The Liz Moody Podcast - The 5 Work Personalities: Which One Are You—And Is It Making You Exhausted?

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

 One of the reasons so many of us feel burnt out, even if we have great jobs and lives, is because we haven’t figured out which work personality type we are. In this episode, we help you figure out yours, and how you can create a job and life that feels ridiculously satisfying every single day. My expert guest is Brooke Taylor, the author of Healing The Success Wound, who’s coached thousands of women to become happier in their careers. 🎧 What you’ll learn: • Which of 5 work personality types you are (and the blind spot of each one) • Why research shows changing jobs rarely fixes career unhappiness • The "micro-risk" habit that rewires you for more confidence at work • A simple daily practice that will make you more successful • One mindset shift that can change how fulfilled you feel at work For more from Brooke Taylor:  • Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/brookevtaylor/?hl=en  • Website: https://brooketaylorcoaching.com/  • Book, Healing The Success Wound: ​​https://amzn.to/4gGPwDn  Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: • Puori: visit https://Puori.com/LizMoody and use code LIZMOODY at checkout for a discount and special offer. • Osea: visit OseaMalibu.com and use code LizMoody to get 10% off your first order • OneSkin: go to OneSkin.co/Liz and use code LIZ to get 15% OFF for a limited time. • AG1: visit DrinkAG1.com/LizMoody and, for a limited time, get 20% off on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro.  • LMNT: head to DrinkLMNT.com/Liz to get a FREE 8-count sample pack with any order The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 464. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the reasons that so many of us feel burnt out, even if we have great jobs in lives, is because we have not figured out which of the five work personality types we are. We are going to help you figure out yours and how you can create a job and life that feels ridiculously satisfying every single day in this episode. Brooke, Taylor is the author of Healing the Success Wound. Brooke, you have coached thousands of women in their careers. What are the most common problems that they come to you with? Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something

that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Over the last decade, I've worked with so many professional women, and the problems really boil down to three main root causes. So the first is people who say things like, I'm exhausted, but I can't stop. They're overworking. They have maybe big family lives or caregiving responsibilities. And they're either full throttle or falling apart. The second are people who maybe gotten the thing, maybe launched the business, finally pivoted from corporate or gotten the title or

the salary or the promotion, but it still doesn't feel like enough. The third category is somebody who says, you know, I don't know what I want to do with my career. I've been trying so many things for the last 10 years, I still don't know. And although these three issues might seem like different issues, they really come from the same root cause. Okay, so what is that root cause? The habit of tying our success to our self-worth.

which is what I call our success wound. So our success wound is the pain that comes from believing that our worthiness of love and belonging is contingent upon what we produce, achieve, or do rather than the inherent goodness of who we are. Can you just draw that line really clearly for me? So why would having the success wound trace into these three problems? So I don't know if you've ever had the thought, I'm only as good as my last piece of feedback or if I could only find my thing, then I'd be happy.

I just want to be so clear. I have these thoughts all the time now. I do think that it speaks to the point of the work that you do, that there is not a level of success where it goes away. I'm very much included in this conversation. Yeah, that is what is so interesting is that even sometimes the more success you have, the worse it gets. But a lot of these feelings that people have, like, I'll just push through and then I'll rest later or, you know, other people can have that, but I can't. All of these thoughts come from this core habit of tying outcomes to who we are. because the truth is if I can hold myself worth in one hand and my ambition and my goals in another hand

and be able to say, I'm good, I'm a good person, and I still have these ambitions and goals, but they don't touch each other, then those thoughts are really going to dissipate and go away. Why do so many of us have this wound? Where did this come from? Is this a millennial woman thing? Did this exist in the older days? Do men have this? Yeah, there are three roots, and those roots are emotional, cultural and spiritual. So I'll start at the cultural level just because it's the most macro. And there are two kind of main cultural forces that have caused this success wound in more modern times. The first is this notion that as religion has declined, work has come to fill the vacuum. So we all have these

human needs for community, for connection, for transcendence, for place, for identity. And we used to get that through an organized religion. But now we really get that through work. Work can give us so much. It can give us a salary. It can give us structure to our day. But it can never actually meet these core human needs of meaning and transcendence and purpose. And so that causes a disappointment. But it also causes a habit of causing us to search in the wrong place for these human needs. Like we work harder and harder and harder thinking that someday we'll unlock this meaning, this transcendence, but it's never going to be there at work. Yes. I listen to people talk about work every day and talk about their complaints. Listen to the words people use when they complain about work. Like, I've lost faith in leadership. This no longer lights me up.

I don't jive with these people anymore. These didn't used to be work words. These used to be religion words. Faith, meaning, calling, you know, connection. But this is like a modern rendition of religion and worship that we're falling into. That's so interesting. I'll let you get into the next two in a second. But I have a few questions on that.

Like, does that suggest that one of the solutions to this problem is we should all go to church and like find religion. This kind of hits into the spiritual root of this. You had Lisa Miller on, who also blurbed my book. She talks about the neuroscience that we are hardwired to search for like a spiritual connection, that our brain lights up when we feel a sense of peace and transcendence, whether that's in organized religion or in nature. But when we feel this connection with something greater than ourselves, our nervous system tends to relax. And we tend to feel more whole because we're hardwired for that. I don't think the solution is necessarily to go to organized religion, but to identify, like, can my job just be a job? Or what are the ways in which I'm expecting my

job to satisfy me spiritually? My next question is, can our job ever fill that sort of spiritual place in our lives? Can we ever get community, true community through our job? If it's a job that we're really passionate about that feels like it actually does have a lot of meaning for us, can it fill that whole, there's nuance to so much of this. But yes, I know in my own life and in so many of my clients' lives, they really look for three things. They look for something like meaning. So I'm solving a problem that matters to me. And no matter what happens with the business, no matter what happens with my next performance review, I'm focused on solving that problem. So that's a source of intrinsic motivation. Oh, that's interesting. So it's intrinsic meaning versus extrinsic value deriving that meaning

sort of. Yes, exactly. And intrinsic motivation tends to outperform extrinsic motivation as it relates to things like meaning and learning and growth. And the other two sources of intrinsic motivation are mastery. So feeling a sense of progress towards something. And then autonomy. So being able to put your creative stamp on something. So as long as your work can tap into those three things, I think that's fantastic. And that can result in passion and community and all of those things. But that has to be the means, not the ends. Okay. Interesting. And so part of the problem, too, is that many of us are looking to get this spiritual sense, this sense of something greater through our work, and maybe that's not available in all of our works,

or we're just like hitting our head against the wall trying to get all of it from work when maybe some of it can come from work and some of it can come from somewhere else. Yes. I think a lot of millennial women suffer with something that I call purpose anxiety. Did you ever read that children's book,

Are You My Mother? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Is it like a duckling that goes around? Yeah, it goes to like a dumpster truck and it's like, are you my mother? And then it goes to a giraffe and it's like, are you my mother? Millennial women are going up to career paths and being like, are you my purpose?

Are you my purpose? Are you my purpose? I really do blame social media, especially people who are like, I quit my nine to five and like, life's never been the same. Or if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. We think that career is going to give us that sense of purpose in place and kind of rescue us from our misery when in fact a job can't do that only connection with something greater or connection with your true self can. Interesting.

Okay, so that was reason one why so many of us are suffering from this problem. What's reason two? Emotional. So of the people that I work with, they all have a childhood experience where they learned that success equals fill in the blank. Love, belonging, survival, freedom, happiness. For me, growing up in the Bay Area in the 90s, success equals love and belonging. I went to a private girl's school where at the age of 10 I walked into the campus and next to my little. locker. It said Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford. And I looked at that. And in my childhood brain, I was like, oh, that's what's required in order to belong here to this group of people. And my parents sent me here so they must want that from me. And so that created this pain where it's like, I'm not enough unless I am living up to a cultural or familial ideal of what a successful or good person looks like. Does that resonate with you? It does resonate with me. I had so many subtle.

messages in my childhood that tied my worth to my intelligence. And I wore that as a badge of pride when I was a kid because I was like, oh, everybody thinks I'm really smart. But I didn't realize how much I needed everybody to think I was smart to think I belonged in any space that I went. Yeah. I can relate to that too. That's very common. And then finally, spiritual. As I mentioned, I really believe that we are hardwired and there's data to back this up to search for something greater. And we project that onto our work. Now, you know, this spiritual malady, this hunger that I believe we all have as humans for something greater, that can get almost like co-opted by capitalism. And we can start to search and need more, bigger, better. And that disease of more can take over. But when we're opting for more and looking for more, we actually end up with less because we end up with less energy, less confidence. Spirituality, it can mean whatever you want it to mean. It can. can mean connection with a mission that means something to you, bigger to you, connection to a community, but it has to be bigger than just your ego, fame, and status. When we're young,

we believe that the more we live up to this cultural ideal of success, the better off will be. And it's our kind of life's work to break that habit. Yeah, I think about it often in the context of the loneliness crisis that we're talking about so much. And I feel like people aren't connecting it back this way. People are like, oh, if you want a village, be a villager. And they think that'll get them friendship, that'll get them a pickup from the airport, et cetera, et cetera. But it also gives you this sense that you are connected to something that is bigger than yourselves. When you're sitting in your apartment, never talking to any of your neighbors, to your home, you don't feel like you're woven

into the fabric of your direct community. Yeah, that's right. And so what are you going to do as a result, you know? We're going to like throw ourselves into work is what you're saying. Yeah. Or compulsive behaviors of any kind. And the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because I know that I myself deal with burnout. A lot of my listeners deal with burnout. And I do think that this is a really novel proposal to why so many of us are feeling burnt out. So let's talk about women and burnout for a second. What is the age that burnout normally hits women? And why do you think that happens? There are three main causes of burnout. The first is just our relationships. So we can all relate to like having a toxic boss or the politics at work or maybe a terrible

client or something like that, those workplace relationships are a huge source of burnout and energy drain. The second is having unclear expectations, but little support. So you can imagine being in maybe a big role or even being an entrepreneur and having a huge mandate, but very little resourcing. That's a huge recipe for burnout. And then finally, misalignment, knowing that you're in a role or in a career path that's not meant for you. It's not It's not using your strengths. It's maybe misaligned with your values. You know that this isn't it, but you don't know where else you might be.

