’re supposed to do and this society. And like, no, we’re not gonna let you off the hook like that and just let you do this surface level thing where it’s like, okay, yeah, let’s just see how we can repurpose your resume so that you can get a job that feels good.
Nah, we’re gonna try to make you do the deeper work and go deeper than that and address the humanness that you’ve been suppressing, frankly. ’cause no one can get 20 years into something that they don’t wanna do without suppressing deep core human feelings and emotions and elements of themself.
Todd: Yeah. Amen, brother. You said mental and emotional, but I would say the emotional part is the one that the masculine or men don’t maybe value as much, and if you’re a man listening to this, well, the thing that I found in all these years of coaching, right, that when men do turn to something like this and they say, all right, I need to heal or I need to open my emotions or look at whatever has been repressed. Like it’s pretty amazing what happens. They actually go through a healing process pretty fast. There’s like an element of the masculine energy that actually can go through it really fast, but they need to turn towards it. So I think the emotional component is really big.
And going back to the example I shared before, ’cause I just wanna close a loop on it. So I mentioned this person that just like got to that point, you know, where they were just frustrated with their inability to feel what their future could be like from an exciting standpoint. And then got to this point, it’s like I need to take a little time off and they’re in a position where they could take a little bit of time off and fast forward and you know, as we’re recording this, this is maybe six months after that conversation, this person is absolutely on fire.
Okay, this person is in our community right now. I don’t even know if you know what I’m talking about, but they’re in our community and like they have two or three things that they are doing. One of them is taking the work that they did from the corporate standpoint, and they put out their shingle to do fractional work or consulting work that is starting to get some legs, you know, and they’re really excited, but then also has taken some interest that they’ve always loved doing, like on the personal side, and have started some side hustles, right?
And all of a sudden this person’s energy is completely different than it was because, you know, I give him credit. Like he allowed himself and I said this to him, I go, you wanted me to do this, like you wanted me to challenge you. You wanted me to keep pushing you. I’m just 20 years into doing this where I dunno, you’ve seen me, I’m a little bit courageous now at this point where I’m just like, I’m just gonna be pretty direct, I’m just gonna , say what needs to be said so that way you can just go through the thing that you need to go through faster. And so you can get to that other side because there is another side.
The beautiful part about this process we’re talking about, of balancing this healing versus pushing forward is that when you do this well you come out the other side, just a better, more fulfilled person, you’re now taking into account your lifestyle. You’re taking into account the things that you, like, your hobbies, you’re taking into account, your relationships, you know, and it’s, it’s not just like this very separated I go to work to make money and then I do these things on the side and I’ll retire it one day where I can do more of the things that I like. It’s more now I’m living my life in the moment and I’m happier and I’m doing the things I like and I’m healthier and I’m more energized. Right. And that’s been you right?
Like I’ve watched you in this process, just become a happier person, a more well-rounded person.
Chris: Listen, the integration of, especially when it’s work that you really feel purposeful and it’s mission driven. It’s what you wanna do. It’s, you know, I like say it’s something I would do for free. I don’t, but it is something I would do for free. I remember we talked, having this conversation, it was like I, with my therapist, I think this was like seven years ago, where I was like, we worked out this idea of like, well, when you’re commuting home, why don’t you take a break for 10 minutes, like outside the train to like decompress so you can shift into, who you have to be in your house, the dichotomy between work Chris and Chris, Chris, which was the real one, was so thick that I just had to almost have like an airlock chamber that I went through on my way to get to be dad and husband and me and it’s like that’s not the way it is at all. It’s all the same person now. Like it’s all integrated.
And you know, there’s also just practical elements of this where it’s like when you know you’re on the west coast, I’m on the east coast, or sometimes I end up doing some work at 10 o’clock at night ’cause I wanna flip something to you or whatever it is. And like I don’t feel like put upon by that ’cause it’s like work that I care about and is I’m just thinking about it and wanna solve it and move it forward.
