Welcome Back And The Work Fog

Hi, and welcome to the podcast. It's been a while since I recorded a podcast, and I'm gonna share more about that as we go along in this episode today. I'm wanting to start with this question for you. Are you feeling lost at work? And if so, you are not alone. We are living in extraordinary times. It's challenging all of us to new levels of resilience, this period of global. Uncertainty and angst and much more, of course has presented work and career problems for many people, many I speak to feel a bit stuck at work or they're seeking a change, but the employment climate isn't very supportive at the moment. Others have lost motivation or are feeling a bit lost, and some are just struggling, feeling overwhelmed with work and volume. And they're feeling like they're in a fog and they're wishing for change or clarity. Now, of course this isn't everyone. Some of you will feel like you are in your lane and having a great time, but if this is you, then this episode is for you. Maybe you are between roles or you are out of work, or maybe you are running a business and your constantly worrying about the future, or you are in a role but you are not sure and you're feeling a bit unhappy. And if you are not sure what to do, if you are feeling stuck in the fog, then as I said, this episode is for you. I'm going to share a bit of my own recent journey of fog from which I'm finally just emerging and I'm going to offer ways for us to navigate career and work challenges in these complex times. As you probably know, late last year, I closed my coach training business and headed into a semi sabbatical. I planned to have some time where I wasn't working full time so that I could do some thinking. I had no idea, no clear idea of what. Would come next for me. I knew a few things I will always coach and I knew I would return to podcasting here I am and writing, but I couldn't get a sense of what work beyond this would look like for me in the next few years. How would I continue to serve people in a way which also served me? Since the middle of last year really, I've been feeling quite stuck and I've been wondering if I would ever find something new. I've made a few attempts to find the right thing in the past few months. Started a few things, but nothing's felt quite right. And then over the past few weeks, a new offering has started to emerge, and there'll be more of that in coming weeks. But I also found myself struggling to commit. As I was grappling with this, a book I've been eagerly awaiting was published. It's What Makes a Life by Jim Collins. You may know his other work, particularly his book, good to Great. In what makes a life he's seeking to answer just that question. I am fascinated by this question, both in how I help clients think about their own lives and in this recent moment, really for myself, what do I do to make the most, if this next part of my life? I devoured his book. I finished it already. There's lots of underlines in it and I've no doubt I'll be ref referencing it for years to come. So prepared to be inundated. But here I want to pull out a couple of the core aspects he shares of how to make sense of life. And these are cliffs. And fog cliffs are things that we all experience. Life or work events that bring about a big change. It might be something we make happen, so we create the cliff, like leaving a job to start a business or to raise children, or in my case, closing a business or it might be outside of our control. Maybe we are made redundant or we end up feeling really stuck. In a job we don't like and we are wishing for a cliff. The fog is what usually, or perhaps always happens, a period of uncertainty with no clear sense of direction and a feeling of being lost. Jim Collins says, in the wake of a cliff, the fog can envelop us in the Merck so thick that we can only see one or two steps ahead. This framing has been so helpful for me. Sure. I created my own cliff and I cleared some space to work out what was next, but I did not expect the fog and certainly not that it would be so dent and that it would last for so long. I knew I'd been burnt out for a long time, but I hadn't expected even a longer period of recovery from the burnout, and I was so surprised by this sense of feeling lost all my life. I felt driven and ambitious and creative, and it had left me. I felt abandoned. Scared. Lost. I continued to work with a small number of coaching clients and I've loved being able to offer them my full focus, but in the past I've always had more in me, more than just one thing. I started asking myself was I finished, but I felt too young. I know many people retire at 62, but not me. That's not the plan I had. My father is still working at 93. That was my plan. I felt adrift and embarrassed, and I became so worried that this problem was permanent, that I'd lost my drive. But I kept thinking, I think I've still got this kind of third act in me at least. I thought I did. In the last few weeks, clarity has started to emerge finally about what is next. But even then, I've been scared to embrace it and to take action. Last year when I was burnt out, I reached for some ideas, but they never felt