And so you feel stuck and trapped. How do you suggest we figure out what role our jobs should fill in our lives then? Because you're like, it shouldn't be your spiritual purpose. We need to get that elsewhere. But you do need to be value aligned so that you're not feeling burnt out. Like, where does that leave us? That's a great question. Fulfilling work really has three things in common.

It allows us to use our strengths in a way that says, you know, I am giving something. I'm contributing. I love doing things that I'm good at. I'm good at things. Work seems to be fun and in a state of flow. The second thing is that, you know, when you are doing something that's not aligned with your values, when I was working at Google, it was around the Me Too situation. There was like a huge walkout. I was like, you know what? I can't unsee it. This is no longer aligned with my values. So it's not just like I don't agree with leaders. on this thing. It's like I'm contributing to a culture or to an organization and that's not for me. Third thing is that you see that your work is, you know, contributing to a problem that matters to you. So these three things of like meaning and values and problem solving, that's essential for a fulfilling career. But I don't think it needs to fill the space of again, like religion or like a greater sense of meaning. So that's really the distinction. Is that clear? It is. And I also think that there's a sense of like it can fill some things, but it doesn't need to fill everything. Like we're putting

so much pressure on work to fill the, the, are you my mother? Like, can you be everything to me? That's right. I also want to clarify for the Google story that you weren't like misaligned because me too moments were coming to light. You were misaligned because you had had a me too moment at Google and lived with that for a number of years. Yes, that's right. I had a me too moment at Google and I didn't report it because I didn't want to rock the boat. And that was really a turning point for me in my life. And then three years later, this whole me two thing happened. And I realized, wow, like, this is something that happened to me. It's not something that the organization took seriously at the time. But then I did report it. This person was fired. They did the right thing. But by then I had

already seen everything that I needed to see. And I decided to leave an exit. I do think for every person who comes forward and reports something like that, I think about all of the people who are not doing so. And I don't fault them at all because there's so many consequences to reporting that kind of thing that we don't talk about. Like, I think you were up for a promotion or something like that. And, you know, you need to be able to make money. You need to be able to keep your job. And when you have the sense, like, oh, I could rock the boat not get this promotion. Like, I think that's a really hard situation. Yeah. It was the right thing for me at that time of my life. I was only 24. I didn't know what I didn't know. And me too hadn't happen. There wasn't this awareness around

gray area. power dynamics. I'm so glad that I did report it a few years later once I did have that knowledge. And I'm so glad that the organization did believe me because that's not the case for everyone. What are the most common myths about burnout that you see? The most common myths are that if I just leave this job, the burnout's going to solve itself. Another common myth is the fact that, you know, if I just changed, you know, my working habits, then things would be fixed. And then another common myth is the fact that burnout is only structural. Burnout, you know, first of all, as a medical condition, and I want to distinguish between the two, because when you are medically

burned out, that's a state of like hopelessness, depression that requires medical attention. But a lot of the burnout that I treat and that you and I are kind of talking about is more of that burnout of like, I'm in an overwhelm exhaustion and I need to find another way to work. Medical burnout, we're going to put that to the side. A lot of the things that I find to be true about burnout is, okay, there's systemic issues that we can talk about and get into. But there's so much that we can do in order to shift our ways of working and the way that we're holding work in order to experience more joy and fulfillment. And a lot of that comes down to our five work personality type, which I'm very excited to get into. But first, I want to play our first game of the session.

Okay. You prepped two truths and a lie for me. Okay, two truths and a lie. So the first one, CEOs have double the national rate of depression and anxiety. Number two is that if you are unfulfilled or dissatisfied at work, the right next step is for you to change jobs or industries. Number three, high achievers are roughly 400% more productive than your average employee. Okay. One and three blew my mind, but they both feel true because I feel like what you just told me is that leaving will not solve our burnout. So I'm going to say the middle one was the lie. Ding, ding, ding, correct. Leaving is not going to solve our burnout. No. Why not? That's because we're just going to repeat the same patterns at our next job. Of the thousands of people who have come to me

being like, get me out of this job yesterday, I am desperate. 60% of those desperate people end up staying in their job, not because they're lazy or they can't get another one, but because their ways of working and their relationship with work shifts their experience so considerably. So how you work is more important than what you do for work when it comes to career fulfillment. That is so heartening to hear because I think it can feel really intimidating to be like, oh my gosh, I'm so unhappy, but I have to blow up my whole life and make my resume shiny and send it out and do all these job interviews and stuff to feel better. And you're like, no, you can feel better regardless of what your job is. That's right. So interesting. Okay, go back to the first truth about CEOs.

CEOs have roughly double the national rate of anxiety and depression. Well, that's bad news for me. Why is that? All the things that you would expect, having incredibly high expectations with very little support and very unclear around what good looks like. Because when you are a CEO or a business owner, you are the one who's coming up with the vision, but you're also the one who's being graded on the outcomes and the outputs. So anxiety and depression is going to live in that, you know, that schism between the expectation that either or the board or the industry or, you know, your team has for you, and then the vision and your ability to deliver on it. Of course, you're also going to be responsible for people's livelihoods.

It's a tough job. Okay. And then what was the last truth? The last truth is high achievers are roughly 400% more productive than the average employee. Well, that sounds good. But I feel like you're like, be careful, high achievers. This is a scary situation for your mental health, for your burnout, etc. But I'm like, look how much more productive we are. Yeah, I want to do. bunk that myth because this is something that's called the high achiever ceiling, which is, think about 400% more productive, is a lot more productive. Like these are the people who are who care a lot, who are putting their energy, their determination, their best effort into work.

And we love that. And we want organizations full of those people. But it hits a ceiling. So that's when burnout hits. That's when disillusionment hits. Because again, going back to our premise, companies can give us a lot, but they can't give us everything that we expect. And from the high achievers that hit the.

ceiling, they're expecting to be given more than the company can deliver. Okay. So the idea is we're 400% more productive, but then we're expecting us to fill all of our buckets as essentially the price for all that increased productivity. And that's not going to get us where we want to go. People who give so much tend to experience a higher level of resentment in return. Think about the people pleasing ethos, right? Usually the people pleaser, the person who's giving so much to other people, they're the most resentful person in the room. High achievers can be the most resentful people within an organization because they are giving their best energy. They're giving so much of their determination and their intellect, which again,

is a wonderful thing. But I can't tell you how many thousands of people I've talked to who come to me being like, I'm giving so much and I'm not getting enough in return. What's the right amount to give to our jobs? On the spectrum of the Gen Z people on TikTok that I see, who are like, it's a paycheck. These are not your friends. Do not get invested. And then the people who are, this is my family. I love these people. I'm giving this my whole life, all my best energy. I typically tell people, when you are noticing that your battery is draining all the way to a zero at the end of the day, and when you wake up the next day, it's not going back up to a hundred, that's the sign that you're giving too much. Because that's the sign that your energy and

sense of self is depleting. If you ever gone on like a really great hike and you feel exhausted, at the end of the day. But then you wake up a little sore the next day, but you're like, man, that was fun. I used all of my energy and I got to enjoy it with my friends, and we saw some great things, and I'm so proud of myself. That's how I want work to feel more often than not. And so I know in my own life, like, there are times where I push really hard in order to get this book out, and then I coast for a little bit, or I push and I coast. And I think that's a really healthy way to work. Yeah, I interviewed Cal Newport, who's the author of Deep Work on the podcast, He talked about working in cycles and the most successful teams work in cycles. And I've tried to

talk about that with my team. It's like, if we're going to do a push right now, then make sure you pull back at some point. And I think we've really gotten into this habit of pushing and then pushing again and then pushing again. Something that I try to think about in my own life is how can I create a day where I'm not so exhausted that I have to check out and scroll at the end of it. I was always trying to solve that from the like, how can I brick my phone? How can I not give my self-access to social media. And then I was like, but my real problem, if I trace it back to the root, is that I'm so exhausted at the end of the day that that's all I feel like I have the capacity for. How can I create a day where I have the capacity to do the things that actually light me up at the

