Pivoting in life and business can result in growth. The thing is, making decisions on it is challenging. Moreover, knowing the right time to make changes in our path is quite difficult. How can we be able to confront these uncertainties that lie ahead when we decide to pivot our directions to change?
In this episode, I talk with Mike Laezer, Founder of Astrology Wolf. We discuss how pivoting in business and life can lead to new paths and growth. With Mike’s experience, he highlights the importance of trusting your guts, intuition, and facing your fears to overcome problems ahead. Additionally, he points out to follow our intuition for career pivots, even if the path is unclear. Join us to learn how to pivot with the expert!
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Thriving Through Change in Business and Life Through Pivoting With Mike Lazear
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about pivoting, because what we all know about really building anything, whether it be founding a business or starting something else on your own, is that you need a little bit of stick-to-itiveness. You need to stick to it, you need to not give up right away, because it is not an issue of instant gratification as so and so our culture is right now. However, there are times when it does become time to pivot, whether you need to find a new way to promote your business, try a new business, or just try something new in general because the time has come to move on. And one of the challenges that we all have is when is it time to move on and when is it that you’re giving up too soon? Today, my guest is Mike Lazear. He is the founder of Astrology Wolf and also the founder of a business he recently sold, 515 Media, to talk a little bit about all the pivots he has made in life.
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Mike, welcome to the program.
Hi, thanks, Stephen. It’s good to be here.
It’s good to have you as well. Now, obviously, you’ve done a lot of pivoting in your life so let’s just start with your story from the beginning. When did you first decide that you wanted to found your own businesses as opposed to what I usually describe as living by the script?
Yeah, thanks, and it’s so funny because when I actually did start my first real legitimate business, I wasn’t even necessarily trying to do it. I had always wanted to before I went that direction in my life sort of live more independently and I had this whole thing of like if I could find a way to just have enough time to do as many creative projects as I could and not have to spend all my time earning a living and it felt like it was almost an obstacle or a problem to solve so that’s kind of what got me first into it. When I graduated from the University of Minnesota, I had a degree that didn’t really have a lot of translatable skills with the bachelor’s, I was a psychology graduate. So, I was always interested in programming, computer stuff, got into that. I took some courses at Portland State, mainly HTML, CSS, and I got a job out there working for a really great company called One Economy. They’re wonderful, but I don’t think they exist anymore.
Oh, that’s too bad.
The area where I worked, I don’t even remember exactly what happened but a bunch of us got laid off kind of at once and I had started kind of getting my own clients doing web development, doing frontend coding, CSS, HTML. This was back in the days too where CSS was kind of a newer thing and I was learning — when dev is a lot more complicated today. It certainly became that way. So it was sort of by accident. I just was getting so many clients that I was kind of frantically looking for another job and I’m like I’m actually making enough now where I can almost see this just continuing. Then I started thinking about my dream of not having to go to a nine-to-five and just do what everyone else is doing. I’m a pretty freedom-oriented person, like I like to have my space and creative freedom to do what I want to do in life, like I think a lot of probably members of your show feels that way. Before I knew it, I was getting more work than I knew what to do with and I started hiring help and I had a business but it was not quite as intentional as I wish I could claim at the time.
You talk about these creative projects that you wanted to do. So when this business started rolling, were you able to do these creative projects? Did it solve that initial problem in your head?
I thought it would. There’s this myth that when you own a business and you have all this free time, I’ll be able to do whatever I want, I can work a little bit in the morning and then have some tea and go golfing and go climbing but it really doesn’t work that way so I was very busy. So, I kind of kept going and going and trying to replace myself in the business by hiring developers and hiring designers and that was a big part of the process early on. But then I realized that was also creating more work for myself so this sort of elusive dream of having all the time in the world to travel and write and do game design and all the stuff that I’m excited about seemed just as elusive when I had my own businesses when I was working nine-to-five when I was in my 20s and so there’s this idea that we have that we can somehow create our way out of this through different types of structures of working, and I do think that if you get into business, you have a better shot at it, depending on what you do at creating that life where you have more space to be yourself but I learned a pretty hard lesson, actually, and that’s that there’s no automatic solution to it.
You have to kind of keep trying things and seeing what sticks. Click To TweetAt least that was the case for me.
