Episode 31 - Overcoming Emotional Barriers for Better Career Decisions

Welcome to the Women's Career Mastery Podcast, the show that's dedicated to empowering women to redefine success and break through barriers. I'm your host, Christine, and my co-host, Laura, along with our amazing guests and experts. We are here to shatter the myths that has been hindering women's careers.

Women's career fulfillment for far too long. So, if you're ready to master your career and take your life to the next level, join us in our journey together. The Women's Career Mastery podcast starts now.

Hello listeners. I'm so excited about today's episode because we are diving into something that doesn't get nearly enough attention. The emotional side of our careers. We often focus on skills and strategy, but what about the feelings that actually drive our decisions?  Well, that exactly what we are exploring today.   Our special guest shares how she learned to tune into her emotions, break through limiting beliefs and create a career that truly fulfills her. We'll also dig into what companies can do to support their people on a deeper level, plus some eye opening tips on how to use your emotions as fuel for your personal and professional growth. This episode is packed with deep engaging conversation and valuable insights. Without further ado. I hand it over to my cohost, Laura. 

Hi, listeners. It's great to be back for another episode of the Women's Career Mastery podcast. Our guest is Sarah Bell. Sarah is a transformation and empowerment coach and an accomplished registered nurse with over three decades of dedicated service in healthcare.

Her journey spans various roles, from nurse aide to vice president of education, and her story is a powerful one, which has led her to the work she does today. Sarah is now guiding women and fellow healthcare professionals towards healthier, more fulfilling lives. She offers invaluable insights and support.

Helping them break free from limiting beliefs and achieving greater balance and overall wellbeing, Sarah's colleagues and peers describe her as attentive, insightful, and forthright. She's also known for her honesty, authenticity, open mindedness, curiosity, fun, and she puts a lot of energy into everything she does.

I met Sarah through LinkedIn. She posted an article titled breaking free from putting others first, why you don't have to do it alone. And then I immediately contacted her and wanted to know more. And I think you all will too. So, let's get started. Sarah, we're super excited to have you join us on the podcast.

Perhaps you can get started by sharing why you wanted to join us.

Well, hi, Laura. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I wanted to join you. I love your podcast, and I wish it had been around when I was struggling in my career and trying to figure out why I wasn't as happy and as fulfilled as I was. And now that I have been on my learning journey.

I love to talk about the emotional aspect of decision making and how emotions hold us women back from making the decisions we need to make to support ourselves. 80 percent of our decisions are emotionally driven, and we think we're thinking with our minds and we're thinking with our emotions a lot of the time.

I want to share that. Yeah. OMG, this is going to be a powerful discussion. So, Sarah, maybe you could start by telling us a little bit about your story.

Yeah, it's a long story. I started out as a nurse's aide many years ago. I didn't graduate from high school, and so this was a position I could get.

But now I realize my tendency to “people please” was always being pulling me in the direction of helping and serving others, because I felt like that was what was going to make other people happy and make me acceptable. And all of the stuff that goes with people pleasing. And I crafted out an amazing career.

I graduated from nursing school in London back in 1992. I transitioned to Texas. I finally ended up as vice president of education for a large healthcare organization. And I was still not happy. I kept thinking every career progression was what I needed to feel like I've succeeded and could be happy.

And I truly wasn't because I was always looking for external validation as to whether I was good enough or doing enough. And eventually I woke up one morning. And it was like a kind of spiritual experience. This voice in my head was, what the fuck are you doing? You need to get out of there. And it was like, oh my gosh, that very, very day I asked my supervisor, are you going to use me in the capacity that I'd love to be utilized?

I'd been coaching for a while, and they were tailoring that off. And he said, no. I don't know where my voice came from. I had never, ever found my voice before. He said, I'll find you another job. He found me another job. And I said, this is a job I already turned down because it's not what I want to do.