end of it? So for you, if your battery starts at 100% when you wake up, where do you need your battery to end in order for you not to scroll? Probably like 20 or 30%. Yeah. Like just above where your iPhone goes yellow. You know what I mean? And you're like, okay, I got a monitor every last little bit of this battery. Yes, exactly. And so that's a felt sense, right? Like you kind of feel that in your body. You feel like you gave, you know, your head can hit the pillow being like, I got through 80% of my to-do list, maybe not 100, but like I gave it my best effort. I used my strengths. I maybe had a laugh today. And then I can wake up and do it again. I also love that you said, I used my strengths. Maybe I had a laugh. I think there's different ways to make sure that your

battery isn't getting depleted. Some of it can be work that really lights you up. Some of it can be friends at work that really light you up. Sometimes it can be doing less work. But there's all these different ways to kind of be monitoring your battery. Yes, exactly. Which I think is cool. Okay, let's talk about the five work personality types. So first of all, tell me why this matters. Like, why do we care what work personality type that we have? The struggle most people face is that they don't know what their strengths are and they don't know how those strengths actually contribute to their weaknesses. A lot of people say, oh, I'm struggling with perfectionism or self-doubt, but that might not be the actual thing that's holding them back in their career. So you've probably

heard the aphorism that, like, you know, sometimes a strength and surplus can become a weakness. What I've noticed throughout my research is that these five kind of constellations of behaviors that tend to co-occur, almost like an enneagram. They have a strength and they have a shadow. For these people, they seem to have better outcomes when they can amp up that strength and be aware of that shadow and minimize it. Interesting. Okay. So what's the first one?

Okay. So the first type that tends to co-occur is the grinder. So this is the person who wants to have more, do more, and be more. They measure a good day based on the volume that they produced. They wouldn't be able to go to sleep unless 100% of their to-do list was checked off. Now, people who tend to fall into this category are people like who are college athletes, for example, former athletes, people who know how to put. their body really, really far. Even endurance athletes today, I have a couple of clients who run triathlons and

marathons and they also are in corporate. They're the biggest grinders because they are comfortable holding a whole lot of responsibility and pushing their body to the brink. And the shadow side of this is like, you don't stop, I assume. You don't stop. You hit that burn that 400% pretty quickly. But the strength, of course, work ethic. They're every manager's favorite, but they're also less likely to become leaders because they're the get shit done person and they're the executor. Before we get into the other types, I want to make sure that the person who's listening and they're like, wait, I'm a grinder, but I want to be a leader. Can we change our type or is it just like we recognize our type and then we can do something to change the outcomes of being that type? Yes, we can change our type. But I think

the beauty of being a grinder is you have a really excellent work ethic, knowing how to channel that towards being a leader and shifting your identity from I'm the get shit done person to I'm, I'm somebody who knows how to work in a way that enables others is critical because our identity impacts our behavior more than anything else. And for people who identify as the get shit done person and my only value is to the extent that I got through my to do list today, those are people who are less likely to lead teams because it feels scary to delegate. That's the whole point of this work is to figure out, okay, what are the small steps that I can take every day to shift this identity and to find a way for me to apply my work ethic in a way that's going to help advance my career

and make people around me good too. Okay, so we'll be able, if you're listening and you're like, I'm a grinder, oh no, can I never be a founder? Can I never run my own company? We're going to share lots of ways that you can transcend that and live whatever life you want to live. Absolutely. Okay, grinder is first.

What's number two? Number two is the hideer. This is the most common one. So this is the person who might look successful from the outside, but on the inside harbors different or bigger dreams for their career. They tend to be perfectionists and fear of failure. They only want to put out work when they're 100% sure of the outcome. This tends to be people who were on the gifted and talented group growing up.

Maybe somebody like you who's praised for being intelligent, somebody who knew that their identity was linked to being perfect and good and high achieving. So they don't want to risk that identity. Oh, so like if they do something and they fail, their whole identity could crumble. That's right. Oh, that's scary. So you can hear that behind these types is an identity piece and so much of shifting this is shifting your identity. So for the hider, of which I actually tend to be more of a hider

than anything else, despite the fact that, you know, it might look like I'm launching a book or going on podcasts, I still have bigger dreams for myself. And I feel like I don't always let those be seen or expressed because of my upbringing growing up where I was like, I want to make sure that I only have whenever I speak, I'm 100% correct. And that can hold me back in some ways. So is one of the solutions for a hider to put themselves in positions where they're intentionally failing? One of the steps for the hider is to take a micro-risk every single day. You talk about micro-dosing novelty. I talk about micro-dosing risk.

So taking small, tiny little intentional turtle steps outside your comfort zone into your growth zone. Because that's where happiness actually is. It's not in our comfort zone. We think it is. We think if we can control everything and only speak when we know things. But happiness is actually found outside our comfort zone. So that's the lesson for the hider. Do you do that?

I do. Against every cell in my body, I will reach out to people asking for a networking coffee or I will pitch myself on things. And slowly but surely, my comfort zone has grown and my nervous system has acclimated to being more outward in the world. And is the idea that by making it a non-negotiable, then even though your body's screaming, no, like you will do it. Yes, you make it as a habit, right? And the other piece here is that I use the word turtle step very intentionally.

So if you think about a little baby turtle and how they, you know, hatch from an egg and then they make their way to the ocean, they take teeny tiny little steps. I want people to take small steps without their nervous system going ballistic. Because people who are hiders who try to take these big steps going so far outside their comfort zone, that's like the only step they'll take and then they'll have to retreat back into their comfort zone. What was your turtle step today? Getting a blowout and coming here. Okay. Pretty good. Were you screaming yourself in the car? Like, don't go inside. Liz is scary. Okay, what is the next time? The next type is the seeker. So this is the person who has the purpose anxiety.

We all have a girlfriend like this who calls you up and they're like, Liz, I finally figured it out. Like, it's this career path that's finally going to be my thing. Or they call me and they say, I saw the job. My dream job, it's on LinkedIn. I have to have this one thing. It's people who are restless, irritable, and discontent and are looking for a career path to come and rescue them from their misery. And so often I find, which is fascinating,

that seekers tend to be daughters of wealthy and successful people. Nepo babies. Nepo babies. Exactly. I was like you said, but you did. Yes, they're nepo babies. Because they have an example of what success looks like, and it's these big swings. It's knocking it out of the park. Oh, so like if your mom is Julia Roberts, you feel like you can't be an accountant, kind of. Sure. I see this in my clients. For example, I had a client whose father was like this huge Hollywood tycoon and he found his career path early and her brothers found their career paths early and she felt like the black sheep of the family because she's like, I've never found my thing. She felt like there was all this pressure on her to find her thing as if success

was one path. The medicine for the seeker is seeing that their career can be this creative expression and it can evolve as they do. Seeing themselves not as an employee. of something, but as a creative in a way, and allowing their career to almost like be this hummingbird where they can flip from flower to flower and enjoy the process rather than being obsessed with the destination. I think so often about how careers these days, every little thing does add up, even in ways that you just could not have predicted or expected. And I think that we still all have this little bit of a should of like what careers used to be where you would get in a career and then you'd climb a ladder. And so when we're jumping from things,

to thing to thing, to thing, we feel like something's wrong with us. But I think skills are the thing these days and that you can piece it all together and kind of see the story, but sometimes almost only in retrospect. Yes, that's right. Anybody who comes to me who is less than 10 years into their career and is like, what's my thing, what's my thing? Who has that purpose anxiety? It really is true that you can connect the dots looking backwards, right? And you can see how everything does ladder up. So my work with people who are maybe a little earlier on in their career is to really like relax that anxiety and help them tune into their strength and that sense of meaning. And like what are the little nuggets you can pull from each thing? Like the most successful

companies, they tried one thing and then they failed maybe that thing. And then they're like, okay, but there was a little nugget there. Like how can we spin it over here? And then they pull the little nugget from the next thing and the next thing. And then they're like this billion dollar company. And we're all like, oh my gosh, it's so successful. But it's failed so many times along the way. I think the secret to everything we're talking about with this type is like, be. being okay with failing. And I can see how that would be hard with the Nepo baby because you're presented with such an example of success very early on. Yes. It's being okay with failing and lowering the standards a little bit. Again, that projection of like this career path is going to rescue me.

I need to find my thing is really the anxiety that a lot of these people live with. And so let's just let's lower the bar a little bit. Justice for the Nepo babies. What's the next type? The next type is the work hard, play hard. is what I was when I was at Google, and I love my work hard, play hard clients. These are people who are the life of the office and the life of the party. They tend to be former party girls or maybe even current party girls. They have this energy and this zest for life and this charisma that people are just absolutely infatuated with. They tend to be really great at sales or being in client-facing roles. But on the flip side, they live in this kind of pain pleasure seesaw where they want to

live life to the fullest. But at the same time, then they kind of write the sales by being like, I just work so hard, I deserve that bottle of wine or I deserve that expensive vacation. The medicine for this person is learning how to extract that charisma and that zest for life and that energy and that enthusiasm, but channeling it to riding the middle a little bit and not living in those extremes. What is the last one? And then we have the pleaser. So the pleaser is the person who's constantly monitoring any situation and being like, are you mad at me? This is the person who, maybe grew up as the firstborn daughter, and they are obsessed with delivering and never being a burden. Their version of success is being liked and taking up as little room as possible.

