Top 3 Career Decision Tips with Dr. Carol Parker Walsh

Dive in for game-changing sustainable career decision tips with a seasoned career changer and guide,  Dr. Carol Parker Walsh. 

https://www.ahyianaangel.com/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is amazing media production.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to the Switch pervod Equip podcast, where we get
real and dig deep into the stories of our peers
to find out their strategies, their solutions and insights you
need to help inform your career transition decisions. I'm your host,
Ayanna Angel, and I started this podcast just after quitting

(00:27):
a career in sports entertainment PR to become an author.
I've had multiple career lives, from designing jewelry worn by
Beyonce to show running and producing award winning podcasts. But
my hope is for this podcast to help you ask
yourself the hard questions, for you to become more self aware,

(00:50):
and for you to ultimately break through whatever is holding
you back from taking a chance on you and the
life you truly does.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Today, we are going to be chatting with doctor Carol
Parker Walsh.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Doctor Carroll is a three time Amazon bestselling author and
international keynote speaker in an award winning coach and consultant,
having coached a Grammy winner and Paralympic gold medalist. She
has a monthly career and personal brand segment on ABC's
katus Am Northwest and Doctor Carroll is also a member

(01:30):
of Newsweek's Expert Forum and Forbes Coaches Council. Doctor Carroll
is so amazing and full of great advice that we
are going to have her on for two episodes. Count
of I said two episodes. So on this first episode
she's sharing three sustainable career decision tips, and on our

(01:52):
next episode with doctor Carroll will dive into leadership. Make
sure you're following the Switch Privoter Quit podcast so you
don't miss that episode on leadership. I guarantee she is
going to share something with you that you have not
heard before and probably have not thought about before. So
get ready for that one. Buff For now, let's get

(02:13):
into these three crucial.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Tips from doctor Carroll.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
How does one start the process of blocking out the world,
listening to themselves and stepping into their own power.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
You start to hear a little voice inside of you,
a whisper, a feeling that all this other stuff around
you is not what you want to deal with, like
the something's wrong, something's off, something is just like not
the way it should be. So when you hear that inkling,
when you hear that voice or have that feeling, the
first thing you have to do is start listening to

(02:49):
it and start giving yourself space and time to explore
what that voice is telling you. The other thing, though,
that I think is really powerful. I think it's a combination,
is that you also want to get a community with
other people who are doing the same work, because it
is so easy that if you're hearing the voice for
you to either talk yourself out of it, for other

(03:09):
people to tell you, girl, you crazy or you know,
that's foolish, and look at that good job you have it,
all that money you make it, what are you thinking
about doing something different. We're so conditioned to fall back
into our habits or to discount or dismiss our own
feelings and intuition, and just to come to the voices
that are outscite of us and external to us, versus

(03:31):
what we think about ourselves. Because by nature, we're pack
animals and we want to be accepted and liked and included.
Nobody wants to get put out of the herd. And
that's why it's kind of a double whammy for me.
It's first, slow down and listen to the voice, and secondly,
get yourself in a community of people who are also
in that process, so you have the support and backup
of other people who are also on that rebellious path.

(03:52):
I like to call it to be able to step
into what it is if they want to do and
what's right for them.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
What role would you say to so awareness play in
making career decisions as well as career changes, because I
heard you say, you know, listening to that voice, and
I think sometimes people have a hard time sitting and listening,
especially in the hard moments when you're grappling with something

(04:18):
that you don't even know what it is, yet you
know it feels hard. What role does self awareness play
within that process?

Speaker 3 (04:26):
We've stopped learning how to trust ourselves, so we don't
trust our voice. We don't trust our intuition because we
have kind of set it aside in lieu of listening
to what other people saying, in other people's advice. I mean,
we live in a very noisy world, and so we
struggle with listening to ourselves and having a self awareness
which I think is there, but we just don't trust

(04:48):
it too often. What we do is that we make
a decision, then we check it with ten other people,
and if we don't get a consensus, we're like, oh, well,
as opposed to I know, what's best for me?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Right?

Speaker 3 (05:01):
You ten people, they have ten opinions that are based
on what they think is best for them that they're
now putting on you. So we have to find this
way to trust ourselves again. And it starts with this
reconnecting to what it is that we already know, to
reconnecting to and valuing our God given intuition and ability

(05:21):
to know what's right for us. And it takes a
minute to do that. I want to be clear. It's
not a quick like, oh well, it takes a minute,
and it takes a commitment to do that work to
discover that to be able to move into whatever it
is that you really want to do next.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
So you've talked on your podcast about regret proofing decisions.
Can you talk to us more about that idea of
regret proofing decisions because so many of us we don't
want to regret our decisions, you know and where? And
maybe that's the unlearning we're conditioned to, Oh, I want
to live a life with no regrets. He and so

(06:01):
talk to me about this. Regret proofing your decision.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Regret proofing our decisions starts with us embracing failure as
a part of the journey and not thinking it means
something bad about us or wrong with what we did,
but that we just are making these constant decisions that
we know are the process of learning and developing and growing.
It's when you become intimately connected to and love failing

(06:27):
just because you make a move. If it doesn't turn out,
then we start the Oh I knew I couldn't trust myself.
I knew I was wrong. I knew I shouldn't make
that move. Oh, how horrible it was. As opposed to
this is a learning process, This is a learning opportunity.
Every decision you make is not going to be a
bet of roses and fabulous because we don't know the