Yeah, and it sounds like it’s a case with a lot of people as well in this world. We got so accustomed to instant gratification, post your Instagram photo, all of a sudden, you have 36 likes, 120 likes, whatever, however popular you are, and that dopamine in your head happens pretty instantly. But one of the things that, I think it’s Simon Sinek that points this out about how some of the most important things in life, establishing a career or establishing good relationships with people do not fall into the realm of instant gratification, they do not fall into the realm of that dopamine fix, you have to show up day in and day out, and in some cases, especially with figuring out these deep issues about how to live a life that truly aligned with who you are, it takes trying a few different things. And so you had that business and then you continued on trying some different things.
I did, yeah, and one of the most amazing things that’s happened to me recently is I’ve sort of come full circle and realized that, you talked about dopamine and the whole, oh, instant gratification, I think that I was almost trying to, with that business, create a solution to a problem that I saw in my life where, “Oh, I would only — I would feel good if only I had all the time in the world and be creative,” was sort of the message that I was telling myself subconsciously. But the reality was, it’s interesting, if you put the sort of love and energy into, like if I had put that into the business and treated that as sort of my creative flow and freedom, maybe I could have done more of the design myself and been proud of it and found a financial way to sell it rather than just outsource everything, so it was almost like I was trying to create more time and creative freedom for myself by not doing the creative stuff that — it was weird. I had kind of psyched myself out and thought that I was creating my own problems. To move forward, I think on that and what you were saying is, now, I have kind of come full circle. I sold my business last year. I started trying a number of different endeavors. I have some time that I bought for myself from the sale the business and now I’m doing — so Astrology Wolf is one of the biggest projects I’m working on. I’m actually an astrologer. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. My mom used to teach me how to read the stars when I was young, I was like seven years old. I think kids, their capacity for language learning is at its highest when they said when you’re seven, eight, nine or something so instead of me learning something useful like French, I learned astrology. Astrology is useful. But only lately, I’ve been like, I really enjoy, people have always kind of come to me for readings, it was a side hustle for a while and now I’m just really enjoying it, building Astrology Wolf out and offering, I’m going to be offering some courses and workshops coming up in the next few months and I give readings, I have regular clients. So that’s sort of a new endeavor. And the second thing I’ve been kind of getting more into is partnering on some design projects and this is where it’s kind of come full circle. I sold my business where I was running a company basically where we hired designers and developers in my web development business and now I’m actually finding myself drawn to trying some of it myself because I have a lot of design background and I’m enjoying it, like doing little side projects, and so what’s actually happened is I’m starting to — I’m like, wait, I’ve actually reached the point I always wanted to reach, I can do these different things, I can work at it, there’s work involved, and I didn’t need to create all this free time and space necessarily to do it, it was always right there. And so that sort of was the big lesson I think I’ve learned to this point.
Now, with creating this free time and space, was escaping the nine-to-five, the type of regimen which I know is becoming a little bit less prevalent now, especially post pandemic with some of these remote jobs, but was escaping that rigid “we expect you to punch in at this time, punch out at that time” work culture, is that still a necessary component in being able to live the life that you really want?
For me, yes, 100 percent. No question. I can say that pretty unequivocally because I, as an experiment, last year took a job for a brief period of time and it was kind of an experiment because I had been outside of that life for so long, I almost wanted to see what would happen if I worked as a project manager. Let’s see what happens. Then I learned very quickly that there was a good reason why I went and started my own business and wanted to go my own way. The regimentation, the need in that, your structure is created for you and I think a lot of people do this because it’s safe. It’s like, “Well, I have a paycheck, I know where my money is coming from, I know when I’m going to be, have food on the table,” all that.
It always does. And I guess for anyone watching, if you’re working a job that you’re not happy, it’s like how would I make things work, you’d be surprised what you’re capable. I was. So that’s just a thought that occurred to me.
And definitely most people are capable of more than they think they’re capable of, and especially with like withstanding, say, pain and uncertainty. One of the things I have been telling people, haven’t said this as much on this podcast, is that I feel like for the past maybe four or five decades, we’ve really been prioritizing comfort and convenience over everything else and people are starting to wonder where is life because you know you’re getting the same paycheck, you know you’re going to the same place every Tuesday, every Wednesday, blah, blah, blah, and on that routine, but what is human about that experience?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is very dehumanizing in some ways. And, to clarify, last year, the nine-to-five that I took as kind of an experiment, it was actually meant to be a temp position so I was very intentional about I didn’t want to do a bait and switch on my employer.
Yeah, exactly.