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So I think that I'm a grinder party girl. Ooh, okay, great. Okay, great. Which that's good to know that you can be a combo. Yes. I think I have like a son of Work Hard Play Hard with a Grindr rising. Okay. Because I, first of all, I am a super former party girl.

I don't know if you know about my background, but I was like a, drug like every night, like snorke and go to class in college. Yeah. We would have been good friends. I miss those brain cells now. But I also think that I have this like existential anxiety of like, we have this one life on this planet. And I think that's good in many ways because I do get a lot out of my life. And I think I hopefully help a lot of people get a lot out of their lives. And I think that can manifest on its shadow side like we're talking about as this like how can we maximize every single moment. Yes, absolutely. And then I'm just grinding because I'm grinding all the time. How do you experience rest and pleasure? Yeah, so I'm working on that. I'm working on trying to

not optimize my rest and my pleasure. Got it. Because right now, it's like, am I having the most relaxed moment that I can have? Am I having the most pleasure that I can have? And I do feel my dopamine sort of swinging around wildly from moment to moment. That was like the least scientific thing I've ever said on this podcast. But like metaphorically, I feel that. And so that's something that I'm working on. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you have a prescription for me?

So the thing about that really can separate the grinder in the work hard, play hard, is that the grinder experiences rest by working more. And the work hard, play hard experiences rest by going into that kind of like pleasure, doom scrolling, alcohol, wild vacation space. That's me. So it sounds like you might be a little bit more work hard, play hard. Okay. Interesting.

And the grinder experiences rest by working more? Sure, they can like collapse like on the couch. But like rest for them is I got literally everything on my to do with. Correct. That feels very satisfying for them. But that's not ideal, I assume. No, because for people like that, they tend to work themselves into the hole. Again, those are the people who are either full throttle or falling apart.

They only have two gears. They're like a Ferrari and they go 100 miles an hour or they're stationary. So my work with a grinder is to install a second in a third year and to give them back the power of choice in terms of how they work. Because there is a time and a place to grind something out and there is a time and a place to devote all your energy and to work weekends and to not sleep. There's a time and a place for that. But you can't live there. How do we know when to downshift a little bit and work in seasons? So the medicine for the grinder is to really like set essential priorities and to apply an essentialist approach, do fewer things.

better and to work in those seasons. Corinne Lowe, who's a former podcast guest, I love her. And she talks about The Squeeze, which is this period of life that many people listening to this podcaster in where you maybe have elderly parents you're taking care of, you have kids you're taking care of, and you're in this pivotal moment in your career where you're really trying to build yourself a future. Can you downshift when you're in that phase of life? Yes, in the sense of those of the times, and I think Corinne would agree with this, where you

have to be so unapologetic about what your priorities are. And you have to say, in this season, it's family and making a salary. Or in this season, it's taking care of my young kids and taking care of my aging parents. Or in this season, it's, you know, climbing the ladder and making a good living, and I'm going to travel and I'm not going to see my kids as much. Having those kind of two non-negotiables, which is what I advise, especially my grinder clients to do, is so clarifying because it allows us to let the rest be just like a C or a B minus average. Grinders want to be A pluses across the board. Okay, so it's not that you have to let everything else go.

It's that you can drop down to a just satisfactory level. Yeah, and for most grinders, they have the, oh my God, what is that? Okay, that means that I'm going to drop everything. I'm going to drop all the balls. Funny how our brains work. They create these like dichotomies where it's like it's all or nothing. That's not the case. My guess is for most of my grinders, yourself included, me included.

our B-minus effort is more than enough. Okay, I have a little game, and this is going to help people see themselves in these types. Who's most likely to be underpaid and never find out? It's childless women. It's people who fall into that pleaser category. People who are covering for maternity leaves, for spring breaks, for bedtimes and bath times,

without any additional pay. These are the people who are assumed to have the most flexibility, and they're not necessarily very good at saying, know, nor do they have the opportunity to say no. So for people who are doing a lot of that invisible labor, I want you to get really good at asking for more. If you're going to cover for a maternity leave, ask for a bonus. If you're going to cover for spring break, you can say I can cover for half of it, but maybe my colleague can cover for the other half. Okay, this is so interesting because I saw a clip where you were like, childless women kind of get the worst of all worlds at the workplace. I was going to

ask, what do we do about this? Because society does not support parents and it especially does not support mothers. And it is not the responsibility of child-free people to pick up that slack. So you're saying, not on either of those groups, let's make the corporations pay for it, essentially. I think so. I've had success with my clients negotiating an extra bonus for a maternity leave coverage, for example. Because here's the truth. Yeah, it's not the fault of the working mother, we need to support her. But so much of that invisible labor then falls on the woman without kids. And that's not fair either. Blaming the system makes us feel like a victim. What's our agency and choice? Either ask for greater pay or use this tool that I love called the no, but yes. No, I won't

cover for the whole maternity leave. But yes, I will cover for this exact month. No, I won't be able to take that meeting on a weekend. But yes, I can send an email, for example. So the no, but yes, it's a very polite way to set a boundary while still allows you to be cooperative and collaborative. What if it's not something as grand as maternity leave, but it's something like, oh, their kid is sick and they can't get a babysitter. So of course that's going to be excused. But things for child-free people are not excused in the same way. If your pet is sick, people are probably going to give you a lot more shit than if your kid is sick. And more work will end up being like falling on the child-free person's plate. What if it's like these little infractions instead of these big thing,

you can say, I want pay for that coverage. I think that's where the no, but yes, is a really powerful tool because it's saying, no, I won't be able to do this, but here's where I can help. And it's again, it's going back to that internal sense of my battery, is saying yes to this thing going to drain my battery to a zero and I'm going to be exhausted the next day? Who is most likely to never be satisfied even if they achieve their wildest dreams? This is former college or high school athletes, so people who fit into that grinder category. This is people who are so comfortable pushing their body in an extreme way that they kind of suffer from gold

metal syndrome. They're consumed with the training that when they actually finally arrive, it never feels as good as they want it to feel. Because here's the thing that ends and the means have to be aligned. You can't hustle your way to happiness and you can't grind your way to contentment. And that's what a lot of these former athletes miss because they're so ingrained with just training, training, training, and never actually enjoying the end. Who's most likely to get quickly promoted? This is the former party girl. That's that work, hard, play hard.

The woman who has that zest and that energy for life, and she is so comfortable winning others over. She knows that relationships are the key to success. It's not just how hard you work. So while her colleagues might be heads down in their email or trying to perfect that last slide, she's the one going up to the VP and trying to win him over. She's the one who is trying to build a legacy around her because that's something that lights her up. So she's taking that same high she used to get from partying and experiencing that in the workplace.

And that's absolutely energizing. That feels like something we all could steal a little bit of and should want to, right? Like, is there anything wrong with that? When I think of this former party girl and all my clients who are, they tend to be quite extroverted and they enjoy joy. What all these other types could steal is like, when am I having the most fun in the workplace? How do I want to feel on a day-to-day basis? For many of my clients having their head down and their computer perfecting that very last night, they think that's what's going to keep them safe.

But it's actually the thing that's blocking their career progression because they don't know that promotions are relational. They're not just performance-based. Oh, that is such a good tip. I love that. Also, I'm an extrovert, turns out, which adds to this type is probably what I am. I insisted I was an introvert for like two. 200 episodes of this podcast and my entire life. And then I had enough experts sitting in the chair

across from me who was like, no, girl, you are definitely an extrovert. Like, you need to just embrace that. What type of person is most likely to get super rich? This is childless women. So this is somebody who sees themselves as an asset to be invested in. And they can take their money, their resources and say, how can I be my best? And how can I invest in my education? sure, how can I invest in the stock market and property? But how can I see myself as an asset? These are the people who get higher education. These are the people who are able to make it far in their career.

And not just be wealthy from a monetary standpoint, but also be wealthy in terms of experiences and a greater sense of self. So the rest of us can steal from that, like what can we invest in ourselves? And essentially that we are worthy of that. Even people with kits can ask themselves the question, How can I see myself as an asset to be invested in? So many people who come to me, the hardest part isn't the work that I assigned to them. The hardest part is the decision of whether they're going to invest in themselves or not

and see themselves as worthy of that. But especially for women with kids. No, the money needs to go to the kids and needs to go to the mortgage. Of course, be financially responsible. But there are so many other ways to invest in yourself to experience the ROI of a new skill set. experience the ROI of doing a public speaking course. Experience the ROI of building your network in a sustainable way. How can we know if an investment is going to have high ROI or if it's a waste of money?

When we think about an investment in ourselves, we have to think about what is the skill gap that we're trying to close and what's the cost of not closing that skill gap? Because so often the cost of not closing it often means wasted time, wasted energy, sometimes a marriage falling apart or a career stagnating. And so I'm willing to take a risk on investing in myself to close that gap to see what's possible for me. What type of person should definitely quit their job and start their own company? The former party girl 100%. This is somebody who makes a terrible employee, but a world-class founder. Because they have that girl in the bathroom line energy. They want to connect with people.

