How to find your calling

0:02 A listener production. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tip and casts. Last episode we were talking about aging gracefully. This episode we're going to tackle. What should I be when I grow up? What if I don't know? It's such a hard one, Cass and some of us in a mid thirties forties still. Don't know what we really want to do. Sure we've all got jobs. Yeah, in terms of finding that passion or calling it can be hot, it. Can be and I think the pressure is on really young. And this comes up a lot that get We ask kids when they're five, six, seven years old, and it only gets more frequent as they get older and they go through school, like what do you want to be?

0:47 What do you think you want to be when you grow up? And it's all very cute. When they're little, they say, I'm going to be fineman or a policeman. An astronaut. Anna Belly used to tell me she wanted to be an ambulance. Not an ambulance work or a parent make she want to be an ambulance. And it turned out this is when she was like four or five years old. This is just as a bye the bye. She wanted to be working a hospital so that she wouldn't have to go to the hospital to be sick. She would only go to the hospital to work there because she had this fear of being sick. She had a job there. She would be the doctor, not the not the station when she was. Anyway, So I don't think she still wants to be an ambulance, but she. But we ask people and then we get to high school and we have to.

1:27 Choose subjects, and we have to be thinking ahead about what's what are the choices we're going to make as an adult when oftentimes we have no idea even as adults, we don't have any. Even that question is wrong because the world's changed. What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, now many of us are many things, and the world's changed. And I see with a lot of young people now and doing a lot of talks in schools and working in schools a lot as I do. When I ask this, they just think it's as easy as you know, getting an Instagram account and people will send them free staff. But there's this whole thing now of self promotion is so easy through social media, yes, and building a brand is a lot easier, and a following and an audience is a lot easier to build. So there's this notion of oh, I'll just see what happens and do a few things. And there's a bit of what I call like a gig economy where you just do a few different gigs until something sticks. And you know, it's really hard and I've been in that position myself where and my husband too. It's been really hard to know what to put on our departure card.

2:36 At immigrations is really hard. You know, what is your vocation? And Ed's like, oh, I'm a. Comedian, broadcast, a podcaster, filmmaker, actor, And I'm like, oh, I design active where, I'm a trainer, I'm an author, I've been a you know, sometimes I'm a children's birthday party entertainer. I do that sometimes. Really yeah, I'm like I don't know what to write, you know, And so it can be really hard to choose that one focus or to feel guilty if you were doing all these things and you don't know where you know where you're. Going to narrow your focus. You're quite right about that notion of instant fame, Like I don't have to do any work. I don't know if that's like, if that's a millennial thing, I think we'd be beyond millennial now. I want into like generation said now I can't keep up. But even my daughter again, I when she's when she was like nine or ten, ask her what she wanted to be, and she wanted to be a YouTuber. She wanted to have a minecraft YouTube channelist like squashy, And.

3:36 That's the same with you. My father yep, and he's nineteen and you know, he's doing a science degree, but he's about to change because he thinks, oh, it's not me. I'm going to go to commerce. But that's a year in and then he's thinking, oh, you know, one stage he wanted to just breed lizards and have like Instagram account and sell lizards because he loved reptiles. And it's just, yeah, it is hard with access your direct now you can create an audience so easily, have a following. You can you know, do that yourself. But it's it's a lot of pressure still because now there's more competition. Even though it's easy to build a brand, well it's not easy, but you can share yourself so hard.

4:18 But I think too there's a pressure even though that's the reality maybe for the younger, younger generation. I sound old now, but really, like when I grew up and where I'm at now, there's a lot of pressure to choose something like to get real. Because as you get older, you start to think, oh I got to pay the mortgage. Oh there's school fees. Wow, okay. It gets you start to think which one of these am I going to make money and have stability? Because you start to think about stability, it's not more it's not about what I'm passionate about, what I like doing. But there's also pressure early on to find that passion. And I know that slogan if you find your passion and you never work a day in your life, you know, if you love what you do, But there's a lot of pressure if you don't know what you're passionate about.

5:04 Yeah, that's true too, and you see that all the time, like you see those people giving speeches at universities and say, just follow your passion. And that can be a lot of pressure, particularly on young people if they don't, if they actually haven't worked out what they're passionate about. Because oftentimes you actually have to go out and have some life experience. There may be things that you're interested in, and sometimes it's okay, well I'm interested in all of these things, but how do I make this a career or how do I turn this into income generation? As you said, you've got bills to pay, in a mortgage to pay. And so there's this pressure to you know, to make a choice and to pick something. And sometimes I think there's two different problems. One is that people are don't know what they're passionate about, and the other is that there's lots of things that.

