5 Skills To Succeed in ANY Career - Helen Tupper (Squiggly Careers)

0:00 in work and outside of work there was a really big risk that we tried to make work the sole source of our fulfillment so I think what we want to do is find balanced sources of fulfillment yes a lot of it's going to come from work because you spend a lot of time from work but it is why we want to think about what am I doing outside of work as well how else am I finding that

0:18 fulfillment Helen topper is one of the co-authors of this excellent book the squiggly career ditch the latter discover opportunity design your career and it's basically an episode that is all about how to figure out what to do with your working life I.E your career and how to navigate what she calls squiggly careers which is sort of the windy type of career that most of us are going to have these days it's about not being limited by a ladder not thinking

0:43 that the only way is up and that the only destination in terms of success is becoming more senior once we get rid of those constraints is actually quite liberating for people I feel like I learned so much about my own values and my own strengths and what I value from a career and so we start off the conversation kind of discussing the this idea of squiggly careers and where they've come from and then we spend the

1:02 rest of the episode discussing five key skills that you can build today to help navigate a squiggly career so we start by talking about values finding and that's really good we talk about strengths we talk about confidence networking in an effective way and exploring the future possibility a lot of people are motivated by getting more money but it's almost like what's the meaning behind the more money is it giving you status is it giving you significance when you work out the

1:25 meaning behind the money you can actually unhook some of your sort of dependency on the pay hey friends so before we get into the episode I've got some very exciting news that I'm finally able to share with you and that is that I have written a book now if you've been following the podcast for a while you'll probably know from some of my conversations with authors in particular that has been quite the journey over the last three years this has been the

1:47 single hardest thing that I've ever done in my life but after three years it's finally here and I'm delighted to announce that my book feel good productivity is now available for pre-order it's going to be published later this year and you can find a link down in the video description or if you had over to feel good productivity.com all one word you can check out the website and the website is absolutely sick now the central idea for the book

2:07 came from a realization that I had while I was working as a doctor a few years ago and trying to juggle everything with my YouTube channel and my business and I kind of realized that the secret to productivity isn't discipline it's in fact joy and sure hard work and great and willpower and determination and all of those things are good in small doses but for most of us they tend not to be the sustainable route to consistent

2:26 productivity but I realized through a lot of experimentation and then diving into a bunch of research that actually the secret to productivity that feels enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable is to find a way to make your work feel good to find a way to make it feel energizing and enjoyable and if you do that you'll be more productive in your work but you'll also have way more energy to give to the other things in your life that matter to you and this

2:46 isn't just my own personal experience but it's an idea that's been validated by a bunch of studies in the fields of Psychology and Neuroscience as well and so the writing process of the book over the last three years has involved reading hundreds of research papers interviewing academics and experts in the fields of like psychology and procrastination and motivation and spending years trying to condense it into a format and cut out all the fluff and try to do it in a way that's like

3:06 engaging and actionable at the same time so that's what the book is about it is a science back guide on how to do more of what matters to you in a way that feels enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable and if you enjoy this podcast then I can basically guarantee that you will love the stuff that's in the book there are nine chapters each chapter has six different experiments in it that you can try out in your own life and so there

3:24 are 54 different experiments strategies that you can apply to your life starting from as soon as you read the book and the idea is that you apply these and you see if they work for you and over time you'll build your own feel-good productivity system now if you do decide to pre-order the book then that would be awesome because firstly it helps me out and secondly I think the ideas in this book can be genuinely life-changing and

3:41 if you pre-order the book it will be delivered straight to you on release date later this year or to your Kindle or your audible account and I'm narrating the audiobook by the way power or to their hardback hardback version of the book If you prefer to read physical copies of books and if you do pre-order then please do be sure to save your receipts because I'm going to be announcing a bunch of really exciting pre-order bonuses exclusively only for

4:00 people who pre-order the book and so final thing before we get into the episode is just want to say a massive thank you to you guys by watching the videos by subscribing on social media by listening to the podcast you have made this book possible without you guys supporting the channel and everything that I do there's no way penguin would have come knocking a bit like hey do you want to write a book and so I'm like this has been like

4:18 such a rewarding experience and I could not have got to come to this point without your support so I just wanted to say massive thank you from the bottom of my heart for that so that's it from me do check out the book If you like at feelgoodproductivity.com it'll be linked Down Below in the podcast description and the show notes as well but now let's get into the podcast episode itself hello welcome to the podcast thank you

4:35 for having me so we're going to be talking about the squiggly career and the idea of like how to how to build a career that you actually love yeah and like the twisty Tony squiggly path along the way before we dive into that I'd just love to hear from people who might not be familiar with who you are can you give us a quick like summary of how we ended up here oh gosh the quick the quick

4:54 squiggly path so I used to work for lots of large organizations mainly in marketing and about 10 years ago so 2013 me and a friend that had gone to University together were reflecting a little bit on our careers they'd started quite ladder-like like so leather like that I did three graduate schemes after the other because I just loved that like ready-made incentive of progression that they come with but then we started to realize together that our careers have

5:19 been going lots of different directions and we were really enjoying what we were doing and developing a lot but we realized that other people were still stuck on this ladder like they hadn't been able to develop in different directions and we decided we just wanted to help people take what we had learned what was helping us and support other people to succeed in careers that were a bit more individual and then the more we did that it

5:39 started with evening sessions so while we were doing our five day a week job we would go train people in the evening and that stuff just started to stick and people started to share it and this business sort of grew that became a book and it became a podcast and it became a big training company and sort of 10 years on from that moment that's what we do today we have a team helping people scale squiggly all

6:01 over the world and supporting them with their skills wow that's a great pitch what what is this quickly career oh what is this quickly career it is a career where people can develop in different directions so you don't have to be defined by the last job that you did and you have freedom and flexibility to develop in a way that's right for you that can be in the same company or the same industry sometimes people think

6:23 squiggly is about you know making dramatically different changes to their career things that you've done for example you've had quite an extreme squiggly career but you can still squiggle and stay in a company it's about not being limited by a ladder not thinking that the only way is up and that the only destination in terms of success is becoming more senior once we get rid of those constraints is actually quite liberating for people because I can go

6:48 sideways because I don't have to worry that that's a bad move or I could go back to something I did before and it's not a failure for my future and people just become much more open and start looking inward what do I actually want from work rather than outward what does good look like on the surface and surface level stuff doesn't often make people that happy it's the inward stuff that's better what what is a career these days like

7:13 how do we understand that word yeah what is a career I think a career is a collection of jobs we do throughout our time at work that's all a career is to me it's the Journey of the jobs what we are trying to say is if you have a squiggly career that journey of the jobs gives you more choice and it gives you more freedom whereas if you have a ladder-like career a journey of jobs that journey is only going in One

7:42 Direction and you are going to have a limited amount of control about what that looks like because when the journey looks like a ladder what a lot of people do is they have to wait for promotions because that's that's how you progress on a ladder whereas when the jelly looks squiggly you are creating more possibility for your future rather than sort of waiting for somebody else to gift you that promotion it is the idea of squiggly confined to

8:05 like like for example I'm thinking in medicine it's fairly ladder-like but then I know a lot of people who have quickly squiggly careers within medicine as well do you see examples of people within a more traditionally hierarchical Fields ending up creating a squiggly career for themselves yeah absolutely so gosh we work with lawyers we work with actually we do quite a lot of work with media companies who are I would say very siled sometimes in the skills like

8:30 they kind of go well I'm I'm an editor therefore I can't go into that function so we deal with lots of different organizations and industries that are traditionally more ladder-like and actually because of their expertise like kind of there's a an international organization we work with with ingredients Specialists like they have phds and all kinds of things that I don't understand they don't necessarily want to go and become a teacher you know they're actually quite happy with their

8:53 PHD expertise but the point of squiggling is it goes beyond a job title so we're trying to think about your talent so okay yes you've got a PhD and yes you're some molecular scientist or whatever it is but what is your talent like specifically what do you want to be known for what gives you the most energy at work and how can we find ways for you to stretch that strength so you can still do the job that you're currently

9:16 doing but if you look at your career in a squiggly way what you're thinking is well if that's what gives me energy that's what I want to be known for then how can I build that beyond the job that I'm in today how could I build relationships beyond the ones I have today because the more we get beyond the thing we're in today the more opportunities we create for our future but in that ladder-like way of thinking

9:35 we don't really go beyond where we are today because we're just just doing the job and waiting often for someone else to give us those things so are we talking like side hustles and stuff or like what's the how how does one go about exploring so so let's let's take strengths for example just for a moment so if I'm if I'm thinking okay so I I want to be known by my talents and not my titles and it's a much kind of broad

9:57 way of things people thinking about their development and so I don't know what is one of the talents you want to be known for I don't know I say songwriting okay songwriting yeah potentially it's not a talent yet but I would like it to be okay brilliant so we want to try and stretch that strength as much as possible the more people and places you use that strength in the better the better it's going to become so we might

10:17 start thinking about in your day job today yeah how can you do more songwriting maybe you could write the intro the intro music for your podcast that would be a sort of a very relevant way of stretching that strength then we might think a little bit more broadly how could you help some other people by stretching that strength so could you volunteer are there I don't know music Charities organizations that you could contribute to could you get involved in

10:42 schools so this is where you get into the role of side hustles or volunteering and you stretch your strengths I I really like people to stretch their strengths within their organizations as far as possible because the more people within your organization that can see your strengths the more they will spot opportunities for you but we want we want it in and outside of the organization different people different places because the way of thinking about it I think is frequency builds

