Last week I was in a session with a client who is in the middle of a career transition.  

While she continues to look for a full time role, to make some money and spend the time productively, she’s trying out a part-time gig in a helping field  that is radically different from the intense roles in the startup tech world she’s  spent most of her career. 

As often happens, the part-time role has been incredibly rewarding–energizing work with a supportive boss. If that’s not a winning combination, I don’t know what is. 

We talked about how she can deepen or broaden this work so it could meet more of her non-negotiables. Continue to experiment along this path to see if it (instead of her current job search on other paths) could check all the boxes. 

And she said something I hear from many clients. ”I feel like I’m always experimenting!”

In essence – when am I going to get to the final destination already?

My response: Yes, that’s life. 

Life is experimenting and constant tweaking and shifting and changing. 

As much as we want certainty, there is no final destination – I mean, not while you’re still breathing and still – truly who knows about that part either.  

Careers are fluid. 

We get into trouble when we put rigid rules and restrictions around them. 

Those are the career cages we build for ourselves. 

So, if you catch yourself thinking–I’ll finally be happy when I find the perfect job, the perfect partner or the perfect dog, remember those things () don’t exist. 

Life is learning from our experiments as often as we can and as many times as it takes. 

Next week, I have a big birthday. Hey there, 50. I’m coming for you. Or you, me.

It’s caused me to be more reflective than usual. Some may wonder, how is this even possible? You can just ask the people who live with me.

But truly – I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I want the second half (eternal optimist!) of my life to look. Who I want to show up to be. What I want to accomplish.

Yet, when I sat down to compile my thoughts on the matter today, I was drawn to the past instead of the future. It’s been a time of tremendous growth and I decided to switch gears to marvel at the multitudes contained within this one decade of my life.

The losses of too many humans I loved/love.

The creation of a business and commitment to an entirely new career path.

A steady and meaningful writing practice.

The work of self-acceptance and the countercultural belief that I am enough exactly as I am right now.

The addition of a new lens to re-envision my past with compassion for my ancestors, knowing they did their best and that I also want to do better for my kids.

The parenting of two of my favorite people and the chance to lovingly usher them into the confounding teenage years.

Continuing to find my homebase in a two plus decade partnership between two people who have changed and grown and have never stopped supporting each other through so much damn changing and growing.

I don’t think there’s a decade I’ve been prouder of the risks I took and the mistakes I made.

Even in the roughest of moments this past ten years, my actions came from a place of self knowledge and an honoring of the true me.

I’m grateful to have taken the time for this accounting to know – I’m entering my 50’s from this place and I’m dreaming up the next decade from a calm awareness that I like the artist in charge.

If you’re coming up on a big birthday, anniversary or a meaningful milestone for you, I invite you to look back before you forge ahead. Absorb the learning and the celebration and take a beat, so you can honor the gravity of the path you’ve taken to create this life.

Sometimes a career shift idea comes on fast and swallows you in a warm hug.

A calm. A knowing. A feel-good movie fullness.

And as big as it feels in that one moment, it can disappear the next.

Not only is it gone, but it leaves a shamey aftertaste.

So, what happened?

We’ve let our practiced and ready internal “Shut It Down Machine” take over.

It’s an efficient system designed to protect us from change, from failure, from what others might think.

And yes it does all that. But it also keeps us stuck. In the same job. On the same path. Tolerating the same shit cultures.

It sounds like…

You: Maybe I want to be a writer.

Shut It Down Machine: Who do you think you are wanting to be a writer? You’re X years old. You don’t have the skills. You don’t have the education. You won’t make the money you need. It’s too late.

There it is. It’s too late.

Now, I’m not saying becoming a writer is going to actually check all your boxes and be the right career path for you.

But, the clue that this desire gives you is an invitation to investigate further. To let this idea live and breathe. To get into action around it so you can learn the multitude of ways it can inform you about your right next path.

When you step into the land of “It’s too late.”, you shut down your intuition and close yourself off from understanding and honoring your own wants.

How comfortable or uncomfortable is it for you to want something?

And why is it so hard that we need to shame ourselves for even thinking about it?

I encourage you to begin to notice when your Shut It Down Machine jumps in to wash away your wanting. Stick up for your desires. You don’t have to go out and sign up for the MFA program in the first 5 minutes after the thought, but you can get curious and take your time to learn more.

A simple, “I can take my time to figure this out.” is a lovely antidote to “It’s too late.”

You and your desires are worthy of taking all the time you need.

A couple of weeks ago I was writing a birthday card for one of my close friends – and I realized we’ve been in each other's lives and inner circle for nearly a decade.

We met in coach training back when we were both in marketing roles, hungry for something new and on the edge of what we didn’t know would be a life-changing, identity-shifting moment in time.

On long runs in Prospect Park, we coached each other through the hard reality of having one foot in our full time roles and one tip toeing into a world we didn’t yet know how to navigate.

At brainstorming lunches, we laughed at ourselves and our respective mistakes. And when I say laughed, I mean projectile tears and lettuce from our takeout salads.

