Navigating a career change is often challenging; it’s about breaking free from the confines of a single job title. When you’re not passionate about your current role and it doesn’t bring a sense of pride, contemplating change becomes crucial. It involves self-reflection, identifying your true interests, and embracing the courage to pursue something new. How do you navigate the complexities of transitioning to a career that better aligns with your passions and values?
In this week’s episode, I talked with Elizabeth Burke. She shared her journey from feeling disconnected and unsatisfied in her career to making a significant change. She took us through the disconnection and dissatisfaction she experienced in her career to the pivotal moment when she decided to make a substantial change.
But that’s not all – she also offered valuable insights on navigating the lows of life, whether in your career, relationships, or family. Tune in for a candid conversation filled with inspiration and practical wisdom.
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Journey of Transformation, Growth, and Fulfillment with Elizabeth Burke
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One question I think so many people are tired of being asked is, “What do you do?” Now, I want you all to think about that question for a second because, first of all, no human being really only does one thing so it’s really kind of compartmentalizing people into just job titles. But, also, how do you respond to that question, “What do you do?” when you’re not exactly in love with what you do right now? When you’re not exactly proud of what you do, you don’t exactly feel it, and it’s not the thing that you want to talk about? I know what it feels like to be in that situation and my guest today knows what it feels like to be in that situation and she even presented a wonderful speech at the recent Denver Startup Week, recent as in two and a half months ago now.
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Elizabeth Burke, welcome to the program.
Thank you. I’m so excited to be here, Steven. Really appreciate getting to share.
Well, I’m glad you’re here to share this wonderful story because I think that a lot of people listening and a lot of people in the world, in general, out there aren’t necessarily content. They’re not seeing all the purpose as well as the alignment. “I’m doing this for this reason and it’s aligned with how I live my life,” and stuff like that. So, well, let’s start off by telling us a little bit about your story about how you made the career change from when you were in that situation, how it felt and what you did to get to where you are now?
Yeah, so I’m happy to share about that. And we’re kind of like not going to start with what I do first purposefully so that you can hold the tension of how does it feel to not know what I do as a first part of my story but you definitely will get to hear that. So, yeah, I have a background in public education and I think, for me, I went into that career and I loved it, I loved working with high schoolers, I taught high school art, built up an amazing program, taught four levels, and always felt like there was room for me to just find new parts of myself as I was teaching. And I started to notice a shift. I think there are times in our life when we maybe have been doing something for a while and we’ve gotten really good at it and we’re kind of looking for that next step, that ability to expand, and I began to just not be able to find it anymore. And I think, for me, that was starting to happen but what really kind of just became a catalyst for really seeing some things that I could no longer unsee was being a teacher during the pandemic and being a teacher during, specifically, the fall of 2021 to the summer of 2022 school year. That school year was my eighth year teaching and it was just truly like the worst school year that any teacher on record has probably ever had. It was just unfathomably difficult for reasons that we could never have expected. This was when a lot of folks were going back in person, which we thought would be easier, and it was actually just so much worse. And it was a year that just was deeply uncomfortable for me for so many reasons. It started off moderately uncomfortable when I realized this thing that I had been doing for a very long time just didn’t fit anymore and I think that moment isn’t unique to just careers, we can have that moment with a physical location we’re in, suddenly the place that we live just really no longer matches our values or what we value in life. A relationship suddenly isn’t actually in alignment with who we are anymore. But, for me, that was showing up in my job just not being in alignment with who I wanted to be as a person.
What were you feeling at the time about — what made you feel this out of alignment? Did it come abruptly? Did it come slowly? Did you feel it before the pandemic at all, just a little hint of it?
Yeah, I definitely felt a hint of it and I think had the pandemic not happened, I think maybe I would have been able to not see it for longer or to just kind of push it aside. I’ve kind of been like wanting to explore my options outside of teaching but hadn’t necessarily really decided upon a course of action, I was just dabbling. It just became very painful. I felt very constricted. I felt like I didn’t want to necessarily become an administrator and there was no longer an opportunity for career growth for me from what I saw if I remained in strictly a teacher type of role. And I loved my students, I loved what I taught, I taught high school visual arts, but I couldn’t imagine teaching that same thing for the next 20 years. And also wanting to acknowledge that there’s nothing wrong if that does work for someone but that I just had to be honest that that was not working for me. I began to see how the larger system as a whole didn’t work for me. Things like how I envision retiring didn’t work, things like, oh, what if I want to move states? Oh, this actually isn’t economically sustainable for me to remain in this career anymore. And also just realizing that I was experiencing just giving so much energy but I was not able to put that energy back in other areas of my life and that’s definitely something that we have to work on. That’s not career specific.
