00:00:00: Music.

00:00:10: Welcome back to a new episode of bitch breathe I am your host ricardia.

00:00:15: I'm so excited because today is episode number 45.

00:00:20: So I'm getting really really close that one year mark of this episode actually of this podcast and I'm just very very excited to share this with you thank you all so much for listening for contributing.

00:00:32: Even contributing topics.

00:00:35: A lot of times and for just being there with me during a time when a lot of new podcasts have cropped up in this time of the pandemic so I especially appreciate your attention and your feedback.

00:00:49: So the other day a couple of months ago now actually I was in a project where you might consider my new role to be one of like a

00:00:57: it position I had the opportunity to hire people to my team and to pick the kind of talent and personalities that I wanted to work with

00:01:08: within that framework an old friend of mine had contacted me she's a job coach and a political.

00:01:16: Consulting person and she had asked me to talk to her group of University students who are about to graduate about careers.

00:01:26: And I thought a little bit about what I would say to these young minds you know what could you.

00:01:31: Contribute that would be inspiring that would want them to get all fired up about their jobs and their careers and indeed their lives so halfway through the process,

00:01:41: actually no it was even sooner

00:01:43: it was very early in the process of my talking that suddenly question started to come up how do I get this internship what is it people want to hear there was sort of very linear questions as to how to I get where I want to go

00:01:58: these kids are always call these kids

00:02:00: kids they're as old as my child but for some reason these young adults I still refer to them as kids they were in their early twenties maybe so anyway these guys and gals they were very focused on how to get

00:02:13: from A to B in a beeline and I thought to myself.

00:02:18: Wow they're really ambitious that's great there's a lot of energy behind this question what

00:02:24: can I say to them so I started to say well you know I generally looked for people that I like to work with and

00:02:31: giving them all these pointers as to what it was I did indeed look for when I received the resumes of applicants and potential candidates.

00:02:40: But at some point I said to my friend hey do you mind if I take a quick detour

00:02:45: keep that word in mind because I'll return to it later and I said to these guys it wasn't always like this I wasn't always in this position and I didn't get there in a beeline.

00:02:58: I don't think I would have wanted to now in hindsight so just asking yourselves I guess is what I said to them maybe there are some other things you can do to get to where it is you clearly want to go

00:03:10: keeping that in mind that that was sort of the preliminary conversation that I was having I want to get to this point today which is this whole idea of finding your passion.

00:03:21: And then running with it.

00:03:23: And you can tell by the title of the episode that maybe I've got a bit of an ambiguous experience around that because I think I was one of the first Generations I graduated in the 90s.

00:03:35: That had a whole lot more choices than the women and men that came before suddenly we were faced with we can be anything we want and that was

00:03:46: really really great we have all these choices I could have been a doctor I could have been X Y and Z I ended up being.

00:03:53: X Y and Z and then some so we'll get to that later.

00:03:58: We're for the first time there was this generation that had a lot of freedom depending on your demographic background of course this was a more privileged one

00:04:07: obviously because if that is not the case then there isn't going to be a whole lot of choices but let's just keep it with him this context for the moment this historical context of growing up in the West

00:04:19: and you're no longer necessarily doing what your parents requested or required you to do so what I thought when I was graduating was.

00:04:29: I have no idea what I want to be when I'm growing up a when I'm growing up I had friends who knew they wanted to be doctors lawyers and I had all these very concrete specific ideas I had none of those.

00:04:41: And I think.

00:04:42: I think it's remained until today that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up but I also think it was because I thought of career in terms of a linear progression because that's what I had been.

00:04:54: Taught that's what I saw around me and so this whole idea now that I'm supposed to.

00:05:01: Follow my passion and know what I want was quite frankly very threatening to me I'm like what am I supposed to do with that.

00:05:09: And then I remember this big speech came up I didn't actually see it until

00:05:13: a lot of time later or hear about it even was the graduation speech that Steve Jobs gave to graduates of Stanford University

00:05:24: and from that moment on his message of finding your passion was just all over social media and has been over social media since then so really this whole idea of finding your passion

00:05:35: even occurred before Steve Jobs gave that speech back in the 90s and though I think passion is a great.

00:05:43: Concept because it really lights up the fire under our ass I don't necessarily think it has Direction

00:05:50: so what if I'm a passionate person but it's more a sort of a hyphenated situation like a multi passionate I think that's even a word I'm not sure I didn't know and

00:06:02: even in many many stages that later in life I didn't know

00:06:07: which passion to pursue which one was going to make me money which one was going to feed the kid and pay the rent kind of situation then there was the idea of Glamour I don't want to have a job that I can't write home about in a way right like I'd had to be sort of creative and cool and stimulating and

00:06:25: anything but a nine to fiver then it was to be something that truly fit my personality which quite frankly I didn't even know what that was yet and for the longest time.

