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Who Are You Without the Job? · After the Rush Podcast

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There is a moment that happens to almost everyone who leaves
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full-time work,
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SPEAKER_00: and it almost never happens on the day they leave.
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SPEAKER_00: It usually comes a few weeks later, or a few months.
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SPEAKER_00: It arrives quietly,
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SPEAKER_00: often in the middle of an ordinary afternoon,
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SPEAKER_00: when there is nowhere to be and nothing pressing.
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And the day has a kind of unstructured space that should feel
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like freedom.
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SPEAKER_00: And instead of freedom, what you feel is something closer to vertigo.
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You're sitting in the house you own in a life you built with a
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calendar that is entirely yours.
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And there's a question in the room that you did not invite and
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it will not leave.
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SPEAKER_00: Who are you right now?
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SPEAKER_00: Not who were you?
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SPEAKER_00: Not who will you be?
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SPEAKER_00: Right now,
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SPEAKER_00: today,
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SPEAKER_00: without the title,
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SPEAKER_00: without the role,
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without the Tuesday morning meetings and the inbox and the
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particular rhythm of a
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SPEAKER_00: life organized around work that had your name on it.
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SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
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SPEAKER_00: I'm going to spend this episode with that question.
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SPEAKER_00: Not to answer it for you.
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SPEAKER_00: I cannot do that and I will not try.
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SPEAKER_00: But to help you understand what it actually is,
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SPEAKER_00: why it matters,
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SPEAKER_00: and what tends to happen to people who try to skip it.
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SPEAKER_00: Welcome to After the Rush.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm Katherine McDowell.
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SPEAKER_00: This is a podcast for people in or approaching the 55 plus chapter.
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SPEAKER_00: People who have built something real and are now asking what comes next?
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SPEAKER_00: Not in crisis,
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SPEAKER_00: not lost,
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just standing at a threshold where the old maps don't quite fit
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the new territory.
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SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking about identity,
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specifically the identity that gets built around a career and
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what happens to it
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SPEAKER_00: when the career structure changes.
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It is a quieter subject than money and in some ways a harder
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one because you cannot
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SPEAKER_00: run a projection on it.
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This one took me a while to be ready to talk about because it
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requires honesty
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SPEAKER_00: about some things that are not particularly flattering to admit.
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SPEAKER_00: Stick with me.
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SPEAKER_00: There is a transition you can't model.
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SPEAKER_00: When people prepare for retirement,
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SPEAKER_00: and I use that word with some reluctance,
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SPEAKER_00: because I think it carries too much freight and too narrow a definition.
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SPEAKER_00: They tend to prepare for the financial transition.
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SPEAKER_00: They work with advisors,
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SPEAKER_00: they run projections,
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SPEAKER_00: they model scenarios,
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SPEAKER_00: they think about the drawdown strategy and sequence of returns,
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SPEAKER_00: risk and social security timing.
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Very few of them prepare for the identity transition And before
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I go any further I
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want to flag one more word Because it shapes how people
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approach this whole thing
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The word is reinvention You hear it constantly about this
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chapter Reinvent yourself
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Your second act The new you I understand why it's appealing But
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I think it points
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SPEAKER_00: people in exactly the wrong direction
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Reinvention says the old you was finished and now you build a
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replacement.
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SPEAKER_00: What I have watched actually work is closer to the opposite.
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SPEAKER_00: You are not inventing a new person.
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You're finally getting to design a life around the person who
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was underneath the
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SPEAKER_00: role the whole time.
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SPEAKER_00: That is not reinvention.
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SPEAKER_00: It is design.
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SPEAKER_00: And the difference matters more than it sounds like it should.
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because it changes everything about how you approach the
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question this episode is built on.
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The reason so few people prepare for the identity transition is
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not that they're incurious.
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SPEAKER_00: It is that the identity transition is hard to plan for from the inside.
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SPEAKER_00: It requires looking at something you are currently living in.
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Which is a little like trying to read the label of the bottle
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you are standing inside of.
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SPEAKER_00: The professional identity is built slowly over decades in layers.
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SPEAKER_00: It starts with what you studied,
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SPEAKER_00: what you chose,
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SPEAKER_00: what you're good at,
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SPEAKER_00: what the institutions you worked for needed you to be.
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SPEAKER_00: Over time it became something you do not have to think about consciously.
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it is just the shape of the world you're in you introduce
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yourself with it you
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organize your days around it you have a community that is
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sorted to a large degree
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by proximity to it you have a sense of purpose that is at least
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partially delivered
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by it whether you love the work or merely respect it and then
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one day by choice or
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SPEAKER_00: by circumstance it ends
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SPEAKER_00: What replaces it is not nothing.