But, yeah, I just started to feel very constricted. And it was pretty painful when you realize something doesn’t work and you want to fix it, you want to immediately put a Band-Aid on it, like what do I need to do? I’m a very action-oriented person and it was kind of hard to just have to sit with the discomfort of knowing that this didn’t fit for me anymore but not actually knowing what it was I wanted to take action on to move myself into next. Then I think that that’s sometimes something that we can all figure and feel rather is that when we realize something doesn’t work, we want to immediately know what is supposed to work and there’s a lot of value in sitting in that place of not knowing and just really needing to give yourself permission to be there. Our careers are just kind of like a manifestation of who we are. It’s like sometimes our career can be very separate but we often just have this notion that like, “Oh, who I am at work is totally different from who I am in my personal life,” and while we can have different personalities and different ways that we show up, I had to look at why did I choose this career and I think that was a really meaningful question to ask myself was like why did I choose this and we have that moment in lots of different ways of kind of acknowledging what were we getting out of something? Why did we originally choose it? Why were we still choosing it? And that was not so fun to have to look at why did I choose this because it was ultimately helping me to look at patterns I had as a human being and those patterns were very connected to my life experiences as a whole, not just, oh, my professional experiences but looking at who I was as a human being and really having to look at some patterns.
You had to go back and look at your patterns. Now, one of the problems that we experience is that people will come to this realization that what I have is not working anymore, doesn’t fit me anymore, but because of the way the world is structured, for better or worse, you can’t just instantly snap your finger and go on to the next thing. It’s not like, okay, this is not working for me, I can just leave. We have bills to pay, we have other things, we have to kind of stay in that world. So what was that like staying in that world while also kind of going back and reflecting on your life and why you picked this and what it is that you really want?
It was incredibly uncomfortable. I think that, again, there’s sometimes that desire to make that immediate change and sometimes those changes can be helpful and sometimes they can actually be harmful, because we’re maybe not making a choice from a place of true knowledge and wisdom, we’re making a choice from reactivity, from fear, just being in such discomfort that we will grab on to whatever choice we think will make it better for that moment. And part of sitting in that space was actually feeling things. I talked about something called the ladder of emotions where it kind of ranks emotions and there’s lots of different versions of this that you can find but it ranks emotions kind of on a scale of very low energy, like fear, depression, sadness, stuckness, all the way up to like peace and joy at the top where we just want to jump right up. But part of actually getting to move forward is feeling. And so feeling things and feeling the discomfort, feeling the anger, frustration, feeling all the things that I needed to feel was a part of actually getting the space to take action from an informed place rather than a very reactive and fear-based place. And it’s uncomfortable to realize, like, oh, I actually have to be angry at what I’ve experienced in my career, I have to be angry at how I was treated during a time when I was taking care of other people’s children and not feeling very cared for myself. And I always want to say that I was not ever angry at my students, I loved my students, but I was angry at the position that we were put in together. It was not fair to anyone. And also just acknowledging sadness too. I think that sadness was a part of that. And just feeling all of that and letting it be okay.
Now, did you have the urge to distract or numb yourself? And we all know the various techniques, whether it be alcohol, drugs, excessive use of screens, social media, or just keeping yourself busy every minute of every day, did that temptation come in? Did you succumb to it? Did you find a way out of it?
Yeah. So I’m actually someone who I’m not a big drinker and so I feel very fortunate that especially during that pandemic time, I had no desire whatsoever to numb in that way, but I do think when I reflect on my life as a whole, I have had a pattern of busyness. I have had a pattern of being overly committed to things, being overly scheduled. And that busyness can kind of keep you just busy enough that you don’t feel what you need to feel. So, definitely, I think that busyness and overscheduling has been a past unintentional coping mechanism or a way that I kept myself from not seeing things that apparently I wasn’t ready to see. But I think I was very much in a place where I was ready to see it. I was seeing it and there were very little — I just felt it all, and that was really uncomfortable but I can say honestly that I don’t think at that point in time I was trying to numb myself. I probably needed to add a little bit more joy in my life to feel at that time and just be like you don’t have to process this all at once, but that’s a really great question.