It was a temporary — yeah, and so, yeah, but it did teach me that it is very much the experience of having to be on call and I think the hardest thing for me was the stifling of the creative process. I remember going there and I found myself doing a lot of design as much as I was doing the project management and I was like I’m actually really enjoying the design piece. I remember doing this when I started my business, but they hired me to manage the projects and to do that kind of work, which is something I did a lot of my business and I didn’t enjoy it as much and so I felt like, oh, here’s some really nice UX mockups I can create for you for this project, they needed the help with that too, but it didn’t matter that that was sort of where I felt connected and I was providing value, they hired me for this, therefore, that’s what I was going to do, even though my direct supervisor, he was like, “Hey, I really wish that we could take more of your time for this but we’re contracted for a certain number of hours.”
So I think, first, you need to notice, personally notice what you’re enjoying, what you’re not enjoying, right? And get this idea in your head. And then, second, you need to actually kind of take action on it in some capacity. So what do you think prevents people from overcoming those two humps? Do you think there’s a lot of people who are so busy, so focused, their minds are always cluttered with so much that they’re not even noticing, “Hey, I enjoy this aspect of the job, I’m not really enjoying this,” or, “I need this in order to be at my best,” or do you think there’s a lot more people noticing that but then not feeling confident and not feeling comfortable or not even knowing what direction to go as far as fulfilling that need or acting upon that kind of revelation about themselves?
Yeah. I think what stops a lot of people — I mean, it’s a little cliché to say this but the fear component is real. I think that inside all of us, or at least most of us, there is an ability to create our own way or to — like if we’re doing something that we’re unhappy with professionally and it’s not working, it’s one thing if you’re kind of like, “Hey, I don’t know what else I would do, I have no idea what the other thing would be,” and that’s a different sort of issue, I think, but if there’s something calling to you, most of the time,
I think what defeats people is actually their own fear of just going Click To Tweetsure, money, I mean, financial realities we have to meet, but there are creative solutions to those problems, like doing things on the side with what little energy we might have left. I did a little bit of that too so I understand it’s not easy. The other thing I want to say, too, is expectation about being judged, like what are people going to think of me if — I didn’t even come out as an astrologer as something I did to most of my — a lot of my friends didn’t even know this is something I did because I was afraid of being judged for it, and I think in a similar sense, business, I got the message growing up from a lot of my teachers you need to get a job, you need a nine-to-five, you need a steady paycheck, all these sorts of messages I kept getting, it felt like, “Oh, if I wanted to strike out on my own, it’s unrealistic or I’m not taking care of myself,” so there’s a lot of social messaging there.
Yeah, and that makes sense. That fear of judgment is still quite prevalent and I feel like no matter — that’s something societally almost they’re like in the same predicament as like you trying to create time, the more we try as a society creating a world when no one’s judging, the more judgy people get.
Yeah. Oh, it’s absolutely true.
When we judge others, it's just a reflection on we're being hard on ourselves. Click To TweetI always think that. If I see someone and I feel like I’m being critical of someone else in my head, like, “Oh, why are they doing that?” I have learned to like, wait a sec, is this something I’m doing? And that actually is a really helpful process. You can kind of look at the areas in which you can sort of improve yourself and improve your life and I’m constantly on a quest for self-improvement for ways — I’m not perfect, I still miss a lot of this.
Oh, for sure, and then that’s a lesson I also had to learn too. There’s that saying that if you don’t like someone, it’s really you not liking a part of yourself or an aspect of yourself.
Yeah, very, very much so. You can always take some of it back to like something you’re doing and maybe you’re not even aware of it. If you say like, “Oh, you know, these people are cowards, they’re afraid that they’re not getting out of — that they could have a much better job or a life,” I’m like, well, okay, is that me? Could I be doing something —
The first wave is internal, I think, is the easiest way to summarize it, which is like if you want to change something about what’s around you, a lot of people focus on changing their surroundings, “I need a new job, I need to move to a new city, I need a new relationship, I need new friends, I need to escape this setting, that setting,” but, really, it’s going to come back to you until you kind of change the energy you’re presenting to the world, change the mindset that you’re coming to all your conversations and all your endeavors with.
Absolutely, yeah, and you’ll keep repeating the same broken patterns and relationships and jobs and everything until you — and I think personal growth is an underrated thing. It’s not selfish to be like, “Hey, I wanna better myself, I wanna —” because your output is going to improve with others, you’re going to create a better like — if you’re a better version of yourself, others will benefit. I believe that very strongly, actually. And so as soon as you stop growing, you’ll kind of get stagnant, you’ll sit in the same job over and over, you’ll go home, watch Matlock, you have a warm glass of milk and go to bed. That’ll be your life.
That’s a first on this show, referenced the show Matlock.