And he found me another job. Eventually I managed to get a nice exit strategy, shall we say? And I exited the organization, and I was terrified because I was on an excellent salary, you know, life was good, and I just left and started creating my business. And so here I am today and what I've learned through that journey, fear is part of guilt.

It's part of me, shame is part of me, and all of those things were the things that kept me in a career that wasn't right for me. And now I get to choose and decide, and I still experience those emotions, but now I understand where they're coming from, and I can talk to them, and I can talk to myself and keep myself forward.

That's a very beautiful hero journey story, Sarah, and now I'm sure you have tons of wisdom and insights to share with our audience. And I will ask you the first questions, knowing what, you know, now, if you go back to who you were before. You know, really doing well, serving others, doing well with your careers, but unsatisfied.

What would you tell her? Oh, wow. I would tell her to pause. And stop focusing on what other people want you to do, what other people think you should be doing and letting other people tell you whether you were being good enough or doing enough because our pay was associated. You're rewarded for how good you do your job if you get your bonus.

At the end of the day, money is necessary, and we love money, and I love money. Don't get me wrong. It's not money that is fulfilling and rewarding. So, I would tell my younger self, take a pause and start looking around and getting in touch with your feelings about what you do on a day-to-day basis that brings you joy.

It could be chatting with your friends, helping a friend solve a problem. It could be anything. It doesn't have to be big, but really get in touch with how you feel doing different things and you're going to find the clues to what. You're going to be passionate about and it could be all the way back to your childhood things you loved doing as a child That could be a clue for you

So, Sarah the story resonates with me. Like I think I've gone through very similar path in you know following the corporate plan, working my way up through the corporation from a new hire employee working on projects all the way up to a vice president. And while it was thrilling and challenging and I learned a lot, and I probably wouldn't change that if I really think about it. It afforded me a lot of things in my life, but if I knew just.

Throughout that experience, if I had the opportunity to think about what is it that I really want, what I could bring to the table, and not just follow the path that was put out for me, I probably could have done so much more. Like, I really, I think I could have achieved even more in a way that was meant for me to achieve, right?

Not just meeting whatever corporate expectations. So, there's something in there too, like it's not a this or that, I think it could be more, like it could even be more, right? Even if you are in the right field, but maybe there's a little something more that you could add or change that would enable someone to go even further to achieve their potential.

You know, I love to go deep into this because, I'm pretty sure there's so many books, there's so many articles, blog posts of people saying, oh, this is the tips to get out of it. You know, take some pause, but I want to go deep into it because I've been also, reflecting on why is we are so stressed out at work?

Why we are overwhelmed. And I believe the reason why is we used to, utilize fear to keep up moving forward. So then without fear, how can we motivate ourselves? So then this has become like a vicious cycle where we are living in fear so that we can be successful. And in fear usually there's no options, right?

Like you have to do one thing or not. There's, there's no other, there's no pause. We cannot pause because it's so scary. If we pause, then what will happen? And I like to ask you, Sarah, what is the cost of all of this? the emotional things that we were not able to face or like reluctant to face.

And then how can we, or at least from your experience, how do you deal with it? Like, when that feeling, between like, oh yeah, I want to pause because I know it's right for me, I need to rest, or I need to think about other options, but you know, then I have to pay the bills, I have to do this, and there's this, and there's that, and what people think, like, when we are right in the middle of thinking, or making, like you mentioned about making decisions, making decisions., what is happening at that time? How we end up not listening to our feelings and how can we overcome it?

Yeah. Well, we are listening to our feelings, but we're listening to the, the fear feeling. Right. And a lot of those thoughts that are going around and around and around in our minds are not thoughts that we are consciously creating.

These are the old messages we've learned throughout life. So, every single one of those things at some point in your life was important. So maybe when you were younger, and you just graduated school and you're now living on your own and you have rent to pay. Yes, this is a new experience for you, so you're telling yourself, I must remember to pay my rent.