It’s one thing to numb yourself, it’s another thing to just add joy. So, for example, for you to say, “I’m not gonna let myself think, I’m gonna always have something on, I can’t be alone, I can’t have everything and oh, my God, there’s an hour of time and I have nothing scheduled. I can’t do that,” versus saying, “Okay, I’m going to go for a hike with my friends, we’re gonna laugh, we’re gonna see some nature, and I’m gonna allow myself to have a break because I don’t have to be laser focused on, okay, what do I do next, every minute of every day.”
That’s part of also remembering that the present moment is your life too and you need to find a way to enjoy the present moment and I wasn’t going to suddenly have all of the answers because I sat here for an extra hour and just thought about it nonstop. Adding that joy in is important to feel, “Oh, that was a really enjoyable moment,” and that actually motivates me towards building my life in a way that is in alignment with adding more of those moments of joy in on a regular basis so that my life is just fully joyful.
And how do you prevent that sadness, anger from overwhelming you? Because I think that’s a trap that a lot of people in situations like this will fall into. It’s a trap that I’ve fallen into in the past, where it’s like, okay, I’m doing something that’s normally really joyful but all I can think about is, “Oh, my God, Monday, I’m gonna have to deal with that person again and they’re gonna be a total piece of work to me and, all of a sudden, and they don’t value me, I think I’m worth this but they think I’m just a cog in all that stuff.” How do you avoid that trap and let yourself experience the joy and the emotions toward getting to your next place?
I think I did create some really nice routines for myself around things that brought me joy. I distinctly remember on Wednesdays, I would create space to go for a hike on my way from work and I would do the same hike, it was Inspiration Point in Berkeley and it was a way to kind of create that routine for myself and I would try to leave my phone in the car, not think about things. You also just have to get angry and actually feel it all. And then I think part of that is the self-monitoring of is this actually me being angry and something I need to express or feel? Or am I latching on to this anger as a way to avoid feeling something that is underneath it? Am I actually sad? Am I actually afraid? And only we know that answer for ourselves.
I think anger is the surface level emotion and there’s often a lot underneath it so it’s like we often use anger as a way to avoid processing what is underneath that but you might need to just be mad and you might need to find some safe people to be… Click To TweetI processed a lot with an amazing therapist because I was just like no one else understands what I’m going through and that’s okay, they don’t need to. But I think that finding someone who can hold that space for you, it might not necessarily be your friend, and being able to process safely and have someone challenge you on what’s underneath that.
Yeah, so it’s not just like, “Okay, why are you acting like that? Why are you fixated on this thing?” Even say, “Why are you so angry about this when it looks like this might actually be a bigger deal?” But I can see this from an outside perspective not living in your life.
Totally, and helping you to see things from a different lens. And one of the things that really came from feeling those feelings and looking at things through a different lens was identifying the underlying patterns that were really running the show for me, the underlying patterns that were driving my decision making and that were driving how I was approaching things from a very unconscious perspective. And we’ve all got patterns. That’s how we are as human beings. We have sets of behavior that are usually kind of determined from patterns that we’re not even always conscious of.
It’s uncomfortable to recognize our pattern sometimes but that’s the only way that we can actually create change is to acknowledge this is where it was coming from and that’s not what I want to do anymore. Click To TweetAnd the patterns that I was unconsciously repeating in choosing a career that was very helping focused and not making a lot of change was that my value is in taking care of others, others’ needs are more important than my own, and I really realized that I was always choosing safety because I thought it was better than taking a risk, which, really, that last one meant that I was unconsciously not believing in myself very much, that I was not giving myself enough credit that I could actually take a risk. So those are kind of the three things that I had uncovered that were really driving a lot of my work decisions and how I handled things as well as other areas of my life too. They’re all intertwined.
Yeah, I believe I’ve heard some people say how you do anything is how you do everything. Back to your point about the whole thing about people being, “I’m a different person at work and I’m a different person at home,” but, really, it’s the same person, the same mental pattern so you have that underlying value, it’s going to show up maybe in a completely different way, look completely different at the surface, look completely different, but underneath be the same core belief system, you got deep into it, you figured it out or figured out what your underlying pattern is and then what brought you to what your course of action is.