00:06:35: At looking for not that I didn't have one but that it morphs we're not always the same person but was somehow at 20-something.

00:06:43: Or if we're re-entering the job for us let's say we raise children and we've changed we've become a different person we're asked to know

00:06:52: who that person is and then commit to a career path that is aligned with that person we decide or somebody else decides or our life decides we should be.

00:07:04: This whole idea that passion is going to put me on the right path just passion alone feels like it's not enough it's not going to give us Direction.

00:07:13: Adding to that,

00:07:16: just to make it a whole lot more of a tall order is this whole idea of purpose so not only am I to find my passion and then sort of run with that I also have to have a purpose in life.

00:07:29: And again I'm coming up this from an angle of why do I only have one purpose I have multi purposes depending on what my life situation is what my financial

00:07:40: challenges are am I married or not and what country do I live let's not even get started with the pandemic and all the political

00:07:48: and climate stuff that's going on right now so now I'm having I'm having to have this purpose the sort of overarching theme of my entire life and being.

00:07:58: And again I felt the weight of that when I was younger graduating but also now.

00:08:04: Even now I think there's still this pressure of having a purposeful and passionate career life or just life in general.

00:08:14: I've read a lot about this finding your passion thing I've read a lot about.

00:08:18: How to combine creativity with being a multi passionate person and there's been a lot a lot of literature out there and one of the books I read was by Cal Newport.

00:08:29: It was called what was it called so good they can't ignore you.

00:08:34: Cal Newport purports this idea that you don't necessarily follow your passion in fact he's totally anti.

00:08:41: This theory in some ways I'm not quite as strong about that one but he really feels like no you do what you're really really good at.

00:08:50: Become even better at it and then as the title says you get so good at it they can't ignore you and that is where the fire is if you will.

00:09:00: I thought that was really interesting that doesn't mean you'll love every minute of what you're doing

00:09:06: but neither does finding are following your passion mean that that's another misconception I feel like we've been fed is that then we're going to love every second of it I don't necessarily think that's true I've had wonderful jobs and a hole

00:09:19: plethora of them but I wasn't always loving every minute so this idea of.

00:09:26: Looking at what am I really good at that already can take some time it took me forever to figure out what that was me I'm a communicator obviously podcasting away but to sort of be like.

00:09:39: Actually that could be enough I don't have to be all these other things and then have all this glamour attached to it like I

00:09:47: wanted to be an actor and I became an actor for many years and was able to live off of that income but I didn't enjoy a whole lot of it

00:09:56: you know it sounded good and it served a lot of Personality things that I had going on but it wasn't.

00:10:03: You know great and let's face it I didn't become so good that nobody could ignore me I ended up working in commercials a lot which was great but it never became that sort of

00:10:12: epitome of all things of my personality put into one so,

00:10:17: that brings me already to the main point that I want to make today and that is.

00:10:24: If you remember at the beginning I mentioned the word detour from me finding my passion was just too hard to do there were too many interests that still are,

00:10:33: and this whole idea of following a traceable linear career path is also a little bit too complicated for me because.

00:10:42: I've had so many different jobs I have helped to sell anything from menus at a restaurant to helping to sell houses I've been an actor a yoga teacher meditation guide.

00:10:55: Never mind all the personal roles of mom wife whatever it was I've had so many diverging career choices that if you look at my CV like girl what is it you want to do.

00:11:06: And who are you.

00:11:08: And I'm always thinking to myself I've got no idea but if you have time until next year maybe we could talk about that so the idea of detour what do I mean by that I was in my early 40s

00:11:23: I had decided I don't want to be an actor anymore

00:11:26: so I needed to come up with an idea well how was the cash flow going to happen the holidays were coming up I knew I was going to need a little more than I did just before so I had to come up with a solution

00:11:40: a friend of mine

00:11:41: I was working at a restaurant she was a Hostess there now greeting the guests and checking their reservations and stuff and she said listen they're looking for people to work there.

00:11:51: But it's the coach check and I thought to myself okay so just finished training as a yoga teacher I don't want to be an actor anymore.

00:12:00: And here comes a job.

00:12:01: As a coat check person that was a piece of Humble Pie and I thought about it and then I was like you know what I'm going to be among people it has nothing to do with where I want to go

00:12:11: it has a lot to do with where I've been I've done a lot of food business jobs a bartender cocktail waitress whatever it was this was a very familiar

00:12:19: genre to me if you will so I said you know what I'll do it I'll do it I'll just be the person who when you come in.

00:12:27: Asks you can I take your coat.

00:12:30: I remember at the time I was still married and my husband almost had an apoplectic fit he's like I'm sorry what what are you doing and he was embarrassed for me but

00:12:42: to me I was like why is that a shameful thing it was it wasn't easy for me either because it wasn't again something to write home about but it was something I wanted to do

00:12:51: it was something I could do to solve my problem

00:12:54: so that's what I did I ended up asking people could I check their coats but I didn't do it for very long why because the manager of the place.