Of all the things I’d hoped for in my career transition – a new friend to walk beside me on the journey was not even on my radar.

And yet it’s the part I didn’t know how much I needed.

I wish I could go back to “ten years ago me”, a bundle of nerves and fear as I humbly asked myself…Wait, what the hell are you doing with your career while you have two young kids and a mortgage?

And I would say – you will not take this leap alone.

As you move closer to the work you love, you will meet your people who love it like you do.

Who will nerd out with you on the minutiae that would bore your partner and your old friends to tears.

Who will celebrate you, knowing both how hard it is to do what you’re doing and how far you’ve come from the very first idea of your business that lived only in your mind.

It’s hard to quantify the life and the growth I would have missed out on if I was too fearful to make the change, but when I think about the people I would have never met – the pang in my belly makes me grateful I don’t need to live with that regret.

One major complaint I hear from clients and other women in my world is – I don’t have a mentor. Or sometimes it’s – I’ve NEVER had a mentor.

Someone who thinks about you and your career. Knows you well enough to guide you in your big career decisions. Helps you reframe some of the unhelpful thoughts that are holding you back in getting what you want – or being who you want to be in your career relationships.

While I do believe at my core that we are the drivers of our own careers – there’s a comfort in knowing that there’s someone out there who believes in us, who can talk us through how to navigate the landmines of working with an asshole boss or model the language we can use to set boundaries (if we’ve never heard it before!).

This person, these people – are hard to find. It’s not just you.

This is why I created Career Connections. It’s a group of thoughtful and supportive mentors.

Professionals who have persevered through the ups and downs of their work-lives and used their experience to grow into more human leaders.

Individuals who are getting to know each other deeply and coaching each other in the unique challenges of their respective careers.

I am committed to offering a space for these conversations and support so my goal is to make the investment accessible. When you join Career Connections for 3 months it is $285, less than the cost of a single 60-minute 1:1 session with me.

Our next session is July 11th at 4pm ET and we will be discussing Our Relationship Audits – the most impactful relationships we are nurturing in our careers – and those that we need to release.

If you sign up by July 10th, you will be able to join our group of mentors to get intentional about the most important part of our careers – the people.

You can learn more and sign up at rachelbgarrett.com/connections.

And I’m completely biased, but I still MUST say – I’m deeply grateful to spend 90 minutes a month in mind blowing conversations with the compassionate and smart AF humans in our group.

In my 1:1 work with clients and in my Career Connections membership, we’ve been talking a lot about building community, networking and nurturing the most important relationships in a career.

Yet – one of the biggest challenges is…time.

I often hear – I’m so busy with work and family. I’m doing all the things to stay afloat in my life. I don’t have time to network, just for the sake of networking.

Or sometimes the reason sounds like – I know I “should” network, but I honestly don’t know why.

Let me pull this out of shouldsville for you.

In my work guiding the careers of hundreds of thoughtful and talented clients, I’ve learned there are 3 types of relationships that are the most important in building their confidence, expanding their view of what’s possible and creating new bridges to get them where they want to be.

So, because you don’t have all the time in the world, let’s focus your energy, attention and time on the connections that will bring you the most meaning and joy.

To get us organized (my love language), I’ve created - The Career Relationship Audit.

Write a list of people who fit into the following categories:
(Fillable worksheet here!!)

Reminder that you don’t need to nurture all relationships, all the time. Your first three categories will have longer lists – and then you can prioritize where you’re going to focus your energy.

What I’ve found is that once I’m intentional and proactive about setting up conversations, I’m reminded about how much they fill me up and I’m able to connect with many more of my favorite humans than I expected I would have time for.

I say this with the caveat of being an extrovert with relationship building being among my most energizing strengths – so no huge surprise.

That said, I do find that for many clients the momentum they feel in nurturing their relationships builds so they somehow create more time for it.

Plus, you’d be surprised how much time you can spin up when you’re able to turn down the volume on a couple of relationships you’re moving towards releasing.

I’d love to hear what you think about the The Career Relationship Audit. We’re going to be diving deep on how it’s helping us to be more thoughtful about our relationships in the next Career Connections session on July 11th at 4pm ET.

If you join by July 9, you’ll be able to join us and share wins in our online community on Circle.

Here’s to summer connecting!

It’s that time again – I’m opening up my Monthly Office Hours beyond my current and former clients.

If you haven’t joined before – we talk about all things career transition and job search-related. From the very tactical of, "Do I reach out to the hiring manager on LinkedIn when I’m applying for the role?", to the big life questions of, "Should I or shouldn’t I take the first job offered to me, even when I haven’t been searching for very long?".

No questions are off the table.

And beyond questions, everyone in this community is showing up with compassion, support and words of inspiration that can make you feel like you’re not alone in this job search adventure.

So – join us on July 1st at 12pm ET. Sign up at rachelbgarrett.com/office-hours.

And send your friends who may be interested in getting some support on a Monday afternoon.

Looking forward to seeing you and your people there!

We can celebrate the beginning of your summer networking together.

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.