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SPEAKER_00: But for a lot of people, for a while, it feels like nothing.
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SPEAKER_00: I want to be careful here because I'm not describing a failure.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm describing a transition,
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SPEAKER_00: a significant one,
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one that the research literature recognizes as a genuine
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psychological event,
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one that tends to unfold in stages over months rather than
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resolving cleanly in one
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SPEAKER_00: day.
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SPEAKER_00: What I find interesting,
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and this is the part most people do not hear before they are
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already in it,
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is that the difficulty of this transition has almost no
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relationship to whether the
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SPEAKER_00: person liked their job.
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SPEAKER_00: I have watched people grieve a career they complained about for 20 years.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because they missed the work exactly,
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SPEAKER_00: But because they missed what the work provided,
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SPEAKER_00: a container,
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SPEAKER_00: a community,
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SPEAKER_00: a daily proof that they were someone who did something,
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SPEAKER_00: a person who matters to something outside themselves.
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Losing that container is a loss,
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even when you choose it,
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even when it was time.
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SPEAKER_00: There is a grief nobody names,
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I want to use the word grief deliberately here because I think
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it is the accurate
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SPEAKER_00: word and the one most people resist.
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SPEAKER_00: We're comfortable using grief for death.
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We are increasingly comfortable using it for divorce,
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for illness,
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or for the loss of a parent.
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We're much less comfortable using it for a professional
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transition because the
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SPEAKER_00: cultural narrative around leaving work is almost entirely positive.
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SPEAKER_00: You earned it.
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SPEAKER_00: You get to rest now You have your freedom What is there to grieve?
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Quite a bit it turns out When a professional role ends You are
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losing several
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things simultaneously And they're not all visible You're losing
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structure The
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scaffolding of your days That work provided without your having
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to build it The
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SPEAKER_00: meetings you did not choose The deadlines you did not set
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The particular rhythm of a week that had shape because the
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institution gave it
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shape You're losing a community Not all of your relationships
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but the ambient
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community that existed because you were in the same building on
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the same team
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inside the same shared object That kind of community is easy to
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take for granted
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SPEAKER_00: until it's not there
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does not require effort to maintain when you are all in the
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same place every day.
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SPEAKER_00: When you are not,
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SPEAKER_00: you discover that it was a shared place,
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SPEAKER_00: more than the relationship that was doing the work.
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SPEAKER_00: You are losing identity the way you introduce yourself.
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The shorthand that told people where to file you in their
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understanding of the world.
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the title that was not you and that you may have been perfectly
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clear was not you
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but that organized a great deal of how you moved through the
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world regardless and
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SPEAKER_00: you may not be losing a certain kind of purpose
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the reliable daily sense that your effort is producing
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something that your presence
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matters to something outside yourself that you are in whatever
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small or large way
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useful none of these losses are catastrophic none of them are
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permanent but they
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SPEAKER_00: are real
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SPEAKER_00: and they happen at the same time.
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And the people who navigate this transition well are almost
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always the ones who let
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themselves name what they are actually losing rather than
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skipping straight to the
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SPEAKER_00: reframe.
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SPEAKER_00: The reframe is available.
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SPEAKER_00: It is a good place to get to, but it's not a place you can go directly.
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SPEAKER_00: Bypassing the room where the actual loss lives
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SPEAKER_00: I've watched people try they plan trips they fill the calendar they throw
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themselves into grandchildren and golf and a new hobby they
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read about in a
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magazine and the vertigo follows them because the question
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underneath is still
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there waiting who are you right now there are a few patterns I
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have noticed in how
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people manage this transition none of them are wrong exactly
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but some of them work
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SPEAKER_00: better than others
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SPEAKER_00: The first pattern is filling.
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SPEAKER_00: This is the most common one and the most understandable.
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SPEAKER_00: The open space feels uncomfortable so you fill it.
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SPEAKER_00: You take on more family obligations.
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SPEAKER_00: You take on volunteer work.
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SPEAKER_00: You take on a part-time role or a consulting arrangement.
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SPEAKER_00: You stay busy enough that the question does not have room to surface.
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SPEAKER_00: This works in the short term.
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SPEAKER_00: Busy is a legitimate strategy
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SPEAKER_00: But it tends to delay rather than resolve.
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SPEAKER_00: And when the filling eventually slows down,
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SPEAKER_00: because it always does,
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at some point the question is still there and now it's had time
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to get louder.
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SPEAKER_00: The second pattern is rushing toward a new identity.
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This one is particularly common among people who spent their
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careers as high
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SPEAKER_00: achievers,
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SPEAKER_00: people whose sense of self was strongly organized around competence and
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SPEAKER_00: accomplishment.