5:51 They're passionate about. There's a lot of people have lots of. Interests, multiple interests, and I certainly did you know, I couldn't pick a unique degree when I started, So I started one with an option in you know, I started a journalism with an option in psychology, and then I switched. And you know, you've had a similar experience where you've done a lot of different things. I've done a lot of different things. And we know now that people are changing careers multiple times, not just changing jobs, but. Changing fully changing careers, going. Back to university in their thirties and forties and doing whole you know, medicine degrees or psychology degrees. I see it all the time, so you know. I think that they're probably well, that's probably a good thing that there isn't that pressure now to pick something and like you don't have a job for life anymore. Yes, so the downside is well, you don't have a job for life anymore. But the upside is well you don't have to be stuck with the same with the one job for life.

6:47 But all I want it to be. But all that uncertainty I found early on when I was doing a lot of different things that created such uncertainty and such anxiety because I was working from contract to contract, or I would be free for a few months, or I was working on projects that weren't well paid or luck involved. For example, when I was writing children's books, there is an element of luck when the book comes out. It's you know, we're in a small market in Australia. Will other territories pick up the book? The chances of my book being picked up into other territories overseas is very small, so there's luck involved as well. And as it happened, one of my books was sold to Korea.

7:28 Oh wow, yes, so South Korea. But that was a bit odd. Why, like why. Did South Korea random house? Why were they interested in the money tree that I wrote? You know, it is such luck, and so it can be really hard dealing with that anxiety as well of being free and not being locked into the same career, same job. I think it's worth mentioning that there's a term out there now now that a lot of people probably haven't even heard before, which is this idea of multi potential light, which is basically having a lot of different interests, been good at a lot lot of different things, and you know, sometimes people think. That that's something wrong with. Them because you're supposed to pick something, you're supposed to focus on something and make a career out of that.

8:10 And so there's people that sort of shift from one thing to the other thing and they do a lot of things well, feel like that there's a problem or that there's something wrong with them, But that's a whole Those people have a very perform a very useful function in workplaces and in society. So you know, it's important to think about that as well. When people are feeling pressured. To have to narrow down, to have to narrow. And you know, nail down one thing yes, and make it a career that actually maybe that's not the case at all. Maybe letting some of that, you know, taking off some of that pressure is important. Then another term that I hear is and you know, I do a lot of online work and online marketing kind of stuff.

8:51 And there's a woman called Marie Folio who you might have heard of. She's out there online and she runs an online business school. But she uses the term multi passionate, and so she works a lot with entrepreneurs. The people who come to her are people who are entrepreneurial and they have. Multiple different interests and passions. So, you know, I think it's about recognizing that there's not it's not always essential to you know, to narrow your focus. Sometimes broaden your focus can be a good thing. I mean, I've had clients come to me too, And I've worked a lot with young women who are going through university and some of them are getting to the end of the university degree and suddenly realizing they don't think that this is what they want to do with their life, and they're so anxious because they feel like they've wasted their time, money, And I think a lot of people get almost I don't use word trapped, but to some degree kind of trapped in a career that doesn't necessarily make them happy because of that whole idea of the sunk cost by us, like I've invested so much into this.

9:51 That I have to stay with it and make it work. And you know, I guess these days there's not that there's not necessarily that need, you know, and thing ever is goes to waste, I don't think, but you know, that's it's a huge pressure, particularly on young people, to have made that decision and made the right decision, you know, early on. And I was, I actually was in that trap because I did a degree in modern languages at Melbourne University. Modern languages, I cut and French, and I did so well at French at school, went on to continue it at university, paid went to Paris, studied at a university in Paris. It had cost a lot, but third year I was finding it's so difficult. I really wanted to finish up, but I just stuck with it.

10:35 And what happened. I have never worked in international journalism or anything that I thought I would, And now I forget how to speak, how to write it. It's ten years since and I'm like, why did I do that? Well, I just didn't have the guts something that. You mentioned French, because I did French in high school just for the first. Year or whatever it was, and I loved it and. I wanted to continue. And my parents said to me, well, that'll never get you a job. So there's that's pressure as well. Yes, like, rather than doing what you love, do the sensible thing. Well, I had that with the creative writing. I really wanted to do a creative writing degree and focus on that as my major, but people kept saying to me that writing is a hobby, it's not a career. You can write your stories in your own time.

