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What if the problem isn’t your job, but the version of yourself you had to become to succeed in it? Corporate jobs don’t trap us because they’re evil. They trap us because they slowly teach us to disconnect from ourselves. If you're in corporate America and your life looks successful on paper but feels empty in practice, you’re not alone.
This podcast is a space for the quiet questions you don’t say out loud at work. We explore the inner side of change: the fear of starting over, self-sabotage, the trap of external expectations, imposter syndrome, and the unsettling moment when you realize someone else’s definition of success isn't enough for you.
This isn’t about quitting your job overnight or chasing money, but asking what feels right for you and finding clarity before making your next move. We deliver actionable strategies for complex career transitions. From managing ADHD-related overwhelm at work to overcoming the disconnect of the corporate grind.
You’re not broken. You’ve just outgrown the life you built.
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Welcome to episode 90 of Working towards our purpose. In
today's episode, we are going to talk about how to find
yourself. Before we get into that, we're going to take a moment
and just check in with ourselves, slow down for a second, see how we're
feeling.
Alrighty. Hopefully you took a moment there for me.
I am feeling pretty good.
Feeling like I have a direction.
Yeah. Feeling inspired for the things that I want
to go chase after. So that feels good. I think it's
some clarity is maybe what I'm trying to say.
So, yeah, that feels good for me. And speaking of,
this episode is going to be about finding yourself.
And I first want to start off this episode by
identifying something that I've noticed. And I mean, even.
Even just when I, like, did the intro and I'm like, this episode's about finding
yourself. I feel a little, like,
weird about saying that. Like, oh, geez, I hope nobody thinks that that's
cringy or, like, I don't
know, there's like, these assumptions about, like, finding yourself. Like,
you know, people will roll their eyes or be like, oh, yeah, whatever, but you
got to work and you got to get a job. So there's. At
least in my life and my experiences, there's not really been
that many people that are like, oh, you should go find yourself first before you
decide who you want to be. So, yeah,
that's what this episode is going to be about. It's going to be about talking
about that and also acknowledging that there's this
kind of shame or embarrassment around it. So,
yeah, I mean, I feel like just some examples
I can think of off the top of my head is like, if a kid
graduating college or, sorry, graduating high school is going to take
a year before college or is going to take a gap year or something, there's
always sort of an eye roll or, oh, man, I hope they're
all right, sort of judgment upon
them. Another one is when people move away and they
go somewhere to try to find themselves, start over in a
new place. There's always a judgment of, like, yeah, I don't know.
And now that I'm thinking about it, it's always like the. I don't know if
they're gonna be normal. I don't know if they're gonna make it.
So, yeah, I just want to kind of break that because I don't think.
Wherever that comes from, societal expectations, I'm sure
it's not really helpful. And I think
there's. There's one story that
stays in my mind of A perfect example of this.
And I was writing a TEDx speech one time to try to
apply to be a TEDx speaker, and I was kind of having
trouble coming up with the topic, I guess, but I was kind of
talking about it in general, and I was talking to it with a friend
at the time, and they kind
of, like, heard what I was saying, describing it, saying what I want to talk
about, and then they were just like, oh, what is it like finding yourself? And
then rolled their eyes. And then it made me feel immediately
embarrassed or ashamed. And I'm like, oh, no, I don't want that to be what
it is. I don't want it to be about that,
that term, finding yourself. I don't know. There's just such shame around it,
I think. And it made me feel
bad in the moment, but then when I reflected and I thought about it, I
was like, no, they're wrong. This is what I want to
talk about, and I shouldn't have to feel bad for that.
So that memory kind of always sticks in my mind, and I think that me
remembering that kind of spawned this episode. So,
yeah, so in today's episode, we're going to talk about how do you go about
finding yourself? And first off, I think it's just recognizing that there's kind of
this weird, weird societal shame around it, like you shouldn't be
finding yourself. And in
that, I would pose a question to
you, is like, well, what's more important to you? Is it more important
to feel? Is
it more important that you
want acceptance from others in how you're living your life? Or
is it more important to choose for yourself
how you want to live your life? And I think
I say that because I'm trying to remember, because
for the longest time, I let others choose how I wanted to live my
life. I went to college. I never wanted to go to college. I always said
it in high school. I don't want to go to college. I went to college.
I got a corporate job, engineering. And I
kind of followed this path based off of what I thought I should be doing
or what others thought that I should be doing. And
eventually when I got in my later 20s, I just got sick of it. And
I was like, I can't do this anymore. It's not working for me. And
then I started to the slow process of choosing for myself.
And now how I was talking about in the intro, how I feel
empowered to move into the direction that I want to. I feel like
I'm kind of finally putting all the pieces together. And being like, okay, this
is who I want to be and this is how I want to make it
happen. And, yeah, I've
just lived for so long not listening to myself.
And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think that that happens to a
lot of people and it's easy.
So, yeah, talking about how
we find ourselves, I guess I was kind of thinking about this episode and
being like, well, what was helpful for me in order to
find myself? And the first thing.
