In years past during my digital marketing career, when I attended corporate holiday parties the highlights were…

The chocolate fountains.

Colleagues dancing.

The senior leader of our group who told us all before we walked in, "Don’t eat like pigs." An unexpected, but memorable pep talk.

Spending the whole night with the three to four people who knew me best at the company. The people who truly got me.

To contrast, as I take the "so many holiday parties, so little time" approach to networking this year, there are no chocolate fountains. Thankfully, there’s no dancing AND I can eat whatever I want, as long as it’s gluten-free.

That said, the most powerful, visceral change this time is my comfort with talking to anyone and everyone—because I know who I am and what I’m contributing to the people in my life. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished this year—so I have a lot to talk about! And those who know me even just a little know that I…ahem…like to talk.

Part of stepping into my worth and discovering my confidence in networking is also knowing that I don’t need to talk the whole time to build a connection. What a relief to re-learn that I build deeper relationships when I put "The Rachel Show" on hiatus to follow my mantra for 2019—LISTEN.

The practice of deep listening has been a focus for me this year and it has shifted the way I lead workshops, the way I show up for my clients, and who I can be for strangers. When I’m present and generous, I can help them make the connections and note the possibilities I’m seeing for them.

This mindset shift has been a game-changer for both my motivation to network (on rainy, cold evenings in venues so far from Brooklyn), and in my expectations of what will come from those events.

No matter what these connections will bring to my business or my life, I know I will learn more about people. What motivates them. What keeps them stuck. What they want from their lives. What they’re willing to release. All things that bring me energy—inspiring me to write, coach, and help people change their lives.

As you attend— parties this season, I encourage you to use these as networking opportunities to tell your authentic stories, to listen and to be present—removing all expectations that this afternoon or evening will make or break your career or your business. Have fun! Don’t judge yourself or others for unsmooth dance moves—and please, if there’s a chocolate fountain—indulge. Nobody ever regrets that decision.

As I take time to reflect on the most meaningful areas of my work in 2019, what tops my list for the third year in a row is:

My ongoing connection and conversation with you.

It truly makes my day when you write me a note to say a sentence or even a word prompted you to think a new way. When you tell me a piece was "just what you needed to read" today.

I hear you. I see you. And that's why I will continue to be there to remind you to be compassionate to yourself. To be a flawed human. To forgive and create anew.

The way I like to close out the year is with time to be thoughtful about what went well...and well, what didn't. To set goals for the coming year and to choose people in my life who will hold me accountable for those audacious goals.

As my gift to you this season, I'm sharing my - You Got This 2020 Planner (pdf).

Create time for yourself to wrap up this year with the gravitas it deserves.

I look forward to hearing your 2020 goals and being a member of the team that inspires you to achieve them!

All the holiday love,

Rachel

In mid-November, we saw the co-working giant WeWork layoff 2,400 of its 12,000 employees after the botched IPO revealed massive issues with its business model, as well as inappropriate behavior by CEO and founder.

As a coach and workshop facilitator who has supported the Women’s Employee Resource Group—The Women of We—in the past with coaching and personal leadership workshops, I could not be prouder of the resilient employees emerging from this reduction.

One by one, the "last day" posts from WeWork employees appeared in my LinkedIn feed. Woven together, they told me everything the salacious media coverage did not.

They acknowledged the good people, the good work, the good intent and the values they believed in.

They retold their stories—from their own perspectives.

They championed and supported their colleagues—both those who had left and those who remain.

They encouraged hiring managers looking for talent to hire former WeWork staff, at all levels.

These are all areas within their control in this complex and fraught situation.

As many know, one of my mantras in my work with clients is, "The person in charge of your career is you." The same goes for your personal brand.

While the company’s brand sentiment may be compromised, you are more than the company you work for—or worked for, as the case may be. You are a whole person, with a long career that will extend beyond your current role and expertise.

Having worked with mid-level and junior leaders at WeWork, I can say firsthand that there was and is an army of good people there who thought they were working toward a common goal.

These are people who forged forward despite the obstacles in their path—and that’s who you want on your team.

New York City isn’t an easy place to call home. The busyness, the cost, the time-intensive process to educate my kids, and then the moments when I’m drenched in the rain with a broken umbrella trying to catch a non-existent cab. That’s when I scream to whoever’s listening, "New York!! Why you gotta be so hard?!" And yet every time I return from a trip and that skyline comes into view—I feel alive, whole, and connected to all that I love.

I’ve heard experts talk about marriage and long-term partners as something/someone you must consciously continue to choose. I do this annually in my relationship with New York.

I do not remain here because:

I’m afraid I could not find joy anywhere else.

My kids might emancipate themselves if I mentioned moving.