11:16 But to finish journalism degree. And then I did this media degree and as I graduated, social media was born and the whole way I learned to deal with media and even marketing and PR and everything that was in the degree completely changed and it's redundant now. That is such a good point, because you know we're talking now. What they're saying is we can't train kids for jobs now because we don't know what the jobs will be. Yes, actually in ten years or twenty years time, the world is changing and things are changing, so fast that we have to have a different we have to come up with a different way, yes, of educating kids for the future. Yeah, because I'm not writing op eds as I was trained in. I'm writing captions and content for online for different my Instagram, Facebook platforms, blogs, the website, everything snappy and clickbait.

12:06 It's so different. That's a really good point, Tiff. But I bet of all of those things that you learned in those experiences, that degree, everything that you've done, even though it might have seemed pointless and a waste of time, I bet a whole lot of it is actually you've used. It absolutely like nothing's ever wasted. Nothing is ever wasted. And we're going to come back after a short break and talk about some tips and tools for dealing with having multiple passions or perhaps focusing on that thing that you love to do that can become your mission in life. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Cass and we're talking about what to do if you still don't know what you want to be when you grow up.

12:47 And for myself, I've had multi passions throughout my life. I've been in I've written books, I've worked in television. I've been a pt now I run my own business. But for me, looking backcasts and connecting those I realized now that I was following all the way through doing degrees and trying this, trying that I was following not only what I was good at, but what I was interested in. And because I was interested in it, I practiced it more, I got better at it, and at the end of the day, I loved people. I loved working with people, real people person And it hadn't even been born yet. The platform or the way that I would operate a business. It's all online fitness, training people all over the world online, doing fitness online. It was inconceivable when I was teaching body pump and being a Taekwondo instructor from when I was fifteen years old. But I just kept following it, following it, keeping at it, keeping at it. And then finally two years ago, I was able to start my own business online. So is it as easy as following your passion until you just fall upon something like that.

13:55 I think the passion word is the one that trips people up because some people think, well, I'm not I don't. Know what I'm passionate about. I ask people ask all the time, like how do I find what I'm passionate about? I get it, I get the question of me. I was reading a blog post the other day of that Mark Manson, the author who said the biggest question he gets asked by his readers is how do I find my passion? There's all this, there's a lot of pressure to have a passion. And I really liked Elizabeth Gilbert actually in her book Big Magic, Excuse Me, she wrote, forget following, following your passion, follow your curiosity. And I think that's what you're saying, following what you're interested in. If you're curious about something, explore it, you know, and without pressure. And I think that sometimes there's also a lot of pressure to make your have a be passionate about your work and do the thing you love. And you never will work a day in your life, like all of that. Sometimes you just need to do something, and you follow your curiosity, and you follow your interest outside of work, and you have interests and hobbies and like you never can predict in like you don't know how the dots are going to join looking forward, but you will always, like you well, always see how they join when you look back. Yes, but it's a case of just continuing to follow your interests and follow your curiosity and just seeing where that leads you.

15:13 And like you said, you develop skills that are adaptable and transferable, you know. And the world changes around you and opportunities change around. You as well. Exactly. I think it's you know, it's worth mentioning that a big predictor of happiness. We know what predicts happiness and well being, I should say, is meaningful work feeling like you do meaningful work. But what meaningful work is is different for different people. And there's a concept now called job crafting that comes into positive psychology and positive organizations where rather than having a fixed job description and going in and having to you know, being told this is what you will do that, people now are taking more responsibility for crafting jobs to suit themselves. So and there's you know, there's research about this now. So job crafting means altering the tasks that you do so that they're more in line with your specific skill set and your interests and your passions. Yes, you know, changing the nature of the relationships who you work with, whether you mentor people you know.

16:18 People find meaning from passing. On skills to other people and also altering your perception of the work. And so I do this even when I go into organizations and I say, what is the most. Boring menial, you know, mundane. Task that you have to do, the thing that you loathe doing that, you know, the paperwork, the filing, and find a way that that's meaningful. And people, you know, they do this exercise where they work out well by doing this, you know, this is stuff's recorded, and that means that this happens, and this happens. And you trace it. And actually every. Seemingly mundane menial task can actually support something very meaningful. People who are cleaners in hosts but also are the most satisfied and happy are the ones who consider themselves to be, you know, doing a really important service. They help patients find their way, you know, to around the hospital and.