11:08 competency more you use it better you're going to get an openness leads to opportunity so the more people that see it the more people that are going to spot for you and if we can just keep that stretch going it starts to build your brand you become known for that talent and the good stuff comes to you love it okay but I have so many more questions about the strength stuff but but before we go there

11:28 where does this idea of like ladder career progression come from yeah it's so it's over 100 years old as a concept and start in the financial services sector that's the origins of the career ladder Financial Services sector mainly for managers apparently early 1900s there were I think a big growth in clerical workers and managers were trying to create some Conformity over careers so they could manage and motivate a rapidly growing Workforce that's kind of the origins of the ladder

11:59 I'm not sure Conformity and control are the ingredients for like happy careers but you know that ladder stuck around for a very long time but you know it leads to lots of problems now so that thing that was created 100 years ago for one context mainly for managers has sort of been extrapolated into lots of different environments and situations and the world that we're working in now is very very different so we are not working in this predictable

12:25 world like most people are going to do multiple roles in multiple companies and have multiple careers like it's it's a very much change and people also identify with work a lot more it's not so much going to clock in and clocking out it's much bigger part of our identity which means we ask questions like well purpose I mean purpose it's just the concept of having work with purpose is quite a new thing for people making a difference meaning at work they

12:51 are important things for us to consider but they lead to very different responses from different people so with this ladder-like notion what we're doing is forcing everyone to fall into one definition of success and meaning you know become more senior get to the top and it leads to lots of people actually competing with each other in in careers for roles they might not actually want it leads to quite a lot of comparison so I might look at you as someone who is

13:18 successful and think well I need to be like you and if I'm not doing what you're doing then I'm not successful rather than actually thinking what does success mean to me and lots of people lose confidence so this thing that's been around for such a long time people think well if my career doesn't look like that then I'm obviously not doing it right you get this like the right career the wrong choice very binary and it's just not that it's just not that

13:39 binary like we all make different moves we all learn from different things and we should be using that to inform what we do next it's not good and bad moves that that limits people making choices when they think every move has to sort of it's almost like they sort of progression perfectionism which is is holding people back from experimenting and exploring and just becoming a bit more self-aware where does this idea come from that we're like every move we make we have to

14:03 go upwards in this sort of metaphorical world I think I mean I think it's been baked in by the ladder I think it was introduced and then we've reinforced companies so we've created organizational structures upon this concept I've I've seen and experienced it and actually I have been motivated by it because it is it's already made achievement for you you know the promises you show up you work hard and you will go up that ladder and

14:30 when that is true I think it's quite motivating for people that you know I have a value of achievement so for me to some extent that becomes quite motivating but then you get to a point where that level of promotion isn't possible anymore because they don't come around that frequently or the organizations going through a period of restructuring and suddenly you're left going oh well am I not successful now is am I doing something wrong and

14:59 it's not that you're doing something wrong and it's not that you're not successful and it's not that you can't keep developing it's just that very limited way of looking at Career Success and how to develop yourself starts to hold you back and and that's the thing we are not anti-ambition I'm not anti people becoming more senior but what I'm saying is if you become so blinkered about your career that the only way you can progress is by getting

15:23 promoted and the only thing that is success is becoming more senior then at some point you are going to become disillusioned about your development and I I don't want that for people because I think work is such an important part of people's life that if we are selling this story that success is becoming more senior for everybody we create a situation where I think a lot of people are unhappy at work yeah yeah that's so true

15:47 there's a friend of mine Paul Millard who wrote a book called The pathless Path which is kind of like you know he had a sort of corporate big four corporate sort of a management consulting career and after about 10 years of that decided to completely quit his job and now just like you know you know because for internet freelancing and all this kind of stuff and in the book he talks a lot about how he had to

16:06 deal with all of the societal and corporate pressures around like oh like I can no longer go out for drinks with the co-workers because they're buying 100 cocktails and I can't afford that anymore and all of the things things around that but one of the things he talks about he calls it The Accidental meaning hypothesis which is basically like in the 1950s or thereabouts because of these career ladders it was the case that you worked hard

16:32 at a job you got promoted you got a company car you lived in the same place you probably lived in the suburbs you probably went to church you probably had a house with a white picket fence you probably had like three point x kids and you were probably married and you were involved in local community and as a result of the way societies were structured at least in the West in that context you were actually leading a pretty

16:52 meaningful and fulfilled life because you were progressing in your work by default because of seniority and time and you had meaning outside of your work by community and structure and like hanging out with the friends and family and things whereas increasingly now it's like the career thing no longer works because very few jobs are have that linear progression but also we're all increasingly living in apartments in big cities increasingly moving around the world's becoming smaller and so we have

17:17 less of that Community side going on for us as well which somewhat necessitates us putting a lot of pressure on our jobs to fulfill the meaning and purpose questions of Life yeah and I think that 1950s scenario as well I think men's success in that situation was very enabled by the women painting the picket fence at home and so as we no longer have that kind of narrative I think suddenly you can't necessarily have that that kind of system of family life it's

17:43 just different and I ultimately think it's better because now we have more equal opportunities in the workplace however it doesn't make it easy that doesn't make it easy to sort of balance all those things together but yeah I can see I will I will have a look at his work sounds very interesting what do you think so the the people that you speak to during like through the course of your work do you have a sense of like What proportion of people

18:04 are totally happy with their career path versus like increasingly I find a lot of my friends saying I don't really know what I'm doing with my career yeah I feel like everyone kind of feels that but everyone feels like they're the only person who feels that yeah it's really interesting I would say the majority of people are thinking about their development and whether they're doing the right thing and that doesn't mean they're going to do something different that

18:30 doesn't mean that they're going and I want to leave my company and I want to you know retrain to do something else it just means that they are reflecting on work and life and does it feel right for them right now I hire a lot of that and I think people just need to make sense they make need to make sense of what's going on and if you can help them to make sense okay well well let's look at

18:52 what's making you happy at work your values and let's look at what you want to be known for and let's look at who's helping you grow so you don't feel like you're doing this on your own like lots of things that we talk about then sometimes you can go through that process and they become self-aware and they're like actually this this is the right thing for me right now but I'm more confident in what I'm doing and what I'm doing

19:11 it's the unknown and the uncertainty that people really struggle with and so I think a lot of a lot of what we're trying to do is to to create Clarity and give people confidence about the direction of their development and that might be actually I'm in a good place or that might be I want to do some something different but so many people don't have the support that was why we started the business because what we

19:32 realized was in lots of organizations you get to a level of seniority that unlocks career support so you're like congratulations on becoming a director here's your executive coach and then you go through this Epiphany about about your your life and your career and you make decisions and you're like well everybody's going through that uncertainty your friends my friends people everyone's going through those those thought processes so why are we only helping Senior People later in their career to make sense of it why

20:00 don't we take the questions and the tools and the Frameworks and just give them to everybody like democratize development don't limit it by level and then surely everyone can start to succeed in their careers at whatever success means for them so yeah those that that conversation from the friend and the colleague and the mentor saying the same thing like I don't really know what I want to do either that was the starting point for squiggly it was it

20:25 was that we thought well let's just try and help people because we had those questions and we found some things that have helped us so let's just try and share that with as many people as possible nice sick okay I want to talk about the five skills to navigate the squiggly career but before we go there what how what's your sense of how how do people end up in jobs that they thought they would enjoy but that they end up

20:47 actually not enjoying self-awareness and a lot of shiny objects okay so let me I think that the lack of self-awareness is we we don't necessarily reflect for very long unless you're the book on the things that make you happy the things that motivate and drive you so we make quick choices we sort of bounce around from one job to the next hoping that we will find out what makes us happy once we've got there and I think

21:19 if we could spend a little bit more time reflecting on what makes us happy before we get there then we can make better decisions about our development so I think self-awareness is a is a big thing we just need to support people with a little bit of reflection before they move into new roles I think shiny objects is also another thing and I have definitely succumbed these so this is where this surface level stuff so it's grades like when

21:40 you're in large organizations it's the oh I'm a B level and I could get to the C Level and we kind of get very attached to grades it's shiny objects like literal ones like cars like I once took a job because of the car and I remember sitting in my shiny car thinking Hmm I'm not sure this job's really making me happy but I'll just put the radio on in my car so you know there's lots of shiny objects I think

22:05 salaries just to some extent can be a shiny object like everyone has a base level of pay that they need for their life and then I think there's money beyond that that can become discretionary and shiny and impressive it's sort of these status symbols of ladder-like progression and when we haven't really reflected on what we want or we don't feel confident about the choices we're making defaulting to things that seem shiny on the surface and can be quite persuasive

22:32 as can other people's opinions and expectations so if I am unsure about what to do and you're my manager or you're someone in my family or my partner and you're very you know clear about your opinion I might default to what you think I should do with my development so you have this situation where you've got sort of lack of self-awareness lots of shiny objects and perhaps other people's opinions and expectations and I think that is

22:57 creating unclear career decision making where people move into a position and then ultimately find out that it's not the right thing for them and we just have to press pause on that stuff and help people to get there themselves to of you know to look inward on those things and use that to make the decisions for their development yeah love it what are the what are the ways in which we can do that reflection reflection thing like someone

23:21 watching or listening to this now what sort of questions would you be asking or should or could they be asking themselves to figure out what is the career that will actually help me become happier well I think it depends where you want to start right that's why we when we talk through the five skills they are all equally important in getting to that like where do I want to go and how do I want to grow and how am

23:40 I going to get there they are all equally important but I would say they're not all equally important to all the people all the time so for example if I'm let's say I'm in a role that I'm really not enjoying at the moment and I have been in this position and you're not really sure why you're like it's a good job I'm paid a good salary like I should be happy I don't know what I want