I must remember to pay my rent. 20 years later, that your mind is still saying, did you pay your rent? Did you pay your rent? But you've added other things that you have to do on top of it. So, a lot of the things that we think we've got to get done, we need to explore why is it so urgent? Does it need to be done?

Does it need to be done now? Does it need to be done by me? Is there somebody else that could, do it? That we've programmed or been programmed to continue the same habits, same habitual behaviors throughout life because they served us at some point and our mind registered that as, that's a good thing to do.

I paid my rent. I feel safe. So, every month your mind keeps reminding you of all of those things that you need to do. And many of them you may not need to do, but you've never questioned. Or, or even like from a career planning perspective, things that you might be thinking of planning at the beginning of a career, just coming out of college may be different than what you need 20 years into a career, right?

But to your point, I'm still thinking about all of it. 20 years’ worth of all the things that I need, and I really should take some inventory on that. Yeah, you're not the same person 20 years later, but I'm sure, Laura, you have people coming to you saying, I need a resume. Is my resume good?

I need a resume. But it's not that you don't need one. However, it might not be the most important thing for a veteran to have this polished resume. It might be more important for this veteran to step into that and embody their selves and their empowerment and be confident in what they bring. They see themselves as a valuable resource that you need me more than I need you.

Like you said, if we're still operating, like we just got out of school and we're trying to prove ourselves, we're operating on old behaviors. You know what I found interesting is like, I think there is a different kind of focus. And then if we focus the same thing throughout our life, sometimes we feel like we lost.

And those like in the beginning, usually we look outside. Like I, graduated. I want to have a good career, big salary. I want to move up through my career. That's totally fine, right? Because it's like you are going out to the world. And then after a while, you kind of asked yourself, is this it?

Like, what is my value? What is my purpose? What is important for me? And if we do not allow ourselves to Inside to look back, then we get lost because the only way we can see is outside. But I think what you're saying is, as we grow older, as we more mature, we have a different kind of needs and that needs sometimes to go back to see what is important to us.

Absolutely. 100%. And I love that because that is , part of my journey. What do I need to do to be successful? I need money. I need a good job. I need a good education. And part of that is messages that have been given to us also by our parents and our teachers. So, we never got the opportunity as kids to explore, do I want to take the traditional path?

We kind of get encouraged to, and my son's a high school senior and I see it right now. Everybody's like picking their schools and things. And we get on the track and I kind of think of it as a hamster wheel. Now we're on, how do you get off? How do you get off that hamster wheel? Because you've built your life around a career.

However, if you don't stop and, and ask yourself, what now and what's best for me, and this is kind of a change of mindset, right? Because we're always looking at what does the business need? What does the company need? What do my family need? And stopping and going, well, what is best for me? You're not going to create it unless you start asking yourself those questions.

And then all the emotions come up, the guilt, the fear and all of that. And it keeps us going on that hamster wheel. Now is not a good time. Well, if now, when? When is going to be a good time? Because those emotions are still going to be there every time you try. So, learning to understand the emotions and work with them is going to help you change your life and you don't have to do it all at once.

You might even stay in the same job, but you change the way you look at that job, or you change the way you show up in your job and put it in a way that's you're more passionate about. What I'm kind of sensing and feeling from the conversation is theirs, that breaking free, like back to the article, right?

I'm breaking free of the expectations on whatever it is, the career path, the company. I'm not saying, you know, goodbye company. I'm just saying like, I need to somehow realize that I don't need to follow the company path 100 percent and please all my managers and my bosses and make sure that I tow that line if I don't want to, if it's not really aligned with my purpose.

And on the other side, I need to face some of my fears and push past that. If I'm stuck in this kind of feeling, and I know what the feeling's like. I've been there, like, You're, you're, you're pushed, like, you're like, you want to stay, you want to keep doing a good job. You want the great performance.

You want the raise; you want the promotion. We do all that stuff and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a track that a lot of people follow, and I did as well. But then there's like, this little tap that you have that says, you know what, you should maybe be exploring a new skill, or maybe you should be trying something different, but you just don't do it.