And they have ideas that other people can really rally around. They're extroverted. They have that work-hard, play-hard. so they naturally are kind of well suited for founder life. I want to see more party girls in entrepreneurship. Okay. Wait, I love this because I didn't know that. And I also, so I'm a very chatty employee, colleague, whatever. Like, I guess I'm the boss now. But like, when I was the employee, I was the water cooler girl where I was like flitting around the office. And I was like, hey, let's talk about this, which was great when somebody else was

paying me for that and a little harder now that it's all coming from me. But I still am that. And I'm very chatty and I've always, I don't know, been like, is there something wrong with this? But so much of work is relational. It's relational. It's being curious. It's helping other people feel seen and valued, which I think, you know, it's cliche, but I think party girls really do that.

They hype each other up. They have that energy and zest for life. It's like, oh my God, you look fabulous. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Anytime I've talked with women about this, they feel so seen because so often we're taught to suppress those parts of ourselves, that kind of like bubbly, excited, because maybe it can come off as ditsy or unprofessional. But really, like, whether it's corporate or entrepreneurship,

lean into that strength because people are attracted to that. That's charisma. And I think that that's a strength to really be harnessed and dialed up. And back to what everybody else can seal from it, it sounds like there is some of the stealing that we talked about earlier, which is like, if something's fun, if something's relational, that can still be work. It's just a different type of work. How much success of you had has come for fun relationships? Oh, so much. And also, like, I don't know, I just come back to often, this is my life. Exactly.

This is my role here isn't to just, like, grind out a bunch of stuff and then die. It's to live a life that includes the work that I'm doing. So even if it hasn't necessarily gotten me ahead, which it definitely has, it's also contributed to the fact that I am living here as a whole person every single day. That's right. That's right. Who's most likely to get fired with? without seeing it coming.

That's those endurance athletes, people who are so accustomed to putting their head down and just charging ahead that they don't really see the forest through the trees. They don't see the bigger picture or when their effort becomes diminishing returns. They're just so focused on plotting ahead, being a good soldier, getting to inbox zero,

that they're not seeing, okay, how am I best used here? And how can I be more strategic? Oh, that's so interesting. I've been encouraging my employees to schedule in their calendar zoom-out time where they can see like, okay, my job isn't just to produce, produce, produce, it's to figure out how what I am producing contributes to the overall goals of the company. And maybe I need to tweak this

or try this. Is that something that you would recommend for this type of person? I think for all of us, whether it's this type of person or anybody, in the age of AI, we need to be protecting our visionary space. The person who can hone a perspective, who can see the big picture, can see why their work matters, and can bring forward a unique perspective is the person who's going to get ahead and who's going to get noticed. So whether you're the grinder personality or a hider, I want you to be so protective of that visionary time.

And that's the first to go. So I like to use the 30-minute test, which is like at the end of the day, can I spend 30 minutes asking myself three questions? What did I learn today? What did I notice that maybe somebody else didn't? And what's an opportunity for this? business. If you can answer those three questions and then identify where can you bring that

perspective to maybe the next meeting or to your boss, that is going to set you apart so much more, regardless of your level. You said especially in the age of AI, how worried do you think the average person listening to this podcast needs to be about AI coming for their job? I think what can make you unfirable in this day and age is protecting your perspective. I think it's wasted energy to worry, but I think where that energy is better spent is honing your human perspective. If you just look at even what goes viral on Instagram and what people are hungry for right now, it's perspective. The five tips, the like the knowledge, that's, is this AI that's talking to me here? I want to know what you think. I want you to connect the dots for me. That's why podcasting is so well

trusted today too, because it's perspective. Be the CEO of your own career in this instance. Hone your perspective, bring it forward, even when you're not 100% sure. So many people come to me and they're like, well, how can I bring forward a perspective if it's not right or it's just conjecture? I love to use the words my working hypothesis is and then put forward a perspective because that allows for some experimentation. It invites other people to say, oh, yeah, that's a really interesting point. Or I disagree because, but you're protected because it's a hypothesis. And that's what senior leaders do anyway. They're all just putting forward hypothesis and conjecture based on their experience.

They're not running tests. So put forward a hypothesis and see what happens. What if we struggle to have a perspective? What if we don't know what we think about something, either because we've already been using these tools and maybe outsourcing our perspective a little bit or just because we don't know what we think about it. How can we develop a perspective?

Just start with what did I notice today? Oh, I noticed that, you know, my client said this about our product. Write that down. What did I notice today? Oh, I noticed that my superior had this perspective and I kind of disagreed with it. Write that down. Oh, I noticed that, you know, when I said this thing, people around me nodded their heads.

Write that down. It's all this noticing and curiosity because that's data collection. And insight is just inference based on data. So just start collecting and harvesting data. Is there something that happens when we're kids that leads to us being burnt out as adults? Like what type of parent raises somebody who ends up burning themselves out? It's a people-pleasing parent that raises a kid that burns out fastest. because the root of burnout is codependency.

Burnout happens when I need to take care of everybody around me. I'm not going to say no because I don't want to disappoint you. I'm not going to set a boundary or push back because I don't want to come off as mean. When people are raised in people-pleasing households, that codependence is ingrained in their DNA. So of course they grow up to be adults who are not comfortable saying no. Saying no would mean disappointing. Saying no would mean being a burden. So you're a mom.

How are you thinking about all of this when it comes to your parenting? I wrote the book while I was pregnant and I edited the book when my son was a year old. I was doing some research on this. And although I'm not a parenting expert, this fact really did stick with me. The part of the brain that's in charge of intelligence and rewarding intelligence is not the same part of the brain that's responsible for resilience. And happiness tends to come more often from how you respond to setbacks. and resilience rather than intelligence. So as a mom, I want to nurture and enlarge the part of the brain that makes meaning from setbacks.

Oh, you fell, but you got back up. Oh, you know, that person didn't want to play with you, but you went over here and you played with that person. And later on, oh, you didn't make the JV team, but look at all the friends you made on this other team. You didn't get into that great college, but look what came as a result. As adults, we can be the meaning-making center for our kids' brains who don't tend to have that perspective, right? It requires a maturity to look back and make meaning from things.

And so that's really how I'm thinking about it. I'm looking at how can I reward the resilience and the setbacks without focusing as much on the intelligence portion. It's so like empowering and exciting that you get to like redo this. I don't know. It feels like one of the coolest parts of parenting. I agree. Is there a type of person that we don't want to be in relationship with? Like what type of person is hardest to be married to? It's the people with very rich parents and successful parents. Although... The Nepo babies. Although people are like, okay,

Cha-Ching Trust Fund, these are the people who psychologically have incredibly sky-high standards for not only themselves, but their partners. And they will never be satisfied unless they reach those standards. And so these people, of course, divorce rates

tend to be a little bit higher. But in general, like, nobody really wants to be married with somebody who hasn't found their thing and is anxious in their career. and really trying to find that. I know, you know, for a lot of my clients who are married to NEPO babies or people with, you know, a lot of money, they're misaligned on the values front because they don't have that same perspective around what a good career looks like and means.

And if we are married to a NEPO baby, is there anything we can do? I'm not. I wish I would. But no, you're like, don't wish you were. Okay, so this is for all the rest of us, we can feel okay that we didn't marry into a ton of money. and it's maybe even better in some ways. But if we are, is there like something you can do to fix that? I think it's talking to that person,

whether it's a Neville Baby or somebody else in this seeker mindset. Yeah. And just saying, what are your expectations for the job and what are you secretly hoping that job is going to rescue you from? And how can we get those needs met elsewhere? So, for example, I had a seeker client. Her name was Chelsea. She's the person whose dad found his thing really young

and built this huge career in Hollywood. Her brother found his thing. And she felt like the black sheep of the family. And she came to me being like, I need to find my thing, even though her resume looked like the menu at the cheesecake factory. It was like incredibly eclectic. It made no sense. She came to me just being like, help me find my thing, help me find my thing. That seeker energy. We had to relax it. And we had to help her kind of like tend to her nervous system in that way and help her to not just seek what's next, but seek to contribute her zone of genius. So when she figured out what her zone of genius was, she was able to double down and stay in a job longer and ended up. liking that job so much more because she finally figured out what was required in order to feel a

sense of flow and contribution and engagement. So if you're listening and you want to figure out what your zone of genius is, it's a really fun exercise. I suggest texting or emailing your friends, your colleagues, your family, a cross-section of people from your life. And you can just ask them three questions. The questions are, when do you see me most engaged in my life? Is there a topic or an area of interest that you see me light up around and what shows up in the room when I do. So these questions are proven to kind of get at the heart of what are your natural gifts and talents that you come to the world with? And once you tap into those, that's scientifically proven to put you into a greater state of flow at work, which is proven to increase fulfillment

over time. Oh, I love that. I do think there's something interesting, though, to like if you're never satisfied at work, if you're always looking for your thing, that that will, like, bleed over into relationships a little bit. I think there's something spooky there. I see people who come to me being like, I'm so dissatisfied in work. It's rubbing off on my marriage. And I don't want to see my friends because I'm embarrassed about it. But the inverse is also true. You can have that fulfillment spillover effect. So the more fulfilled you are at work, the more confident you naturally are, the more you have that battery charge. You're willing to give that away to other people too. You start to experience more fulfillment in other areas. What if that's out of our control? Like I picture the person

who's applying to jobs every single day and they're just not getting them or they're toiling away at their work and they don't feel rewarded by it. And they do feel like they're less happy in the other areas of their life, but they don't feel like the thing that would make them happier at work is within their control. What do you suggest to that person? A telltale sign that something at work is out of your control is if it has toxic culture. Toxic culture is really one of the only things that is outside of your control. And a toxic culture, according to MIT Sloan, is characterized by things like gossip, back channeling, cutthroat competition, chronic lack of inclusion and disrespect. If that is the case for you in your workplace,

that's not something that you can influence at all, unless, of course, you're a leader. But that's a telltale sign that it's time to go. Most other things can be changed in your work life. So I have something called the million dollar check test that I applied with one of my clients. and she was miserable. She was about to step away from a career. She spent 14 years building because she had a difficult relationship with her boss and she viewed that she had no other options but to leave.