Yeah. I mean, I think I just really had to think about if I keep making choices based on believing that my value is in taking care of others, others’ needs are more important than my own, and that choosing safety is better than taking risks, what kind of life am I actually building for myself and is that the life that I actually want to live? And I just had to realize, no, that is not what I wanted. And those patterns were created for a reason and I think that whenever we’re choosing to break a pattern, evaluating how and why a pattern developed from a non-judgmental place is kind of helpful. Oftentimes, we just beat ourselves up for having created a pattern which doesn’t actually help us move forward. It’s okay to feel guilt, it’s okay to feel shame, but you feel it and then you release it through just kind of actually naming it and being able to be like, “Oh, this is what I was doing.” It gave me a choice to think about, well, what is the opposite of that, and I wasn’t quite conscious of what the opposite was until I was kind of on the other side, like I didn’t name like, “Well, I wanna flip this pattern,” I’m being able to go back and identify everything that happened from the opposite side of it all. But in recognizing those patterns, I was able to then kind of flip that narrative and rewire them. And so you’re creating healthier patterns when you’re doing that. And, as human beings, we’re wired to be able to be rewired and I think that we forget that sometimes. We think that I’ve been this way, I’m always going to be this way, change is not possible, but change is extremely possible and if you just take a moment to think about all the different versions of yourself that you’ve been right now, there’s been like a million versions already so why can’t you be another one? And so, for me, I got really comfortable disappointing people and that kind of counterbalanced my previous belief that my value was in helping others. I could still help others but maybe not to the same extent and maybe not doing it from a place of obligation or martyrdom, like doing it because I actually wanted to and because I had the capacity to so getting comfortable saying, “I’m really sorry, I don’t have the capacity to do that. Thanks for understanding.” Also just saying, “If you want me to do that, I’m happy to reprioritize that. What would you like me to take off my plate?” So, like if that is a priority to you, how do you help me take something off because I can’t do both. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be liked and then I thought there was safety in being liked and it doesn’t mean that you need to be a jerk but not everyone liked me at that point anyway so why was I so worried about it? I was contorting and twisting to try and be liked and it just probably didn’t serve me so I’d rather not be liked for actually being myself than not be liked for some contorted version of myself that wasn’t who I wanted to be anyway.
Well, it’s interesting the whole being liked thing because that’s a trap that I’ve fallen into myself a little bit. And one of the things is that you can always start off small and whenever I recognize someone having a pattern of, say, people pleasing, similar thing, it’s like start with just a really, really small way of disappointing someone, just like say someone’s really excited about a particular movie and it’s one that you don’t really care for, being comfortable just saying, “I didn’t really care for that movie,” and I know it sounds so basic but there are some people who are so deep in that mindset that I need to be liked, I need to be approved of that they’d be afraid to say on the surface level things, like TV shows, movies, musical acts, “Sorry, that’s not really my style. I didn’t really like this one.”
Yeah, and if we can’t be honest with ourselves about those things, how do we expect to say in a relationship, “I’m not happy, I need to make some big changes here,” or like in a job to be like, “I’m unfulfilled with what I’m doing here”? So I do think those like micro practices of just being more authentic with ourselves lead to the confidence and kind of inner trust of being able to disappoint others when bigger things call for it.
Because it sounds like what you’re saying in everything that you come across is that, “I matter too.” You have your agenda, you have your thing you need to get done, and you have your thing that you need me to do so you can get your thing done but my life matters too and I matter and that ties a lot into where you ended up.
Yeah. And another thing that I did realizing that I mattered is that I realized I did not have to be perfect and I allowed myself to be a lot messier. I realized that risks could be fun. And in taking more risks similar to like the disappointing people on smaller scales, start taking small risks and start building up your confidence in yourself and your ability to take risks so that when you choose to take a bigger risk, you have that belief in yourself that you’re worth taking a risk for and that you’ve shown yourself that you can take risks and be successful. But, yeah, so I’ve, ultimately, through that, just kind of went through some really uncomfortable periods of not knowing and allowed myself to sit in that discomfort of not knowing, like I didn’t know what I wanted to do as I was leaving teaching. I chose to just kind of follow my curiosity. I did a ton of informational interviews with folks and I also just allowed myself to learn and kind of do some professional development simply for the sake of like joy, like what do I enjoy learning? What makes me excited? And through following that path, it actually led me to UX research, which is user experience research and, essentially, if human psychology and design were combined, you are using human psychology and empathy and an understanding of a human being to ensure that things are designed for how human beings operate as people. It utilizes a lot of my skill set from teaching in terms of backwards planning, empathy-driven design. I get to talk to people all the time and listen to them, which I love doing, and synthesize information and process things. And if I had tried to just do that right away and just been like, “Oh, well, this is it, this is it,” I don’t actually think I would have been able to get here. I think it happened very organically. I definitely continued to take steps but some of the steps I couldn’t have predicted if I had not given myself the freedom to just walk and see what happened.
