Building your brave career isn't always about leaping, insisting, disrupting. Sometimes it means staying with intention using. This moment to calm your nervous system, build your skills and inner strength, enhance your financial safety and deepen your real life, your hobbies and your interests, and the most important relationships.
Building your brave career is sometimes about bravery in the meantime.
Listen to this episode for concrete examples of how to use a difficult career phase to build your long-term career without stressing out, burning out, or limiting your goals.
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Detailed Transcript
Right now, most women in tech are in a career phase that isn't quite what they expected. I mean, sure some of my clients and some fellow women in tech are moving abroad. Accepting promotions or lowering their stress by working fewer hours, traveling less, taking on less emotional labor. Yes, that is true.
What is also true is that most of my clients, and many women in tech, are in a career phase that kind of sucks. They've been laid off with no warning, passed over for deserved, and sometimes even promised promotion, or they're stuck working with people they don't respect on products that aren't quality at companies that don't seem to care. They're watching executives and shareholders, and investors take far more than they could ever create.
Because here's a brave truth: it's rough out there for a lot of women in tech, quite frankly, for a lot of everyone. And maybe that's you, and if it is, keep listening.
By the end of this episode, you'll have a few ways to build the skill of bravery in your meantime. Even if you're in a job, that kind of sucks. Right now, you may be feeling ignored, stressed, lost, angry, stuck. You may feel held down by bad management and tough, real economic realities, but you're still showing up for work.
Maybe you're biting back your sarcasm, your boredom, maybe even your hope. You are watching the cost of everything rise: food, clothing, housing, schooling, everything. It feels threatening. You're saving, but it never feels like enough. And you know that guy who does less and does it poorly is still earning more than you.
You want to grow, be bold, create your next career phase, but you've also survived three layoffs in two years. Your friends are struggling, your mentors are struggling. You look around and it feels like just about everyone is struggling.
You keep wondering what's right for me right now? Is there anywhere safe anymore?
In the tech industry, we often celebrate the bravery of quitting, founding, leaping, reinventing. We talk about moving fast and breaking things, but sometimes the bravest thing, the best Next thing is choosing to stay. Choosing to stay at a job, that kind of sucks because it gives you the stability you need this month and the next.
It helps you rest, build skills, activate your network, and deepen your personal relationships. Yeah, it kind of sucks and you can use this phase.
You can use this phase to be your phase of bravery. In the meantime, crafting the foundation you need for that next clear leap. That might be exactly the type of bravery you need right now.
Now, before I go any further, I wanna be really clear the rest of this episode is not for you. Or anyone. If you are in a truly unsafe environment, if you're being abused, bullied, harassed, or just frankly not paid, these tips are not for your situation. You need to protect yourself, and you need to seek support.
What I'm about to share is for women in tech who are stressed, overworked, underpaid, and trying to stay afloat and craft a future in a very tough season.
Today we're talking about how staying, how choosing bravery in the meantime can support your next career and life phase. None of what I'm about to say will help a toxic or abusive situation. Okay?
If work feels draining. And it's impacting your life. This is your time to focus on bravery. In the meantime, it's about making conscious choices to build the habits and the skills you need for lowering your stress, for managing your time better. For most of you, that means working less. And setting yourself up in the future for greater income.
Because you have built, expanded your sense of self, you've made yourself more valuable on the market. These are tiny habits that remind you of who you are, what you want, and why you matter.
This might mean staying quieter in meetings, doing the minimum necessary for success in your role.
Pay attention to what I just said : you're still going to meet success for your role. You're going to achieve. Not gonna overachieve you are not gonna extremely achieve. You're going to achieve and do the minimum necessary for achievement in your role.
Maybe this means you're gonna be asking fewer questions and listening even more carefully to what is not being said.
You're gonna be tracking your time more consciously.
You are gonna be showing up on time with an attitude of your choice, and you're also going to be leaving on time in the attitude of your choice.
One of my clients who's in a unhelpful boss situation, has chosen her quiet tiny habit, is creating sticky notes and placing them around her apartment. These sticky notes translated into English. Say, " You are an expert. This is a phase I believe in me."
She's using these little habits, these little mindset choices as a reminder to keep learning her skills. She's an expert. Even if she has an unhelpful boss, she can still gain and deepen skills.
Building her network : this is a phase. It's a phase in her career. The next phase is coming because she's creating it because she believes in herself. Remember her quote, I believe in me . So she's going to events, expanding her network, and she picked up her favorite hobby again.
Another client to give you another example, is currently working with three colleagues who consistently drop the ball and then even worse lie about it.
Yes, she's keeping a running track of all the times that she saves their butt and all of the lies that they've made. However, what she's focusing on is her phone background is a thank you message from a long-term customer. Every single time she unlocks her phone, she remembers who she's really working for : her craft, her standards, and her future.,
Right now she needs to work in this environment, with this healthcare, because she has a child with a disability. But in a few years, she's gonna be going out on her own.
She's building the reputation and the skills and the network to set herself up for that success. She's choosing bravery in the meantime
. You too. If you are in this type of situation, you need to find your own quiet way to build your brave while you bravely stay.
Pick up a hobby you loved as a kid to build your energy and your personal relationship and your belief in yourself. Learn to play the piano again, like one of my clients, or join a hiking group or volunteer locally.
Listen, regardless of the phase you're in, keep it simple.
I love to say, I read fast and I run slow. I volunteer my time and my heart, and right now I am so privileged, so I'm donating more money than I ever have to feed my neighbors.
When you invest time in the parts of your life while you're building these tiny little habits, these quiet moments of bravery in the meantime, you are strengthening your internal safety net.
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