So I went out on a bit of a limb and I used this with her and I said, okay, imagine Sarah, I had this million dollar check. And it is yours. If you can find a way in your career currently right now to experience more fulfillment and satisfaction and to shift your relationship with your boss, write down all the things that you would do to win that million dollars. She's like, I'd have the difficult conversation that I've been putting off.

I guess I would ask him to set more clear expectations for me. I guess I'd maybe talk to my colleagues and come up with more support. She came up with over 20 different things. I only had her do one thing a week. And within six months, she was so happy to report that she didn't have to leave her career in academia, that she had shifted her experience at work because she had, had shifted her relationship to the people around her and to her experience of agency in the workplace. And so I love that million dollar test. That really unlocks a different reservoir of

motivation and it allows people to see opportunities that they couldn't see before. I feel like the alternative title to this episode is like your job is the problem. Like you doing your job is the problem. That's exactly right. I'm famous for saying, honey, the job's not the problem, but you're the problem. Can you apply that to the first person I mentioned? The person who's sending out all these job applications. It's a really hard market out there, and they are just unable to get any job, and that's bleeding over into the rest of their life. First thing I would say is stop scrolling LinkedIn, get off job boards immediately. Here's what I want them to do instead. I want them to focus on what's called the content rather than the frame of the job. If you think about

the last time you went to an art museum, I bet you looked at the wall and you admired like the color and the strokes, and you took a step back, and you looked at the gestalt of the picture. I bet you didn't notice the frame that the art came in. So too do we wake up every single day in our jobs to contribute to a problem that's meaningful because we love our employees or our colleagues because we're committed to a mission that we're passionate about. So I want people before they go on to job boards, even before they start networking or asking other people, what do you think I should do? You have to write down your career content because that's your art. So I want you to answer the following questions. What are my values? What are the things that are most important to me?

What is my zone of genius? What problem do I want to contribute to? And what are my two non-negotiables? What are the things that I'm not willing to forsake no matter what on that next job? So that could be money, community, commute. Correct. Money, flexibility, work-life balance, commute, size of company, salary in certain instances. And we only get two. Yes, you only get two. Yes, you get two because that indicates what's most essential for you in your next step and what you're not willing to forsake on. If you have to have three, you have to have three. It's okay. After that, then you ask yourself the question, what potential frame could fit that content? So you take a step back, you look at it like you would art, right? And you say, okay, what is the hypothetical answer to

the question? What could be next for me in my career? And I want you to write down three different hypotheses for potential frames for that content. So you would say something like, okay, based on the fact that, like, I'm, again, I'm a people person. I love being creative. My non-negotiables are flexibility and being strategic. A potential frame for this could be, well, I want to be like a fractional COO. Another potential hypothesis could be I could go in-house and I could work on something more creative but still use my skill set. So I want you to go through and be like, what are this potential frames? So now all of a sudden, instead of agonizing over, you know, throwing your resume out into the ether and getting no responses,

which is a terrible thing anyway, you know exactly what you're after and why that matters. And you have three different potential frames for that, ranging ideally from safest to riskiest. And then go to your network and say, this is what I'm looking for. What do you see for me? And have them try on a couple different frames. And then after you've honed in your hypothesis, then go to the job boards. You're basically saying there could be entire avenues that your career could take that you do not even have any idea about right now. There probably are entire avenues that your career might take.

And you need to do this research first. And then you need to take that art to other people and say, what are my blind spots? What am I not considering? Is there a great company that you think would be thrilled to have a skill set like this? Do you have a friend who does exactly this? Do you have a cousin who does this? Would you be willing to connect me? Are people getting jobs through applying anymore?

Are they getting it 100% through networks these days? 80% of jobs are filled through relationships, regardless of level. the more senior you become, that goes more to like 90-95. There's something called the hidden job market. Have you heard of this? No. Okay, so the hidden job market is the unfortunate truth that 80% of jobs don't even make it to job boards at all. And so the hidden job market is really found like Easter eggs through your relationships.

You have to get in through the back door. It just feels very disheartening because how are we supposed to find those people, find those jobs? I just picture the thousands of people out there right now who are scrolling on LinkedIn, scrolling on the job boards, and you're saying that is a waste of time. I'm saying it's a waste of time in terms of getting a job. I think you'd be helpful for research. But if you're trying to get a job, if you're spending 100 hours looking for a job, I want 90 of those to be in conversation with people and 10 spent on the computer.

What people? Where are we finding these people? What are we asking them? What does networking, I guess, look like in pragmatic practice? So your network has to fall into three categories. It needs to fall into, I want to talk to people who are in the industry that I'm interested in pursuing. So again, this is after you've done your art, you've done your hypothesis.

Okay, now I'm going to look to my network. I want you to name out all the people who are in that industry that you know. Colleagues, cousins, friends, a network is anyone you know. People you met at a party five years ago, somebody you've been connected with on Instagram or Facebook for 20 years and haven't spoken to since. They are valid. Put them on the list. The second is who's somebody who might be in this role or adjacent to the role that I'm interested in.

And then the third, and this is the most important category, are your connectors. Connectors are people who have their hands in a lot of pies. Maybe they're the party girls, right? They're people who are extroverts. They tend to know a lot of people. And even if they themselves don't fall in those first two category, they're like, I know a guy. When you map out your connectors and the people who are in the industry and in the role, the next step is I want you to go to the low-hanging fruit. Go where it's warm. Go with the people who you can

kind of text and be like, hey, I'm considering my next career move. I know you always have really great ideas. Can we hop on a 30-minute call? You share with them your hypotheses in your career frame and you say, do you know anybody else who you can connect me to? Because everyone you just listed there, those are your first-degree connections. But they're probably not where your job lies. Your job probably lies in that second or third-degree connection, which is why your network is like a web. So your secondary connections are opened up through your first degree connections. Is it okay to say like I'm putting myself out there? This is something that matters to me. Can you help me? Yes, but you can't say what do you think I should do? Okay. You have to say these are the

things that I'm interested in for my next job and here's why those matter to me. And these are my hypotheses for what could be next. Help me pressure test my thinking. Don't just have somebody come draw on your canvas. That's your art. You have to have it first or else you're just going to fall into that seeker mentality again. This is just so huge, I think, because I just picture all the people who are listening right now who are just scroll and scroll and scroll and through the job boards and you're like, that is not how you should be spending your time right now. That is crazy. Did you know that the average half life of caffeine is five hours? Meaning if you drink a coffee or matcha at 3 p.m., you still have half of that caffeine in your system five hours later when you

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That's Liz to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply, see terms for details. I want to talk to you about the Tradwife phenomenon because there's a growing conversation online that the solution to burnout is just to opt out entirely to go live our soft girl lives, to find somebody who can take care of us. Is that an effective way to deal with burnout? So I'll never pathologize the impulse to want to spend more time with your kids or your family, I think that's like a noble pursuit. The question isn't if you want that. The question is,

are you fleeing something or are you running towards something? So in this instance, we're talking about the fleeing. Like, I can't hack it here. Maybe this just isn't for me. I had a client like this and, you know, she was really working to try to figure out what was next for her and she was, her mental health was really suffering. She decided to have a baby almost like a bandaid for that. She's like, I'm just going to pour myself into motherhood. And she came back a year later. being like, it didn't work. It didn't work. I'm right back in the, you know, in the same situation. And now I have a baby and I'm trying to figure out what's next. And she wasn't satisfied being a stay-at-home mom. So, you know, the trad wife phenomenon is, are you fleeing something or are you running towards

something? Okay. I have another game. This is underrated versus overrated. And basically these are famous bits of advice about women in the workplace. And I want to know whether you think the advice is underrated or overrated. So, Ariana Huffington, the founder of Huff Post, we think mistakenly that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work instead of the quality of time we put in. Underrated or overrated? I'd say underrated. There's something called effort moralization. In our society, we tend to moralize effort and assign more positive character traits to people who work harder, regardless of if they're more productive or not. There was this famous study. There were these two guys, Mark and Justin. Mark was and Justin were making

widgets at the same rate of six widgets per hour. But Mark, it was effortless. He did it. And it was fine. And then for Justin, it was really, really difficult, but he produced the six widgets when he had to. Respondents marked Mark as more competent, but Justin as more virtuous. Justin was probably a better husband. He was probably a better father. He was probably a better person and more moral. So in our culture and in our minds, we assign morality to hard work. The root is really around probably the industrial revolution. And the fact that when we left farms and went to factories, our value as a person was how long we could labor on the factory lines. Part of the psychology behind this is like, if somebody works really hard at something, it's because they're a good person.