So I got like three things here that I want to talk about. And then
these will kind of be like the how to find yourselves, I guess.
So the first one for me was undoing corporate conditioning.
And, you know, maybe if you work in a
corporate job or come from a corporate job, there's these sets of
requirements that you're just supposed to be following. You're supposed to listen to your
boss. You're supposed to do things the way that everybody else does them. There's not
any rewards for being an individual or for being yourself. It's
very cliquey. Speaking from my experience, it's very cliquey.
The groups that you end up working in kind of all like the same things.
They all end up going and buying the same things. And it's a very group
think society in corporate culture. And this
doesn't even have to come from. Maybe you never worked corporate job, but even schools
like this and society in general,
they all want you to kind of fit the mold. And if you aren't
fitting the mold, you're usually kind of poked at or made fun of
or questioned as to, well, why
are you doing that? Because I want to.
So, yeah, I think undoing the corporate conditioning is kind of the first step.
And for me, I worked in corporate for six years, and
it took a long time to
remove some of those ingrained patterns and beliefs that I gained
through corporate culture. And
I think for me, I can think back about how I
spent those times. It was my early 20s. It was from,
I don't know, whatever age you graduate college until
26 or 7 or something. So
that's kind of the part of your life, I think, where
if I imagine a different life for myself, I could have went out and experimented
with things. I could have tried different jobs. I could have more easily
tried a business and failed at it and done something different. I think it's
just a time for, like, exploration and for learning yourself and for learning who
you are, which is another word for finding yourself. But I kind of
feel a bit like robbed because I spent those years,
like, trying to stand up straight and, you know,
be the person that my corporate job wanted me to be and put
the clothes on that they wanted me to wear and just, like, be in line
and be a good. A good employee and all that
stuff. And so I spent so much time focusing on who I thought I should
be that I never really asked myself, well, who do I
want to be? And it's so common to
never ask yourself that or to not listen to your intuition,
that little voice in your head that's always curious or asking for,
oh, I wonder what it would be like if I learned how to play guitar.
Those certain thoughts that keep coming back to you, it's
so easy to suffocate them when you're in a corporate environment.
So that's why I think the first step for me for undoing,
or the first step for me finding myself was undoing this corporate conditioning.
And I think once I left my corporate job, I then
was able to try things and I worked side jobs that
I thought that I would never work as an engineer with a salary.
And I found areas that, like, I enjoyed and
I found community, like, real community. And I,
Yeah, I just found so many different people. And, like, even the
beginning of this podcast, like, where I interviewed
different entrepreneurs and creatives and stuff like that, like, the whole idea of that
was because I left this corporate environment and I was like, wow, I was
meeting people, I was going to, like, networking events and creative
meetups and stuff. And I was like, look at all these cool people I'm meeting.
Like, I need to talk to them more. Like, I want to. I want to
interview them about how they got to where they did. And I just found so
many people not living the normal, straight, corporate
path. And it was inspiring to me. And,
yeah, if you haven't listened to any of those older episodes, I think it's like
episodes one through 36, they're all
interviews of cool people that I met and I like. I found something that I
liked about them. So, yeah, that was part of it was like learning from
other people. But it's taken. I haven't been in
corporate for five years, I think, and it's taken me a
while to shed that old belief of myself and to
figure out what my new belief is. And of course, that will ever
evolve and change as I get older and have
new experiences and stuff. But really tuning into
your intuition and what yourself thinks instead of
what someone else thinks. So internal more than external,
I guess. So, yeah, that was the
first step. I Think. And I just want to make sure I'm not missing something
here. Yeah, I
think that's all I wanted to say about that. Undoing corporate conditioning. And again, it
doesn't have to be from a corporate job. It could just be from your school
experiences or neighborhood
or familial. Maybe your family has expectations of you
and that sort of thing, but sort of undoing that and
thinking about what it is that you want for your life and
how you want to live your life. So the second thing
to think about when you're trying to find yourself, I think, is being careful with
other people's advice. I think
a lot of people like to give advice,
and that's fine. Advice is great. But you do have to take
some advice with a grain of salt. Because I think for me, when I was
a younger person, maybe in high school and college,
I would take people's advice, but I wouldn't really
think about where that advice was coming from. And
especially if it's family. You trust your family
usually, not always. But if you trust your family and
you listen to the advice that's being given to you, it can be
hard to separate it and to be like, well, why are they giving me
this advice? They're giving me this advice because they want me to have a stable
job and a stable income because they think that's safety and security
for me. So when they're telling me these things and this advice,
it has that context to it, and I'm not saying
disregard it, but make sure that the advice is right
for you. And even, I guess a voice popped in
my head and was like, well, are you giving advice right now? But even if
I say something and it doesn't resonate with you, don't take it. I would
never say, take my advice always. That's silly.