24:01 to do I don't know why I'm not happy for that person I would say work on your values first there is no point you moving to another position until you've reflected on like what motivates and drives you and you know there's a whole series of exercises that can help people there if you've got somebody else who's saying I just want to do something different like I do like my job but I'm like I feel like my career's been a bit

24:24 constrained I want to try something out that person who's quite excited you know they're not lost they're quite excited about the potential of their progression I would say let's go explore some queer possibilities before you start doing just loads of random things because you've got all this energy and enthusiasm why don't we proactively explore some possibilities have some Curious career conversations collect some data for your development and then use that to make a decision so for that

24:50 person I'd be saying well let's look at Future let's look at Future possibilities and and sort of start you working on that skill so I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all question for this I don't think there's like a and the squiggly career question everyone should ask themselves I don't think there is that I think there is where are you right now and what's the skill that's going to be most relevant for you and helping people to spot the skill and

25:12 invest in that otherwise it's really overwhelming like trying to do all this stuff at once like I don't want to overwhelm people with Career Development and I want to give them the specific stuff that could support them to succeed and I think that is a very individual way of managing it nice okay so I wonder if we start with the values thing yeah so you know we've got a question from Henry from our telegram Community who

25:30 says let's say you're in a corporate job and you feel numb from The Daily Grind you're relatively good at the job but you're looking to find something that excites you how do you go about this discovery process and he's also asking how do you balance the monetary value of the corporate job with kind of exploring other other options that's a numb from the corporate grind a motivating statement to start the day with and so first of all we just need to

25:54 take a bit of time to think about okay what motivates and drives me I think one of the easiest ways of doing this is to we kind of call it the career graph exercise but you you're going to reflect on your career so far and some people have had quite a lot of experience some people might have a year if you've come off you know at University you might not have loads of time that's fine and I

26:13 want you to start wherever you think your career started to where you are today and just just sort of unravel the squiggle into a series of highs and lows and so I'd be talking about my career started on the boots graduate scheme in Nottingham and and just describe it and I would have I would say Okay that was actually a high for me and you might go why was it a high and because I was with

26:33 lots of keen people and we're doing lots of new things and I got a lot of variety because I've changed every six months Etc et cetera and then I moved into something else got my shiny car but I wasn't very happy but why weren't you very happy and you kind of unravel the career into a series of highs and lows and really start to probe the points in time that were particularly high and particularly low yeah and the questions

26:53 it's sort of like why was it high what can you learn from the low specifically I would I would get people thinking well who are you working with and not not someone's name sorry it was Jane it's more the characteristics were they entrepreneurial were they curious like what what are some of the words that come out or what were you working on like a day in your life when I was on the boots graduate scheme what

27:12 was that like describe the detail what we're doing when we're analyzing these points in time is we're collecting Clues because because your values are present when you're really happy so I'm trying to collect those Clues like what was there when I was loving that job what was present and then what was missing when you weren't like when I think about some of my career lows a lot of it is because I was working in very process

27:35 driven organization with very sort of siled thinking kind of people who were quite aggressive in their approach like when I think about some of the places I've worked and my values of Freedom growth and energy and achievement and so what I can see was missing in those moments was I didn't have the freedom because it was so process driven and the energy that I need wasn't there because people were so aggressive in their approach and so

28:01 those roles didn't make me happy because I couldn't get that from my work so for Henry I would say draw your career graph like map out those moments and probe the points in time that stand out the goods the goods and the bad that will get you to a set of Clues and you want to spot the consistencies what three or four words or themes really really stand out and that's a starting place for your values there's more you can do but it's

28:23 a pretty good starting place as to what makes you you then what we want to do is try and get those fulfilled as much as possible in work and outside of work I think there was a really big risk that we try to make work the sole source of our fulfillment and that's where you start to risk enmeshment which is where I go well I now know that freedom growth energy and achievement are what makes me

28:44 me so I'm going to try and you know get as much as I can of that for my work I want to try and get all of it from my work and then what happens when me and my manager aren't getting on or you know there's a I've hit a road bump for my business is my achievement value goes from green to Red straight away and my entire happiness is affected as a result so I think what we want to do is find

29:05 balance sources of fulfillment yes a lot of it's going to come from work because you spend a lot of time from work but it is why we want to think about what am I doing outside of work as well how else am I finding that fulfillment it means you are less likely to be affected by the changes at work and also for Henry as well talking about the money so Henry Nano's values he now knows that maybe find some of

29:28 that stuff outside work as well as inside of work and the money thing balancing the the money that you might get from a role with the meaning that you might want from your work and I would suggest that you need to think about sort of the meaning behind the money A lot of people are motivated by getting more money but it's almost like what's the meaning behind the more money is it giving you status is it giving you

29:51 significance is it giving you security like why why why do you want more money is it Freedom like for me a lot of the time for me yes I want more money but not not so it's in the bank that's not what it is it's because I can do new things when you work out the meaning behind the money you can actually unhook some of your sort of dependency on the pay like I obviously pay is important

30:14 because there are certain things we pay for in our life but it's that discretionary stuff if you are stuck on a ladder becoming more senior because you want to get paid more I think that can become quite dangerous people's happiness because it's not always the pay that's making them happy it's the meaning behind the money so find out the meaning behind the money and then just just see if there's other ways that you can find that fulfillment or next time

30:33 as a pay freeze you're going to feel really really unhappy and it it's likely that money means more than just what you're what's going into your bank this episode is very kindly brought to you by huel I've been a pain customer of huel since my fifth year of medical school since 2017 actually since before I started my YouTube channel and I first started using heal because my life was pretty hectic I was juggling lots of different things like medical school and

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34:10 typing in trading 212 into your respective App Store so thank you so much trading212 for sponsoring this episode another good book by Vicki Robin called your money or your life I don't know if you've come across it I haven't oh it's so good it's just like that just completely changed my approach to money when I read it a few years ago her argument in the book I mean it was it was written a couple of decades

34:30 ago but but essentially the argument in the book is that fundamentally the only reason we do a job is to make money and she's like I know people are going to say fulfillment and meaning and contribution and like learning and all that but she's like but you can get all those things outside of a job yeah you can get all of those things by volunteering if you had 100 million in the bank you probably would you might make slightly different

34:51 you know different decisions with how you spend how you spend your time and therefore money is the thing so let's call this pay to spade a job is fundamentally about money and now when you recognize that it's like cool how much of my life my life force My Life Energy am I trading for that money and yeah to your point around like the freedom the growth all of those things can actually be found outside of the day job potentially

35:17 and I think I just remember a personal pivotal point for me was when so we were building our business in parallel with our careers for many years so it was at Microsoft I was a market director of Microsoft in the UK and you know at this point I had two children and I had my side project and had the podcast and had the book and all that was kind of going on and I thought I I needed to make a decision I'd

35:38 managed all this together for quite a while and I was just becoming I needed to make a choice it was just becoming a bit too much I think the trade-off that I was making in terms of time I was spending one family and the quality of the work I wanted to do was I could start to see the impact of spreading myself so thin but in order to make the move to do amazing if my company full

35:55 time well I had to let go some identity things like working for a big company to let go of that but I also had to halve my salary and again that that to me was a really like pivotal decision where I had to the ladder said become more senior earn more money because that's what success is and I'd been on that ladder for a little while but actually the squiggly career said work out what's meaningful and motivate waiting for you

36:18 build the support you need around it and and use that to drive your development and so that enabled me to have the confidence and Clarity to make a move that not everyone agreed with people like this is madness Helen so why are you doing this you've done it like this way for so long just keep doing it like this but that has been so much better for my development for my impact for my happiness and then I I think because

36:40 work does take up such a big part of your life it has ripples on the people around you too and I think it has been better for my family I think my children now see me being very happy at work and they see work in a different way because of that decision I made about my development and I'm not saying everyone should make that decision but what I am saying is that if you can put work

37:01 and money in these slightly different boxes you know not not the same like it's all tied together if you just kind of hold them here for a second or just look at them slightly more critically it can help you to make different choices yeah that's it this values thing a lot of people talk about you know figure out your values but like what I liked about the book is that you actually have a step-by-step process for

37:22 how to figure out your values so just if we stick on this point a bit I wonder if we can we just like talk through it for me like how would we figure out my values and I'm hoping that listeners or viewers can then apply this to their situation okay so let's let me ask a few questions sure and then I'll just kind of collect some instances okay in terms of the people that you work with what's most important to you about

37:42 those people if you're going to create your perfect team what traits and behaviors would you want to to see in those people oh energizing getting stuff done keen on pushing the envelope entrepreneurial friendly yeah okay does that yeah yeah it does it does I'm going to keep it all in my head no pen and paper so kind of energizing entrepreneurial effective they're

38:13 getting things done so I'll kind of hold those and what about the type of work you're doing what's most important if you're designing your perfect day what what kind of work that you're actually spending your time doing and why hmm if I was designing my perfect date I really like teaching and learning and so if I could spend some proportion of my day learning and growing and then some amount of my day like applying those insights or something and

38:40 then some amount of my day teaching or sharing those insights through writing or through making videos or through talking to people more through talking to people and making videos rather than writing because writing is kind of kind of annoying it feels more Contracting rather than expensive that would be a pretty pretty good day okay expansive is an interesting word what does expansive mean to you what does expensive mean to me when I'm giving a talk in public I feel like