right. And what if this was another one of those? After listening to Jim Collins talk about the fog, I began to think about what others say about the fog. And a coachy client also reminded me of this as someone who's. Spent her entire career to date, helping people think about their careers. I should have been expecting this period. William Bridges, who talks about transitions, describes it as the neutral zone, the time between the old and the new. He describes this time is often being full of anxiety and confusion as well, of course, as creativity and possibility. Martha Beck writes in her book that I love called The Way of Integrity about the dark wood of error. She is referencing Dante in the Divine Comedy and the dark wood of error is described as a foggy swamp. As Dante says, I've lost my true path. I knew all of this, and so I should have been expecting my own fog or dark wood. I was in it and I was surprised and struggling. Then I was stopped in my tracks. It was in the middle of the struggle that a few months ago I had the most extraordinary experience, one that defies logical explanation. And I've been a bit unsure about sharing this experience, but it stayed with me so much and it describes the next stage of my working life and how it is emerging. So I thought I would share it. So it was on a morning a few months ago that I was feeling particularly low living without the sense of clear direction was really eroding my sense of self and who I am. And at the end of my morning meditation, in a moment of utter desperation, I asked for guidance from anyone who was listening. I didn't care. The universe, God, creative intelligence, I pleaded. I really dunno what to do. Please give me some guidance. Soon after this, I got into a taxi to go and meet a friend for breakfast. And on the way there I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about Lisa Miller's work on synchronicity. And again, from this low state, I pleaded, please, please, can I have some synchronicity, some signs, but what came next left me absolutely stunned. In order to share that I need to do a bit of an aside. The book I recommend the most to clients and on this podcast is The Happiness Track by Russ Harris. It's a practical guide to help us to live differently with our inner struggles. The central model in this book is called The Choice Point, and I use this model extensively with clients and have adapted it to include a wide range of tools which clients find really helpful. And for a while I've been thinking about creating a group coaching membership where I teach and coach around this and other frameworks to help people to be more emotionally resilient at work. But I've been hesitating, and so back to the taxi. As I'm pleading for synchronicity, my taxi driver starts talking to me and a bit reluctantly. I pause my podcast and engage in conversation with him. He asks me if I'm going to have a good day. I loved this question, and it starts a conversation about how we can choose to have a good day or not. Belief we both shared and as we pull up to my destination, he asks me if he can share something that he personally finds helpful. He reaches over to the front passenger seat and picks up three pieces of a four paper. He looks through them and finds the one he wants and holds it up to show it to me, and for a moment, I'm completely dumbstruck is what he's showing me. The choice point it can't be. Why would a taxi driver in Singapore be showing me the choice point? He starts talking, but I'm not really listening because I'm too busy looking for the reference at the bottom of the page and there it is. It says The Choice Point by Russ Harris. How could this be? I asked for guidance and I was shown the exact model that's sitting on my mind that's always open on my computer by this lovely taxi driver. He then went on to explain how he had found acceptance and commitment therapy. It's called act, which the model is based on, and that he was reading another act book, which I also have sitting next to my desk. I thanked him, telling him he couldn't possibly ever know how meaningful that moment was. It didn't end there. I sat down to breakfast with my friend and shared this experience with the driver, and after I told the story, she said, that sounds so much like the way Lisa Miller describes synchronicity. Again, I was stunned. So Lisa Miller does describe synchronicity in this way. She said it isn't just a matter of perception or awareness, it's a physical phenomenon, something that actually happens in the world. Since that moment, I've been kind of sitting on what to do with this. I asked for guidance, and the guidance that came couldn't have been more explicit. I think it was so stark that I almost didn't trust it. That wasn't my plan yet, and I got sidetracked by another idea, but slowly I kept coming back to it. I kept remembering this experience when I asked for guidance, and now I guess I can see the fog clearing. I know I what I need to do, and I feel completely aligned with it. As I was reflecting on this and preparing for this podcast, I went back to see what York said about synchronicity, and Jung describes synchronicity as