Like, think about the people who you look and it's like, oh, they're a really hard worker. Like they probably work really hard at their relationship. They're probably really devoted parents versus people who are like, yep, clocked in, clocked out. That was easy. Oh, those people are smart? But are they good parents? Are they just going to clock in, clock out? with that too. This feels like related to the GLP1 conversation, which there's probably 50 million GLP1 conversations happening right now, including abuse of GLP1s and the skinny conversations and all of that. But one of the conversations is like, is it cheating? Is it taking the easy way out? And there's a lot of people who are like, we don't like this because we feel like you should have to suffer to lose weight.

How can we know if we're putting in quality time versus quantity time? If you have set your most essential priorities. And I think for anybody who's working in an organization specifically, like with a boss, like within a company, you want to make sure that your priorities ladder up to those larger business objectives. And I want you to have no more than three priorities. So quality time looks like spending 80% of your time on those three priorities and 20% on your time on business as usual. And what if our boss just wants quantity time? Like they're like looking for the mouse to be moving throughout the day, et cetera. They want our butt in there are certain industries like that. Government really is about like butt in seat and like staying

there from like nine to five. And I think the reason for that is that these are taxpayer dollars at work. And we want to make sure that we're, you know, doing a good job there. But I feel like as a taxpayer, I'd rather quality. I'm like, why would we ever be about hours versus output? I mean, you're preaching to the choir. But I think the question is like, I don't think you can change your boss's mind. You can't change the government's mind. But the question is like, how can you within those constructs and confines, deliver the most value that you possibly can. And it's not from volume of productivity. It's from doing few things very well. Okay. Marissa Meyer, who is the former CEO of Yahoo, said, burnout is about resentment. Preventing it is about knowing yourself well enough to know what it is

you're giving up that makes you resentful. Do you think that's underrated or overrated advice? I think it's overrated. Burnout is not about resentment. Burnout is about codependence. When we are, again, bending over backwards to please other people, when we are refusing to say no, taking on things that aren't ours to own, that's when burnout happens. Now, resentment might be a co-occurrence of that, but the root, if you really examine your behavior, the root of burnout is codependence. Cheryl Sandberg said, success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is

successful, people of both genders like her less. First of all, have you found that to be true? And second of all, what do we do with that? I've read the research. I've found that to be true. I guess I just have to think about when I have observed, both in myself and in my clients, when they believe things like that, how does that make them feel? In my experience, that doesn't make me feel empowered necessarily because then I am busy thinking about, okay, am I showing up is likable enough.

And when I had a mentor of mine say once, you can't do a good job and be concerned if people like you at the same time. Those two things have to be mutually exclusive. Sure, there might be this likeability trap, and maybe it exists, but I don't want myself or my clients to spend any energy focused on that. I'd rather than be spending energy on doing a good job. So adequately rated as like true wisdom, but overrated in terms of actionability and like how much time and energy we should be thinking about that. That's fair. Yeah. Michelle Obama was not a huge fan of Cheryl Sandberg's famous lean-in book and movement. She said it's not always enough to lean in because that shit doesn't work all of the time. Is the lean-in movement underrated or overrated? It is overrated for sure. The problem that

Michelle Obama has with that, and I have that quote as well, is the fact that it places the pathology on the woman rather than the system. And there's just so much evidence that regardless of if people lean in and lean in and devote, again, their time, their energy, they keep trying to solve these problems that there can still be systemic barriers. Now again, my perspective is there's systemic barriers and there's still things that you can do right back to that million dollar test, but we have to hold both truths at the same time. I love that. I sometimes get caught up and like, this isn't a me problem. It's a system problem and I can't change the system. But that doesn't mean we can't find where we have those levers. Yeah. If we just blame the system,

then that feels very hopeless. And it makes me feel like, I don't have any agency. But if I only say, okay, it's, you know, rugged individualism, it's all on me, then I'm gaslighting myself to a certain extent. So you have to hold both truths at the same time. Okay. You just die with guilt. The biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other. When you have to have kids, you have to build your career. Just as you're rising to middle management, your kids need you because they're teenagers. We're screwed. If you ask my daughter, I'm not sure that she would say that I've been a good mom. That was from the CEO of Co. Is it underrated or overrated that being successful and having a fulfilling home life are just at

odds? And this is like an impossible task that we're even trying to do. I think the battle between home life and work life is underrated, but I think the guilt is overrated. So here's why. When we believe, again, that, you know, when we're tying what we do to who we are in the workplace, that success wound also comes home with us. And so if we set an unrealistically high standard for what a mother looks like, then we're bound to always fail. When it comes to working mothers, an exercise I always have them do is I have them set like a clear success statement for them in the workplace and then also within their motherhood. So if their success is really around things like intrinsics, presence, you know, learning, connection, accountability, those are things you can control for.

If you have a big career, you can't always control for the fact that are you going to be at every single baseball game. Are you going to be home for every single bedtime? Are you not going to be traveling over a play? You can't always control for that. But what is the quality of the time and the success that you have when you're there? When you redefine success according to intrinsics, the guilt really lessens. It is an impossible task is what you're saying. Yes. And I love this. As you kind of come back to, this is the truth. And here's what you can do about it. Always. And Helen Peterson wrote, the desire for the cool job that you're passionate about is a particularly modern and bourgeois phenomenon at a means of elevating a certain type of labor to the point of desirability that workers will tolerate all forms of

exploitation for the honor of performing it. The rhetoric of do what you love and you'll never work another day in your life is a burnout trap. Are passion jobs underrated or overrated? Passion jobs are underrated. So I disagree with what she's saying. Because I think that passion is, is not necessarily an input you should control for, but it's the direct result of finding some sort of spark within your job. So you can find that spark through contributing your strengths, through finding something that you're really interested in, through an intellectual pursuit, by having that sense of like, oh, I'm really going to master this thing. Like, I'm going to come to work today. I'm going to really work on my Excel. Or I want to do better in my presentation next time.

I got all this really great feedback. I'm excited to implement it, even though I'm a little bit scared. That's passion. Passion is an energy that can like carry you forward. The famous work of you know, Angela Duckworth, grit is the result of passion and perseverance. I think there's a role for passion in our work. But you don't have to find a job that you're passionate about, but you should find a job where passion is part of the equation. And Helen Peterson also said burnout isn't a personal problem. It's a societal one and it will not be cured by productivity apps, a bullet journal, a face mask skin treatment, or overnight fucking oats. Is this, this overrated or underrated wisdom, should we be trying to fix burnout systemically instead of

individually? It's probably underrated wisdom. I think a lot of people think that burnout can be cured with a bubble bath or a vacation or, you know, a quick fix. When the truth is if something, again, is like, is misaligned, that requires huge personal action. I don't agree that it's only systemic because I've seen it over and over again, again, 60% of people who come to me being like, get me out of here, end up staying because they shift their working patterns. And I just refuse to believe we live in a society where, you know, we have no personal agency. Okay. I have a little speed round for you. What's the most dangerous career advice given specifically to women? Just do great work and you'll get noticed. So we have to make people notice us? I can't tell you how many times I got that advice

when I worked to incorporate. Just do your, just do your work and you'll get promoted. That's not the case. So many women fall into that trap and they fail to create enough awareness around their work. Have you heard about the pie theory of performance? So think of a pie graph. And if you think about your performance, you need to have 60% exposure around your performance. 30% is about the image that you're projecting. And only 10% is about like your actual work. So when we think about workplace performance, not only in terms of how you're perceived, but also how you're rated, it's much more about your exposure around your work.

So what's the best way to bring exposure to our performance? Should we be emailing our boss, all of our wins? I want you to think about, like, on a weekly basis, what's one way that you can share an insight that you've learned through work that you've done with other people? So you can share that on LinkedIn. You can share that on Instagram. You can share that with a colleague. But just one thing a week, you know, every single week. What's one thing that somebody might be doing right now that guarantees they're going to burn out in the near future? Optimizing their recovery. Wait, I do that.

I know. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I'm laughing. It's knowing laughter because you mentioned it. The sleep score, the heart rate variability, the kind of obsession with relaxation and restoration. Even just the energy that I'm using right here, I'm gripping. There's energy. There's anxiety. There's tension. It's like, let me relax, please.

What real relaxation is is regulating your nervous system and getting into a rest and digest place. So I'm guessing there are things that you do and that I do that actually genuinely do regulate your nervous system. I like a cold plunge. Sure. I like the heart rate. But for me, tracking kind of is more of the same issue. That's so interesting because intuitively, I did take off my aura ring recently and I've stopped tracking my sleep because I felt like it was making my sleep worse.