I never watched it, but, yeah, that was like the 80s.
I like an elevator pitch for my business a couple years ago when I was like still first working on it with a phrase like, okay, it’s great that you watched the whole season of Love Is Blind or something like that, like specific shows, but then being like, okay, is this really what you want out of your life? Like no character, no — at the time of recording, I know there’s a couple week lag with production at the time of recording, people thinking about who’s going to win the Oscars and all those trivia games, like “Who won the 1989 Oscar for blah, blah, blah?” and it’s like, okay, it’s great that you know that but has that really helped you build a life that you want? Unless you’re in showbiz, probably not.
Yeah, exactly. So many of us do it. So many of us are so I think conditioned to care about what others think of us rather than how can I share my gifts with the world, regardless of what I think other people think. It’s like a relationship we have with ourselves and with others really dictates a lot of this, I think. Worrying about what others think rather than doing what you’re called to do, because then you don’t have time to worry about you judge others so that’s what gets people stuck a lot of the time because they’re like, “Oh, I’ll be judged if I do this crazy, wild idea I have or try something new so I better just watch Love Is Blind and Matlock and whatever.” Nobody watches Matlock, but, yeah.
Well, and I know starting an astrology business is an area where you’re opening yourself up to judgment, probably not as much as it was like when you were seven and your mom was teaching you how to look at that stuff, but even now, there’s probably people that will say, your common phrases, “It’s not real science. It’s based on the geocentric universe model, blah, blah, blah,” so was kind of overcoming this idea, this fear of judgment, part of your process of pivoting from your previous business to the one that you’re launching now?
Absolutely, 100 percent. Yeah, and I’m still working on it. To be honest with you, the idea of getting on social media and posting that I’m an astrologer, it’s a coming out, almost, to me and going to be doing it in the next few days to week, we’ll see when the soft launch happens here, but big time yes, and I still struggle with it. I still am worried I’ll probably have some judgment. Astrology is amazing because, for me, it isn’t so much about like, oh, predictive, what’s going to happen, it’s an instrument that you can use for learning about yourself and others and also for asking a lot of questions about the decisions that you’re making in life and whether or not you’re living in best accordance to how you could, and whether or not it’s real or not isn’t what’s important, it’s an archetype or a blueprint for learning and so that’s kind of how I approach it. And if you believe that your Saturn transits and Pluto transits are taking things away, like making, maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it’s more just getting you to question what you could do better or ways in which you could show up for others in different ways in your life. And I think that we very, very much as humans create our own realities. If you believe in astrology, it becomes your reality. And if you believe in any major religion, yeah, so reality is very much what we create to a degree so that’s kind of a conversation I have with people who say, “Oh, does everyone believe in this or not?” But astrology is a wonderful tool to get us to connect with ourselves and others actually.
I saw on the website you created, you’re also talking about retreats and teaching people and teaching others how to look at their birth chart and teaching others about astrology in general.
So for retreats, I’m looking at doing one this summer, it’ll probably be somewhere in Colorado, where we’ll teach astrology to those who would like to learn it and also talk about different exercises you can do to better your life using astrological methods and also probably learn a little bit more about how the planets function. I might do a little astronomy in there too because I think it helps to actually have a visual representation of what you’re seeing and understand how it works. And then we’ll probably have a lot of fun, maybe we’ll do some, we’ll have a yoga instructor come in and we’ll have some nice healthy food and go hot springs, mountains, hiking. Colorado is great. It seems like a retreat friendly state.
Other than that, though, the plethora of places you can go.
Yeah. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, I’m really looking forward to it, just going to be that. And then I’ll also have online courses that you can take if you want to learn astrology on the site. So it’s all coming together slowly but probably by the time you’re listening to this, the site will be up and I’ll have an announcement as to when some of this stuff will be occurring.
Oh, nice. And then I admit that I’m pretty novice in astrology stuff. I do know my birth chart. In my birth chart, one of the things I have is my Mars is in Libra and so when I think about that, personally, I think that means that the thing I’m willing to fight for is balance. So my screen time initiative, reducing the amount of time people spend on social media is just fighting to get people back into balance, back into about — thrown off by this, I guess my question is, am I thinking about this properly? Thinking about what the planet is and what the sign is? Is that like kind of a really basic level way to like kind of look at your birth chart?