39:05 more open when I'm sitting at my computer typing out on a Google doc I feel more closed that's what I mean by expensive yeah got it okay and then last thing in terms of where you work if you maybe think in your career the different places that you've worked the the team you're creating now the company that you're creating now what's important to you about the culture of those places oh okay so a friendly casual I remember when working in the

39:36 hospital the days that were the most enjoyable were ones where there was this sense of camaraderie with a bit of casualness so kind of the younger Consultants rather than the really old Consultants that we were working with who could have a bit of a laugh and we'd go to the doctor's mess together and we'd sort of chat about patients while having some chips or something like that that was really nice and then when I discovered wework and started working

40:01 from there when you know during the pandemic when I quit the day job that felt like oh this is this is my happy place I just love freaking love going to a weework which is just like nice and the free coffee and the people are wearing t-shirts and chinos and what a vibe that kind of thing amazing so what I I am listening for the words that you're saying and I'm listening to the way that you say them so so when when people talk

40:25 about their values I feel like and when you're getting really close to it if you watch people you can see effect a very physical response so some people go oh I hated it you know they're like literally they'll use their body like this they'll come inwards of like oh I hated it in that job and you're like oh oh why talk a bit more about this and I'm just watching the body when you talk about we

40:44 work you get you always quite very expansively with your body or you're like oh I loved it there's people they've got t-shirts and and you're just getting bigger and you're smilier so sometimes when you're getting close to what someone's values are you can literally see it I can see it in the energy that comes from someone when they talk about it because remember this is what makes you you so when you're in those environments with those people

41:03 you're like more Ali it's more you and or you hear it in repeated words so there are the words that people just say over and over so you mentioned friendly about three times when you were talking about yeah you talked about I really like you know like friendly people it's important that people are friendly you sometimes it's like clues in exact words sometimes it's like a theme so I've been listening to you described there's some sort of theme I think

41:30 something about connection or community that when you talk about the doctor's messes like this community of people but it's a very like non-hierarchical equal you talk about wework you know there's this community of people everyone's there I'm bumping in so I don't know it would be Community or connection but what I'm trying to spot is these words that you say frequently the clues as well there's some words that are similar there's a cluster and then your your body language

41:58 and that that's all data and for me I'm just like listening and learning and if I could just get you talking even more I would get more data I'd collect more clues and then it is not my job to say to you and here are your values like that that's your decision but part of what we're trying to do and people can do this on their own or supported by somebody else is to look at these Clues

42:18 and say okay what does feel most like me I'm just presenting you with what you've played back to me but I'm doing it in a way that creates Clarity so you said words like and you talked a lot about entrepreneurialism I thought that expansive word was really interesting you know you talked a lot about I like learning and growing and sharing and I was like oh is that expanding knowledge is that your value like you're expanding

42:39 your own knowledge you're expanding other people's knowledge I like to listen out for like particularly what I think are sticky words words that other people don't say because then they're more meaningful and memorable to you yep well it's not like I've ticked it off a list like I don't really want people to just go through a list and go oh yes I've got a value of ambition and I've got a value of this you know you might

42:58 have it but let's talk about it for a bit longer what does that word mean to you because if I can find the sticky words it's more likely to stick with you and then you're more likely to use it when you're thinking about your career damn that's really good it's like you've done this before well I'm just blown away so is there a list of words that someone could look through and be like because like there is yes it's in the

43:20 book because we have to put it in and everyone loves a list but I just want people to think before they tip you know I want I want you to really think about what a brilliant day looks like and what a bad look day looks like and I want you to pick apart those moments and reflect on it and I want you to talk to someone I want them to listen to you and then you can go to a list but the list should

43:41 reinforce you know so it's I think use your reflection first and then you can look at a list and you can go oh yeah that was the word I meant yes that that's it that's it or I think I've missed that rather than taking one minute to scan through a list of words and going tick tick tick and move on like values on a tick list they have formed through a lot of your life experience and we need to unpick and

44:08 reflect upon that in order for us to really do the work like do the work but it's worth it if you can work out what your values are you will be happier at work you'll make better choices about your development and you'll build better relationships with other people it is worth doing the work so yes there's a list but I'm just gonna encourage everyone to like do do the work first love it what is a good amount of

44:31 values to have in one's mind yeah I I would say three to four so if you look in the research of this there's difference between core values and satellite values so satellite values are basically like the long list of things that are important to you you might have 10 you might you might be okay well I've got entrepreneurialism and I've got achievement and I've got community and I've got knowledge and you have this long list but we want to get down to

44:54 three to four and there's a few ways that you can you could do that I mean sometimes you could look at it and be like it's those if I just took some words now that you've said to me these may or may not be your values because you haven't chosen them but let's say I take the words some of the words you mentioned so entrepreneurism Community growth and I want to say friendly you had that one in there so what I could say to you

45:19 is what's more important to you entrepreneurialism or community community what's more important to you entrepreneurialism or knowledge knowledge what's more important to you entrepreneurialism or friendly friendly okay then we'd go to the the second one where I'd talk to you about Community what's more important to you community or entrepreneurism Community what's more important to you community or friendly oh it's kind of the same maybe yeah yeah hey they're getting at the similar yeah

45:50 hold that thought okay and then what's more important to you entrepreneurialism or friendly oh friendly here okay okay so ideally I'd have a few more words and I won't be trying to do all in my head yeah and I but I'd be able to see there I'm always looking at a couple of things here I'm looking out for the noises so you know when you went oh I love a new because that means you're going You're really

46:13 thinking and exactly what you played back to me was they're getting at the same thing brilliant brilliant brilliant that's a cluster so you said community and you said friendly but to you they're very of course they're different words you look in a dictionary they're different words but to you the meaning of those words is getting at something very very similar yeah and we don't have to worry about the exact word right now that's just gonna delay us so we'll just

46:36 call it Community slash friendly okay I'm just gonna just switch to hold that thought and you just take your list of words and you you score them through exactly like I was doing there you take the first word score them across all them in the next one we're basically ranking them all against each other to work out what Rises to the top the ones that rise to the top that's the difference between your core values and

46:53 your satellite and we're looking for three to four the reason it's three to four is that memorable because I can't remember a list of 10 things it's memorable it's meaningful and it's manageable so I can use three to four to reflect on and make decisions a list of ten I I can't remember them and so therefore it's not very useful and also I'd trade them off anyway I would always freedom is my Top Value trade it off for everything and so you

47:21 once you have that clarity about your core values then you that's where your confidence comes from to use and to make the decisions to what extent are values the same as kind of needs because we we've used the word need quite a lot and yeah I think they're very similar I mean I think actually sometimes I think the word values can get in there you know it can feel a bit self-development too yeah like I think there are some people

47:43 really values yeah whereas we call it a need it's like I have a need for Freedom yeah yeah exactly and I I never it's really funny language like we know language is really important it's what you know we're talking about confidence that's why we talk about squiggly where we know language is very sticky but also I think sometimes language can just get in the way and you know you can talk about your values without ever saying the word

48:02 values like I might just say to you like if you're my manager I might just say to you one of the things that's really important to me is that I feel like I'm getting a lot of wins along the way like that is my definition of achievement but I haven't mentioned the word values I haven't even mentioned the word achievement I've just taken what that word means to me and shared it with you in a discussion maybe about my my

48:22 development or what I'm doing the company and so if you want to call it needs call it needs if you don't want to call it like you must like one of the things that motivates me is one of the things that I want from my work is like myself yeah just is getting in your way of talking about it that's really good how can you be sure that your values are not being influenced by external sources

48:49 why am I'm laughing because my the first time my business partner reflected on her values she was working in Canary Wharf and she did them I think she said it's like on the 23rd story of like a building in Canary when she was working in banking and she did all the exercises and she came out with very I'm just gonna call them Canary wolf type values it was all like achievement and it was all very like one a one-sided

49:17 version of her and a manager called her on it because I think she took she was like I've done it here's my work here are my values I've sat in this room on my own looking out over London and these are my values and her manager was like oh that's surprising I see other things in you like you light up in other situations this seems to only be one aspect of you and Sarah's like oh and then she went

49:38 away and reflected on it a little bit more in a different place and the words that came out were much more nuanced and much more reflective of all all the things that she is and all the things that motivates her so I think that is an example that we can be influenced by the environment that we're doing this in the people that we might be doing it with and I think it's why with this one repetition is really

50:02 important I think you should do these exercises more than once I still come back to it I still I will still go back to the career graph and I might do it for a year you know I mentioned doing that career graph to Henry I might just do it for a year like 2022 and think what are my highs and lows in 2022 and now if I reflect on the really standout points in time the highs and the lows what was going on in

50:25 those moments almost this is a sense check like are they still are those core values still the same core values or is something else creeping in has there been some significant moment that I didn't appreciate that's changed my perspective and I've done that quite a few times and it doesn't change for me anyway it hasn't changed but that's I think this is not just a one-time only I'll do this exercise and then I'm done like you your situation will change your

50:47 experiences might expand who you are and so I think we need to come back to this and the more you come back to it the more you see the consistencies the more we know that we've not been swayed by a place or a person love it so let's say someone figures out the core values and they're like I am not feeling these in my work I'm not feeling a lot of these what happens next yeah being there yeah have you been there

51:11 so I think the first thing for people to do I think is not not to panic about your progression and just go I'm leaving straight away and then let's pause a little bit there are sometimes ways that with a conversation you can increase the amount your values are filled in a particular position I've done that I've created roles in companies that didn't exist until I did them so don't I always think about you know like leaping versus

51:36 learning lots of people leap into a new a new role but we if we spend our career leaping without doing the learning then it's not really a great pattern for our progression so we just want to sit and kind of think well okay these are my values how do they play out could they play out more here could I have some conversations about my career and what I'm looking for from work and see whether that's possible here and I think