It kind of runs counter to a common narrative that people have. So the first time I ever left a job without another one lined up right away, I got the feedback, “Oh, my God, you’re gonna have a gap on your resume.” It kind of ties into this mindset of the fact that if you’re not doing anything, you’re just wasting away, you have a one-year gap in your resume, say, that makes you, whatever, not worthy. Someone’s is going to look at you and say, “Oh, that person cannot possibly be valuable to this organization because they either chose to or struggled enough to,” and the struggle is real too with the job search today, “but they were not doing anything productive for that year.” And it’s a similar idea behind even like, “Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing,” but that mindset trains you to keep saying, “Oh, wait, I need to be doing something. Am I taking a course? Am I applying to 45 jobs a week? Am I doing that?”
There was one conversation I had with a friend, I was literally just so frustrated, I was in tears because I was just like, “What am I gonna do? I don’t know.” and I remember she said, “Well, what if you just worked at a restaurant for a while?” and I just remember in that moment being like, “Oh, you wouldn’t care?” I didn’t say those words but the feeling I had was like, oh, you wouldn’t think any less of me if I did that or like if I didn’t have it all figured out? And it was kind of humbling just to remember that someone who I adore, who’s been a friend for years, I didn’t realize that I was unconsciously worried of what they would think of me and the truth is, no one who really and truly cares about you is going to view whatever you do in this gap time, they’re going to be supportive. They’re going to want you to be happy. And I think a lot of the pressure I was putting on myself was internal and so once I got comfortable with internally just being, well, this is where I’m at and this is what I’m doing and I don’t have it figured out and I may have a gap on my resume, it actually I think is what helped lead to the confidence to be able to navigate the conversations I had with people, like, yeah, I might not have gotten through the door with my resume because I did have a gap but if you talk to me in person and you listen to me and you heard my story and you heard me explain who I am and what I did and why, it all made sense. And so I kind of just had to trust that, yeah, that might not work for everyone that I had taken that gap but it was what I needed to do and that’s the truth.
And a big part of it is still believing that you’re a person of value even though someone else over there, wherever, is looking at your resume, seeing that whatever the length gap was, and saying you’re not a person of value because I see this gap on your resume and you saying that doesn’t matter, I know I’m a person of value because this is my story. I see it all the time when I take Uber rides and people who are driving are oftentimes between one thing or another trying to figure out what to do next and stuff like that and just still believing that you’re person of value no matter how much feedback you get from someone or that feedback from yourself, which sounds like what you say is the most important thing is that some people get a lot of that internal feedback, like, “Oh, my god,” the same thing with keeping busy every minute of every day, “Oh, my god, Oh, my god, I just spent two hours doing nothing. I’m not a person of value anymore.”
Let’s say you started working as a teenager, how much time have you had in your life where you’ve truly been unemployed, not working, and I want to also acknowledge that we’ve had layoffs, we’ve had things like that happen so there may have been some of that that was involuntary, but if you think about your life as a whole, like, there may not actually have been very much time where you were truly not working. For me, I started working at like 14,15, I’ve pretty much consistently had a job for most of that so to give myself the freedom to just be like I am unemployed, and, again, acknowledging that there’s privilege in that but I think it also brings up a little bit of classism, like we identify as being a part of a specific class because of what we think our job is thought of as and so, suddenly, when that is taken away, that identity, it’s like, well, where do I fit in and where do I belong?
Yeah, that’s the title of your speech.
Yeah, I know. Who We Are Is Not What We Do: Work Worth and Identity. Yeah, and it’s true and I want to acknowledge that it’s so much easier said than done and I also think that just surrounding yourself with people who support you, who encourage you, who don’t actually care what you do, like when I think about the conversations I have with my friends, we definitely talk about work but there are still people who I really don’t understand what they do and I’ve known them for a very long time and I’m okay with that.
Yeah. So another thing is that we’re also kind of living through a loneliness epidemic and there are a lot of people out there listening that don’t have that supportive group of friends or, according to a 2021 survey that I cite quite a bit, 12 percent of all people surveyed said they had zero close friends and another alarming 48 percent of them only had one to four and if you only have one to four, you probably don’t consistently have a person to confide in because people get busy and get really occupied. So, if someone does feel like they’re lacking that group of people they can call and either experience joy with or lean on in some of those situations or get support as someone beyond just whatever their job title is, what can someone do to start kind of changing that situation and get out there and meet not just anyone but the right people?