I built my business and my network here.

All of those reasons stem from fear. My knowledge of my self and my capabilities counteract that fear. I know I could get my business and my family up and running in a new place if that’s what I/we wanted to do. This could happen some time in the future, but for now—I continue to consciously choose this city that I love, with a community that supports me and winters that kick my ass every year.

I’m not the only New Yorker constantly re-evaluating my decision. Nearly 75% of my career transition clients tell me on our first call, "We’re considering leaving the city." And we treat this as one of the potential paths to explore.

If this sounds like you, know that you are not stuck here AND you may be able to find some the things you’re hungry for, right in your backyard (or fire escape, as the case may be).

Here are some ways I help clients further investigate moving their careers to a new city:

1. Identify your values
Name your top 5 values and define what they mean to you. In the values that are driving your choices and decisions for right now, you will find some clues as to where your current life is out of synch with what’s important to you.

2. Name your non-negotiables
I typically ask clients to choose their five non-negotiables for their next role, but this time, I recommend doing it for your next potential hometown AND role. Do you want to go somewhere where you already have a network or is going someplace completely new one of the biggest draws?

3. Drop a few pins
Choose 2-3 places you may want to move and do your research! Vet those places out for your values and your non-negotiables. Just as there’s not one perfect role out there for you, there’s not one perfect next city. If health is one of your top values, what could that look like in all of your city options?

4. Move toward instead of running from
There’s a high likelihood that what’s prompting you to make a big change doesn’t only stem for your location. While you’re figuring out what’s next, use this moment as an opportunity to make some shifts where you are. I went through this exercise at one point when I was feeling the tug to move. I discovered I could tweak my Brooklyn life to find what I was seeking—peace. If you make these changes and you still want to move, you’ll know that you did all could to optimize where you are. You are truly drawn to this new adventure.

5. Know you can always come back
As I learned in my coach training, there are no wrong decisions. You are a resilient person capable of regrouping and redirecting if need be. No matter what happens, you will learn from this change—as will your family. Simply remembering this when you’re about to take the leap can be a huge relief and give you momentum in taking that next step.

For my Bay Area friends and family who are reading this to the end expecting to see that we’ve finally decided to make that move to Cali, sorry—it’s not happening. You guys would be the first to know! For now, I’m actively choosing NYC. But—I’m here to support my people when they’re ready to give up those moments when—the train goes express without warning—in search of new adventures.

Last week I received two emails within minutes of each other. Both were from former clients—one to announce her new exciting role after a year of project work and looking for "the one", and the second to share the news of her resignation after a few months on the job.

As I looked at them stacked, one on top of the other in my inbox—I was struck by the tone that unified them: pride.

A hard-won leadership position.

A decision to tend to mental health over a paycheck with toxic strings attached.

Both women were choosing how they wanted to view these snapshots in their career narratives. And their compassion for themselves leapt off the screen.

Beyond making me one happy coach, this realization felt like a message. It was a reminder that what can appear to be a:

Failure

Longer than normal job search

Stupid decision

Can also be seen as:

A critical lesson

Time to be thoughtful to find the right fit

The best decision with the information you had at the time

Often times when we’re stuck, it’s because we’re tough on ourselves in the retelling of the story. It’s hard to get momentum and move past that traumatic moment when we’re berating ourselves about what didn’t go well.

Now, I’m not saying to avoid the lessons about what you could do differently next time, but you do need to extend compassion to yourself, just as my clients did. Believe you did the best you could do, and your best was OK.

Stepping into momentum and ideas for what’s next in your career and your life comes after accepting where you are right now and choosing what it means to you.

There are many authentic versions of the story. Why not write the one that fuels you?

Over a month ago, another coach who I’ve admired from afar—Katie Goodman—reached out to me and asked if I’d like to join her upcoming improv workshop in Manhattan.

There were a couple of factors to consider.

It was on a Saturday, so I needed to think through spending an entire weekend-day away from the kids. This is always a tradeoff, but with the right positioning (once a marketer…) and a well-curated set of activities—a day away can be good for everyone involved.

Then there was the obvious staring me in the face.

IMPROV. A discipline I don’t exactly consider to be in my wheelhouse.

My approach to being a working mom and a business owner has traditionally been to plan my life and my world down to the minute detail, to create processes and roadmaps, to predict outcomes and scenarios and then build newer, better processes to address that wider scope of potential outcomes…and scenarios.

So, improv.

It made me want to run the other way. And that’s exactly why I said, “yes.”

Katie, a veteran comedian, speaker and coach, led us through a day of improv games that truly pushed me to the Antarctica of my NYC comfort zone.

In the safety of a group of kind, open fellow improv newbies—I found myself stuck several times. Blank mind, unfunny, desperate to plan my way out of a moment of silence.