You don't take the time to do it. You don't think about it. So, I'm feeling like there's a push pull in there a little bit. Yeah. And the other part of that, there is a push pull because the other part of that is oftentimes. We're not even speaking up and asking for what we want at work. So, what happened with me was I was going to leave, and I went to coaching school and I'm like, whoa, I love all this coaching.

This is what I need to do. So, I stayed in my job while I, you know, while I was working through coaching school before I graduated, and I was asking people. Will you let me be your coach because I need the experience in my mind. I was going to be leaving, but actually I stayed for another seven years. I got recognized and got transitioned into a different division that needed and required coaching.

And that served me very well for seven years. It was only when they wanted to put me back in my, old role that I'm like, just not doing this. I found what I'm passionate about and I'm not doing it. Had I not spoke up and said, I like coaching, and I want to coach and here's how I think it serves the organization, that wouldn't have happened.

I never used to speak up for anything. I used to be afraid to speak up in case I got into trouble, or they didn't like it, or they thought I was stupid. That was the worst one for me. They'll think I'm just stupid. You know, it's very interesting story. I think we all can relate to that. And I just want to kind of bring up the essence of what you saying.

So, listeners, first of all, explore. That's what Sarah did explore what she likes. So, she likes coaching and our story pretty similar. I was coaching too, and I did it, in my job. And then I left, so it's kind of. Exploring what you like there should not be a right or wrong mentality.

Just try a little bit. Go explore, take a course, or do something you don't have to leave your job and enjoy it. And then from there, because then actually what you did, Sarah, you listen to you, you speak up and you listen to yourself. And as, we are trying this and that, we listen to ourselves, then the next step is speaking up like, hey, you know, this is what I like.

Can I do this and that? And that will open up another door. And that way, it's not like , I need to be an entrepreneur. I need to change the career. I just need to shift a little bit and talk and speak up. And then there's another way. And then that may take you seven years to go to another, that's their journey.

It's not left or right. It could be just like one degree change. And then, that would lead you into something else. And that's something else would lead you into something else. Yeah, that's the things that I heard. Thank you. And that brings more joy to life, to work.

When you bring in those things that you really like, like Sarah was saying, like take stock of the things that you do enjoy doing and maybe they can manifest into your work as well. I Was often not the favorite nurse anyway, because I was always the one who would sit with a patient and listen, and nurses are super busy. They don't have a lot of time to sit and listen to patients, but for some reason, I, felt that that was important and so oftentimes I wasn't the most popular nurse on the team because I was not like contributing in a physical way and getting the tasks done I didn't realize that that was part of who I was but later on in life.

I went oh that's why I didn't care about the numbers, the lab values. I was like, I can't remember what they're supposed to be I'll have to go look at a chart other nurses could just reel them off I could not, I couldn't remember them, they just weren't that important to me. But the people, their faces, what they were going through fascinated me.

But I didn't realize that was a skill that, I had that served me in the end. Yeah. Connects directly to your coaching. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also, this is something I found very interesting, and I felt it, and I had a negative experience at work as well. You know, in business setting, of course, you need to be a certain way in order to support the objective or the business goal.

So, for you, Sarah, who care about people, it's probably not a good performance for, productivity about times, right? And we forget that sometimes we think, oh, my God, like I'm not performing, I'm not good, but that's not who we are.

We cannot be measured in one category. Because then. We miss our inner genius. We miss the gift. Like, Sarah, your gift is sitting with someone and really listening to them. And you become a coach and that's where your gifts shine. That's where you can serve other in your best way.

In a very like, puzzle piece thing, sometimes we cannot see that. So, I like what you share because can we see ourselves like all the goodness that we have, not just according to, the business, criteria, but to us as a person and how can we relate and serve others in a way that is fulfilling us, not draining us.

Some of this goes back to our programming again, when you've been raised and rewarded for something as a child or, a young adult, you're like, this is what I need to do. So, we're looking for that external validation. And unfortunately, some people had less than pleasant childhoods and upbringings.