Totally. I think number one is I’m just a huge advocate of therapy and so if you have a job, exploring what resources do you have available to you that you might not know about. Are there resources in your community? A therapist can talk to you about the things that are really hard that you might not be able to process with someone who you’re just getting to know. Part of my journey was also moving states and totally rebuilding community so I joined a ton of meetups and did a lot of things and pushed myself outside of my comfort zone to meet new people and to build new relationships. And building adult friendships I think is just very different because you don’t necessarily have that same sort of passive contact that you might have in different phases of life. And really thinking about what am I interested in? What do I want to learn? What kind of people might I want to surround myself with that? Is that going to a yoga class and making an effort to talk to someone who you see in class frequently? Or being like, “Hey, do you wanna do this workshop together?” I think that you’d be surprised how many people might also be looking for friendship and not being afraid to just name it like, “Hey, I’m building more community and I’m looking to create new friendships. Are you interested in being friends?” The worst thing that happens is they say no.
That’s another way you can build some more confidence in yourself, right?
Yeah. And you might be surprised. Someone else is looking for that too.
Yeah. So I recently spoke at the Rocky Mountain Young Professional Summit and they had this board where it was like a give/ask board, what can I offer people and what am I looking for and on the ask board, I still have a picture of it, even though I haven’t followed up in — it’s been almost two months now. I have a picture of it and I was surprised by how many people on that board just said, “I’m looking for a buddy. I’m looking for someone to go ski with.” It was in October so it’s kind of looking forward to that season and all that. It also reminded me of this idea that, sometimes, what you’re feeling, you’re oftentimes not nearly as alone as you think you are. Most people who are like, “I’m lonely, I’m looking for friends,” probably think they’re alone the same way. When I didn’t fit into kind of the standard working method of, okay, sit down at a computer and just sit there for eight hours and I worked in 90-minutes spurts, I later read stuff and realized, wait a second, I’m actually much more normal and that the work culture is what’s not normal. And so you put yourself out there, if you’re someone looking for friends, you realize, wait a second, I’m not the only one, I’m not the only one sitting around watching a movie at home thinking it would be so much better if I was doing something outside with someone else.
Yeah, totally. Well, and some things that I’ve done is I took a pottery class. I love art so, again, my examples might be art focused but maybe for you, it’s a different type of class or something where you’re going to be around people with a similar interest and there is going to be some ongoing meeting and you get the chance to get to know someone and you kind of have to just be willing to take that risk of like, “Hey, would you like to go grab coffee?” or, “Hey, would you like to do this thing together?” and just see what happens and you never know. I also think that volunteering is a great way to potentially meet new people, maybe just struggling with not feeling great about yourself, doing something where you are of service to others, whether it’s people, your community, volunteering at an animal shelter, it just kind of helps you feel good about yourself, like you are contributing, you are helping, you have the time and space to do that. Again, you might meet people through that opportunity who you might never cross paths with otherwise.
One of the things I’m wondering is as people go through these situations and we’re all going to have a situation at some point where your job is not really working for you, kind of like your teaching job eventually did that or anyone else, it’s like, okay, it was working for a while but something changed, I got a new boss, which happens to a lot of people, if it’s not working, does having these other parts of your life, whether it be a good social group, whether it be volunteering, involvement in other types of organizations, does that help kind of soften the blow of losing this, like, “Okay, I have this really good job, I really love it,” because you still have these other places and these other people and these other things that bring you have this sense of like, “I have a purpose, I have value, I have worth”?
I think, absolutely. I think the more that we can build up the other parts of our life — let’s be honest, we might all be amazing at our jobs, but there is probably someone else who could do our job. There isn’t someone else who could be a friend like you. There isn’t someone else who could be a family member like you. There isn’t someone else who could maybe like volunteer in their community like you. So I think also really appropriately allocating our time, energy, and intention to those areas of our life, like our relationships, cultivating those, cultivating healthy sense of self outside of this one area of our job. We might lose our job, we might become disabled, we might like really just need to take a freakin’ break and when you have those other areas fleshed out and really healthy, it takes away the intensity of this one area being the only way you identify. And I want to also acknowledge that’s easier said than done.
Well, yeah, a lot of these things are easier said than done, right?
Yeah.
One of the weird things is I always try to come up with whenever I hear that phrase, what is an example of something that’s easier done than said?
Oh. Probably baking. I feel like to actually just bake something versus like explaining how you do it is probably easier done than said.
Easier done than said.
Yeah.
