Mindful in 5 Podcast

I Have a Confession

• Spiwe Jefferson • Season 5 • Episode 177

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If you are dealing with a voluntary or involuntary transition, this episode is for you. 

And today, I'm getting vulnerable with you with a surprising confession.

And it is my intention to lift your spirits and you might even laugh:)

Have you ever noticed how your brain treats job loss like it's being chased by a predator? That's because your nervous system doesn't distinguish between a saber-toothed tiger and a severance package. Both trigger the same survival response, even when you've voluntarily left your position.

Core Psychological Insights: 

  • Your emotional complexity during transitions isn't a character flaw—it's your psyche processing significant change
  • Research shows professionals who thrive develop psychological flexibility rather than suppress difficult feelings
  • Career transitions activate a unique neural pathway that most employed individuals never access

Identity Disruption as Catalyst: 

  • The question "Who am I if not my title?" represents a powerful pattern interrupt that can catalyze transformation
  • Between professional identities, you access unprecedented freedom to experiment without organizational constraints

Strategic Emotional Processing: 

  • Create intentional space for your complete emotional spectrum—disappointment, anger, relief, excitement—without judgment 
  • Practice a daily five-minute morning reflection to decode emotional patterns without suppression 

Transformation Opportunity: 

  • Career transitions offer a rare window to rewire limiting professional beliefs and align with your authentic self 
  • Your brain is literally creating new neural pathways for professional growth during this pivotal moment


More Links and Resources

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Mindful in 5 Summer Zen Series, your hub for thriving leaders. Here we will explore actionable insights to support resilience and success as we navigate the unique chaos of summer, and success as we navigate the unique chaos of summer. I'm Spheer Deverson, certified mindfulness practitioner, lawyer and author of the Mindful in 5 book series. I believe we all deserve a bit more balance and peace, especially when work and life get a little hectic. When work and life get a little hectic While you're enjoying the sunshine and this vibrant season, I'm excited to share insights and practices that can help you integrate mindfulness, balance, peace and a sense of purpose, whether summer's just beginning or winter's at your door. Grab a comfy spot and let's explore these practices together. Elevate your work, empower your life, work higher, live stronger. Let's go. Do you know what today is? What a fox? What today is? Well, it is my day to be vulnerable with you because I have a confession. Keep listening and I will tell you. Today. Our title is I have confession and we are decoding something powerful.

Speaker 1:

If you have recently experienced a voluntary or involuntary job transition, there is a good chance that your nervous system is processing this as a threat, a threat. You might be feeling angry or sad or scared, like what did I just do? This is completely normal and before we go on, let's talk about those voluntary transitions for a minute, because if you have gone through an involuntary one, you might be thinking who is she talking to? I'll give you a few examples. In the book Mindful in Five, there is a character named Sengita who, after a lot of soul searching, decides that she is going to quit her job because she wants to go to law school. Everybody, I think, who's been in college may remember a group of college students that, at least when I was in college, were called non-traditional students. These were people who had gone out into the workforce for a while and then come back to college or, in my case, to law school, to get either another degree or maybe even their first degree. This is not unusual and it takes, in my opinion, courage and huge intentionality to stop your life in mid-career to go back to school and do something even better that you want for the rest of your career journey. That is an example of a voluntary transition. Or I have known people who have quit their jobs because they recognize that the role that they were in was not right for them, or maybe they had a terrible boss, or maybe they just wanted a change. I have a very brave friend who left a perfectly good job in a perfectly decent situation because she wanted to take time out to think about what she wanted for her career journey.

Speaker 1:

There are lots of times when people may choose to quit a job. You may have heard during the pandemic, people were quitting jobs left, right and center because they wanted to go and get a different job, or maybe a better job, or maybe a higher paying job. So there are many times that people have voluntary transitions from one job to maybe just space, or from one job to the next. This, as I said, is completely normal. So, whether you have chosen to leave a job or whether your job disappeared, whatever your situation is, I am talking to you today Because your brain's ancient wiring does not distinguish between a saber-toothed tiger and a severance package.