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When the professional identity goes,
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they move quickly toward a replacement.
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SPEAKER_00: A new title, a new project, a new thing they are officially building.
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SPEAKER_00: The speed is the tell.
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SPEAKER_00: This is reinvention in the sense I was pushing against earlier.
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The new identity is assembled before the old one has been
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properly examined.
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And it tends not to quite fit because it was built in a hurry
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in response to
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discomfort rather than from any genuine clarity about who you
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actually are now.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not criticizing this, I've done versions of it myself.
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But I have also watched people spend years in identities they
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constructed to avoid
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SPEAKER_00: sitting with the question.
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SPEAKER_00: And they have to do the work anyway,
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usually when a health event or another major change force them
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to slow down.
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SPEAKER_00: The third pattern, the one that works better in my observation,
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SPEAKER_00: is what I would call deliberate slowness.
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And I want to be careful about how I describe this because it's
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not passivity and
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SPEAKER_00: it's not avoidance.
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SPEAKER_00: It's not the absence of doing.
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Deliberate slowness is choosing intentionally to let the
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question breathe,
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SPEAKER_00: to not rush the answer
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to allow a period of genuine not knowing structured around
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curiosity rather than anxiety.
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And to trust the clarity will come not because you forced it,
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but because you made room for it.
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SPEAKER_00: This requires a tolerance for ambiguity that not everyone has developed.
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It also requires a reframe that is simple to state and
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genuinely hard to practice.
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SPEAKER_00: The transition is not the problem.
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the transition is the work not the thing you get through on the
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way to the next
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chapter the in-between itself is a chapter and it is asking you
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questions that are
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worth taking seriously I want to offer some of the questions I
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have found most
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useful in this territory not as a worksheet not as an
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assignment but as invitations
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SPEAKER_00: They are the kind of questions that do not have answers right away.
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SPEAKER_00: They are the kind you come back to over weeks, not hours.
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SPEAKER_00: The first, what did you do at work that you would do for free?
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SPEAKER_00: Not the whole job,
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SPEAKER_00: not the institution,
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not the politics or the meetings or the particular frustrations
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of your industry.
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SPEAKER_00: The actual activity, the thing that
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when you were in the middle of it made time go strange either
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very fast because you
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were absorbed or very slow in a good way because you were
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attending carefully to
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something that deserved attention that thing is not the job
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that thing is yours and
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it is almost certainly still available to you in some form with
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or without an
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SPEAKER_00: employer
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SPEAKER_00: The second, who are you in the absence of an audience?
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SPEAKER_00: Work provides constant feedback.
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SPEAKER_00: You are evaluated formally and informally continuously.
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SPEAKER_00: You know whether you're doing well because the environment tells you.
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SPEAKER_00: You have benchmarks,
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SPEAKER_00: reviews,
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SPEAKER_00: praise,
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SPEAKER_00: criticism,
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and the ambient signal of whether you are regarded as competent
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and valuable.
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SPEAKER_00: When the job goes away,
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SPEAKER_00: so does that feedback loop,
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SPEAKER_00: which means you have to develop an internal one.
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You have to become,
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perhaps for the first time,
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your own primary audience.
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SPEAKER_00: Who are you when you are not performing competence for anyone else?
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SPEAKER_00: Not when you're being observed.
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SPEAKER_00: Not when you're being evaluated.
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When you are entirely alone with the morning and nowhere to be
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and no one watching.
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SPEAKER_00: That person.
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SPEAKER_00: Who is that person?
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SPEAKER_00: The third question.
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SPEAKER_00: What did you set aside?
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SPEAKER_00: Most careers require a certain narrowing.
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SPEAKER_00: You get good at the things the role demands.
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SPEAKER_00: You let other things atrophy.
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The interests that were not relevant The skills that did not
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get used The parts of
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yourself that did not fit the container This is not a failure
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It is what careers do
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They concentrate you But the things you set aside did not
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disappear They're still
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there somewhere Possibly dusty and out of practice But waiting
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What did you set
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SPEAKER_00: aside?
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What are you curious about now that you did not have time to be
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curious about before?
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SPEAKER_00: What have you always said you would do someday?
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SPEAKER_00: And what is the honest reason you've not started?
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SPEAKER_00: The fourth question is the one that takes the longest in my experience.
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What is the specific thing you want people to say about you at
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the end of this chapter?
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Not a eulogy Not grandiose Something specific She helped people
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see what was
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possible He was someone you could count on She kept learning
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until the end He was
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genuinely present in the room Not planning his exit When you
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know what you want
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SPEAKER_00: that to be You have a direction
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SPEAKER_00: Not an identity yet, but a direction.
