Every so often within the messiness of life – I witness my clients fall into a steady, content state of being.

A confident and compassionate groove.

A flow of working parenthood that clearly is not perfect – yet (holy shit!) it’s actually working.

When this happens, they typically have a community surrounding them that’s meaningful and supportive.

A role where they’re respected and confident about the value they’re bringing to the organization.

And a family that’s emerging from what I call “the in it stage of parenting.” They’ve left toddlerhood and diapers behind and are beginning to see more bandwidth opening up on the horizon.

It’s in this stage of life in which you’ve managed to put the pieces together to become whole once more, that the universe may debut its latest joke at your expense.

Out of thin air, you get a seemingly once in a lifetime opportunity for a BIG and exciting job that requires you to move your family across the country.

As you might imagine, this is not hypothetical and it did happen to a former client of mine recently.

We jumped on a session to discuss it.

We reviewed her non-negotiables, her current values, her pro’s and cons for the role–and even the feelings she was having in her body.

It was clear. She’d built a life of her design. It was on her terms. She was loved and celebrated and supported.

Yet – this could be an adventure, a climb up the ladder, a unique leadership experience.

As I listened, my intuition flooded me with a message I needed to share.

“I don’t know what the right decision is for you, but I do know that if you decide to say no, it doesn’t mean you’re not ambitious.

You can still go after more. You can still hunger in your career – and prioritize the community, the relationships, the ease you’ve intentionally built into your life.”

This is not the binary "ambitious vs. not ambitious" that some may color in the lines of the decision.

You get to choose your version of success.

And there are seasons where flow and ease and community may be the right formula for you.

Sometimes the NO can be the big career win.

I still don’t know what my client has chosen to do – and will certainly support her in either direction.

Yet I can see that the release of the meaning she was placing on saying NO is helping her to make a decision that is on her terms.

In the past year I’ve been healing from the harms of diet culture, learning to honor my own body’s needs and investigating the intersection between agency in our careers and body trust outside of Patriarchy and Productivity culture rules.

And after a year of this work, I’m proud to say – deprogramming is hard AF and it’s making me feel more myself, more in my body, more free every day.

I couldn’t have stepped on this path without my compassionate guide – Anti-Diet Nutritionist and now dear friend – Abbie Attwood. I learned from her for months on her podcast – Full Plate – before joining one of her group programs.

Now – I’m beyond proud and grateful to share this episode of Full Plate where Abbie and I are in conversation about my own story with disordered eating and rules that were passed down in my family for many generations.

Plus, we dive into how our focus on dieting, thinness and “health (often code for thinness)” can impact our careers, creativity, relationships – and yes – how much money we make. Truth: It happened to me.

I’m so comfortable with Abbie that after we wrapped the recording I noticed – I had absolutely no idea what I said. Oof!

Now, listening back I know why that is.

Something shifted. I was in my body. I wasn’t performing the talking points.

I was whole.

So – here’s the link (also available wherever you get your podcasts!) if you want to go deep with me on one of my favorite topics of late – and hear more about how my unlearning is colliding with the body wisdom I’ve already woven into the career pathing process I share with clients.

I appreciate you and how you’re walking with me down this counter-cultural path.

To smashing the Patriarchy, one carb at a time.

Think about the last time you felt burnt out in your career. You started to talk to friends and colleagues about it. Searching for answers.

Then they looked you straight in the eyes, telepathically grabbing you by the collar and asked that bone-chilling question.

“Well, what do you want?”

And they call themselves friends.

It’s well meaning and yet – most people who come to me can’t answer that question.

They meet that question with the blank mind of someone who’s never had a thought before.

Empty. Void. Creativity has officially left the building.

Now, if this is you…let me swaddle you in a warm blanket of, “It’s ok.”

You don’t need an answer to this question right away.
In fact, you’ll never be as certain as you want to be about the answer.

On a quest for the certainty about the right next thing, many searchers claim the answers other people tell them they should want. I urge you to avoid falling into this trap. It will leave you hollow and unfulfilled.

Instead - acknowledge you don’t know what’s next. To your people, and most importantly, to yourself.

Not knowing doesn’t make you lazy, unambitious or unintelligent.

It simply means, right now you don’t know. But, when you begin to trust your intuition and you experiment with the clues it’s sending you – you will get closer and closer to your answers.