Speaker 1:

Both can trigger the same survival response, and that can be true. Even when you made a clear-headed decision, the day after you might be thinking oh my gosh, what did I just do? I mean, it made sense yesterday, but does it really? But here's the thing this same disruption that feels threatening is actually creating the perfect conditions for neuroplasticity your brain's remarkable ability to rewire itself. The uncertainty you are experiencing isn't just discomfort. It's literally opening new neural pathways for growth and transformation. Before we shift into solutions and I invite you to come back to next episode where we'll be diving into solutions let's create space for what's really happening inside of you. Maybe there is anger towards your former employer. Perhaps there is disappointment about how things unfolded. You may be cycling through resentment, fear or even relief, sometimes all the same in the same space of a morning or an afternoon.

Speaker 1:

Now here is the part where I give you my confession. In my most recent role, I was the general counsel, chief of staff and corporate secretary of my company. I loved the job so much I was literally dreaming about my to-do list. I would wake up in the morning and just fight the urge to sprint to my desk so that I could make time for my morning meditation and workout In a whirlwind of great activity. In a whirlwind of great activity, we launched a lot of new initiatives, rebranded the major corporate brands of the organization, sold some significant parts of the company, sold some real estate, did a lot of merger and acquisition activity that ultimately resulted in us selling the whole company to a publicly traded parent that already had a law department, so our legal department in my company was eliminated. So, as I talk to you now, I am on a career hiatus.

Speaker 1:

Now you might be surprised to hear that, but that is not even the confession. The confession is that, by the end of the day, that was my last with the company. That was my last with the company the overwhelming emotion that I had was a sense of relief and freedom. As I said, I loved my job. So you might be thinking well, how could this be that you're feeling relief and freedom? Well, I had been working crazy hours, sometimes 16-hour days, and I didn't even realize how heavy a weight I had been carrying until it was lifted. I felt like I didn't have I wouldn't have called it work-life balance, but I was juggling and I felt like I had a reasonable amount of work-life harmony.

Speaker 1:

But on the first evening that my girlfriend called to check on me and she asked me what I was doing, I told her I was walking around the lake by the gym and I asked her do you know why I'm walking around the lake? At 6 pm, melanie? And she said no, spiwe, why are you walking around the lake at 6 pm, melanie? And she said, no, spiwe, why are you walking around the lake at 6 pm? And I yelled because I can. And I literally cackled with glee. I didn't have to run home to work until bedtime, you see, and I just felt so free. Look at me. I get to walk around the lake at 6 pm without feeling like, oh, I have to go to work. And you know, to be clear, no one at my company mandated those hours. I drove myself that hard because I loved what I was doing. I was also surrounded with a lot of other general counsel who were working those kinds of crazy hours. So we essentially reinforced that crazy imbalance for ourselves. And now that I'm done with that job, my overarching emotion in this season has been that sense of relief and just expansive freedom. But I'm sharing it with you because I want you to see and hear that there are lots of different ways to process a transition in your professional life and it's not all bad.

Speaker 1:

In the Mindful and Five book series, I started writing these books because there were so many professionals that I was running into who were encountering just dark seasons in their careers. Unquote ladder was a lot more work were 16 hour days, was a lot of travel, which sounds fancy, but what it really means is you're probably working on the plane, you're working in a different time zone, you don't have time for your body to adjust to said time zone. So you land at 7 am and you are in the office at maybe 9 am in the morning and you're going all day six hours different from where you left and you are just expected to navigate those kinds of just physical stressors on your body. And so I wrote the books to suggest that there is a different way to navigate those kinds of challenges. Even if your job does look like that, even if your life in this moment is not perfect, because I believe that for the most part you know, for most of us life is always a little bit crooked where you kind of say, well, it's going great, except for that one thing. And that one thing could be anything. But here is the point thing could be anything. But here is the point there is no right or wrong way to feel about your situation.

Speaker 1:

This emotional complexity is not a flaw in your character. It is your psyche processing a significant life transition. Research in emotional psychology shows that attempting to suppress these feelings actually amplifies their intensity and duration. So right now, I am giving you explicit permission, in fact, I am inviting you to feel whatever you feel without judgment. I like to say that mindfulness is all about being present in the moment, without judgment and without being overwhelmed by what's happening around you. And even in this moment. Maybe you appreciate that, even though I can say that in a few words, it can actually be incredibly challenging to do, especially the judgment and the overwhelmed part.

