Ep. 146 - Work From the Inside Out: Fit, Fulfillment, & Sustainable Change - with Tammy Gooler Loeb

Find Us Wherever You Listen To Podcasts

For a lot of us, when we feel stuck, it’s not necessarily because we don’t know what we want — it may be that we feel like we’ve invested too much time and effort to change course now, or we feel scared of stepping into uncertainty, or we feel like the step’s just too big to take given our circumstances.

We spend so much time convincing ourselves that we’re better off feeling safe than feeling happy, but that perception is more in our heads than it is reality.

So today, Tammy Gooler Loeb, career coach, award-winning author of “Work From the Inside Out” and host of a podcast with the same name, shares her expertise on the critical importance of introspection and self-discovery in shaping — and revealing — a meaningful, satisfying and sustainable career path. We'll explore how deep personal understanding can be a powerful driver for professional growth and success, and how we can tap into the people around us as a source of inspiration and knowledge.

Finding Fit and Fulfillment by Creating Sustainable Change

So often, people’s stories about career transformation, like Tammy’s, include a hint of regret — regret that they didn’t start taking steps towards something different sooner because they’d been ignoring the little voice in the back of their heads urging them to they need to pursue something different.

That’s why, if you want to find that fit and fulfillment in your career and life, you often have to do some work on your internal life first. We’re always going to be able to come up with reasons not to make a change, but when we do the work of interrogating these beliefs, they’re so often rooted in fear and limiting beliefs about what we’re capable of doing.

And that’s a difficult hurdle to overcome, but it’s often more self-imposed than a material obstacle. When you get to the root of that, when you’re able to get inspired by hearing other people’s journeys, it makes it that much easier to make a plan and start taking steps towards a life that makes you happier. That’s why Tammy started her podcast and wrote her book, and that’s why I like to share stories like this on my podcast.

There is a fantasy of quitting your job to start a new business overnight, sometimes that fantasy is sold through success stories on social media, and we don’t do anything because making those shifts we want feels impossible. And it might not be possible to do everything all at once — it’s important to remember that, for most people, “These changes don’t happen overnight, they happen over time,” Tammy says. And creating change that is sustainable looks different for everyone, but it’s probably going to be the result of many small steps.

Because change is an iterative process. But once you start to build some momentum, what you believe is possible starts to shift.

Definition of Success:

“ I've always just wanted to have an impact on people's lives and help them. And so, if I know that that's what I'm doing, I feel successful...my goals and my success are tied together in that way.”

Key Takeaways:

Don’t ignore the little voice in the back of your head that says something isn’t right about where you are. That’s important to help you find your fit.
Many “fill their heads with all kinds of limiting beliefs about why they can’t do something” because making a change is hard and you have to step into the unknown.
Don’t let unrealistic expectations for what change looks like dissuade you from making those pivots. Sustainable change starts small.
Get relevant information you need to help you determine if a new path you want to entertain may be right or wrong. That could entail a better understanding of your values, interests, goals as well as getting context/insight from those who have taken the route you might want to pursue. The intent is to build a foundation of knowledge about yourself to help you make better decisions in the long run.
Sometimes we already know that we want to make a change in our careers, we might even know what we want to change, but we need something else to help us see our lives and the future through a different lens. Talking to other people can be a catalyst to help us get unstuck and see what’s possible.
“These changes don’t happen overnight, they happen over time.” Sometimes that means doing work from the inside out first. Sometimes that means mitigating risk by doing things like working part-time or endeavoring to shape your current work environment before taking a big leap.