No, that’s actually really good. I give you kudos for that interpretation because I think that’s right on. Yeah, a person’s Mars in their birth chart is where their energy goes, Mars says, I act, like this is how I act and this is the way that I’m going to put myself out in the world and it can be aggressively, Mars, the planet, a bringer of war so this is where we go out and we face life head on, right? So, with Mars and Libra, you’re exactly right, you’re facing life in terms of how can I bring balance to the world, that’s how I act in the world, so how can I help others create balance. You’re trying to look for balance in your own life and so you’re sharing that with others, because it’s Mars. Mars and Libra actually are a little bit antithetical in energy so, sometimes, maybe it means it hasn’t always been easy for you to use that energy, is what I would say. And then you look at other aspects in the birth chart to Mars, like, do you have aspects to other planets? What signs are your other planets in? You can look at — what house does it occur in? There’s all kinds of things to learn.
Yeah, I just know I’m like Sagittarius, but Aries ascendant and then Mercury in Capricorn, which I know creates a very scattered existence.
Did you say Sagittarius sun and Scorpio moon, is that what you —
Yeah, yeah.
That’s me too, actually.
Oh, really?
We’re the same sun and moon sign. Yeah, I’m not even kidding.
Oh, my gosh, that is —
That’s really cool. That’s a first fear show right there, yeah. Now I got to do your chart. That’s really cool. Yeah.
Yeah. I have my chart on my phone but then like I get other things like north node and Lilith and all these things that like I don’t understand to dive into it as well as like what is sextile and a trine, like there’s a lot to dive into.
Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a huge — astrology, and this isn’t to knock on tarot because tarot is really fascinating in its own way. Tarot is a little bit more accessible early on. You learn the cards and kind of the interactions and the different spreads and you’re pretty good. Again, not to knock on tarot, there’s some really great tarot readers. But with astrology, you could study for a very long time and not learn everything there is to learn and the interactions so it’s a big undertaking, so it can be a little overwhelming if you’re learning and you’re like, “Wait, what is this? What’s Lilith do? What is that? I’ve never heard of this.” It’s a little overwhelming.
Yeah, and then, of course, the Pluto is still a planet, Pluto’s not a planet to date.
Don’t even get me started. I actually just did a YouTube video, I talked about that. Pluto is, in astrological speak, we treat it as a planet, whether it’s a dwarf planet, I don’t know what that is, but, yeah.
Obviously, you went from a field that was previous business very, very technical, web design, to something that’s a very different nature, astrology. What has been the range of reactions that you’ve received from people when talking about it? Does it confuse people?
So the people that know me really well, it doesn’t surprise them at all. I’m kind of one of these people that’s interested in lots of different things. I have a lot of hobbies and interests and I kind of — I guess my idol is Leonardo da Vinci, the renaissance person. Not to say I’m anywhere as accomplished or will ever be as he was, I doubt that, but it doesn’t surprise people who know me well. There are some people I can think of that I haven’t actually come out and told, “Oh, yeah, this is what I’m doing,” that might be a little bit shocked, like, “Wait, what? Really?” I could see that reaction and that’ll be actually kind of fun, like I’ll just play with it.
And given that your journey with astrology starts with your mother when you were seven years old, what’s her reaction been?
Oh, she’s so happy. She loves it. She’s loving this. We’re talking astrology all the time now and she’s so good, she’ll still say stuff that, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think about it from that perspective or that way,” and I think my mom, and I don’t want to speak for her here, there was a part of her that maybe wanted to get more into doing this more in this way but I think that she just enjoyed it for astrology’s sake and didn’t really feel the need to actually put it out there in the same way and that’s totally cool. I learned so much from her. And I still do.
Oddly enough, one of the things I’ve said living here in Denver is that the astrology has actually become one of the safest topics for me to bring up in a lot of different settings because a lot of the other religions people have some like bad childhood memories of it, not to knock them, I think there’s so many great things about them but like, “Oh, you know, my parents made me go to church every week,” and everything like that and you don’t hear these traumatic stories of like, “Well, my parents made me do a full moon ritual every month and it just really destroyed me,” you know?
Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s like, oh, those toxic astrology circles and now I’ve trauma and I’m just — you don’t hear that. Yeah, and I think I’m — and, yeah, I’m not trying to knock other religions when I say this, religious trauma is a real thing and I think that there’s a lot of religion and political overlap that happens where it’s used as an excuse to sort of get people behind it, I don’t want to use the word “cult” or name any religions, but there’s a lot of that out there. Astrology is very safe in that way. Like if the world was run by astrologers and we’re voting people in the office based on their sun sign, maybe we’d have a different conversation but I don’t think that’s going on.
Well, you know, America has a crisis every time Uranus goes into Gemini so vote this person into this.