I mean, there’s so many little elements of this when, when, you get to the place where the work is who you are. And of course not everybody gets there, but I think this is really a major goal of what we’re trying to help people get to through reinvention. When you get to the place where the work is who you are, you don’t have to have silly little conversations about work-life balance and work-life integration and whatever like. By the way, Todd, you and I both exemplify work-life balance. Like we are not working 90 hours a week or something like that. we are living full lives and raising our families and protecting that. But my point is, is that there’s no persona difference. There’s no identity shift. It’s, it’s me, it’s me when I’m doing it at 11:00 AM it’s me when I pop on at 10:00 PM and it’s me throughout the whole rest of the day and everything I’m doing and not feeling this like work is this othered thing that I just have to, you know, it’s like that show severance that I still haven’t watched, but, but
apparently that’s the,
Todd: to watch. Oh my God. It’s, it, it’s exactly what you need to watch. It’s my, one of my favorite shows ever. I love that show. And really relevant for this, you know, ’cause they’re really naming that metaphorically. And you know, the air chamber Chris thing that you mentioned with, you had a therapist that said this.
I have coached people to do that. You know, and this is part of the stages of reinvention because you don’t just all of a sudden come from like a corporate lifestyle where like work is separated from your life and all of a sudden you’re able to do this. Right. I remember I had a client who was an NCAA soccer coach, division one, like literally a top 20 program in the country.
Okay. I knew his wife through some circles and wanted me to coach her husband. And he had this issue, particularly ’cause he could not separate the work from his home life. And they have three young kids. And I told them that very practice. I’m like, before you come home, I want you to find a field.
I want you to find a place, a stream on the way home. I want you to go out. I want you to 20 minutes. I want you to take off your shoes. I want you to walk in the grass, and I want you to think about your kids and I want you to think about when they’re born. I want you to think about. Because that’s the, just part of the reprogramming that’s necessary to start living a more holistic life.
Like it doesn’t happen automatically. But what we’re saying here, and I think to start to cap this, is that there is a process by which you can integrate healing or self-reflection practices in your reinvention, in what’s next for your future. And it’s a spectrum, right? And where you get to is a place where you’re really integrated and really for me, you start to live a life of appreciation that, wow, I get to do this. You know, you start to be just happier and shining from the inside and work doesn’t become work, it becomes just part of who you are. And so, this conversation is one that we will continue to have, and if you’re listening, the takeaways that we hope you get from it is that no matter where you’re at in the reinvention process.
Look at healing as something that you need to do, that you need to look at. Learn how to start to process your emotions. Find accountability partners, find communities, or maybe even the number one community that’s doing this, ours, right? As we,
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say other takeaways. This is the best podcast we run, the best community. Uh, there’s no community or podcast that even exists other than this.
Todd: Right.
But, but do that have those real conversations as best you can and look at it as part of the process of becoming more whole that’s the goal here because let’s just remember life is short. We’re all dust in the wind here, right? We just are like, don’t let it pass you by.
And the core premise of reinvention and we’re talking about careers is, that your next career can be your best one if you design it around the version of yourself that you wanna become and not your past trajectory. And that’s the difference because your past had a certain trajectory and energy that now you’re here in this moment thinking about reinvention or in it, and you have the opportunity right now to do it bigger and better and more fulfilling than before.
So let’s take that as a very real thing. Because we’ve seen it, man. Right? Like how many people are just flying high now when they go through this process, it’s really amazing what happens and we, just want others to do that. And look, man, I just love talking about this with you. We could go on forever, you know?
But this has been really juicy and I appreciate you sharing your story more.
Chris: Yeah, man, thank you. I appreciate you bringing it out in me and definitely had some chills a couple times as we talked through this today, and I really hope we’ve inspired some people to think about this and, and start to accelerate their own career reinventions.
So thanks a lot, my man.
Todd: Let’s go, my brother. Let’s go. All right, we’ll see you next time on the Reinvention Podcast and, signing an offer for now.
