Are you as exhausted as I am from the onslaught of Big January Energy?
The "you’re already behind, your weaknesses are holding you back " vibe?
Side note to the marketers on this: fear does not motivate people long term.
And to the organizational leaders: you can’t accomplish the entire year’s goals in January. So put away the six decks you’re working on concurrently. You’re burning out your people in week four of the new year.
How can we possibly sustain this pace?
As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking an intentionally different approach to January. One that interrupts the crushing messaging about all I need to change about myself and my business.
It’s unhelpful, unproductive and well…unfun.
While everybody else is Dry Januarying or New Year, New You’ing – I’m rounding out my Self-Love January – and it feels rebellious in all the best ways.
I’m writing down my energizing new ideas for the year AND I’m simply letting them percolate.
I don’t need to take action yet and force the ideas into the world before I’m ready. It feels grounding to give myself some time to let the ideas untangle themselves.
I’m meeting the Big January Energy in my people with calm and compassion. Modeling another way that comes from an inner knowing of what truly motivates me.
I’m building wide berths of buffer into my calendar.
I’m seeing heart filling friends and colleagues for coffee, lunch and REALLY chilly walks.
I’m respecting my body’s desire to hibernate on cold, dark winter nights. I’ll meet you for an evening in April.
My self-love January is mostly about self-trust and the belief that I know what’s best for me.
And it’s not anything you’re selling to make me better. I’m already pretty great.
I hope as we round out this month, we also say goodbye to all that’s already burning you out. And if not, we could make Self-Love February a thing too. I’m in if you’re in.
As part of my intentional self-love driven January counter-programming, I thought it would be the perfect time to give some of my favorite people the extra TLC they deserve.
Raise your hand if you…
Inevitably become the glue connecting multiple disciplines.
Are the translator among teams to find common ground.
Prefer the forest to the trees.
Continue to be surprised when you get tapped for leadership roles.
Are confused about which direction to choose because you’re good at most things you try.
Have a nagging feeling that your expertise (or the multitude of them) isn’t deep enough.
Congratulations, friend. You’re a generalist. And you have a critical role to play in any and every organization.
Most of my clients who fit this criteria, first admit it to me in a whisper. Like they have a secret. Or they’re saying a dirty word.
My response: Yes, you’re a generalist! Stop apologizing and let’s celebrate your general awesomeness!
Somehow, in academia and in some corporate circles we began worshiping deep expertise as if it is the only way to pursue a career.
As if anything else is superficial. A path to avoid at all costs.
I’m calling bullshit on this.
Generalists are…
General Managers, Chiefs of Staff, Program Managers, Project Managers, Consultants.
They are also…
Strategic problem solvers, flexible communicators, motivating leaders.
So, generalists, if I could write you a love letter, I would say…stand in your power. Talk about your multidimensionality and your brilliance in being the catalyst that brings teams and projects together.
Add it to your elevator pitches, your LinkedIn profiles, your resumes and your cover letters.
Don’t hide your magic anymore.
We need you.
We need you to lead us more than ever.
We’re halfway through January and you may still be wondering, how can I be intentional about maintaining a career that truly energizes me in 2024? I got you.
Last May, I collaborated with Park Slope Parents on a one-hour virtual workshop where we discussed how to get off the reactive hamster wheel of your career and begin planning and goal setting–so that you reclaim agency in your work.
Given the multitude of goals flying around right now, I figured–hey–why not share the recording now so you have some structure to your big goals. You know I love structure and a useful process!
The recording is now available for purchase for only $25!
The “Growing A Meaningful Career Workshop” is packed with actionable insights and strategies that will empower you to take control of your career journey. From nurturing essential relationships to making calculated risks, enhancing your personal brand, and more.
In this workshop, we cover…
🌱 Nurturing Key Relationships: Discover the power of cultivating meaningful professional connections that can propel your career forward.
🎯 Calculated Risks: Learn how to embrace strategic risk-taking to open up new opportunities and expand your horizons.
🌟 Optimizing Your Personal Brand: Find out how to present yourself in a way that resonates with your values and goals, building a compelling personal brand.
📞 Taking the Call: Understand why taking that interview call at least once a year, even when you're not actively seeking a change, can be a game-changer for your career.
To feel satisfied and content in your career, it’s essential to take charge of your journey. This is not just during a transition, but it takes consistent nurturing and tending. .