Yeah. Well, we are having a Pluto return in America so we actually are kind of going through a little bit of a crisis, as you can see.
Yeah. It’s been a strange time, not to get anything into some potentially divisive political issues because I know there’s a lot of people out there that feel different ways and we all have like our reasons for feeling one way or the other. But, yeah, like it is like an identity crisis of like, “Who are we? What does our history mean? What does our place in the world mean? And what do we want to be going forward?” and I hope we come out of it stronger, because I’ve watched some videos on YouTube that talks about Pluto returns for different countries and sometimes they come out stronger but sometimes the nation or empire is destroyed too.
Yep. There seems to be the 250-year itch or whatever they call it for countries where it’s sort of make or break time. You’re presented with all the issues that you’ve swept under the rug and not dealt with as a country and then they come out, sort of like “draining the swamp” or whatever terms you want to use. Again, I’m not making claims politically one way or the other, but the idea is Pluto’s energy is all about letting go of and cleaning out whatever isn’t working and so, at that point in a country’s history, you have your Pluto return and that says, “Wait a second, this wasn’t working and it’s now come to a head and we have to deal with it or we’re going to break apart,” and some countries survive it and some don’t. And so, democracy itself is a concept in the US but a lot of people talk about that as being the threat and there’s all kinds of things to consider here.
We’re kind of in the middle of a transit there where it’s like I always think about Pluto entering Capricorn back in 2008 and that was like institutions, that’s when the banks collapsed, that’s when we realized all that’s happening. Now, it’s going into Aquarius and the first thing I think of is sweeping under the rug of like how our technology has impacted our mental health and stuff like that, the themes and how those will play out over the course of the next decade.
You could be in Australia, you’ve got this down already, I can say that’s the second time — like, actually, that’s a good point that we have to deal with the ramifications of this technology and Pluto going into Aquarius. I think with Capricorn, you had an energy that was very much achievement oriented, let’s make money, let’s find ways to do business, it was very much a financial kind of thing. Capricorn is about achievement, climbing status, doing well, “I’m building an empire.” These days with Pluto going into Capricorn, and we have to let that go and if you’re trying to build an empire just for the money and it’s not more of a humanitarian or for the greater good energy, like Aquarius, it’s not going to work. We have to start thinking more about what’s good for everybody and humanity. Otherwise, it’s going to — this is a very critical time in the world. And so I really liked what you tied into it, though, with the technology and how it’s time to sort of question some of this stuff.
With this recent pivot, what prompted you to sell your business? What prompted you to look into doing an astrology business? Was there something that let you know, “Okay, now is the time to pivot, now is the time to start thinking about something different,” experimenting with things even with that full-time job experiment for — or the temp job one?
It was pretty much 100 percent intuition, to be honest with you. I had a hard time letting it go. I had been playing with it for over a year at the time but I couldn’t see any logical way, reason to do it, I just knew that I felt unfulfilled. I felt like I had created something that wasn’t coming from me exactly, it was more coming from this desire to be free to have all the creative time I wanted to but instead I had kind of made that difficult because I wasn’t doing those things, I was just running this business. I didn’t know what was next. I didn’t know Astrology Wolf was going to be a next thing. I had some other ideas, things that I wanted to do at the time. But when I did make the decision to let it go and said, “All right, I don’t know exactly where this is gonna go next, I just know that I want to feel connected with whatever I do next,” because I ran that business for 14, 15 years so it was a lot of — it was a big decision, for sure, when I didn’t really have a full plan on the other side. I just trusted that it was time intuitively to let go and I would not change that decision today. Absolutely not. In fact, I’m really excited about all the things that are coming. I took some time to get here. It was a little scary for the first few months, I’ll be honest.
Well, for sure, it sounds scary. And was there a delay between when you first started noticing these feelings of like, “I feel like this isn’t really me. This is me just doing what I thought I had to do to get the freedom that I want,” and then actually started doing anything, saying, “Okay, this has gone on long enough. I’m gonna sell the business, I’m gonna start experimenting with some other things, go back to the drawing board”?
Yeah, there was a delay of about a — it was a little over a year when I first started getting those feelings to when I actually did it. I had a couple of times where I was like maybe I should close this and then I couldn’t do it, I was like, well, I’m making money, all these things and then I started thinking more in terms of, well, if I did, maybe I could make more than if I held on to it and I could have this base — it started becoming more of a positive thing for me towards the end of the year and I eventually told my main project manager on my team that I was going to be doing it and, at that point, I knew there was no going back. But, yeah, there was definitely that period of a year. Pivoting is hard. You’re not sure if you’re going to be making the right decision.