It got so bad that at one point, I could not come up with ANY word in the English language that began with the letter K. Any. Word.

My inner critic, busy polishing off an epic monologue, opted instead for a clear and concise, “Wow, you really suck at this.” I even texted that to a friend at a break who said, “Strange, you’re usually so funny.” And for a moment I wondered if I lost my funny on the subway ride over.

After getting to know some of my fellow improv’ers at lunch and throughout the day, I did manage to loosen up slightly…even smile and laugh at clever choices.

Then, just as I was ready to announce myself done for the day, Katie asked us to do one more exercise—an improv musical. She gave us a topic and played a few songs on a keyboard. Then we were expected to…ahem…put on a musical? In my mind this definitely required the next level of improv skill, and since I didn’t even have level one down, I was pretty shocked when I raised my hand to volunteer.

I stood up with a few of my new peeps and we simply began our scene. The music started and something changed for me. I was clear and calm. I burst into song. The words flowed more freely than they had all day. Without notice, we were all belting out the catchy refrain of my made-up song in unison, “Let’s all break stuff together. Let’s all break stuff together.”

I felt alive. Energized. Adrenalized. I got it.

I was present and without a plan. I let go. I let it happen. And it happened—ideas, flow, connection, creativity, energy. Fun.

What I found in this moment was that sometimes you need to go to Antarctica to redouble your mojo. You must do something that makes you want to run the other way, something that challenges your wiring. Sometimes you’ve got to break from the rules and the plans and the roadmaps so you can simply…play. As a grownup, I too often forget this so I know I will need to practice. I’m grateful to have had this chance to try it out. Making up songs about breaking stuff is a really good start.

When I was a child, I had a beautiful singing voice. It moved people. I could see it in their faces as I landed each note and articulated phrases beyond my years.

Grownups delivered praise that could make a kid drunk on possibility. And they imprinted their own dreams and desires on me in a way that made us all high on potential.

But our collective buzz did not last. As it turned out, my love for arias, jazz standards and even my folk favorites did not outweigh my disdain for the time commitment, discipline and practice it would take to improve. Halfway through my freshman year of college, I gave up all classes and academic connections to music in search of new answers.

This was not a popular decision with family and teachers. In the end they did support me, but for years after this moment, talk about my wasted potential crept into conversation. While I knew that was not my path, I didn’t have a clear sense of what my path would be—and so I internalized some of that fear.

What if that was my only gift and I squandered it?

What if it’s too late to get it back?

Years later, I’m confident that if I would have continued to pursue that dream, it would have been for someone else. It would have been for the recognition and not the love—which is a tough pill to swallow in a field where the hours are long, and the odds of success are low.

Beyond my personal journey, I’ve come to know that the idea of potential is an out-of-date construct. An old school bullshit that hinders the people who believe they have it as much as the people who believe they don’t.

Whether you think you’ve got it or not—know that the idea of wasted potential is simply one of thousands of thoughts you have a day.

It is not action.

It is not growth.

It is not momentum.

It’s stagnant, trapped in amber—fear—that there may not be more out there in this life for you. You get to choose whether to believe it or to move forward and do.

When it comes to corporate leadership workshops, there’s one topic that consistently makes people writhe in their seats. They squirm. They scrunch their faces. Cross their arms. They get angry or they simply put up a wall.

When I say: Self-Promotion

People say:

Slimy

Fake

Salesy

Playing the game

A necessary evil

They hate it. And yes, I know hate is a strong word. But it’s not pretty.

When we brainstorm all the benefits that come from self-promotion, the room loosens up.

You control the language used to describe your work.

You let people know what type of projects are a good fit for you in the future.

You give your team visibility and build them up in the eyes of leadership.

You open the door to additional funding for your projects.

That’s not so bad, right? In fact, I would argue that when you love what you do and you know you’re making an impact, it doesn’t feel like selling, promoting or playing the game.

When I tell people about my work—in the back of my mind—I know the end goal is to get more women into positions of power. The larger my audience, the bigger the impact I can make. As we know, there’s a lot of work to be done on this front, so I talk about it—A LOT!

That’s why as a coach with a background in marketing, I would argue that what’s truly needed here is a rebrand. If self-promotion feels sleazy and like playing the game, call it whatever feels in synch with the outcomes you’ll get from it.

Whether it’s Owning Your Story, Choosing Your Narrative, or—if you want to go woo woo, which I enjoy—Shining Your Light. Whatever you go with, practice allowing those words to help you get beyond whatever is keeping you stuck and shrinking from sharing all that makes you proud. The world may need more of what you’ve got…but we will never know it unless you tell us.

Please, tell us!