Speaker 1:

Dr Stephen Hayes, creator of acceptance and commitment therapy, discovered something profound the people who thrive during life transitions are not those who avoid difficult emotions. They are those who develop psychological flexibility. This means learning to hold both your disappointment about the past and your curiosity about the future simultaneously. Now here is the liberation blueprint that research validates, blueprint that research validates when you are in between professional identities, you have access to a unique form of freedom yeah, freedom, I said it that most employed people never experience or just don't have time to experience. You get to experiment with different versions of yourself, without the constraints of organizational expectations or role-based identity. Now I understand that many of you listening to this episode may have intentionally or unintentionally wrapped your identity in your role.

Speaker 1:

Many committed and successful leaders do I remember I did that very early in my career. I was a lawyer. If somebody said to me, sue, what do you do? I'm a lawyer. That's the first thing. Any form of the question, who are you? The first thing I would say is I'm a lawyer.

Speaker 1:

And so when I made a voluntary transition because my husband and I moved and we left Ohio and we moved to Iowa, and I got to Iowa and I didn't have a job for a while and in fact, my husband said to me well, you know, cost of living is low enough, I'm doing well enough, you don't even have to work. And I tried that for a minute. But the thing that I had not anticipated, that I found just the hardest thing, was if I wasn't a lawyer, what was I? So now, when people said, what do you do, I had the hardest time coming up with an answer. And I have had friends who have gone through the same identity crisis when they left one role and were really thinking about if I'm not working in this moment, who am I? This is not unusual. It is something that many committed and successful leaders experience.

Speaker 1:

The trouble with that is when you are obviously not doing the job that you were attaching your identity to it can leave you feeling untethered, lost, confused, like who am I now If I'm not? The blah, blah, blah, fill in the blanks of your title? We will tackle more of that topic on another day, because I feel like it warrants its own entire episode, but for now, just know that you are not alone in your struggle. So that is where I will leave you this week. I just want you to marinate in this idea that you can create space for what's happening inside of you, and also that it doesn't make you disloyal, it doesn't make you weird. It doesn't make you strange if some of that emotion is actually maybe relief or joy, or delight, or anticipation, or curiosity, or just enthusiasm and excitement about what is in front of you. And it's not weird if you experience that, even at the same time as you might have times when you feel disappointed that things did not go differently, or you might feel angry even at how things went down. And so just allow yourself to feel all of those things and give yourself the space to navigate all of that emotion. I am, on most days, just really excited about the space that this grants me and what I get to do and what I get to think about, and I'll talk more about what that looks like for me in the next episode. Join me for the next episode and let's keep this conversation going.

Speaker 1:

My next Mindful and Five book is called Phoenix Rising Ignite your Job Search, and it's all about how you can rise from the ashes of shock, surprise, despair, anger, all the things, and rise like a phoenix from the ashes into the dawn and the day of your next professional adventure. Click on the link at the top of the show notes for this episode to pre-order your copy today. It is all about how to navigate the intersection of mindfulness, ai and traditional job searching capabilities, but also how to give yourself the mindful space to recover from your last role and re-energize yourself so that, if it feels like you're sitting over there in ashes and sackcloth, throwing ashes on your head because you're so in despair, how do you rise from that like a phoenix and reignite that job search? I believe that you can absolutely do it and I would love for you to have the confidence. Even when you don't feel so great, have the confidence to know that this can happen for you, and it is my wish that it does, that it does Hold those different thoughts in your heart.

Speaker 1:

Give yourself time every morning for five minutes. Sit by yourself and give yourself permission to reflect on so, how am I feeling this morning, how am I feeling today, how am I feeling about my life, how am I feeling about my career? And allow whatever emotion to come. Just Just come and don't squash it. Don't say to yourself I shouldn't be feeling this way. Don't say to yourself oh, I should be bigger than this. You're not bigger than anything. Feel all the things that you need to feel, because that will be your fastest path through that season. If it's your dark season, that will allow you the freedom to enter into a new dawn season, a new day season. That will equip you with the mindset that you need to go out there and find your next adventure and be successful Until next week. This is Be Weigh saying, be mindful and be well.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for listening to Mindful in 5. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend, follow and rate it on your favorite podcast platform. Pick up your signed copy of the book and journal from spewayjeffersoncom, or unsigned copies from Amazon, barnes, noble or wherever you get your books. Visit spewayjeffersoncom to download sample chapters of the book, watch videos and become a mindful ninja. Join us on the LinkedIn Mindful in 5 group and share your thoughts. Until next time, be mindful and be well.