51:59 once we've explored those different Avenues you might get to a decision that I'm not in the right position I'm not in the right company and then at least you've got more insight that can form your progression so I had I had this experience where I was in an organization and I was doing pretty well on the surface that you would have said Helen's you know doing doing well but actually below the surface I wasn't particularly happy and I really pressed

52:24 pause on it and I went back to the skills and I was like what is going on here and what's going on with my value strengths and confidence Network Community I was like what's going on here and what I realized was that I had several conversations and I realized I couldn't really do what I wanted to do with my development there which was you know it's fine to come to that conclusion that but then when I went to my next

52:44 move I made sure that I had some Curious career conversations with people in different positions of different companies so I could understand whether they were likely to be a good fit for me so I was getting sort of you know I was like I remember I went I remember ultimately I went to work for Virgin and I remember saying that how much Freedom do people have in what they work on and how they work because same as you so

53:05 that's so important to me and if someone said well we do have processes that we have to follow and work is very I I'd have a flag in my brain that this probably wasn't the right place for me but what I heard was things like oh yeah I mean everyone's got AI project and everyone's doing all this and so I heard that this was likely to be an environment that was going to work well for me and then you know you also want

53:25 to make sure that these roles that you're going for these companies that you're going to work in that they need what you want to be known for so you if you understand what your strengths are on what you want to be known for you really want to make sure that they actually need that because otherwise you might move into a position that looks perfect on paper but it's not it's not going to be perfect for you because it

53:44 doesn't need what you want to be known for and you're not you're not going to be happy and we're doing a job that you're going to be energized by you're not going to make the impact that you could elsewhere yeah and so just spending a bit of time taking that Insight using it to inform the move that we make means that we make better decisions but in the meantime because you still have these needs or whatever

54:01 we're going to call you still have the values within you I would be looking for ways that they can be filled outside of work so I would be thinking okay if I can't get this here and I tried and it's not happening that is not gonna that's not gonna go anywhere so are there communities that you can be part of that's been massively helpful for me communities and contribution outside of work has been hugely helpful because

54:24 you know if I can be a trustee for a charity then my values for achievement and growth are fulfilled in slightly different ways and if I can you know contribute to communities and part of lots of different communities the energy that I need which means positivity and productivity to me I get a lot of that from those communities so our contribution and communities have worked well for me when in my career in the moment my values haven't been as

54:49 fulfilled as I might like them to be we've talked about values yeah what about strengths what about strengths so yeah you call them super strengths I think yeah so we call them super strengths and I think actually since we wrote the squiggly career because obviously we are we are talking to people about this stuff all the time a part of our business is helping people with squiggly skills so I think our understanding is evolving all the time and I think one

55:10 of the things that for me and strengths that's actually changed the way I think about them since we wrote the book is this idea that strengths start with the things that you're good at oh okay I think there's like so there's a little bit a bit of a trap here so most people will say a strength is something that you're good at and you know super strength is something that you then become great at you invest in

55:31 it you become brilliant at become known for it I think the starting point for that is wrong so the things strengths beings are things you're good at actually strengths the things that give you energy and the work that you do even if you're not great at them yet so when people think they have to be good at something or they'd be great at it for to be a strength they start sort of dismissing it and they go well I'm

55:52 not as good as Alias it so it can't be a strength because obviously it's your strength but I'm not as good as you so it's not it come in my strength and you get into all this stuff so if we just if our starting point for strengths is just strengths of the things that give us energy it's a kind of easier starting point it's the weakness thing I just want to really reflect on for a little

56:06 bit so weaknesses are the things you do that take your energy away when you do them even if you are good at them and that's the bit that I want to hold okay so things you take energy away when you do them even if you are good at them because the the issue that I see a lot is that people have things that they're good at like we all have like people we've got a list of abilities right

56:28 there's things we've learned to do some things and natural talents but not all of those things give us energy at work and it is a real issue for people's development when the thing that they are good at but they find draining to do but other people see it as a strength and then they can't get out of a situation where they have to keep doing it it's it's a real trap for their career and what we have to start doing is make sure

56:54 the things that give us energy that we want to be known for that that stuff stands out and that we are not defined by the work that we find draining to do now you can't just stop doing it overnight so let's say somebody's like oh my gosh that is a revelation I spend 80 of my time doing spreadsheets and I hate it like you can't suddenly go I'm never doing a spreadsheet again delete because your manager's probably gonna

57:17 get really frustrated with you and that's not going to help us build the relationships we need to succeed but what we are aiming for is no more than 20 of our time on that kind of work let's just be honest we all have things that we find raining to do we definitely don't want to be defined by it we definitely don't want to spend all our time doing it but it is probably still going to be a

57:35 bit of your role so 20 no more than that and because we need to put most of our effort and energy into making those strengths stand out that we want to be known for but also just get good enough at it like you don't need to be amazing at it like sometimes it's okay to be good enough at things so spreadsheets for example just just get good enough at it so it doesn't get in your way and

57:55 definitely don't spend more than 20 of your time doing it because if we can spend more time on the strengths things give us energy that becomes really self-fulfilling in a squiggly career we want to make sure that those things we want to be known out for stand out because the more we can do that goes right back to what we were talking about about becomes part of your brand gets bigger and better other people associate with you they come to you for more of

58:18 what you want to be good at and that's what we want to get to nice that's a really good way of thinking about it it's almost a shame the word of strengths and weaknesses because it's like drainers and energizers yeah I mean language maybe we just maybe I strengths can be a bit of a barrier like a mental barrier they become quite fixed and go oh I've done a strengths course you're like okay like and how much are you

58:43 using on your job I don't know but I can tell you what's on my strengths profile yeah I'm like okay but it's just you know all those reports and tools and things they're just an input it's it's like what we do with the awareness of Sarah my business partner we're always talking about it's awareness and action doesn't matter how many forms you fill in how many online surveys you take how many courses you go on if it's just a

59:02 load of awareness it's not really doing anything different for your development so with strengths I think we've really we've got to put it into action we've got to make those strengths Stand Out we've got to stretch them in different situations we're going to take a very quick break from the podcast to introduce our sponsor brilliant.org I've been using brilliant for a few years now and it's a fantastic online platform for corsairs in maths and science and computer

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60:54 to click that link which will be in the show notes and in the video description as well will get 20 off the annual premium subscription so thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this episode and let's get right back to the podcast the rule in medicine which is that there's no point doing a blood test if the results are not going to change the management plan and it's like you can do all the blood tests here I can

61:12 spend like tens of thousands of pounds on all the fancy blood tests but it's not gonna change anything like what's the point and I think again and that it could sound a bit brutal like it could sound a bit like well you can fill it in but you've got to do something about it but it's true I think the thing that makes it a bit less brutal is is when people understand the why like why is this

61:30 going to be better for me well if if you are willing to take that awareness about strength and put it into action you you'll be more energized by the work that you're doing and you spend so much of your time at work do you not want to be energized by you'll also have a bigger impact because you're going to do the work that you find energy that you're going to get better at and so I think sometimes we do have to connect

61:48 people with the why otherwise it's all just a bit theoretical like invest in your strengths and succeed in a career like it's like but why why does it matter to you and if we can like work with the why at an individual level we can often find the motivation to do something different to what someone's probably doing today yeah yeah this is I'm I'm kind of like annuit myself because this is like the exact thesis of my book which we've

62:09 just sent to the copy editor and I'm like oh I should have mentioned something about strength oh they love it when you go back and you add more things yeah they really enjoy that I've tried so hard to cut it down it's like it was 120 000 now 65 000 words and I'm like you're so right I need to add in a bit because like the whole apartment is what are the things that energize you and how

62:26 can we apply them to our work because the titleists feel good productivity I love it you know the way we become more productive is not by trying to manage our time it's by trying to regenerate our energy yeah and if close to everything we do in our work can be energizing it means you have way more energy at work as a result you're way more productive and you feel great and then you get home and you have way more

62:44 energy to do other things hang out with your family and it's so true I remember when I started squiggly careers as a side project so I was at Virgin I just had my first child Henry and I just started an MBA and I just started a side project and pretty much everyone around me was like that is madness like what what why are you adding this into that mix you're going to exhaust yourself and it was a lot I'm not going

63:06 to say it wasn't a lot it was a lot but the thing is I would leave my work my job at virgin and I would go and run a squiggly skill session and honestly I would get there about seven o'clock and I would probably start a little bit tired because I'd already done a day at virgin and goodness knows what time my little boy got up in the morning and study was on my mind and so I did start

63:23 a little bit tired but that session would finish by half past eight and I went home I remember I used to go on the train I'd get my lunch the dinner from the station at least at the train and I was so energized because that strength that talent I wanted to be known for was about you know helping people learn develop and grow in their career specifically and when I did it I just died and I just loved it and I gave me

63:44 so much energy and I would take that into my job at virgin the next day and it would come with me and it would affect how I led my team and that energy just continued and so I'm not saying everyone should do all of that stuff that I did because it was hard but I really saw the benefit of using a strength that gives you energy in more situations and that actually side projects some people I think they see

64:08 side projects as a competition for the day job you know like you're doing that side project because I never saw it that way I saw a side project as being a different way that I stretched my strength that meant that I got better in both positions I was a much better manager in virgin because of my side project it didn't compete with that career oh nice that's just again put a puzzle piece in my in my head where

