This month’s Q&A questions come from Brit and Dave. In this episode of Love Always, Jo I actually didn’t get any questions for me so I thought it’d be fun to have my husband Mike answer some questions for me. In this episode, Mike answers questions about what it’s like to be married to a life coach, how to stay positive, and choosing a job that makes you happy.
Links:
Quotes:
- Things don’t always have to be the way you were taught that they should be – Mike
- If you numb one feeling you numb all the feelings — Brene Brown
- May everyone find something in their life that makes them feel the way the Eagles winning the Super Bowl makes Mike feel — Joanna
- Do what makes you happy and not what you think you should be doing – Mike
Journal Prompts:
- What does resistance sound like in your head?
- When things aren’t going great in life what are things that you can look at and say yeah but look at ____.
- What parts of Mikes story do you relate to
- Where can you be more supportive of yourself
- What checkboxes are you working toward that you don’t feel aligned with
Follow Mike:
What is it like being married to a life coach?
You get the full range of emotions pretty much every day it’s really good Joanna’s helped me get through a lot of stuff that I don’t think another partner would be able to do. I’m really grateful it’s your superpower.
Assuming that you feel resistance to feeling your feelings, what does your resistance “sound like” in your head? What does it say when you’re edging up against emotions you don’t necessarily want to deal with? And then what helps you push past those thoughts and face your emotions? — Brit, @jammarketinggroup
(Mike) We talk a lot about numbing and there’s a distance to feeling things you don’t want to feel turns into numbing and that’s doing something mindless or grasping for something you don’t need but feels comfortable to help deflect some of those feelings and feel like you’re in a safer space. It’s like when I turn on the news and just veg out it’s distracting me from stress or anxiety about work.
Resistance in my head sounds like avoidance— ‘you can deal with it later’ but not really believing it because it’s still weighing on you. So using things like turning on the news to distract from stress or going out to eat so I’m not sitting at home stuck in my head.
What helps me to push past it is time, there’s only so long you can numb out for before you realize you have to face it and just do it. Sometimes things at work stress me out so when I come home I tend to resist thinking about what’s going on the next day or the things on my to do list I have to do. It turns me into a procrastinator which I’m not which is something I really hate the idea of.
(Joanna) I took Brit’s new online test to determine what your marketing personality is and through that I learned I’m a P (which is super free flowing) and Mike is a J (which is structure and routine) which makes sense as to why you’re not (or don’t want to be) a procrastinator.
You recently made a career move that was pretty brave, can you tell us about how you made that choice?
(Mike) The deeper thing for me would be that I have a fear and hatred of being wrong or not knowing how to do something when people expect that I know how to do it. That’s what would give me stress at work; I’ve always been really good at my job and as I started moving up in positions I’d get around more and more people who were older than me and had more experience which would cause me to feel partially like the weak link. And that would exacerbate the things that would cause the anxiety of “I don’t know what I’m doing” and those feelings would lead to the daily numbing out because I didn’t want to be in the situation again.
In my last job from day one, I felt that I didn’t know what I was doing and then it essentially bottomed out/came to the surface and I started to have breakdowns feeling that the weight of the company was on my shoulders. It started because there was the daily numbing and escapism of looking at jobs that weren’t in DC anymore. Once I started to face it head on I hired a life coach (Kristen of Clarity on Fire) and it helped give me outlets and come up with solutions to mitigate the intense feelings and help me get through the days and weeks. It helped me get clarity on what I wanted to do next. Part of what I did was write down my core desired feelings— that was the start of figuring out what I wanted and was something I used to help evaluate future job opportunities I was having.
How do you stay positive all the time and how are you supportive of Joanna and others. Do you have tips about how others can be as supportive to others? — Dave – @dclands
(Mike) I think I’ve always been a generally optimistic person, so I think the positivity and stuff come naturally to me. Being able to be so supportive of what Joanna’s doing now is a result of our relationship and I think she’s taught me that there’s a different path to life than what we’ve been told. Things don’t always have to be the way you were taught that they should be. Or the way that is “normal”. The idea of Joanna being a life coach isn’t anything we were exposed to growing up; dads went off to work at a 9-5, moms stayed home, very middle-class upbringing. You assume you’ll grow up, go to college, get a job, buy a house, and have kids. I think in our relationship Joanna taught me you don’t have to do that, you can do things intentionally and it doesn’t have to fit the mold that everyone else is doing. If it’s right for you then it’s the right thing.