The thing we fear the most, I think, is that we're going to regret our decisions. Click To TweetIn the course of my life, when I’ve made a decision like that from my intuition, and that’s different than making a decision just based on what I want, instant gratification in the moment, those are two different things, recognizing the difference is hard, but every time I’ve done that, I’ve never regretted it. I just trusted that that would work. And so far, so good.
Well, I think what’s on a lot of people’s minds now is how do you know when it’s your intuition? Because our minds get so cluttered and you could act from whether it be like an instant one or an instant one to escape something, like, “Oh, my God, my boss was mean to me, I wanna quit my job now,” type of thing. How do you recognize that this is indeed your intuition as opposed to just some reaction?
I wish I was better at that myself. That’s something I’ve been asking myself a lot of my life, especially in recent years. I think the closest kind of guests I have is does it elicit an emotional reaction versus not? And this is a little tricky because if you’re reacting to something, like, “Oh, I’m miserable,” or, “Oh, I feel this in the moment,” then that’s different than intuition. Emotion is something we all do to kind of teach us like how something is affecting us over a long period of time. If it adds up, maybe it adds to our intuition, but there’s some kind of inner guide that we all have that shows us what our path is. I don’t know how to explain how we access it but if it’s like a flash and it just comes into your head and that’s almost like this feels right and it goes away, that’s sort of what I listen to, those bit of flashes, like where are these coming from? It’s so hard to put into words with this but that’s intuition. And I think the way that I probably would summarize this is when people say we should make decisions from our — should you make a decision from your head or your heart? I’ll always say neither. You make your decisions from your intuition. Your head is supposed to make — it’s supposed to come up with ways that you can follow your intuition so you actually do the logical progression, and your heart is meant to enjoy the ride. That’s kind of what I always —
Nice, yeah. And so people can get out of balance between head and heart in that other way but not in the way that we’re thinking.
Exactly. If my intuition is calling me to be an astrologer, my head is saying, “Okay, I need a website, I need social media. How much can I live on?” Those logical questions. And then the heart is there, like, “How am I enjoying this? How does it make me feel? Can I connect with other people and make that feel good for them too?”
But the intuition drives our decision making process. Click To TweetI think. I don’t know. I’m just making this up as we go along.
Well, I want to thank you for helping me out with one particular question because, oftentimes in life, you’ll hear people use the phrase, “It’s easier said than done,” and whenever I hear that phrase, I always think what is something that’s easier done than said? And I think following your intuition is a great example. When we say like, okay, you do it, you follow your intuition, but it’s hard to really describe it, it’s hard to write a book on it or anything like that and say, “Here are the instructions on following your intuition.”
Yeah, that’s really cool. I love that. I actually have to remember that one. Yeah. How do you describe intuition? But doing it, going after it is like, yeah, once you learn to do it, that’s a really good point.
When someone has said something along the lines like, “You’re in your head too much,” which I think is heard more than, “You’re in your heart too much,” even though it’s possible that some people are not thinking things through, I guess it’s usually said, “You’re not thinking things through,” it’s just two different ways people say it. But when people say that, it’s really how that stuff is getting in the way of your intuition, so if you’re in your head too much, it’s like I have this intuition but then your brain or something about your surroundings is talking you out of your intuition and your brain is saying, “Well, these are the 50,000 things that could possibly go wrong if you try to do this, how are you going to be judged, even,” kind of like what you were saying before, or, “What if it doesn’t work?” all these other insecurities as your head is kind of getting a little bit in the way of that intuition, as opposed to working with your intuition, as you mentioned. The head’s going to say, “Okay, how do I make it happen?”
Yeah, absolutely. That’s really cool. Because like the head is almost doing a disservice to your intuition in that way. When you’re pivoting and making big decisions in your life, if you follow your intuition, sometimes your intuition leads you in a direction you don’t end up going and that’s okay. Maybe that was part of the process that helped your learning cycle. But your head is going to try to stop the whole process and go, “You don’t wanna do this. You’re not gonna make any money with this. You look stupid when you go on social media,” all these things went through my head, they still do, and so that’s a really good point. It’s not like if you just follow your intuitive nature and ignore your head entirely, I don’t think it’s possible to do that because our intuition comes from experience too that we’ve had so the things that we do and store in our head, financial and all that. I think they inform our intuition so we do use our heads naturally when we’re making these decisions.
