The One You Feed - Leaving My job

Episode Date: August 5, 2018

I'm talking about the fears that come with leaving my job and how I'm working with that. And I'm sharing the thoughts about going from your full-time job to something else you might love. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, good morning. It's Eric here with a mini episode. And in this mini episode, I'm going to talk a little bit more about leaving my job. And the reason that I'm going to talk a little bit more about leaving my job. And the reason that I'm

going to talk about that is twofold. One is the obvious, to ask you to support the show so that we can make this work. You can go to oneufeed.net slash support and please make a contribution to help the show. Secondly, I want to talk about it because I think the process of getting here and kind of what I'm going through now that I'm here is useful to just examine in general. But I want to start off by talking about the fear. So I have two fears in doing this that I'm trying to work through right now. The first fear is just the simple, the show does not generate enough revenue to support me. So of course, I'm worried about that. How am I going to pay the bills? How am I going to make my son's tuition payments,

et cetera, et cetera. So there is that fear and I'm working through it. The other fear is a little bit more subtle and it's the fear of me needing to make money from this show and me asking you guys all the time for support or taking on additional sponsors or doing different things. I don't like that aspect of it. I'm not comfortable with it.

I don't like to be in a position of always asking again and again. The challenge of what I've learned is that that's the way this works. Is that in order to get people to take action, often it's necessary to say it over and over and over again. And so I don't like doing it. And so I'm a little afraid of it. And I don't want you guys to be like, oh, he's always going on and on about this. So that's one of them. And then the second really is, I started this show from a place of just doing it because I loved it. And also because I really thought I needed it, it would be helpful for me. And those two things are still absolutely true. I do need it.

It has done so much for me personally, and I really do love doing it. The fear, of course, is that when something becomes a quote-unquote job, the way you make your living, it adds a different element into it. And I really want to watch within myself to make sure that the element of making this something that can support me doesn't suck the joy and the love I have out of it and I can stay focused on what's most important. So I'm kind of really wrestling with both of those things right now. How do I get the show to the point where it generates the revenue it needs to support me while remaining authentic and respecting you guys and your time and all of that?

And then secondly, how do I do this in a way that it remains something that I love doing and is important to me and my heart goes into not just the part of me that worries about making money. So I feel like I'm going to figure it out. And I feel like I've done okay with that. I mean, we've been making money for a while now. Again, not as much as is needed. And so I've been balancing that. But I really want to watch it now because this is kind of a critical turning point. And I don't want fear, specifically the fear of whether I'm going to be able to pay the bills, color what happens in the show.

So there is all of that. So I'll end that with, again, if you can, please, oneufeed.net slash support. It is really helpful and really critical right now. The other thing I want to talk about is sort of the process of this going from being a hobby to a full-time job. And I know that there are a lot of people in the world, a lot of people listening to this show who dream of sometime getting to the point where they do something that they love as their full-time job, so to speak. And there's a lot of stuff out there on the internet about just do it, just go for it, you know, make the leap. And I thought I'd talk for a couple minutes about what the process has been like for me, because yes, I am making a

leap of faith, but it's not a blind leap of faith. And so we've been putting out an episode a week for over four years now, probably four and a half years. So obviously a lot of work. So in addition to my job that I have was doing, which was a pretty demanding professional job, you know, an exec, you know, almost executive level in a large company type stuff. I had the podcast going on and all that work. And so I think one of the most important things to recognize is that you don't have to, at least to start, and in my case, for a good number of years, decide like, okay, it's either my full time job, or this thing that I love to do, you can do both. And that's what I did. Now, it was

challenging, and it took a lot of time. But by and large, I loved all of it. And, you know, so I was in a place where, and many of you might find yourself in this place, that is, it seems like you don't have very good options. Option one is you just do your job that you have, and just kind of get by and let these other things that matter to you or that you have and just kind of get by and let these other things that matter to you or that are important to you kind of go by the wayside. Or you quit your job, you get rid of all your responsibilities, you take this giant risk that endangers you and for a lot of you, the people that count on you, and you do the thing that's your passion.