And so, they know what not to do to get into trouble. Well, those things may not have gotten them into trouble if they were in a different family. It's other people's rules that you learn to operate by. And we never get to create our own rules. And most people are good people. Even if you think you're a bad person because you were always in trouble in school or something.

No, you weren't. You weren't a bad person. You were different and you wanted to do things that maybe were not part of the curriculum. Does not make you a bad person. But we get these beliefs about ourselves. The limiting beliefs that we have about our own selves, and we don't want to be shamed. We don't want to be humiliated.

We want to be praised. Humans like to be liked. We do like to be liked. And so, yeah, it's all part of that pattern. Yeah, totally. What, what do you think, an organization can do to support employees or women in general in this space? Like, how do we open up the aperture for people to be able to speak up?

Like what are some things maybe we could try? I'm thinking like maybe we need a category on the performance review that says, how am I as a human? Like, Do I, do I communicate properly with people? Like, am I, do I have good relationships or my social skills? I don't know. Like, how do we start to help corporations to make it better for people at work?

So, we're not suffering from these things. Yeah, well, I think Christine really touched on that earlier on when she was talking about the fear of, when you're an employee, and I think that comes from the old leadership style of command control. We're going to tell you what to do, how to do it, then we're going to tell you how good you are at doing it.

And so that builds a lot of fear. It doesn't actually build the best performance, but that's another discussion. So, when you change the leadership style to be more shared leadership, when you start asking people, hey, what ideas do you, have you had and what's the saying I learned? Most ideas are not great ideas, but one idea is going to be a great idea.

And so encouraging people to come out with these stupid ideas, right? Let's have a meeting and let's talk about this. Let's have some fun with it. Let's get all of the ideas out, the dumb ones. It doesn't matter because you know what, Laura, you could have something that you think is a dumb idea and its actually genius.

It's genius, but you've told yourself my ideas are dumb, so you don't share them.

True. Yeah. That's definitely true. You know, it's also made me think, I think. It needs both sides, right? The organization, the leadership, but also ourselves. Can you imagine when you say that I can kind of see myself doing the same thing too. I call myself dumb, like we call ourselves, oh my I am dumb and I'm not good.

Like how much critical and dumbing down thing that we do to ourselves that is so mean and so bad and I think we need to start seeing what we are doing to ourselves and start listening. Start like you said about pause and listen, what is the voice that we tell ourselves?

Like what kind of tone, we talk to ourselves? And I think that thing about, listening to our feelings, start from there because otherwise we don't listen because we just so mean to ourselves. We have a habit of suppressing our feelings and that causes so much damage. I think it's Dr. David Hawkins wrote a book called “Letting Go” and I found it fascinating, and you express, suppress,  or repress your emotions. Well, in many work environments, expressing your emotions in the moment is not gonna be, helpful, shall we say, to you, especially if they're anger or something like that.

So, it makes sense to suppress them in the moment, but what we often do then is we just get about life. And we don't address it. So that anger from that situation is sitting there and then another situation happens and we suppress another emotion. Now we're carrying these emotions around with us and then they become repressed.

We're not even aware of them anymore. But it's like a pressure cooker, I feel. And then one day somebody says something pretty innocuous, and the lid blows off and we are super angry. And I think that's one of the reasons why we find it hard sometimes to speak up because we have these suppressed and repressed emotions that have not been addressed.

And so, when we want to speak up, this was definitely a problem for me. I couldn't speak up without feeling angry. So, I couldn't present myself in a professional way. Because I would come across as angry. Yeah, that's so true. I'm fascinated with especially anger, because I felt like that, angry is more like a cover up for any other feelings, like frustration, disappointment, sadness, and all other things.

And what I also found was that What you said true in a way of, you know, sometimes that strong feeling we have that we suppress is never new. Every time we meet someone, it's a new story. We feel something. Those feelings, usually like old feelings have been there for a long time. Can you, can you explore how?