So how much of it was also kind of our societal conditioning that you kind of briefly brought up? I always reference our education system and how from kindergarten through grad school and everything in between, you’re pretty much drilled into your head wait for someone to tell you what to do, do it, and then wait for that person to judge it, grade it, and adjust accordingly, right? So, how much of it as far as getting our heads to really inform our intuitions properly is breaking some of this conditioning?
Oh, it’s immense. In our heads, as adults, we’re still subconsciously trying to get an A. I think the education system needs a complete overhaul and I don’t have — yeah, but we are absolutely trained rather than taught and those are two very different things. I think especially younger kids. I’m not a teacher, but have teacher friends and people in my life who have told me stories that, you know, what is this? I think like, actually, the whole structure of our elementary school and even middle school in the United States comes from post-World War Two, how do we get people to join the military industrial complex and become good factory workers? Actually, real learning isn’t what it’s about, it’s about making sure that you can follow directions and so, yeah, it’s difficult to untrain from that.
Yeah, wasn’t it like Rockefeller when designing the system that said, “I want a nation of workers, not a nation of thinkers”?
Exactly, yeah. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with that. And we’re still doing it for some reason. It’s very hard for humanity to move on from what’s safe. I mean, we hold ourselves back in so many ways and it bugs me but we can only do as individuals to the degree that we can do and try to live our truth.
The more we live our truth and just go after what feels right to us and not worry about judgment, the more we're fighting against that system. Click To TweetIt’s one thing to like rail against education, it’s like, “Oh, this needs to be changed, we need reform,” but then it’s another to just live your life being your authentic self and undo the training that was done to you, not worrying about what others think so much, because then that’s the best way you can fight it. If we all do that, it can’t win. Now, obviously, that’s very idealistic of me to say but it works.
Our systems will eventually reflect the changes that we’re all kind of making as individuals if we can overcome, and I think this goes to like anyone out there listening, thinking about pivoting or thinking about moving on, thinking about doing their own thing, the question is like, “How am I going to be judged?” Well, maybe you don’t worry so much about that, maybe what you really need to be worried about is how do I just execute this properly because almost every business idea sounds weird when it’s originally an idea, but then once it becomes something that people actually want to be part of, no one’s asking those questions anymore.
Absolutely. It is 100 percent, yeah. And you will be judged, people will judge you and they won’t say it to you and that’s usually — it’s 100 percent a reflection on them and not on you. It has nothing to do with what you’re doing, ever. And the more that I and others keep that in their head, the more their paths become clear. And it’s money that someone’s worried about. I mean, I never thought, when I was a college grad, that I would be able to make a living totally running my own business for 15 years, 100 percent. I mean, I went into it with no savings. I was eating ramen in 2009 and watching YouTube videos at four in the morning to learn how to like fix menu bar issues in Internet Explorer 6 and I worked hard but you could do it. It’s possible. So if someone’s saying to you, “Don’t, be safe, get a paycheck,” and all this, “The economy’s bad,” and all that and it doesn’t feel intuitively right to you, just who cares what they think?
They’re saying it but this is your life, this is your life path, you’re the one experiencing whatever you’re experiencing day to day, whatever choices that you make, so make them yours and make them what you desire based on understanding who you are.
Exactly. That’s summed up really well. It’s about owning yourself and owning your own power. Deep down, that’s what this life is. I think, I don’t know. I’m not trying to say this is how you have to live.
Oh, that’s a wonderful message. Mike, thank you so much for joining us, telling your story about understanding who you are, following your intuition, and letting it guide you as far as when to when to pivot, when to try something new, and continuing to try new things even in the face of some potential judgment.
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Stephen. It’s great to be on today and, yeah, appreciate it.
And I’d like to also thank all the listeners out there for tuning in to Action’s Antidotes, kind of just keep encouraging you to be inspired by stories and live according to your truth and following your path.
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About Mike Lazear
Mike Lazear is a serial entrepreneur, having run a variety of businesses in freelance design, calligraphy, relationship coaching, and event coordination over the last two decades. He also founded a successful web development and marketing agency, which he ran for 15 years. His team has worked with hundreds of clients across the globe to build lucrative web applications. Mike recently sold this business to focus on a more human-centered endeavor, dedicating himself to Astrology Wolf.
Mike has been an Astrologer, reading birth-charts, transits and progressions for individuals, couples, and groups since he was 10 years old! He reads in the traditional western-style and studied the books and readings Robert Hand, Liz Greene and other classical Astrologers. He is excited about the direction of Astrology Wolf and would enjoy giving you a reading.