It will not hit you like a lightning bolt. It’s more of a slow burn. A building of momentum.

So the next time someone asks you, “What do you want?”

Have compassion for them.

And practice saying, “I don’t know yet. But I’m having a lot of fun figuring it out.”

I like to put a whole new spin on networking.

It’s being you.

It’s hearing interesting stories from cool people.

It’s laughing at ourselves because, let’s face it–sometimes when we’re trying to be “professional” we’re actually weird AF. And you know weird is a compliment coming from me.

So, let’s be our whole human selves together – from the comfort of our homes with a festive top and sweatpants on bottom.

There’s still space to join us for my Virtual Networking Event on Thursday, May 23rd at 7 PM ET.

Build your professional village. Make time for your priorities. And most importantly, let’s have fun together!

As you’ve heard me say – just a few (thousand) times, relationships are the part of our careers that bring the most meaning and joy into our lives.

Yet many of my clients find it beyond challenging to meet new interesting and generous people – in between all of the multitude of responsibilities they’re juggling in a given day.

But here’s the thing – I meet so many people like you – talented and looking for connections and community in your work life.

And I’m always on the hunt for ways to bring you together.

To show you all the other interesting humans who find you interesting…and want to help you.

So, here’s something new.

I will be facilitating a Virtual Networking Event where I guarantee you will meet at least 5 new people.

People who can help you think about your career in a new way.

People who can introduce you to folks in your target companies.

And those other folks like me who just LOVE connecting people. I see you, connectors.

We’ll be gathering on Thursday, May 23 at 7pm ET and the cost to join is $32.

For those of you who are already part of my Career Connections Membership, this event is one of the benefits of your membership – so no need to register!

Bring your glass of wine, polish off that elevator pitch, think about what you might be able to offer others – and where you may ask the group for help.

I can’t wait to see you there!

It’s hard to believe it’s May!

For the fellow working parents out there – we’re staring down the barrel of all the lovely but middle-of-the-workday end of school events...and the bittersweet seasonal lapse of caregiving coverage, most affectionately called, summer.

If you’ve already been job searching and getting some traction, your cortisol levels may start to amp up when you think of the extra camp drop offs and pickups, the days without activities at all and the melty (but understandable) fall out in your kid’s behavior due to the constant break in hard-won routines.

I am going to generalize here – so guys please reach out if I’m off base – the mental load of summer planning and activities and camps and coordinating with other parents so your kid has a friend at said camps and mountains of on and offline forms and procuring crazy hats for ad hoc spirit days – falls on the mom.

All while she has a full-time job. And is looking for a new one.

I see you, tired (and quietly enraged) moms.

Here are a few ways you can plan for this time to bring a bit of calm and keep your job search momentum going.

Ask for help so you continue to have (at least some) job searching time:

If you have a partner, have a meeting about summer plans asap. You don’t have to do all of this by yourself AND if you do want to share the responsibility, you must make the tasks visible to your partner. If you’ve been doing this work every year, your partner expects you will continue to do it. And, while you’re such a pro that you know all the steps and when they need to happen, I assure you that your partner doesn’t. Just as you would train someone on your team the steps to complete a project – go forth and assume good intent while you share your expertise with your partner. If you don’t have a partner, I highly recommend having a brainstorming session and community meeting with a few other single parent friends so you can help each other with both ideas and village support on tasks.

Consider a summer staycation:

If you typically take a summer vacation where you either travel or rent a home in a beach, or country spot for a week, consider staying home and planning for a day or two of whole family time. Time for you and your partner to be together without the kids and some alone time for each of you so that you can build in some networking conversations, do your homework for your career coach 😁, and see a friend that is heart filling for you. This approach can help you save money to put into your “F-you fund” - a savings that will support you if you must quit your job without one – or if you get laid off. And it saves you the time and mental load of packing for the kid/s. Also something that typically falls on mom.

Set different boundaries in your current job:

If you’re in an industry that slows down over the summer, take a beat and slow yourself down. You don’t need to be putting in 110% when the job is currently requiring 70%. Reminder, your 70 is probably someone else’s 110. If you’re not in one of those industries – now is the time to practice those boundary-setting muscles! Start taking an hour for lunch where you can do research for your job search. Begin scheduling networking meetings at 5:30 so you can still get home before the bedtime shenanigans, I mean routine. It’s great practice to draw these lines with your current employer so it’s in your muscle memory to set them for your new exciting job that you’re definitely going to get…soon!