Can we recognize it? Again, you really have to get in tune with your body and you, you've got to not think about it. You've got to look at your body, scan your body and see where it's sitting in your body, where you're actually feeling it. And then allow yourself to A short period of time every day, maybe 20 minutes, no longer I'd say than 20 minutes.

Sit somewhere peaceful where you won't be disturbed and allow, invite that feeling to come in and welcome it. Let it get as big as it can. It's not going to hurt you. I think part of the thing is we get afraid. If we feel that feeling, what, what is going to happen? It's not going to hurt you. A feeling is an emotion.

It's giving you a message that you've ignored. So, it's still sitting there waiting, especially anger. When anger comes up, it's telling you something's not right. That's all anger is doing. It's a great emotion. So, sip with it and then acknowledge. If it tells you what it's angry about, self-compassion.

Acknowledge it. Say, Yeah, you know, you really weren't treated very well and you've had every right to feel angry in that situation. Acknowledge yourself. Validate yourself. And then let it pass. It takes practice. Yeah, I know. I'm listening to a few things right now talking about emotions and that idea of inviting it in and sitting with it for a moment.

And for me, I often take a deep breath. Okay. Let's say, let's say it's in a feeling of anxiety. Also like our vocabulary and our knowledge of emotions. all the emotions. We tend to go to the same ones, but there's so many emotions that humans experience. But let's say you have anxiety, and it creeps up and you feel it.

You, you have to just recognize it's there. Take a deep breath, welcome it in, just process it. Like you're saying, why is it here? Why is it happening? It's not there to hurt you. It's just there to Alert you to something and then you can respond better, you know, even if you acknowledge it there too and say, hey, that conversation made me feel a little bit anxious.

Here's why and then you can explain the experience you went through and then it's not a confrontational discussion. And then you can own it, right? So, you can own it. I can say, Laura, what you said, I felt hurt and here's why I felt hurt.

I'm not saying, Laura, you hurt my feelings. I'm saying, I felt hurt and, and here is why. So, I'm owning it. Then Laura's more likely to want to have a conversation because that was probably not her intention. Right. So, it's a definitely more professional way of approaching it. Yeah. I like that. I just want to bring that up again.

So, what you're saying is, we need to sit down with our emotions, if with other people or with ourselves, we need to own it because, instead of like, Laura, you make me feel this way, or Sarah, you make me, it's like. people get defensive right away, right? But even if I communicate and I say, I feel this way, like you cannot say, no, you cannot feel that way.

Then we can have a conversation. And I felt that's also important. Because this is what I believe. The deepest human needs. That we all have is to be acknowledged and to be seen and I think if we can treat that anger as more like the internal systems, like that we can have dialogues and conversation and said, hey, I acknowledge you, like, I know you feel angry. So that way there's a dialogue instead of creating story or so and so is doing that to me and did that.

And this is what happened. And this is like, no, no, I own it. then I'll take care of it. I'm having conversation and because I can have conversation with this person or this entity or this emotion, I can have solution. I can have understanding with that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. They're your friends. I was told once invite , all your emotions to the table with you. Yeah. Ask him all day. Have some dinner together, right? Yeah. We have, have conversation. And Google list of emotions, right? Get a list of all the emotions and print it out and keep it on your desk.

There's so many different emotions we experience. It's worth just having a list so that helps you identify it and and sit with it a little bit more too. You know, I like your point because this is what we have, right? It's like, you know, learning a language. And sometimes when you start learning a new language, you only have maybe three or five words, for example.

So, in emotion, learning language of emotion, sometimes, I'm like, I'm angry, I'm disappointed. I'm anxious. So, we only have like those three or four or whatever it is, but if you can kind of have a different language of like richer language of what are the emotion, what is the spectrum of it?

Because, sometimes when I'm feeling anxious, it could be excitement too. Right? So, if I can see it differently or at least have a different language to express my feeling, I'm like, Oh, okay. So, I think that is a very interesting, exploration to see, am I really just anxious, maybe something else happening there.