00:13:04: Obviously noticed that possibly I could do more than ask people for that coats he says listen

00:13:09: ricardia we're looking for someone to do the back office management we really need someone we can trust and who can sort of run the whole thing

00:13:18: and within two times of having checked people's coats I ran the back office of that restaurant it was an office management job it wasn't a huge promotion but I

00:13:28: I loved my job I loved it it wasn't glamorous it wasn't something where you like that's right I'm doing this now I'm working for a Chinese restaurant.

00:13:38: A very good one but still a Chinese restaurant and I was so happy

00:13:42: happy I had only wanted to stay there for two or three months I ended up staying for almost two years I continued my work as a voice artist and sort of supplemented that way but I loved whom I was working with.

00:13:53: And that's one of my key things

00:13:56: not just for people who are coming out of graduate school but I have a lot of friends who are trying to return to the workforce again who have raised children or who are making career path switches and stuff.

00:14:07: And that's one of the things is if the people we work with aren't people we love to be with.

00:14:14: Then all the passion and purpose in the world is going to be fuck all worth anything there's no point in that I've worked with people who are absolutely.

00:14:25: Incompatible with my values or I with theirs and it was a horrible thing it was a super glamorous job and I hated every minute of it so this detour.

00:14:36: Of going to work for a Chinese restaurant was so good for my soul.

00:14:41: Was so good for feeling like I'm able to do something I can manifest I can help do something and we made record sales,

00:14:49: during that time now that doesn't sound like I'm saving Dolphins obviously I'm not saving Dolphins right.

00:14:56: I was a very content person.

00:15:00: And so this inner idea of contentment I think already makes this world a little better it's not Greenpeace.

00:15:07: But it made my world a little better and happier and I think that has a ripple effect and this detour again of going there.

00:15:16: I meant I was learning things that ended up being really really valuable in many jobs that came after the whole idea of running an office of doing bookkeeping of.

00:15:27: Knowing all these Microsoft Office skills and whatever it is I learned to do a lot of these things because I was there so this whole.

00:15:36: Thing of linear progression of a career path and like putting blindfolds on and how do I get there,

00:15:43: seems a little misguided to me and that's what I told these guys and these women in that Workshop I mentioned at the beginning of the episode which was I sold.

00:15:56: Chinese food and that is how I got to where I am today at the time where I was hiring people and too

00:16:04: embrace the idea that the detour is where you will find the connections that you can only see in hindsight and here's where I do agree with Steve Jobs.

00:16:15: Speech where he speaks about connecting the dots you cannot do it while you're still connecting them it has to come from hindsight,

00:16:24: and when I look back at how things worked out in my career life then I have to say it was because of all this going left right and looking very confused and like a very Meandering path the whole time.

00:16:38: But it did make sense it did make sense from where I stand today and I think that is so important and here I want to quote.

00:16:46: From another book I read I think the guys called Steven kotler or Cutler I'm not sure how it's pronounced and he actually quotes Edward Albee where he

00:16:56: says sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way to come back a short distance correctly.

00:17:05: And I think that is the whole point we cannot see all of the path that lies ahead whether we're 20 or 40 or 60 something we.

00:17:15: Don't know as we get older we run into this risk of thinking we know how this is going to go down that we've seen it all before I know that's a risk I run into a lot of times I'm like nah I've done that already I know how it goes no I

00:17:29: why am I even pretending that and I think that's so important is that we don't know where this will lead.

00:17:35: And to have the kind of permeability and open-mindedness and indeed open heartedness

00:17:41: to embrace a new situation that looks like it's going nowhere but if we think back

00:17:46: haven't we already seen it over and over that we thought something would turn out one way but then it turned out another it wasn't what we looked for at the time maybe it wasn't what we wanted maybe it was very painful.

00:17:58: But in hindsight we connected the dots were like oh that's how I found this person who's so great for me now that's why I'm so content in this job and that's why I raised my children to do this that or the other.

00:18:12: So that's my maybe a little long-winded idea is that this whole idea of finding our passion can really make us lose our way.

00:18:21: It's a tall order to find our purpose that doesn't mean we don't find it it just means that maybe.

00:18:28: Our purpose looks a whole lot different from what we expected it to look like.

00:18:34: I'm really curious to hear from you to see what were the kinds of passions and purposes that you put forth and did you end up pursuing those to the end and did you end up being happy

00:18:44: did you maybe take a couple of detours and find out how you know what actually it's more like this is what my purpose is

00:18:51: you can write to me at bitch breathe at gmail.com the eye and bitch is a number one you can join us in the Facebook group by the same name and I look forward to.

00:19:03: Hearing are at speaking with you.

00:19:06: Music.