Now, you may read this and say – these aren’t job searching strategies. Give me LinkedIn hacks. Give me resume best practices. These go in my favorite category of job search strategies.
​
​The first category where you must focus before all others - prioritizing you.

​​You must believe your time, your career desires, your mental health is worthy of investing the time and putting yourself at the top of the list. After you do that – the more tactical part comes together.

If you’re ready to prioritize you, your career and need the tools and accountability – I’d love to work with you. To learn more about my 1:1 Coaching program and sign up for a complimentary 30-minute call go to rachelbgarrett.com/coaching.

As you may remember, I’ve been on a path of divesting from diet and wellness culture, all the many rules and programs and rigid regimes I’ve internalized since the age of 5.

It’s been a process of listening to my body, trusting it knows what it wants – while also drowning out the noisy ever-present messages that tell me to make myself smaller…and well…to buy something to make myself smaller.

It is not easy work.

I’ve let experts tell me what and when to eat for so long, that in this area of my life, my body and I are just acquaintances, sizing each other up – wondering if we’re going to build a relationship.

Yet, as I do this work, I am grateful that there is one part of my world where my body and I are simpatico…and it’s my career.

Since my early career, I’ve locked arms with my body. In the best of times, I’ve listened to its whispers. I took action when I got the nudge. Even when others disagreed, advised against, told me to quiet down or chill the f out.

And even in the tougher moments on my path, when I had two small children and felt stuck on my marketing track, my body sent me clues that would lead me to my answers over time.

I trusted my desire to train for a marathon. To set a big goal. To make time for something of my own that wasn’t about my kids or my job. That training time was exactly what I needed to meditate, to reflect, to learn about myself and what I wanted.

It led me here. To a business and a practice where I trust my intuition and my body’s clues in how to move forward and I teach my clients how to do the same.

In this year of revisiting embodiment in all other areas of my life, I smile wide every time I share one of the many ways it’s threaded within the career pathing framework that’s part of all of my programs.

Remembering the moments in your career where you felt sparky and alive in your body.

Checking in with your body during networking conversations and interviews and even reading job descriptions. If you’re experiencing chest constriction when you read the jd, do you think you’re really going to be energized in the role?

As you’re moving through your day either in your current job or in your job search - experiment with checking in with your body. What are you feeling? What is it telling you?

And if you feel more connected to your body in other areas of your life, spend some time reflecting on how that’s going for you and how it might be able to give you confidence that body trust is possible for you.

How can you build a bridge to create that body trust in your career?

Part of my work with clients is talking about their non-negotiables for their next roles.

What are the 5 things you need to be in place for this next role to feel successful or meaningful? Flexibility comes up for many clients – yet it means different things to different people.

So – what does it mean to you?

And how’s it going?

Sometimes it’s as simple as - I want to be treated like a grownup. If I need to run an errand during the day AND I get all of my work done – it’s not a major event where I need to account for the 30 minutes I was gone.

Also – most of the working parents I support want to log off between 6:30 and 8:30 to spend QT with their families.

They may log on after to check a few emails…or they may dive into the latest streaming true crime docuseries. Or both at the same time

Whatever you want it to look like with your work day, it’s important to take the time to reflect on your work-life boundary-setting wins – and the areas where it may be falling apart.

Are you able to carve out sacred, disconnected time?

Is it respected by your employer or your clients?

Are you jumping into after hours or weekend work without being asked? Where is this coming from? Does it feel expansive and energizing?

Or is it coming from a place of fear? I need to prove my value. Responsiveness equals usefulness.

We’re going to be discussing setting work-life boundaries, holding our lines, the discomfort when others disagree, powerful ways to say no…and more in our next Career Connections Conversation.

To be part of this chat and a member of this growing community of vulnerable, supportive and wise humans sign up at rachelbgarrett.com/connections.

Our last conversation about asking for help was heart-filling. Everyone walked away with new friends and career advocates.

Hope to get you thinking about how it’s going with your own boundaries – and even better get to chat with you about it soon!