And it's good, like you said, it's not just like one feeling at one time, it could be like 10, 20 or three at the same time, right? And Laura, I did exactly what you said. You see, I wish I'd met you guys’ years ago, and I didn't have to figure these things out. I did Google and I downloaded an emotions wheel.

And honestly, I still use it now because sometimes I'm like, I don't know what that is. You can trust your body, to resonate when you read the right emotion, I have found that I don't know what this emotion is. And I start looking at the list or the wheel and I suddenly go, yes, that's, that's exactly what it is.

But I could not have come up with that without looking at the list. My body just went, yep, that's the one. Okay, so that's something you have to share with us. The emotion wheel, definitely. Maybe we could provide a link to our listeners for that. Yeah, if you just Google emotion charts, there's various different charts.

What I liked about the wheel was it splits it into core emotions, love, And I can't remember what the five core emotions. And then it gives all the sub emotions under it as well. And some like disgust would come under anger, I think. And so, there are five core emotions, and I forget what they all are. I know anger and love.

I think fear is another one. And then they all have little like anxiety would come under fear, but like Christine was saying, there are so many emotions. Awesome. So, this has been a great conversation. I don't think we've had one on emotions and in the topic of breaking free.

So, thank you. Sarah. Tell us where can our listeners find you? They can find me on my website, www.bellscoaching.com. I am on Instagram and Bell's Coaching is my Instagram handle. And you can find me on LinkedIn and my LinkedIn handles a little different. It spells breakthrough coaching. I've learned since then that shorter is better.

Well, we'll definitely put links to all of that on our show notes. Great. Thank you. Now, before, before we end this, Sarah, did you have any more words that you want to share with our listeners? Just to trust your gut, all your decisions are not going to come from your mind. Your mind creates logic, but your body, your heart, and your gut are also giving you messages.

So, something doesn't feel right. It probably isn't right. And pay attention to that. If something feels right. It probably is right and pay attention and dig into why it is, especially when it comes to a career, if something excites you, but you feel like it's too late, it's not. It's never too late. It might feel like a long way away for you.

You just start at the beginning, which could be just exploring, going on Google, sending an email. It doesn't matter. But trust your gut, trust your heart. If they're directing you in a direction, that's great advice. I'm listening very attentively because I'm like, that's great advice.

So, thank you, Sarah, for those final words. Before we close, we like to do the lightning round of questions, just to get to know you a little bit more. Are you ready for those? Let's see. So, we look for one-to-three-word answers, but you know, whatever you need to do, however you need to respond. First question, where do you go for inspiration?

Other women, network, networking. Girl power. Love it. Yep. What is one habit you adopted that has greatly improved your career? Hitting the pause button when I start getting too busy because I know I'm on the wrong track. Interesting. What is one thing that keeps you moving forward each day? A little post it notes that says, if I do one thing today, it is, and I just write that thing down.

Wow. You do that like first thing in the morning? I do it last thing at night, ready for the next day, so I can get up and see it. Yeah. These are great. These are great. Um, what is the most valuable piece of advice you ever received? You can't change other people. You can only change yourself. Whoo. Love it.

Love all those responses. Thank you so much for, sharing all of your insight and experience in knowledge with us and our listeners. We really appreciate that. And thanks for doing this so quickly. Like we only met a couple of weeks ago and, um, and podcast. So, thank you so much.

You are so welcome, and thank you for having me, Laura and Christine. It's been a pleasure. Awesome. Bye, everybody.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Women's Career Mastery. To ensure you don't miss any future episodes, please subscribe to our podcast on your preferred podcast platform. If you found this episode enjoyable, please leave us a review or give us a thumbs up. Your support helps us reach a wider audience who could benefit from our content.

Also, if you want to learn more about us and our guests, please make sure to check out the show notes for this episode. Thank you again for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you on the next episode of Women's Career Mastery.