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SPEAKER_00: And the identity follows the action, not the other way around.
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SPEAKER_00: I want to say something personal here because this episode warrants it.
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SPEAKER_00: I have changed careers more than once.
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I have moved from clinical work to nonprofit leadership to
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financial education to writing.
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SPEAKER_00: Each transition involved a version of this question.
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SPEAKER_00: And each time
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SPEAKER_00: I was not as patient with it as I am now recommending you to be.
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SPEAKER_00: I moved fast mostly.
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I replaced one container with another before I had fully let go
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of the first.
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SPEAKER_00: There are good reasons for that.
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I had sons to provide for,
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obligations that did not pause while I figured myself out.
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Some of the identity I built quickly has served me well,
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but there was also a cost.
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Things I did not examine that I later had to examine anyway at
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inconvenient times
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when I was less resourced to do it My husband is 10 years ahead
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of me in this
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SPEAKER_00: particular transition I've watched him navigate it up close which is both
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instructive and humbling He is someone who is very much defined
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by his professional
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SPEAKER_00: identity
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SPEAKER_00: Not in a fragile way, but in a real one.
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SPEAKER_00: The work mattered to him.
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SPEAKER_00: It organized his sense of himself in the world for a long time.
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What I have watched him discover over the years since he
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stepped away from
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SPEAKER_00: full-time work is not a new identity in the same sense as the old one,
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SPEAKER_00: not a replacement life,
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SPEAKER_00: something quieter and I think more durable.
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SPEAKER_00: A way of being in his days that is genuinely his,
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SPEAKER_00: rather than organized around what any institution needed him to be.
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SPEAKER_00: It took longer than either of us expected.
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It required sitting with discomfort he was not naturally
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inclined to sit with.
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And it is,
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from where I'm watching,
20:23
more solid than anything he built before.
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because it was built from the inside rather than assigned from
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the outside.
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SPEAKER_00: That is what I'm hoping for my own version of this.
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SPEAKER_00: Not a reinvention and not a new title.
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SPEAKER_00: A more honest life.
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SPEAKER_00: I want to come back to the vertigo I described at the beginning.
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The moment that arrives weeks or months after leaving in the
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middle of an ordinary
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SPEAKER_00: afternoon in a life that is entirely yours.
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SPEAKER_00: The Vertigo is not a sign that something went wrong.
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SPEAKER_00: It is a sign that you are paying attention.
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SPEAKER_00: It is the moment when the question becomes impossible to avoid.
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SPEAKER_00: And that I would argue is exactly the right moment to stop avoiding it.
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SPEAKER_00: You do not have to answer it quickly.
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SPEAKER_00: You do not have to answer it all at once.
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SPEAKER_00: You're not behind.
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SPEAKER_00: There's no schedule for this.
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What you have that almost no one at this particular point in
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your life has had is
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time and relative freedom from the demands that made the
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question impossible to
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SPEAKER_00: hear before.
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SPEAKER_00: Use that.
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SPEAKER_00: Sit with it.
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SPEAKER_00: Be more curious about it than afraid of it.
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SPEAKER_00: If you can manage that,
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The answer to who you are is not going to come back from a book
21:56
or a podcast or a
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SPEAKER_00: workshop or a personality quiz.
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SPEAKER_00: It's going to come from paying attention to yourself over time,
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SPEAKER_00: from noticing what you're drawn to and what lights something up in you,
22:10
and what you're willing to do even when no one is watching and
22:14
no one is keeping
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SPEAKER_00: score.
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It is going to come from living with the question long enough
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to stop being afraid of it.
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SPEAKER_00: And when the answer begins to emerge, it will not arrive all at once.
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SPEAKER_00: It will come in pieces, the way most true things do.
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SPEAKER_00: You will not recognize it.
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SPEAKER_00: Not because it's dramatic or perfectly formed.
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SPEAKER_00: You will begin to recognize it because it fits.
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in a way that things borrowed from someone else's idea of a
22:51
life well-lived never quite do.
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SPEAKER_00: You are not done becoming who you are going to be.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean that precisely.
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SPEAKER_00: I am Catherine McDowell.
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SPEAKER_00: This is After the Rush.
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If today's episode found you somewhere useful,
23:12
share it with someone who might need to hear it.
23:16
The newsletter is on Substack and there's more there including a
23:20
guide to the first
23:21
year of full-time work ending which goes into the territory in
23:28
more depth and gives
23:29
you a practical framework for navigating the transition I'll
23:34
put the link in the
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SPEAKER_00: show notes and I'll see you next week