Career Shift Blog
by Rachel B. Garrett
Permission To Want What You Want
In my work with women, there’s one epiphany I’m grateful to witness often. An insight that turns the ship around and provides a new lens to look back on a life half-lived.
Sometimes it starts with a feeling.
Guilt. Anxiety. Frustration
And then there’s a moment where the unseen is seen. The common refrain—I don’t know what I want—becomes untrue.
In its place arises something unfamiliar and beautiful. Many wants.
But still no permission to want them.
As women we are so accustomed to cloaking ourselves in the needs and desires of everyone else in our lives that our own oxygen feels selfish to breathe.
Yet when we inhale and imagine, we see a glimpse of what is possible, and we are filled with hope.
This is the shift that can forever change you. It is an honoring of what you want. No matter how you may fail or fumble. Especially because you may fail or fumble. It is agency. It is trust.
It is admitting to those you love that you have wants and they are important. And practicing together. Continuing to remind each other that they are still important, even when they are inconvenient and throw off the equilibrium of the old systems that put your wants at the bottom of the list.
Your wants are worth fighting for even if there’s chaos before you find your order.
We were not taught to want outside the lanes our culture drew for us. And yet every time we unlearn these bounds—we find who we are meant to be.
The Broad Experience Podcast Features Rachel Garrett
I’m thrilled to be featured on The Broad Experience podcast with Ashley Milne-Tyte discussing the impact of the pandemic on women’s careers—and within my own business.
You can find the full episode of the podcast on The Broad Experience Website, on Stitcher or Apple Podcasts.
Working Parents Are Preparing For An Unprecedented Summer
The good news: you made it through the most challenging school year in history, during which we were all collectively making it up as we went along.
The bad news: the school year is now over, as is the structure and the hanging on by a thread reason for your kids to be occupied and leave you to get at least some work done.
If you’re anything like me, you’re having the same nightmare vision every time you let yourself think through the realities of this summer.
It’s Lord of the Flies time, people.
Most in-person camps are cancelled. My kids are not thrilled about the idea of virtual camp. I don’t want to invest in camps they’re rebelling against before day one.
While I’m typically the person who has every day of every week of summer white boarded and accounted for—the uncertainty of the life we’re currently living is driving me to try it a different way.
Welcome to The Garrett Improv Summer.
I’m working with a few guiding principles. (Plus, a reminder that my daughters are 9 and 12, so this will be tougher for kids under 7 or 8.)
There will be:
Fun
Creativity
Alone time off screens (meaning make your own fun instead of watching 6 seasons of Glee)
Learning
Movement
Rest
Nature
Helping others
To drill down into some more detail here:
We started with a Summer Ideas Workshop this past weekend.
I wrote down the principles on a big pad and then gave everyone a big piece of paper and markers.
With pictures and words, we listed activities that fit under each category on our respective Summer 2020 blank slates.
We presented our ideas to the rest of team Garrett.
Example brainstorming for me:
Fun: Outdoor weekend day trips, games, date nights!Creativity: Writing daily (blog/book), Writing workshop with girls 2x per week
Alone Time: 9 - 4 work hours for sessions/writing/learning
Learning: Online course, continued racial equity learning, reading as a familyMovement: Yoga/walking
Rest: In bed by 10, journaling
Nature: Prospect Park, Upstate NY—walks, hikes, swimming (not sure where or how)
Helping Others: Bringing supplies to Uncle Ray, Working on political campaigns aligned with my values.We attempted to map it all together into a loose schedule. That’s where team Garrett lost patience and came to terms with our disappointment for the summer we are collectively having, one that is not the summer we wanted. There were tears and frustration.
Instead of setting a schedule, we decided on boundaries and guidelines that included when the adults must be left to do their work and when the kids can "finally" get onto their devices. All other activities can be chosen by each kid or adult based on their lists.
To make it all work, we’re bringing back a former babysitter for a couple of weeks to hang out with our younger daughter and she may be able to help sporadically for the rest of the summer. But again—we’re playing it by ear and taking extra precautions to make sure it’s safe for our sitter and for all of us.
We have selected some free learning options for the kids to include into their schedules, like Camp Kinda and Camp Khan Academy.
Summer Ideas Workshop results aside, we’re going to learn from our rocky start to virtual learning in March. For those of us planner types, we will remember to shoot for loose guidelines and not rigid schedules. We will remember that our first priorities are still the physical and mental health of our families. We will ask for help when we need it. Of course, I’m grateful that my business is designed for the flexibility of cutting my workday, during the summer—and yet I have never run this experiment before. I’ve always had camp and childcare coverage to keep the same pace as in all seasons.
So, onward we march...into the great somewhat unknown of Summer, 2020. Ready for smiles, tears, insights and boredom. We are here for all of it. Because...we have no other choice.
Before You Rewrite Your Resume, Focus On Your Narrative
Job seekers and career-transitioners often come to me in a panic, feeling they are unemployable. They believe they will never find a job that pays them what they want, let alone with a company that’s aligned with their values.
They fear:
Their experience is fragmented and all over the place.
They’ve stayed at one company too long.
They’re too old and their experience will not be valued.
They’re too young, appearing green and naïve.
They’ve spent too much time out of the work force.
All of this may be true, in the version of the story they are telling. Before we get to any of their materials—elevator pitch, resume, LinkedIn and beyond—we rework their narratives.
If you’d like to begin this process, I invite you to push your thinking with this free writing exercise:
Rewrite your narrative as if you’ve stepped into an alternate reality where every career move you made was intentional, and you learned something important from every role and every change.
As you move away from the formality of your resume and the salesmanship of LinkedIn to view your story from a different perspective, you will find:
Meaning
There were deep relationships built and lessons learned that could only have been found in what seemed to be failures at the time. There were risks taken that prompted you to grow. Moments where you discovered a true purpose behind your work AND moments where you found you needed to rediscover how you could best use your talents.
A Through Line
Even if it is not obvious at first, there is connective tissue that bonds each career move into a cohesive, contained package. Whether you find it in your values or in a certain strength of yours that was often leveraged or amplified in others, there is a way to pull a disjointed or fragmented seeming career into one that makes sense to you—and one that can be more easily explained to others.
The Skeletons
Every career has its fair share of challenges. Toxic bosses who give you an eye twitch for many months. Microagressions in a corporate culture built on white supremacy. Being passed over for a promotion while on parental leave. These are critical offenses and issues that shaped what you are striving for in your next role to feel safe and valued. And yet now, you get to choose how much or how little you share about them in your narrative. I highly encourage you to work to heal these career-related traumas with a therapist and reflect on how you shape the story so that you both advocate for what you need, and also share the version that helps you connect to your confidence and your worth.
Once you’ve completed the exercise, share it with a friend, former colleague or your coach. Notice how it feels to tell the story in this new, all-true and yet intentionally shifted perspective. Practice this retelling when you’re networking or discussing your career change with friends. Start with your close-in circle so that your narrative seeps into your muscle memory. This will create a more fluid process when writing all your other materials, and help you step into your interviews with the clarity of what you have to offer.