events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, yet they lack a discoverable, causal connection. So what does this mean for all of us? Well, it brings me back to the book. What Makes a Life? This framing of cliffs and fog has helped me to make sense of things over these past few months, and I've also been noticing the same pattern with some of my clients. There have been these cliff events and these periods of fog. And Collins describes these periods as coming with feelings of pressure or impatience to figure it out and get on with it. And I've certainly been putting this pressure on myself. We will all have moments where we're in the right place at work. And Collins would describe this as doing work. We are encoded for. We will all have cliffs and we will all have fog, and sometimes we don't even have to have a cliff event, but the fog emerges while we are in the same role where we feel unhappy and lost. So what can we do when we are feeling surrounded by the fog? I went back to look at what Colin said, what Martha Beck was saying and what William Bridges was saying, and a few others. And here are suggestions that they. Have that help us to think about how to navigate periods where we can't really see where we are going. The first is actually to honor this stage, to see it as part of a life. Colin saw it in all of the lives he studied. We can choose not to pull against it as I have been, but to allow the process of walking through the dark wood and to be patient with ourselves. We can ask for guidance and we can talk with our trusted advisors. People we know will listen and help us to work out what is true for us, not the expectations of others. And these can be our in life guides, coaches, colleagues, friends and family. And if it's right for you or for us, we can ask the universal consci. We can listen for what we're encoded to do. Collins talks extensively about how we all have encodings for our work, and we can lean into those gently, and that when we do, maybe the fog will clear. So, for example, I know I'm encoded to teach, and so looking for ways to teach is helping me to find a way out of the fog. We can take small steps and find small ways to express what we are encoded to do whilst we wait for the fog to clear. So this might be looking for expressions of something you love. If you feel stuck in your job. You might notice a few moments in the day where you can express your strengths or your values. It's important to be gentle with ourselves, and while we are doing these small steps and trying some small tests, we can be listening to ourselves and finding what is true for us. Curiosity can be really helpful here, and we can look at what is inspiring us, what's interesting us. We can look for those moments where we feel a glimmer of feeling good, even if it's just a few seconds where we feel content and we can follow those, we can see where they might take us. Certainly for me, taking time for quiet and solitude and rest has been really helpful. It can be tempting in periods where we're in the fog to be really busy and productive to try and push a way forward. But actually, maybe we don't. Fog can lift. When we stop trying, the sun can come out and burn it off. When we take time to tune in and listen to what might be best for us, maybe the fog will clear by itself. We've all had periods of fog in the past, and these can also be learning moments for us. You can look back at your last fog period and think about what helped you to move out of it and what you can do to identify the next best steps. You can ask the question, what would I do even if no one paid me? This is described by Jim Collins as the hedgehog question, looking for ways to move more towards what we would do, even if nobody was looking, can give us some feelings of fulfillment. And of course, you can build or join a community. You can find some trusted people to help you through this period and watch this space because there's certainly one coming from me. I've got many journaling prompts for you which might help you if you are in this period, and these are available on my Substack, which is found. At Jean belfor.substack.com and I'll put a link to this in the show notes. Journaling is extremely helpful in the fog. I feel two journals over the last few months, even more than I normally do. And looking back, I can see how this has really helped me to organize my thoughts, to notice patterns, to tune in to small intuitions, and really to start testing out my next steps. As I've said, I'm really happy to share that the fog is clearing and my new offer is coming together, and oh, I feel excited about it. I feel energized and motivated and really happy to be moving forward into the next stage. And so I encourage you if you are in the fog, to hold the face to know that the fog will lift. It might take some time. It might take lots of some, but it will lift and you will be able to move forward into what's coming next for you. As I've said, there's more information available over on my substack and also if you have comments or things that you would like to share, you can add these to the post in Substack and we can have a conversation about what to do when we are in the fog.