I think you always have to listen to how you
feel about something. If somebody says something and you feel it to be true
and it encourages you and energizes you, then, yeah, sure,
take it. But if it makes you feel bad about yourself or if it makes
you feel sad or down, you don't have to take it, no matter who it
is. And yeah, I think that's been a
big lesson for me, I think is now more so than ever, I don't
get affected by people's advice. I used to be really upset
and think that other people shouldn't say things or should
say things, but now, more so than ever, I'm able to
hear somebody's advice and be like, okay, that
works for me. Or I really like that, or I
don't like that. And then I can kind of go into like, well, why are
they saying that? Oh, maybe they like me and they want me to
be secure and they think that this is the way to do
it. And you know, at the end of the day, that's a good intention.
So I'm, I'm grateful that they have good intentions for me or they want good
for me, but it doesn't mean that their advice is going to be helpful.
And one last thing about that too is just like, even just
in our society today, things move so fast. And
a parent telling you to go buy a house because it's a financial investment
now versus 50 years ago, it's a much different
scenario and much different landscape. So even if the advice was good
for their lifetime, it doesn't mean that it's going to translate to your lifetime. And
especially when it's something specific like that. I feel like the best
advice is always sort of more generalized and
not a specific, you should do this thing, but more like a,
yeah, I don't know, more general sort of thing.
So, yeah, be. I don't want to say careful, but
just be cognizant that all advice
isn't best for you. And again, to
check in with yourself and you can hear the advice, but then
ask yourself and check in with yourself, is this advice good for me? Does
this make sense for me? And to just always kind of
check back in with yourself. And I think that's kind of the
biggest thing is listening to yourself and again,
honing your own intuition and practicing
tuning into your own voice. It's taken me a really long time
to do that and I'm still getting better at it. But
we have a lot of knowledge within us, we have a lot of
answers within us if we can kind of be
quiet and tune into it. Because I don't know, I never
learned that I had intuition. I think
I really sort of learned that
in therapy and especially in reading. And that
leads me to my third point of how to find yourself
reading. Books have been so significant in my life, and
they're just the greatest way to get a different perspective.
And I mean,
maybe you know this already, but for me it was like, so life changing because
I hated reading. All through high school, all through college,
even after college, I hated it. And then
four years, I think, or five years into my corporate career, when I was just
so bored at work, I decided to just download an app to read
books and I read a business book and I
ate it up. It was so good and it
made me inspired. It made me believe in myself, I think
learning just different perspectives from people. There's so much to learn
out there. And books can like. And I guess specifically I'm talking about
nonfiction books, but you can learn stuff from fiction books too,
and characters and.
Yeah, I mean, I don't read a whole lot of fiction, but you can totally
learn stuff from fiction books too. But yeah,
lots of awesome nonfiction books that I've learned from and
been able to just get a different perspective and to again,
help me realize that what my own intuition is or
what it is that I want for myself.
And yeah, so I've compiled a list of seven books. So
I was trying to go through and find. I was looking through my Goodreads app
and I was looking at the books that I've read, and I was like, which
one of these books helped me find myself?
And I scrolled back for like four or five years and I
compiled a list of seven books that I think really helped me find
myself. And I'm not going to list them all now because that
seems useless or just too much information.
But I will put all the links to the books, the seven books in the
show notes, so you can just head to the show notes to check out those
books if you're interested. But yeah, they're just. They
were just really great books for me to help me find myself, to help me
think about spirituality and thinking
higher of myself and thinking allowing myself to
want more and that sort of thing. And I think
that that kind of is a good way to conclude the episode is,
I think when we say how to find yourself for me, I
kind of almost see that in you're asking more for yourself.
You're asking for the things that you desire
and dream of and the things that you envision yourself to do in your
daydreams. And when you're inspired and
feeling good, you're asking more for yourself when you're
asking to find yourself. And
there's a vision and a sense and an intuition that
there's more for me down the road. I don't know what it is yet, but
I'm gonna try things to head in that direction. And I think
that for me, that's what finding yourself is. And
I don't wanna feel shameful about it anymore. I don't want to
have this make myself kind of small. When
I say find myself, I wanna say find myself confidently. And
I want that for you, too. I want you to think about that in a
positive thing. Because it is a positive thing. It's like, you know,
I don't know, like, I can't think of many more things that are important than
figuring out who you are and becoming that person.
Because when you do that, you also positively impact all
of the people around you. And, yeah,
I don't know, I think, like, I've become.
I've enjoyed myself more. I like myself more the
more time I've spent trying to find myself and the more time
I've spent in going in that direction.
And yeah, hopefully that makes
sense. I don't feel like that was very articulate, but maybe it was.
So, yeah, don't feel bad for saying that you want to find yourself and you
can do this at any age. Also, too, I think I want to mention that
I feel like I was late to the game in my later 20s. But
if you're here on this earth, you have time to decide
to go in that path of finding yourself. And
it doesn't matter where you are, you can always make choices
to do that. So, yeah, don't
forget, the seven books will be in the show notes. And then I
always have the Softening youg Inner Critic Seven Day
Guide in the show notes. Also. You can get that for free. And
yeah, I think that's all I got for you today. Thank you for listening and
being here and I'll see you on another episode real soon. Take
care.