And I'm like, the goal of wearing this is to make my sleep better and it's making my sleep worse because I'm stressing out about it. Like I'm not helping myself by wearing it, essentially. What's one thing that we can do today to feel happier at work tomorrow? Take one intentional micro risk outside your comfort zone because happiness is found outside your comfort zone and your growth zone. Happiness is not found in controlling things, trying to play it safe and trying to play it smart. So often we need to microdose this risk, whether it's, again, sending an email, speaking up when you don't have 100% of the answer, building your network,

any of the things that we talked about today are probably outside your comfort zone. Give one of those a try. What's one thing that we can do today if our goal is to make a lot of money? I think a lot of people don't understand that making money comes from owning, not earning. And so think about what What can you own, whether it's part of a stock portfolio or investing in your own business in a certain way. So often, so many of my clients are W-2 employees like in corporate, and that's not what's going to earn wealth over time. So I want you to be owners, not just earners. Even if that is just taking your money, because not everybody is suited to be a founder. And I want to be careful with that because we live in a world that pushes everybody to kind of like quit your job, start a business.

And as we've talked about today, that is not the right fit for many, many people. But even if you're just taking your money you've earned from working for somebody else's company and turning that into ownership via the stock market, via property, via anything like that. What's one question that everybody should ask in a job interview to suss out whether it's a toxic job? Who occupied my role before me and where are they now or where are they going? So you can read between the lines. Oh, they've, you know, moved on to their next opportunity. Okay, great. You know, what was some of their feedback about the role as they left? You don't necessarily want to ask this like in a first round to a recruiter. I would ask this, like, as you kind of maybe develop some trust with people over a period of time,

but it is incredibly important to know why they left where they're going. It's a great sign if they left because they're filling another role within the company, for example. What's one piece of research that really changed your mind about something? I read the stat recently that self-trust comes from following the 51% answer. So so many people think that self-trust comes from, like, making good decisions. but really self-trust comes from trusting your intuition and knowing when you're 51% sure and making moves based on that alone. Because so much of self-trust is like, okay, I can be trusted to make good decisions.

And I trust my knowing and I trust my true self-and-I'm able to follow that forward. Self-trust can be damaging when we say things like, I don't make good decisions. But learning to trust the 51% answer is a really great thing. 51% feels wildly low to me. Talk to me about. your decision-making process. I just feel like 51% I'd be like, well, there's 49. I'll research a lot. I just really like to find like what is the best right answer. And I usually am trusting myself. I'll take advice from other people, but I'm not going to do something just because somebody

else says it. But I usually am aiming to be much more sure than 51%. Where does that number come from? You've done the research. You've talked it all through. And then when you sit with it and you think about it, sometimes there's an answer that's like nudging you one way or another. That's what I mean by the 51% answer. It's like the thing that's tugging you, even just 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%. You don't have to be 100% sure in order to make moves. Do you, a lot of people say for having kids that if it's not 100% yes, it's a no, do you think the 51% applies for having kids? I believe that when it comes to kids, being ready is a decision. It's not a feeling. I never felt ready to have kids. I wasn't 51% ready, but I knew ultimately that I was 51% sure

that I did want to have kids. I never felt ready, but I did make a decision to be ready. And so I do agree. I think 51% is enough to have kids, but I don't think you have to feel 51% ready in order to do. Wait, so that's like double permission. Not only do you not have to be 100% sure, but you don't even have to be ready, you can kind of take the action before you're emotionally there for it is what you're saying. I think that if there is an enduring desire that you've had over a long period of time,

and it's tipping more in the yes category and it has been in that. that yes category in a sustained way, then that is something that's worth you pursuing. I see this with jobs too. Like people come to me and they're like, I've always actually been interested in like mentorship or I've always really been interested in like kids and parents and like that's something that I've been interested in for a long time. But like could that be a career path? And I talked to them and I said, if that's been a desire that's on your heart over at least, you know, like two years, then that's something that's worth pursuing. It's interesting the idea that it's not about the strength of the sureness. It's about the duration of the sureness. That's my experience around it.

That's really interesting. Okay. If you couldn't say it depends, what's one thing about being both successful and happy at work that's true for almost everybody? That we get happiness and comfort all wrong, that so many people try to stay safe, certain, and in control, and that that is a recipe for a career dissatisfaction. So happiness really does come from taking risk, trusting the 51% answer, doing things outside of your comfort zone every single day, and knowing that fills in with the theory that how you work is more important than what you do for work. Because if I'm working in a way where I'm trusting myself and I'm taking risks and I'm growing and I'm changing, then that's a recipe for great happiness.

I just find it so hopeful. Like any job can be a great job if you do it in a great way. What's one habit that's changed your life? Knowing ready is a decision, not a feeling, that I don't have to be ready. in order to make a change in my life. I wasn't ready to have kids, but I did it anyway, and I'm very happy about that decision. I wasn't ready to leave my job at Google,

but I did it anyway. And so many of my clients say something that really breaks my heart, which is like, I need a catalytic event to force me to change. I need a cancer diagnosis or, you know, I wish somebody would just fire me so I could start my job. They want something external for them to push them into feeling ready, but readiness is never going to come. It's a decision, not a feeling.

I want you to just end us with speaking to the person who is feeling really burnt out right now. They're feeling like, I feel like I did everything right. And life just is not paying off for me in the way that I expected it to. Maybe they don't have a job they love. Maybe they do have a job they love. But they still don't feel good. Just speak to the person who feels really burnt out and tell them what they need to hear right now. You're not alone.

It's not your fault. There are so many forces at play that have created this situation. But that healing and changing is your right. responsibility and that there is so much that you can do in order to change your circumstances, whether you're microdosing risk, whether you are learning about your values, sending those three texts around what is your zone of genius, whether you're willing to grow your network, or you're willing to set those essential priorities. There are so many levers that you can pull in order to make you feel more empowered, connected, and happy at work. Yeah, and I love the idea

of going back, like really resonating with which of these five personality types you are. And then you shared a micro prescription for each of these personality types. That's a really great place to start. We love to leave people with one action step. One thing that every single person listening or watching can do right now to begin to experience some of the results that you're promising in your book and that we've promised in this podcast. What can people do right now to feel a difference? If you identify with one of those archetypes, figure out what your workplace identity is that's ascribed to that archetype. So are you a get should done person? Are you a fixer? Are you a people person. Are you a pleaser? What is that identity and how is that holding you back or either

helping you? If it's holding you back, maybe try on a new workplace identity that sounds like I am somebody who. So if you're a grinder and your old identity was I'm a get shit done person, but that's holding you back in some way, say I'm somebody who asks for help or I'm somebody who gets things done one thing at a time. Or if you're a people pleaser, you can say, I'm somebody who doesn't shy away from difficult conversations or I'm somebody who tries. Behavior change comes from identity change and they reinforce each other. The words we put after I am are the most powerful words in all of human personality. So the most critical thing you could do after this episode is figure out what that workplace

identity is and rewrite it so that you can have more impact. So I'm the party girl. For me, would it be I don't need to earn rest or optimize rest or something like that? Yeah, whatever those magic words are for you, I am somebody who earns rest because of who I am. Or I am somebody who finds satisfaction in following my values. Or I am somebody who allows her effervescence to shine, but without, you know, dulling that through scrolling. Yeah, it's like the dopamine toggling. I'm somebody who can rest in real ways. I think what's so important about this is that these words have to resonate with you. And so there's a little bit of

wordsmithing involved here. But some of the ones that people really like the most is, again, like, I am somebody who tries. I'm somebody who doesn't shy away from difficult things. I am somebody who is doing their best. I'm somebody who doesn't have to earn my rest. I'm somebody who rides the middle and is able to see the joy and everything. Whatever those words are for you, really try those on and make sure that it creates a reaction of some kind and make sure that that is your workplace identity, not anything else. So we can change these. Yeah. Like we moment to moment, if you're listening, we can always kind of like not only change the way that we are living within the identity we have, we can slide between identities, there are fixes, there are solutions, and that's everything

that we talked about today. Yeah. Brooke, tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book, Healing the Success Wound. Thank you. Healing the Success Wound. I love the subtitle. It's Align Your Ambition, Find lasting career fulfillment, and end the cycle of never enough. It's all of these intentional decisions that you can make every single day to change your thinking

about work, to change your action. about work and to change your emotional responses at work because so much of our fulfillment comes in how we work, not what we do for work. And there's stories, there's data. And I'm really proud of it. I love it. And if people want more from you, where can they find you? You can find me at brooktaylorcoaching.com or Brooke V. Taylor on Instagram. Amazing. Thank you so much, Brooke. Thank you. That is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening on Apple or watching on Spotify or YouTube. You can subscribe or follow so our next episodes get sent to directly to your feed. If you like this episode, leave a comment or better yet, send it to a friend,

a coworker, a parent, or somebody else that you think might love it. All right, I love you. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. One of the easiest micro habits to change your diet is to stop giving yourself the unhealthy option, the option you don't want to reach for in the first place.

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