(06:50):
other side of our action, right, That's the whole thing
about stepping into the unknown. You learn in the doing,
and so on the path of learning. While doing, you
made side, Oh this is really what I want to do.
I need to recalibrate that a little bit and maybe
do something a little bit different. But I'm glad I
took that step because it's giving me information to be

(07:12):
able to make a better decision next time. When I
started my career, I started as an employment attorney, and
I thought that was my path, but I realized pretty
early on that I didn't like being an attorney. There
are aspects of it I liked. There are aspects of
it that I was really good at, but there are
aspects of it that I really could not stand. Now,

(07:32):
I didn't sit and say, oh my god, I spent
all that time, all those years, all that money being
a lawyer. What I then decided to do was to think,
what can I pull from that so that I can
step into something different, that was more aligned, that was
more connected to what it was that I wanted to do.
And there were a few pivots that I made throughout
my career. I moved from that. I became an HR director.

(07:55):
I'm like, eh, not that I became an organizational consultant.
I really enjoyed like that, but I realized I liked
working for myself more than other organizations. So as I
look back on my journey, I don't regret any of
it because it informed and helped me to make a
better decision next time. So part of regret proofing your
decisions is embracing this idea that I am going to

(08:18):
make some decisions that may not turn out to be
the best, but it doesn't mean it was the wrong decision,
the bad decision, or that something's wrong with you in
your own thought process and decision making skills.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Okay, hold time for me for just one minute. Okay,
maybe two, but I promise we will be right back
after we hear from our sponsors. Do you have any
thoughts on strategic ways that one can position themselves for
a career change.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, honestly there is, and it's not as complex as
one thinks. I call it leveraging your location, leveraging all
of what it is that you bring to the table
before you start looking at other opportunities. Please do the
work to get clear that that opportunity is where you
want to go. When I work with my clients, we
go through months of self discovery, of self understanding, of

(09:16):
clarity around values, organizational values, what workplaces are aligned to
not only the career they want to do, but the
lifestyle they want to have. So we unpack a lot
of stuff. What's your vision and goals? What do you
want to accomplish and how does your career fit in
with that? Because I always tell people that your career
is only a part of the greater ecosystem of your life.

(09:37):
It is not your whole life, and if you try
to do your career outside of your life, something's not
going to quite add up. So you want to make
sure that you have an eye on both as you're
processing that. So I want to put that caveat out
there before you do what I'm about to say. But
the strategy that you do. If you have narrowed in
on something that seems right for you and a path
that you want to take, you want to take a

(09:58):
look at everything that says a job description that you're like,
this is it. You want to dissect that job description
to see what they're looking for. Then you want to
look at all of your both natural gifts and talents
as well as any additional skills or education that you have,
and you really do a little bit of a gap
analysis to say where is the disparity, And then you

(10:22):
do a little recon meaning you start talking to people
in the position. Because job descriptions actually are unicorn dreams
and wishes. Most employers put what they would love to have,
but they don't tell you, but we would really be
okay with this, and so sometimes we discount ourselves because
we think, oh, and women are bad at this. We
can have eight things out of the twelve that we

(10:44):
are qualified for, and those four things will keep us
from applying at all or going after it right, So
we have to get rid of that. But we have
to do a little bit of a gap analysisy where
is the disparity, and then in your current role or
in the current work you're doing, look for opportunities to
fill that gap. I always tell people you don't want
to run away from something. You want to walk into something.

(11:07):
So you don't want to be so panicky that you're like,
I'm just going to quit and take the job and
hope for the best. No, you want to know what
you're stepping into and look for opportunities to leverage the
location that you're at now to position you successfully to
step into that position. Now, that's the strategy, but I
always say it's an inner and outer game approach to
this process. That's an outer game strategy. The inner game

(11:30):
strategy is that you have to develop the cellular level
confidence in yourself and your abilities that even though you
don't have all at twelve, you have eight but you're
missing four, that you're confident enough to step into an
interview and tell the employer listen. I know you listed
these twelve things, but let me tell you why you
only need eight, and why more importantly, you need my

(11:51):
eight more than anybody else's right now. If you don't
have that inner game confident level in addition to the strategy,
the strategy you won't work. And this is why I
tell people be careful about just going into action without
doing this inner game process, because then what will happen
is you don't get the job, or they don't hire you,

(12:13):
or they go with somebody else. And then what we
do to ourselves is to tell ourselves, oh, I wasn't ready.
It must be me. I knew it was those four
things I didn't have, but that wasn't the case. You
didn't go in and sell yourself because you didn't believe
in yourself. And so that inner game has got to
be there for the strategies to really work and take effect.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Well, that wraps up our episode for today.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
I hope you got exactly what you needed from doctor
Carrol Parker Walsh, whether it be a tidbit or just
the push in the right direction that you were looking for.
I hope you got what you needed today. Thank you
so much for spending time with us. You can find
more about doctor Carol Parker Walsh that's kind of a

(12:58):
tongue twister at Carol Parker Walsh dot com. And if
you want to keep up with what's happening with Switch
Privet Quit, be sure.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
To follow a podcast, rate, leave a review if you
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Speaker 2 (13:15):
I hope you have an amazing rest of your day,
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We love when you share. And until next time, be well,
be good, take care,