64:35 okay so two things one there's there's a bit of a narrative that side projects are hustle culturally and like oh you know it's it's hard enough to get get to the end of the day of work and now you're telling everyone that they should have a side project just yeah just like chill out and watch Netflix and like it's okay to have a relaxing bath and stuff and I've always been like not a fan of this particular narrative because

64:55 for me the side project has always been incredibly energizing and people would often ask back when I was working in medicine they're like oh you know you were working all day as a doctor that's pretty minding and then you get home and you just make these YouTube videos and then how how do you do all that I don't see this because like I found ways to make the day job more energizing by figuring out what were the things

65:13 that energized me and actively incorporating more of them into the thing I like realizing I get a lot of energy from just hanging out with the nurses and just having a cup of tea and chatting about whatever so I mean let me actively make an effort to do that because it gives me energy and then I get home and make a YouTube video and that would give me energy and it's just like this energy flywheel continues and

65:29 then like I was I was never exhausted I was never burnt out in the job and yet a lot of my my friends and colleagues who would work all day get home and then chill the chill was not actually regenerating the energy it was scrolling through social media watching Netflix yeah in a way that if if you're really honest like like I get to the end of a Netflix sesh and I feel drained rather than energized yeah whereas a side

65:49 project I feel energized great let's keep going I think there's there's a thing about active rest that I find quite interesting that Alex Pang talks about it in them in his book and you know that I always think there's like a scale and on one on one side you've got kind of restful we're asleep we're in a great level of sleep and then at the other side we've got restless where we're trying to do way too much stuff a

66:09 more Tuscan and we're scrolling and it's sort of like a Restless mind when we're going through like all these things and often you can't sleep at work like you'd have to be awake to do it so we can't just rely on sleeping in our day and we know that Restless thing isn't really working but Alex Pang always talks about kind of this active rest thing in the Middle where you're doing an activity that consumes your attention

66:26 that gives you the energy back and I found that really really useful because I'd always thought oh I don't want to rest because wrestling's doing nothing and he and he taught me that no it doesn't mean doing nothing it can mean doing something that you enjoy that you find consuming and and it turns off all the noise of everything else it turns off whatever was going on at the hospital or whatever's going on at home and in doing that thing for an hour and

66:49 it can be anything right so people like doing puzzles like you know your nan likes doing Scrabble whatever it is like people like that can be that thing but it consumes you and it gives you energy back and I think it's working out what is that thing that gives you that energy back but if it aligns with your strengths even better even better because then you know you're building that town at the same time yeah yeah so

67:07 when I was when I was reason so the penultimate chapter of my book is is about recharging and so I did a load of research into the papers and stuff around what is it that makes certain activities energizing and there was a really interesting meta-analysis they did where they sort of did all this and they came up with like four things it's like if the thing that you're doing has these four things chances are it's going

67:25 to be energizing or feel recharging and with a bit of shoehorning I turned it into the mnemonic calm c-a-r-l-m so C4 I think is competence so if you're good at the thing yeah it will more likely to be energizing a for autonomy yeah if you feel like you have ownership L for Liberty a bit of a shoehorn but it's like basically a sort of sufficiently distinct from your day job or what you normally do yeah which is

67:47 why like Ed Sheeran paints rather than does music as his Hobbies because it's like music is now his job and stuff and then M for Mellow again a bit of a shoehorn but things that are not so like high energy but are like that that feeling of calm and mellow that we get from doing things to doing certain activities those sort of calm activities tend to be one ones that recharge us and then the actual words they used in the

68:11 study were a bit different but it wasn't nice mnemonic because it was like let's do some shoe warning but I think people don't often prioritize it because they think it's it's that's not important but actually the benefit of doing those things makes all the other things that you do in your day kind of more more efficient and effective yeah yeah so how so I guess we're saying someone can ask themselves what are the things that I do

68:31 in my work that bring me energy and what are the things that I do in my work the drain my energy yeah and then it's like oh crap like 60 of what I do drains my energy what what happens next so we need to as well as that oh crap realization we also need to do that like the oh yes realization like the okay so those are the things that give me energy and I mean I would

68:52 just like look in your diary you like look at your days and the meetings that you've been in the moments in your week and like just pick out when were the highest energy moments and what was the strength I was actually using in that situation like maybe you were researching or building relationships or like whatever you're doing and and I would write a list of those words and then from that list I would pick no more

69:13 than three no one three I might even just go with one to begin with to be honest and the the picking that you're doing is thinking of these words here these strengths that give me energy what do I actually want to be known for I rarely see people make that choice rarely see someone go do you know I actually that is why I want to be known for if people are talking about me and I'm not in the room that that is the

69:37 thing that I want them to say about me and I think the risk of people not making that choice is that they leave this to chance you know you might say one thing about me and you know Sarah might say another my manager that I work with a virgin might say another and so then my my strengths are quite inconsistent you know different people are saying different things about me in different places I'm not really building

69:55 my brand in a consistent way yeah whereas if I take control of this if I go I want to be known for career development and that is exactly what I said 10 years ago not known for career development known for marketing I made a choice because it was a thing that gave me the most energy in my day like beyond the job title that I had regardless of the company that I worked in the thing that I loved was like helping people

70:16 with their careers yeah to the extent that I've got some feedback when I was at Microsoft and someone in my team who said I'd spent more time trying to understand the people that worked for me then I had the company that I worked in and I was like that is harsh but true that's so true and actually that's just Helen you know it's harsh chew and Helen and and but I thought it was a very it was a very

70:35 clear feedback to me and that's because that's the thing that I love doing so you've got to make that choice once you've made that choice you can start to really look at that strength and see okay well what situations am I using it in today who and where could I use that strength with more and and that becomes a really intentional thing like I literally thought okay if I want to be known for career development what am I going to do

70:58 differently in my one-to-ones what I'm going to do differently my meetings what departments could I offer that skill to I could run a lunch and learn until it just becomes just part of who you are because you're just it's just how you're thinking about the things that you put yourself forward for may this is so good I feel I'm just getting so many dopamine hits and inside like everything you're saying is just so sick wow what do I want to be known for

71:19 like yeah that's that ties into the whole like personal brand professional reputation type stuff which I know gives some people a bit of an allergic response yeah it's like yeah but it's so true it's like and you know the the thing I always say to people without really think about it too hard is like you have a personal brand whether you like it or not yeah because a personal brand is just a professional reputation it's the thing that people

71:40 say about you or think about you when you're not in the room and I guess what you're saying is like let's think what do we actually want that to be and actually work towards it yeah and I think two two kind of things I think are important here it takes time so I couldn't come away from here and think do you know what I want to be known for being I don't know an expert in like

72:01 Neuroscience or something like that could be like I could make that decision that's my choice but it doesn't just happen overnight you know it takes it takes learning it takes opportunities it takes experience but I'm just driving that for my development so I think you it's it is a choice that you can make and you can definitely change the direction of your development because of it but it does take a little bit of time and then the other thing that I would

72:20 say is you can change your mind you can definitely change your mind sometimes I think people think fine fine just know that you can make a choice and you can change your mind but then it will take time to do it it's also why I say with the five skills pick the one that feels relevant for you right now because this does this does take time reflecting on your values takes time and but you're at work for a long

72:44 time so we've got time to do all this stuff we don't have to rush it we just have to start like where we are with the skill that we need most right now yeah and just like minor course Corrections along the way yeah nice that's great Okay so we've talked about strengths super strengths energizing strength values and we talked about values you talk about confidence so what's the role of confidence in navigating a squiggly career confidence is the key

73:08 company is the key I often think I'm not supposed to have favorite values I don't know if I really have but I do think that that so I'm not I'm not sure if those are favorite skills I think values is at the core of a squiggly career because if you're going to have a career as individuals you are you've got to know what motivates and drives you so I think values are these are the core and

73:25 I think confidence is the key because if we are going to get people to take action to do something different to have a conversation to make a difficult decision all that stuff they've got to have the confidence to do it or otherwise it's all awareness it's all nice nice in theory and so we've got to get the awareness and the action and the confidence is the key for that and they people have so many beliefs that hold

73:50 them back we we call them confidence Gremlins because you you know you're really getting to the territory of psychology here in Liberty and that can feel quite uncomfortable for people and quite theoretical language so we often we talk about these as confidence Gremlins and we see some very common confidence Gremlins that hold people back like not knowing enough for example a need to be liked and people have some limiting beliefs about their age like I'm not old enough or I'm too old like

74:16 both of them people have confidence Gremlins related to failure like I can't fail if I if I fail I'm a failure so there's confidence Gremlin about they can't possibly fail people have confidence Gremlins about particular abilities as well that really get in the way their growth like I don't I'm not good at numbers but any any numbers any numbers at all just they just say it often started at school when they weren't in the top set and then

74:39 it's just this little Gremlin has grown and then they're at work and they go I can't do numbers or presenting that's another very common confidence Gremlin where people are like oh dude I can't I'm not a good presenter and so what they do is they stop sharing their thoughts and their ideas because presenting is such a big way that we communicate in lots of companies so I think with with confidence the the first thing that's really important very often

75:01 is for people to know that they've got a gremlin and know that everybody else has two because so often we're like oh well I might just think I'm I just think I don't know enough and I'm going to get found out but like most people have those kind of thoughts and it doesn't really matter how senior people are or what position they're in most people have some kind of confidence grandma that gets in the way their growth and I

75:21 often find when we're doing like squiggly skill sessions but it's it's this moment of like realization I'll be in a room I was in a room recently with them a group of lawyers and I was thinking well they're going to be are they going to be open it's a group of lawyers talking about confidence and I was like are they going to be open to talking about this and we talked about the confidence Gremlins and I got