I believe that those are not the only two choices. I believe that the middle way, which as you listen to the show, know, I love as a teacher and I love the middle way really works, which is that you do both. You do the thing you love, you put the effort in, you build that, you work on that, you nurture that, you see how that goes and you keep your job and you do the work that needs to be done there. And like I said, it is difficult and it is a lot of work. And after four and a half years of it, I kind of hit a point where I needed to make a decision. And so I did make a leap of faith. But again, the show had been making money. I had been saving money for a period of time so that I was able to do this. So I was able to make

a leap in a way that felt yes, risky, but not irresponsible. You know, I do have responsibilities. I have bills to pay. I've mentioned my son's college multiple times, right? I've made a commitment to him that I will take care of that. And I'm not willing to just be like, well, I'd change my mind because I want to go pursue this thing. That's my passion. Now, some of you might make that choice. I'm not saying it's the wrong choice. It just wasn't the choice that was best for me. So I worked for, you know, the last four and a half years on both. And again, as I mentioned, it's a lot of work. But what I did was I just eliminated what wasn't important from my life. And I had to make difficult decisions about how I spend my time. And that can be a real challenge, but it is imminently doable and lots of people do it. So I

just don't want people buying into this idea of it's one or the other. I have to keep my job and give up my dreams or I have to give up all my responsibilities to chase my dreams. There's a middle way through that and you can find your way through with diligent effort. The other thing I want to mention about that that I think is important is even if your dream is or you've got a plan to get out of, I'm just going to use your day job for lack of a better word. For me, it was important to continue to cultivate that day job, to love it and to do my best because here's what I found. What I found was that when I resented the job because it was keeping me from doing this other thing that was more important to me, you know, the show was the most important thing to me. When I resented the job, there was this little part of me that thought, well, if I really hate that job enough, it'll drive me to work harder and get out. But it turned out to be the exact opposite.

Going to work every day and hating it and resisting it sucked all the energy and the life out of me. And I did not have as much energy to put into the show to make it better. So I found it was really important to do two things at once that were sort of paradoxical, try and love the job I have and legitimately dig in there and work hard and care and do all that stuff and have a desire that eventually this other thing will come true, where I will do the show and that will come true. And I had to do both those because what I found was that loving my job and caring about it and trying hard did not change the thing that I really

wanted to do, which was the show, didn't change my desire to do that. It just made my life in that transition period again, which has been a long, you know, it's been years, transition period, made that period a lot better. And it wasn't just time that I was like, if I could just get past this. Of course, there are moments of that I had moments of like, if I could just do this, but I really worked with myself to watch the resistance to the job I had, and to really try and appreciate what was good about that job. And I know that when I'm trying and caring and investing in something, I feel better about it. Whereas if I'm just doing it because I have to, I struggle. And so those are a few of the different thoughts about, you know, me getting to this point. It's Saturday morning,

I just finished the first full week of me doing the show full time. And it has been great. I have been worried because I worried that without structure, I might not do the work that was needed to be done. And I know that's a problem for a lot of people. A lot of people like coach are in this problem. They have lots of unstructured time. And it seems like if you had all the time in the world to get things done, it would be easier, but it turns out to almost be the opposite. When there isn't structure, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get things done. I was extraordinarily productive as someone who was extremely busy all the time, you know, day job, other, you know, side project. I managed to get it all done and I was worried and still need to keep an eye on putting in the effort. So I just really did what I work with my coaching clients on, which is to put a structure in place of my own. So I gave myself a very clear

structure of what I was going to do, when I was going to start that day, when I would end, what I would focus on, what I would work on. And then I also had people that I would just touch base with and keep me accountable to doing that work. So I'm trying to follow my own advice of what I teach people when I do the coaching with them. And one week in, so far so good. Again, thank you so much those of you who have supported the show already by donation. That's so critical to what we do and I thank you. If you're not in a position to support the show via donation, there are things you can do. You can go to oneufeed.net slash Amazon and buy anything you buy from Amazon through our

affiliate link. You can share the show with other people. You can rate and review us on iTunes, any of that stuff. And then most importantly, thank you for listening and caring about what we're doing here. I sincerely hope that the episodes each week, the interviews, give you something in your life that is useful and help you to feed your own good wolf. So with that, another episode out on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Bye.