Growing a Meaningful Career means ongoing self-assessment, strategizing, and taking steps to ensure your career remains fulfilling and aligned with your aspirations.
As I mentioned last week, for several years now, I've been kicking off my year with a word or a theme that will drive me forward.
The first couple of years of this practice, I would choose a word, then get swept back into the reactive way I was living my life. So by the time December rolled around, I completely forgot my word.
In the past few years I’ve found my word in a new way. I get quiet. I don’t settle on one too quickly. I check in with my body. And I only set my intention when it feels right from within. This simple shift amped the power all the way up on this practice.
My 2023 theme was truth telling. If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember me announcing it to every corner of the earth last January.
I believed it to be the intention and driver that would glue my butt into a seat to write my story. The book…my book that seems to be rolling around in my head instead of on the page.
In Q1, I talked to book coaches. I wrote outlines. I added blocks of time into my calendar for writing. And I did not write. I didn’t want to.
I wanted to rest. Think. Play in my business and in my life.
I told myself the truth about what I wanted and didn’t want and I felt a wave of freedom. I knew I was onto something. I wondered where else I could be truth telling.
I spent time thinking about the types of clients and companies that feel most energizing for me.
I said no to the people and the work that no longer felt like a fit.
I asked for a rate I know I’m worth. And I accepted not a penny less.
Again, the freedom flooded my body and I felt alive.
So alive that I began to tell myself and others the truth about my relationship to my body. I used to say I was restricting my food to tiny portions and going without gluten for 11 years for my health and my longevity.
But it was really to be thin.
A lifelong ache rooted in childhood trauma and a culture that not only validates this self-harm, but requires it for acceptance and “ok’ness.”
But the truth.
The truth was that I was hungry and rigid and I was teaching my daughters this way of being.
The truth was my body, my whole worthy-of-all-the-love being was done with that.
The truth was that at 49 on my way to 50, with a full life of people who love me and a career supporting women to be their fullest, truest selves – there can only be truth telling.
And so while I wasn’t writing in 2023, I was healing and advocating and connecting and playing with all the extra time that I had now that I wasn’t counting and tracking and planning my completely new life that starts tomorrow.
My body knew this is what it desired last January. It took me until April to figure it out and I’ve been in a healing place ever since.
It’s a work in progress that I will continue in 2024 with a new word that came to me while lying still on a yoga mat.
IMAGINE.
I will sit with clients to imagine their wild and energizing new paths.
I will imagine new areas to deepen within my business and new ways to show up for my community.
I will imagine the words of compassion and love and acceptance I needed to hear as a child, how they would have sounded in all of those memories instead of the ones that made me think my body was a problem to fix.
Because that’s what happens when you tell the truth. You realize the pain was real. That you deserved more and better and when you imagine, there are still some ways you can have it.
I’d love to hear the themes and anti-resolutions you’ve chosen for your 2024.
Welcome to 2024, friend.
As a human doing the hard work to divest from diet culture and the hustley, robotic tools of “productivity” - I’ve been struck in this moment by the strength of my disgust for the concept of resolutions to start a new year.
I have compassion for all the versions of young me who started each January with a new way to lock into an exercise habit. Kickboxing, spinning, barre, pilates, yoga or my favorite – signing up for a marathon.
And all the ambitious Rachels who bullet journaled from 1/1 - 1/7.
Some of them also miracle morning’ed themselves into meditating at 5:30am before the kids woke up.
At the heart of all of these resolutions was the belief…
I’m not enough.
I’m not thin enough.
I’m not successful enough.
I’m not lovable enough.
I was starting each new year with a practice rooted in self-harm.
And that no longer fits with where I am in my healing – even if it continues to be normalized in the culture around me.
For several years now, I’ve been abstaining from resolutions and instead coming up with a theme for the year. I do love this practice and will continue to do it – but somehow this year it doesn’t feel like enough of an opposing force to counteract my resolution disdain.
So, instead I’ve chosen an anti-resolution.
Something I love about myself that I will double down on in 2024.
For me, it is connection and my ability to build community. I LOVE bringing people together. I’m grateful to have this gift and the opportunity to do it often in my personal life and in my business.
More of this 2024, please!
What do you love about yourself that you want to bring into focus this year?
What feels different when you declare your anti-resolution to the world?
What happens in your body when your intention comes from a place of self-love?
Feel free to share your anti-resolution with me and with your people. Change starts with the vulnerable and honest conversations we have within our inner circles.