(Joanna) You have a very live and let live attitude which I think also helps with that.
(Mike) When you’re numbing out that’s not a time to be supportive. If you’re numbing yourself out then its much harder to be optimistic, fun, and supportive of someone else because you don’t want to deal with anything. A tip would be to be conscious of when you’re numbing out and then try to get yourself out of it so you can have the bandwidth to hear what’s going on with someone else.
(Joanna) When you’re in a constant battle with your inner critic believing that you have to live your life a certain way, you’re also putting that lens on everyone else. So one thing you can do to be more supportive of others is to be supportive and compassionate with yourself. That will help you be more present and shift you out of the numbness/judgmental feeling.
I think it was really brave of you to make the change in your job. Can you share how you had the courage to make the change?
(Mike) I started my new job a month ago and for the first 10 years of my career it was straight out of college and I just wanted to keep moving up and was very focused on titles and feeling like I was working for the right company or organization. I had the umbrella that I wanted to do public service, which is why I worked where I did. And in the past 5 years when I was at my last job I had the opportunity to get promoted and became a manager for the first time in a high-profile job in our CEO’s office. Through that, I got the opportunity to join a leadership development program which is all about developing me and the others in my cohort for future VP roles in the company. You move through different jobs in the company so that when the time comes you’re ready to be a VP in the company. In the last few years, I started having a push-pull feeling realizing that I didn’t want to work. I work because I need money to do things outside of work, which isn’t something I’d felt until a few years ago. It boils down to the fact that I had a literal plan of where I was going and what I needed to do to get to the next position and I didn’t enjoy the process. Probably because I wasn’t doing anything anymore it was more strategy/big picture. So I started looking for a new job outside the organization and I started thinking if I don’t want to work but I have to do something, what do I actually want to do? The work I always got the most satisfaction out of when I sat down at my desk was task-oriented work, like administrative work. I’d rather have a dozen small things to do a day rather than one big thing to do each day. I put things on to do lists just to mark them off sometimes.
So I reached out to a recruiting firm that specialized in that type of work and started going down the path of an executive assistant. For me it was what I liked doing and I get satisfaction from the work I’d do. An opportunity came up at rapid speed (less than 3 weeks from interview to hire) and since I made the move my quality of life has improved greatly. I feel like I’m back in the right place for me. I don’t feel like the weight of the company is on my shoulders anymore and at the end of the day I can look at my to do list and feel satisfied that I completed something. It feels natural, like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.
(Joanna) How’d you get there internally?
(Mike) While it didn’t feel like a risk, it did feel like a big decision but knowing how stressed I was and how much it was impacting me I knew it wasn’t sustainable. I finally feel like I can actually enjoy my weekend, not dreading Monday and having to go back to work.
Love Always, Jo is about lighting you up and relishing your joy—so Mike, what is making you glow from the inside out?
(Mike) The Eagles won the SuperBowl—I still can’t believe it actually happened. From watching the Eagles play 20+ years you get to a point where you don’t think it’s ever going to happen and to see the way they won it. The reason why I’m beaming when talking about it is that I’m really interested and passionate about sports. It’s such a part of who I am and being a fan of those teams is such a part of my identity and the identity of Philadelphia sports is not one of winning a lot, so the pure joy of the thing you’ve put so much time and emotions into that you have no control over and have come to fruition after 25 years is pretty amazing. It’s perspective changing.
What have you done recently that changed your morning workout game?
(Mike) I used to force myself on a morning workout routine because I don’t like working out in general and knew I wouldn’t do it at the end of the day. But a morning routine wasn’t working for me because I need time to wake up. One day I realized what if I flipped my morning routine and allowed myself to wake up, have coffee and then go workout? Since flipping that I’ve been able to keep that routine for about 6 weeks.
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