But I love what you have to say about how only you can be you and there are other people who can do UX but there aren’t other people that can be your unique combination of what you’re passionate about, what you bring to your project, your human-centered aspect of it, and that goes for pretty much anyone else, right? I mean, the only time people I think are really, truly replaceable is when they’re trying to be someone else.
Yeah. And I think the more I lean into the authenticity of who I am, what I’m curious about outside of work, that does add value to how I show up and my role but it’s a byproduct of me choosing to invest in who I am. I’m not like, oh, I’m pursuing my interest in human psychology and growth because I know it’s going to benefit me as a UX researcher. It naturally does but I do it because it’s who I am and what I’m curious about.
And so I think the more you’re just authentic about who you are and being willing to share those parts of yourself, it just comes out more naturally. Click To TweetSo if you’re interested in human psychology, so one of the things is I actually really wish I had studied or taken some coursework in psychology when I was in college because it’s not necessarily tied to like a specific job or not that many specific jobs but it’s kind of embedded in almost everything you do, especially entrepreneurship, building businesses, finding ways to connect to people, so much that, so what have you studied about human psychology and what have you kind of really learned about what humans are really like? I know that’s such a loaded question this late in the episode.
Yeah, no. So being an educator, I was always very curious about behavior, I was very curious about the mindset, our growth mindset versus fixed mindset. There’s something just called the zone of proximal development which is as we grow as people, we have a zone of proximal development, that’s like as far as we can go without being deeply uncomfortable to the point where we can’t learn. So as we grow and expand as people, our zone of proximal development expands, we have a wider comfort zone. So I love thinking about growth in terms of looking at people. And then I’m also super fascinated by just human psychology and understanding how trauma can impact us as human beings, how it can inform our life experiences, how we can grow and change and heal trauma and evolve as people, and I think everyone experiences trauma, whether it’s like big T trauma from a specific life event or little T trauma, which is smaller things that can happen, but just that we also have the capacity to heal and that we have the capacity to grow and change those habits that sometimes come from a place of trauma. So those are my two fascinating areas.
So what you’re saying is that when it comes to this growth, expanding your comfort zone, you can’t really do it all at once. I’m even thinking about that ladder that you had at your presentation where if you’re depressed, and then you move up the ladder a little bit to angry, that person, someone who’s depressed is not ready to go directly up to like jump for joy the same way someone who’s like, let’s take a very extreme example, someone that’s like not even comfortable leaving the house because they’re so traumatized and if they just go for a walk around the block and then not ready to suddenly travel the world and introduce themselves to a new set of people, trying to learn a new language, that may come later, but there’s like kind of eight steps in between getting from here to there.
Yeah, and celebrating each step is important, that each step expands your zone of growth and it makes you more open to your next capacity for growth, but to try to grow too quickly can actually be harmful because you’re just not ready yet. And I think the “yet” is the important part, like sometimes people think that because they can’t accomplish X now that there’s something wrong and it’s like, no, you have the capacity, but to try to go from A to Z is really hard. so why don’t you just try to go to B and then C? But it’s really about just giving ourselves the permission to grow at the rate that is healthy and that is safe and acknowledging that the more we choose to consciously grow, the wider our zone of proximal development becomes and the more we are able to keep growing.
And are there situations in life where people are retracting, doing the opposite of growth, whether it be certain external pressures, a certain trauma or a certain experience, a certain job even can cause people to actually shrink a bit?
Totally. I think if we maybe go too fast too quickly in our growth or we have a moment of failure, we might retract momentarily and just kind of take a step back and I think it’s okay to maybe evaluate, oh, did I take on too much? Was I maybe not as ready as I thought I was? And that’s okay to acknowledge. Oh, I maybe took a little bit more than I was ready for. Maybe it was a specific event, like if we’re talking about trauma, like maybe it was a specific event that triggered something within us and we realized that that was a trigger and that part of us needs a little bit more healing and a little bit more attention and we get to be okay with that and just to acknowledge that, or we get to evaluate is that something I could remove in terms of — is that something that’s unsafe that maybe I need to change? I’m not a professional so I want to acknowledge that but I think that sometimes being triggered isn’t bad, it’s a moment of awareness, but you do also want to acknowledge is something repeatedly triggering you and it’s just not safe.
Oh, yeah, like the unhealthy reaction to something small that you need to kind of work on, be like I need to find a better way to handle when this happens in my life. And a lot of people probably have on their mind New Year’s and New Year’s as a chance to look at what am I doing in life? What can I change? What can I do differently? What should anyone out there listening be thinking about as we head into 2024 or we head into just, generally, this New Year’s, this time of reevaluating habits?