75:38 everyone to put their hands up every time they're identified with one of the Gremlins and they were putting their hands up in the room they're obviously looking at each other in the room and then we went through all the 10 most common confidence and I said and what what does this all make you think well you've just seen each other put your hands up what does it make you think and they they were like oh we've all got

75:56 Gremlins and then they all sort of laughed and there was like this relief it was like oh I'm I'm not the only one they're obviously in very successful senior positions where credibility was important so I think admitting that they had these thoughts was quite a big thing but once we do it you've you've opened the door then you've opened the door and gone okay we have these thoughts and I'm not alone and it's okay to have them but

76:17 now we've got a cage the gremlin so you've almost got to let the gremlin out in order to cage it because when the gremlin's in your head it's in control of you it's stopping you speaking up in meetings it's stopping you applying for positions it's stopping you challenge someone if you don't agree with what they think once we have let the gremlin out we can more consciously cage it which means that I can speak up in that

76:41 meeting now it's not going to be easy I'm not going to love it because it's a confidence Gremlin for me but I am now in control of my Gremlin and I can do things that I wouldn't have done before because that the gremlin was driving my development and now I'm in the driving scene and the gremlin is still there because it's very hard to kill it but you're you are more in control and that's the journey we're trying to get

77:02 people on is what is your Gremlin let's get it out and then let's cage it for you and there's a set of activities that people can do that make that Gremlin smaller and less significant but I I always say like it's probably not going to go away sort of your Gremlin is a part of you and it's gonna it's gonna keep popping up but we're just gonna get better at putting it back in its cage what are

77:23 these common confidence Gremlins oh I have to run them from my head now so things like a fear of not knowing enough fear of not being good enough fear of not being liked a fear of failure age-related confidence Gremlin the theory of presenting the fear of senior people I think just one some people like just really fiercely people have a whole different identity when I see the person's in the room one of the ones that I find funny and I hate

77:45 saying this because confidence aren't that funny but it's just it's a fear of uncontrolled bodily reactions I find it funny because it's a funny thing but basically some people have a confidence Gremlin about how their body reacts when they are put under pressure so they might blush for example you know let them again blush on the neck or they might perspire or maybe their hands might shake a little bit in a situation or maybe they're both stuttered all that

78:10 kind of stuff like it's not particularly something they can control because it's driven by the adrenaline that's created by that situation that they're in but for them the confidence Gremlin is more what other people will think of them if they see that happening and so because they're so worried about what other people will think if they see their neck going out of all this stuff they don't put themselves in a position where that's that outcome is possible which

78:31 means they don't put themselves in a position where they might be under pressure which means they play it safe in their career and so it becomes really they're like oh I'm never going to present on a stage because I've lust and then people think I don't know what I'm talking about and it's like the thing with confidence scramblers is often when you go and get some feedback from other people they see that situation very differently like a confidence

78:51 create a real filter that we look through that other people don't see in the same way so they might say you know they might have gone they might do the presentation they're blushing and they're thinking oh that was awful and then they might go to a colleague and saying you know what's the one thing you remember from my time when I was talking on the stage and the person might say oh and like you were so clear and

79:10 articulate or Oh I thought you looked like so smiley and like everything that's played back has nothing to do with this blushing that for that person was like a beacon on a stage like there were this big red Lighthouse but no one else saw it and so often it's very useful to get somebody else's perspective on the situation where your Gremlin really really stood out to you because it helps you to realize that you're it is changing the way that

79:34 you're seeing the world of work and that other people are not seeing and experiencing what you are and again it's just about going my Gremlin is creating this it's not it's not the reality it's my experience of it because my gremlin's in the driving seat and it's those little moments of insight that help us realize that oh we can do something about this this is a choice this is something I control this is not what's going on in everyone else's world

79:56 let's move on to networks yes so what's the role of networks oh networks are so important they they will help you go further you'll get where you want to go faster because people can see opportunities you can't see for yourself so in a squiggly career we're talking about people developing in different directions people are having more Choice over where they take their career but so many of those doors will be opened by other people and so we need the

80:21 relationships with people who can see positions and opportunities we can't see for ourselves and so we've got to build that and it isn't just about it isn't just about new jobs it is about learning it you know the often you know people think learning is going on a course but so much of learning happens through conversation and in fact it lasts a lot longer like when you look at like how we you know learning loss in our brain

80:45 discussion with somebody else is significantly more effective than just watching a course so our community is a source of opportunities our community is a source of learning is a source of feedback it's an enabler for our growth but lots of people I think struggle with building a network because they think about it as sort of people knowing people how many people do I know how many followers have I got how many connections have I got on LinkedIn like

81:11 that that is like the sign of a good Network and that's not that meaningful that doesn't mean you've got a good Network you might be connected to a lot of people but it doesn't mean you've got a good Community around your career a good Community around your career is one that is active and effective and so we think about it as people helping people because if I'm helping you that's active like here's some help it's an active

81:32 thing and you've been helped it is effective so when we think about people helping people as the basis for this it starts to get a lot better and and two there's two big benefits of it as well the first is people like helping people like it's a human traits like you get to help us high it's like proven that I if I help you it makes me feel good and so when people feel awkward about building relationships starting with how

81:55 you can help and what you've got to give it it just feels nicer but then if you look at research from people like Adam Grant in his work on give and take give us get more so I actually get more back by helping other people I get more in return anyway and this becomes a really self-fulfilling way of building your network so it starts people helping people and then thinking about and what have I got to give and you you do just

82:19 have to trust we kind of think of it as career Karma but you do just have to trust that the good stuff comes back like you can't treat this as a transaction so I can't think oh I was writing a book I'll help him with that because then Ali can help me set something on YouTube tube it's not it's not I don't think we want to go into this in a transactional way you just think what do I know that can help you

82:36 to grow like I literally go around thinking that and when I say I literally go around not to everybody that I meet in every minute of every day I think you do also need to be intentional about the relationship you're building for your career there is an element of Randomness which is like this weak Thai stuff so the the kind of helping people who you don't have a big connection with at the moment because you never know where

82:56 that's going to go but there is also a lot of very intentional building of relationships with people that you think well I know that person could open that door for my development so if I think about how I can help them then perhaps in the future that might come back but I'm not I'm not trading I'm not transacting with help hmm nice you talk about the three d's of networking do you know what yeah there's a while ago since I've done that in that

83:21 book yeah we don't the the we talk about sort of distance donating and diversity so I think the the reason these are important so distance is some of your relationships are going to be very close to you so my business partner she's super super close to me super important in my in my kind of my network she's very close to my context but sometimes there are people that are further away from where you are that can

83:50 have a different perspective and can have you know see things that you can't see in your world so kind of distance is quite important when you're looking at people you don't basically want your network to be made up of people you see every day like we want so kind of some difference there donating so we want to make sure that we are giving because then we will kind of get lost back and then we want lots of difference so you don't want an

84:09 echo chamber of people just like you and when we're looking at sort of difference in diversity there are four roles that we recommend people to build into their Network so and I think everyone should have these I don't think everyone's got them but I think everyone everyone should have them so the first role would be a mentor so somebody and this this gets really over complicated I just think a mentor is somebody who has done what you would like to do right

84:33 that you could have one meeting like you could be My Mentor because you've done something I want to do we've had one meeting and we might we might not meet again but you still mentored me it doesn't have to be this relationship that endures the rest of yours and my career so it's just someone who's done what you want to do and they give you advice easy second one is a peer so a peer is someone who is going through what you

84:52 are going through really helpful to accelerate your development because I can talk to you about what I'm doing and you're doing it too and you get it and we can help each other like Sarah Ellis has been my peer for 20 years I happen to have to work with her but my I would not be where I am if it wasn't for her she's accelerated my growth massively and the next one is a sponsor so a sponsor is

85:13 someone who can advocate for you so they have got access and influence over an area you're interested in so you've got to just think well what am I interested in I'm interested in writing a book am I interested in start a podcast am I interested in that position and that team over there like who's got access and influence that person is it could be a brilliant sponsor for you you can't ask for sponsorship so I can't just say can you say brilliant

85:36 things about me and that team over there that sponsor needs to see me at my best so when we talked about strengths we want that person to see our strengths like really see us in action they're much more likely to support us then and then the fourth role as a coach now this doesn't have to be a professional coach they are quite expensive to have a career coach not definitely not accessible to everybody the I think it's

85:55 better to think of this as someone who's got a coaching approach which means they're very good at asking questions like and and they're very good at just stopping talking to let you think and they might follow with another question but what they are not doing is answering the question that's for you to do and so if you know people who've got that ability they're really really helpful to have in your career Community because they'll help you think differently and

86:16 so as well as like the 3DS I actually think those four roles again you know I said that we are evolving our thinking all the time we wrote the book well the book was published in 2020 and since then we've trained like almost 200 000 people and then it was almost like in each one of the conversations I have I get some feedback on how effective tools are and they're they're kind of we're always evolving them we're always seeing what sticks

86:38 we're always seeing what's useful and I think I'm finding that those four roles people really focusing on those are what one of the most useful ways they can build their Community the principal people helping people but the Practical focusing on those four roles sick one thing people always ask is any tips for finding a mentor yeah yeah don't ask for one yeah I sometimes do get emails being like will you be my mentor I don't I'm

87:06 pretty sure it's not how it works yeah yeah don't don't ask someone and first of all I think you need to work out what it is you want to learn so I might say one of the things that I want to learn about is commercial skills or investing actually it's one of the things that I want to learn about and think amazing if our my business we're thinking about creating an investment fund so that other people who