Holiday plans, celebrations and gift-giving are in full swing. Did you ever think your Google Calendar could be this full again after those pandemic years?
Amidst all of the connecting and busyness, I’ve been working with clients on setting 2024 career intentions.
How do you want to reshuffle your time and energy?
What do you want to learn?
What problems in the world do you want to help solve?
What creative projects are you ready to tackle?
What are your 2024 career desires and how committed are you to honoring them?
If on a scale from 1 to 10, you’re anywhere from a 7 to a 10 in your commitment to shift – I’ve got something for you.
The Career Command Four-Month Shift.
Career Command was designed to help women define who they are and what path they need to take to grow closer to their vision. Then with the support of their coach (that’s me!) and their new squad of 15 women, they take action to make their 2024 career intentions a reality.
The Career Command Four-Month Shift will help you with a clear career pathing framework to lead you through every step of your transition.
With Four-Month Shift you’ll get access to:
The Career Command Process: Video training and resources to help you shift your mindset, identify your superpowers, and create a solid networking and job search strategy.
Weekly Live Video Support Calls: Dig into the lessons and modules within the Career Command Process, share insights with your crew and get real-time feedback from me, your Career Coach, on where you may be feeling stuck (Thursdays at 12pm ET.)
One 1:1 session with Rachel and the option to purchase additional sessions at a discounted rate of $250.
Curated Career Pods: Connect with a group of like-minded women who will be your team, your supporters, and your accountability partners.
Resume & LinkedIn Audit: After reviewing resources on best practices for both your resume and LinkedIn profile, our team will provide you with customized feedback on how you can optimize both to maximize your search and your personal brand.
Registration closes on December 26th and we kick off January 11th.
The early bird discount of $200 (with coupon code SHIFT2024) ends Thursday, December 7th. So, if you know you want to join our latest crew, now is an ideal time to do it!
The women who have already joined this group are talented and creative…and hungry for a change, like you. I can’t wait to see you there!
It’s truly hard to believe we’re this close to the end of the year. For many this is a time of reflection. For me, I’m proud and humbled by the number of women I was able to help this year. This job keeps getting better!
You may be asking yourself…
Did I accomplish my 2023 goals?
Do I even remember what they were?
What’s next for me in 2024?
If a career or job change is a priority for next year, I have two opportunities for you to get support:
Join my free Career Change On My Terms Panel on Thursday 11/30 at 7 PM.
Featuring four talented former clients who made career shifts in 2023 amidst mass layoffs, bank closures, corporate uncertainty and an overwhelmingly complicated world.Sign up for the waitlist of my next cohort of Career Command Four-Month Shift Group Coaching Program. Doors open on 11/30 and there’s an early bird discount with coupon code SHIFT2024 through 12/7. We kick off our work on 1/11 and it’s the ONLY time I’ll be running the program in 2024.
I’m so honored to bring you the panel event this week and to amplify the stories of these incredible women who did the hard work of unapologetically naming their career desires and going after them…even when it was scary AF.
I’m looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. Here’s that link to sign up one more time and share your question for the panelists: rachelbgarrett.com/panel
My heart is full of ALL the gratitude because I’m planning to spend an evening with some wise and generous women. And you’re invited.
I will be holding my 2nd Annual Career Change On My Terms Panel Event with four former clients who have successfully pivoted into new roles in 2023.
I heard from MANY of you after our event last year saying – we want more!
More stories about different ways women are pivoting in their careers, the details about how they did it and the inspiration that making a move is possible for them–and for you.
So I heard you and here we are again.
All four of these women did the powerful work of clarifying what’s important to them, articulating the right words to share who they are and what they want–and then creating a strategic plan to go after that thing.
I’ll be asking them to share their stories, where they were stuck and the tools that helped them make a shift.
We’ll cover everything from the mindset shift of taking the control back in the process to the very tactical questions of how do I reach out to this former colleague I haven’t spoken to in 8 years.
I’ll be moderating the panel and you’ll have all the time you need to ask your questions. Feel free to respond to this email with any questions you have about career change and I can add it to the docket!
Here are the deets on the date and time of the free live panel:
Career Change On My Terms Panel
Thursday, November 30th
7:00 - 8:30pm ET
I’m also excited to be opening up my next cohort of my Career Command Four-Month Shift Group Coaching Program on the 30th, so I will loop you in on the details about the program and share the Early Bird Discount!
Enjoy your Thanksgiving and I hope to see you soon at the big event!