Totally. I think it’s a great season for reflection and I think that it’s a wonderful season for slowing down, even though there’s lots of stuff happening around the holidays. Also, this might be not popular but I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I make intentions. You don’t have to necessarily know it or start it on January 1st but I do think creating a container of reflection for yourself and creating a timeline of like, “By the end of January, I’m gonna be really clear on what I want from X, Y, and Z,” and I think just thinking about like, how do you want to feel in different areas of your life? Not necessarily thinking about what specifically do I want to accomplish because I think, oftentimes, the external goal is not really — that’s something we’re chasing, that’s like a job title, but it’s like how do I want to feel? Maybe you’re like I want this promotion and it’s like, well, what does that promotion actually mean to you? It makes me feel that I am really competent so maybe I want to actually do some professional growth and some learning. Maybe you want to be in a new role. Okay, cool, what do you actually want that to feel like? Is it about your team that you’re working with? Do you want it to feel supported? Do you want there to be an element of collaboration? Actually thinking about what you physically want to experience and feel in your different areas of your life I think is more meaningful than just setting an external goal because the way that you actually achieve that might be different than the topical goal that you apply to it. Do you want to actually feel it or do you just want the surface level solution?
So you’re saying slow down so that you can go a little bit deeper than just a certain number, someone might say, and to use the most obvious stereotype about New Year’s, I’m going to lose 15 pounds.
Totally.
So that’s something almost everyone has at least heard, 35 people say that at different New Year’s resolutions, right? So it’s like, okay, well, why do you want to lose 15 pounds this year? What is that going to make you feel? Do you want to do it so that you could, I don’t know, keep up with this group of people and all their activities that involve a lot of running around? Do you want to feel good about yourself? Do you want to smile more, etc.?
Yeah, is it that you want to feel healthier and that you are actually taking care of yourself to have a longer life and a healthier life? Do you want to be able to participate in things that are currently challenging for you? Like really thinking about not just the surface level, but getting underneath it. And just also, again, giving yourself permission that maybe you don’t have it on paper by January 1st but giving yourself time to think about things.
So, before we wrap up, I want to come full circle to the very beginning of this episode and just ask you, so let’s say someone’s putting themselves out there, trying to grow a little bit, what’s a better question to ask than “What do you do?”?
Oh, yeah, so many questions. “What are you excited about these days?” “What’s a hobby you have?” You can also think about, I love the question, “What’s something exciting or boring that’s going on in your life?” I think sometimes people are really thrown off by that but by giving someone permission to share something super mundane, you might learn something about them. “What are you known for?” That’s really fun because you’re gonna learn about who someone is as a human being. I think those are fun.
So there’s so many great questions. Every once in a while, I’m tempted to go fully absurd and ask someone something along the lines of, “What’s the second worst movie you saw last year?”
Oh, love that. Yeah, or like worst book or…yeah,
Yeah, and I’m even — I’m looking straight at my bookshelf there and I’m thinking about some books where it’s like, this one, this one kind of missed the mark, one way or the other but…
Yeah, I love that one. That’s fun.
Excellent. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, telling us all about your career transition and a great way to get through some of those low points because whether it’s your job, whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s family, whether it’s some kind of other hobby or other pursuits, we’re all going to have highs and lows, we’re going to have areas where one part of our life is high and other part of our life is low and we’re going to have to find ways to get through it while maintaining our sense of self-worth.
Absolutely. And just knowing that it’s going to happen again so whatever things we learn about ourselves in this first round, we get to deepen the learning the second time we encounter this lesson.
And hopefully we can embrace these lessons.
Absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
And I’d also like to thank everybody out there who took time out to listen to Action’s Antidotes today. Hopefully you’re inspired to go out there and grow yourself in a way that is appropriate for who you are as an individual.
Absolutely. And I’m cheering you on. You got this.
You got this.
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About Elizabeth Burke
Elizabeth Burke is a curious chef, a sporadic meditator, and a dedicated learning enthusiast. You’ll frequently find her out hiking or paddleboarding.
She has a passion for creating meaningful moments, which she’s honed through her extensive background in corporate events, public education, workshop facilitation, and UX Research. What truly ignites her spirit is providing the space for others to learn and establish shared meaning.
Currently, she’s thriving in her role as a UX Researcher, where she revels in uncovering insights to design a better world.