87:26 are doing stuff in the career space can we can help them to grow more than us just operate in the space and we want to create an ecosystem of squiggly Crystal so but I've not done that before I don't know how to do it so for me who's done what I would like to do a good Mentor would be somebody who's maybe built some kind of investment fund and they've got some experience of doing that from scratch and all everything

87:47 that goes with it so now I know what I want to learn I can think about who I might think about who do I know in my network that's got the knowledge that I need and maybe maybe I don't know anybody and so I could go to somebody else that's in my network and say do you know anyone who like we don't always know everyone we might need to know so it's fine to ask someone but you can be

88:06 very specific I'm not saying can it introduce me to Ali I'm saying one of the things that I'd really like to learn about investment funds do you know anyone who and so it's it's about the what before we get the person because otherwise I think people just ask senior people to be their mentors because it looks impressive and we've got to be specific to be genuine and then when we're making that request for that person's time I think the way that we

88:27 articulate that request is really important so this is where we get to the kind of the why I'm coming to you so let's say you have got investment experience that I would benefit from I might say one of the things that I'm really focused on is amazing this growth and impact and one of the ways that I think we can do that is by investing in other people's businesses I know that that is something that you have done

88:44 before and I think you've got a lot of knowledge that I can learn from would you be prepared to spend half an hour with me just sharing the insights that you got so that I can use that to inform the the things I'm planning to do and well yeah of course if I'd just gone to you and said will you be my mentor how much time do you think I actually have like like there's no it's too it's

89:14 too hard we don't want to make it hard for people to help us remember people helping people I want to make it as easy as possible for you to help me now you and I might have that meeting and that might be all I need like you might just be like here's five things that I think you should look at see you later and I and you still help me right it's still been useful or you and I might have that

89:32 meeting and there might have been some kind of connection yeah you're like oh I feel fine what you're doing is really interesting I'd actually quite like to see how it goes and how it grows and I'm like and you know loads more than I've got out of here in 30 minutes and because we've got that sense of connection that conversation is likely to continue now this is really really important for the mentee the mentee needs to follow up if if the mentee

89:54 wants that conversation to continue so if I'm like I really want to see you again because there's a lot more that I could learn from you it's really important that after that meeting not same day like give it a few days actually do something with what that person has shared follow up with the mentor so go back to the mentor say thank you so much for your time as a result of this conversation these are the things that I've already done and I

90:16 really appreciate it and I would love to continue the conversation if you went for another meeting in the future and because the mentor gets two boosts in their brain the first boost is when they helped like when you gave me help you're made me feel good yeah help us hide people are helping people second boost is when you know the impact of your efforts so when I play it back to you you're like oh that was a good use

90:37 of my time she's done something with what I gave her and therefore you're much more likely to give it again so I think if we can approach mentoring a bit like that it's I think it's better for both parties yeah and the word mentors like never even used yeah yes I help knowledge and like that's more yeah I think people under underappreciate because I feel like a limiting belief a lot of people have is oh why would that

90:59 why would this person this important person want to talk to me about the thing I think I don't realize it like if you push it in the right way then it's just it's just nice everyone loves sharing what they've learned and someone to be interested in that and for that person especially to then take action on applying the thing you're like oh sick yeah and you might even become friends and back to you back to confidence

91:18 Gremlins maybe they've got a confidence going about senior people that's getting in the way of that so you might have to unpick the confidence Gremlin and say you know they might hey the limiting belief might be a senior person will never make time for me and it might the Limitless belief is I've got some I can help the senior person to see I don't know to see this as a different situation or something you know like I've got some insight that

91:43 they actually could help them because they can't see this situation from the position that they're in and so so much of this stuff is tied together that's why there's five skills I love it all right let's go number five future possibilities yes what would you like to know what what do you mean so what we are trying to do here with this skill is to help people to be proactively curious about their career and if I just go kind of right back to

92:09 the ladder for a moment what the ladder often leads to is people not being practically curious they're actually much more reactive about how they manage their development and the most proactive thing they probably do is they might make a plan they might make a plan so I'll get a piece of paper and I say you know 2023 I'm CEO of amazing if and 2024 I'm gonna do this and in 2025 I'm gonna do this and that's I might plan a series

92:31 of roles and then I often become quite blinkered by what I've put in front of me and and I don't tend to explore around it and then the problem is when those things don't materialize I suddenly start to get a bit stuck or a bit frustrated by it so we're trying to get away from the idea that we can plan all this stuff and we're trying to get away from people fixing their future and so possibilities are more about career

92:57 City and instead of fixing things or trying to be a bit more flexible so that's the skill here really is to be practically curious about your career and you can do that in in lots of different ways what I often suggest is a starting place here is that people go and explore for specific possibilities like and I don't mean apply for jobs that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying I'm saying I want you to go and talk to people and get closer

93:22 to these career possibilities and so for that I'd recommend people have a look at the obvious career possibility so we we all have a move that probably makes squiggly sense like when I was at Microsoft as my manager's job like that's what people thought I should do and it seems sensible to do now I run my company the sensible move for me to make is actually just stay in my job because it's growing my company's growing and so I will grow

93:46 with it that's the sensible move for me to make and the reason I want people to explore this one a little bit more is because a lot of people assume that because it's obvious it's the right move for them to make so they take on their manager's job or they go for that promotion because they've they're currently a junior and they should be a senior and all those kind of things or I just stay in my role because it's

94:05 obvious that it's growing and I should stay in it and actually maybe that role doesn't actually need what you want to be known for but the strengths may be that role doesn't align with the things that really drive and motivate you back to your values so it'll be a good fit for you if it fits with your values and strengths if it doesn't then it might look good on paper but it's not going to be good for you

94:27 and so we only know that stuff when we when we talk to people who are in those positions maybe we find time to spend time in those meetings we're observing it from a slightly different perspective you know we're kind of looking out for things so obvious one's a good place to start ambitious possibilities definitely worth spending a bit of time getting curious about those so those are the ones that are interesting but feel a bit of Reach Out Of Reach right now

94:49 sometimes that's because it's more senior like nothing wrong with want to be more senior sometimes it might be a sideways move like I might think oh I want to go do this thing over here feels a bit ambitious because I've never done that before the issue with this possibility for lots of people is because it it feels Out Of Reach they leave it for too long they're like oh I'm not ready for that yet or you know people are going to

95:09 think that I'm being too ambitious you know I often hear that confidence Gremlin coming up from people but the longer you leave it the further it will always feel away so we want people to go and have a conversation make a connection get close to that context that The Closer you get the sooner that's good great possibility is going to become more of a reality the longer you leave it the further that one's always going to feel away third one of

95:30 pivots so pivot possibilities these are fun I like these ones so in in ladder-like careers we often look through our progression through the lens of a job title that gets really limiting because it always has to sound senior and similar in squiggly careers I want people to look at their future through the lens of their talents so who needs what I want to be known for in my company outside of my company in this community outside

95:52 this community and then you just start going you kind of get Beyond a job title you start matching in a very different way based on talents that's quite I quite like that one and then the fourth possibility is the dream one lots of people discount the dream so this is like the unconstrained career choice like we've all got constraints how much we need to earn and what we need to live and what we need to know

96:08 and all these kind of things some are very real but if you just took them away for a moment what would you do if you could do anything some people love that one you love that like you're nodding because maybe because of all your values oh yeah some people get really scared by it and they're like I don't know I don't know but I get people to sit with it a little bit and then think well well what

96:25 do you need to know like let's not discount the dream like why why would we discount the dream like what do you need to know about it and and who could you find that out from and I always find with the dream there was a quote that really helped me to speak what you seek until you see what you said really help me with the dream one like speak what you seek do you see what you said so there's

96:44 something that you want to do it is very unlikely that it's going to happen if it just exists in your head but if you talk about it if you say like this is what I might like to do in the future this is what I'm interested in is much more likely that you're going to see what you said because someone might know someone or someone might be able to enable it or someone might just support your ambition

97:01 in a different way and all you've got to do is have curious career conversations about different career possibilities and sometimes you roll them in and you go that sounds amazing and sometimes you rule them out and that's totally fine and but what happens in the course of those conversations is you start to get closer to the possibilities and the people that are connected to them become more aware of you and so it starts enabling and the possibilities become

97:28 probabilities which become positions for you in your future that's that's the journey we're trying to go on love it at the end of the book you have a like 100 pieces of career advice we do just to end with like what if this well what are three of your favorites three three of your favorite pieces okay I'll be I'll go mine Sarah's and Simon cynics okay so we'll go with those so mine is to run your own race I have

97:56 found that to be a really enabling piece of career advice for me that has unhooked me from comparison and given me a lot of confidence that's really worked for me Sarah's is to never live the same year twice so she's very driven by variety and and that really keeps us like I think it just keeps her growing really keeps it growing and then Simon cynics that really stuck with me because he was on the podcast and I

98:23 asked him for his advice and he said to you don't have to have all the answers and you don't have to pretend that you do and I thought oh it's quite liberating to hear somebody who is like so successful sort of admit that they don't know everything and they don't need the pressure of having to know everything and they have to pretend that they know everything and I was like oh that's quite nice to just admit that we're all

98:46 sort of work in progress so that we don't need to know everything that that takes the pressure off so there were three but there's so many in there and I think you know you you you read in a quote what you need right now you know so I think you know when you go through quotes some of them they stand out to you at different moments because of what what you need so I think it's a chapter

99:03 for me that I can go back to and actually my favorite one has changed just because of what I need right now right I think that's a great place to end this Helen thank you so much thank you so much all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or

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