17:10 Fight disease in a way by keeping it keep it. So how you personally find meaning is a very individual thing. So you know, it's not about having to change the world, but it is about, well, how do you find something that's meaningful to you regardless of what you're doing. I think the other thing is to remember that you can have passions that are outside of your work. So you know, people work as accountants and you know, dentists and do whatever they do, but maybe on the weekend they sail boats or build you know. Yeah, I play the piano, but it doesn't mean I have to be a piano teacher. Like I enjoy it. It's a passion. But let's leave it at that there, you know. It's Yeah, I think that's really important to point out because you don't want to put added pressure on your passions and they don't become fun anymore.

17:55 Yeah, that was another really interesting thing I read in Elizabeth Gilberts bookcase. We know that she's like a really famous author thr ePRO love, but she said she never ever put pressure on her writing to support her financially. And that's a really good one. Because when I started my business, and Ed and I would do our financials and we've got a company that we have together, my business was never put into the company, as in, if I earned something from it, it was a little bit of extra pocket money. That's great. Yeah, maybe it takes a little bit of pressure off, but we never put it in our bas or anything because we thought, oh, we don't want to put pressure on the business. Now, of course we do. But in the beginning he's like, you are so passionate about helping people with fitness. It's all online, it's all new. Let's not put pressure on it and count it in our financials, you know.

18:40 I think the other important thing to mention is that it is hard sometimes you know, but you don't. The saying that I love is clarity comes from engagement, not from thought, and that means that we get clear about what we like and what we don't like, what we're good at, what we're not good at, what we're interested in. By doing it. It's doing it, not sitting and thinking about it. So you know that, and that applies to everything. We just have to put ourselves out there and do things. I see a lot of people I've known people in my own life, who oh, I don't know what I want to be, and so they think this is going to drop out of the sky while they're sitting on the couch watching Netflix, that they've suddenly come up with what they want to They what they're big calling is in life, we've.

19:20 Got to get out there and just try things and do things. Yeah, I did an internship at the seven Network to be a newsreader wow, like to do little reports and things around town. And I just didn't like it because there was a lot of driving and a lot of standing around and then you just do a little cross and then that was it. And I was like, oh, I knew in myself that I needed to be around more people. It was a bit lonely and it just didn't suit me so until but I did think that was the way I wanted to. Go, Yes and change. Yeah, Well, look, I We've talked about this before. How I started a journalism degree, which and I realized very quickly that that wasn't what I wanted to do. So I did my psychology degree. But then at the end of that I.

20:01 Went often just detO it into sales and marketing and business development and overseas. Student recruitment, and. Then came back many years later after I had my daughter, and came back and actually finished my psychology training, but meanwhile had built up all of the other skills and this other experience, which again, it all counts. It does all count, and it all feeds into you know, everything I've done in my life has been about helping people to feel well, to feel good through fitness and through nutrition, and that all these skills have come together. And I think what you're saying, and I think what I know to be true as well, is that even if you think you don't know, there are always clues.

20:45 I think sometimes we dismiss we know what we're interested in. Like I know when I go into the bookstore which section I'm drawn to. I know the kinds of things that we know what we're interested in. I think sometimes we just dismiss them as being not relevant or not important. I couldn't make a career out of that. And that's where I think it's about following your curiosity because you don't always know what it will lead to. But I think we all as long as we're spending time doing the things that are of interest and that we you know, that we enjoy and that we come that come naturally to us, then you know oftentimes it will. It will just it unfolds in its own time. But we have this pressure and anxiety about needing to like needing to know, need.

21:27 With that, because I struggled with that. We all do. It's that intolerance of uncertainty. We all like to kind. Of be able to plan and predict to control and know what's going to happen. Often we can't, and so sometimes really it is about accepting the fact that we don't know. But again, you know, just allowing ourselves to just follow follow the crumbs, you know, follow the follow the bread crumbs of our interests and our skills and and seeing where it leads us. So, if you have a career and you're not really into it and you really want to make a change because you want something more meaningful and you know a mission in life, how do you make the change if you're so fearful.

22:08 Well, I guess if you're making a change, which a lot of people do, you know, there are practical things to consider. It does get harder as you get older and you have a mortgage and their financial responsibilities, you know, can't often always just pack it in. For me, the opportunity came after I had a baby, because I wasn't working then anyway, and it was just I just grabbed that opportunity and went back to university. And many of my friends have done the same thing and have gone back and done whole university degrees in their thirties after they've had kids and got their kids off to school and have retrained in different careers. But I think just accepting that, you know, it is difficult. Any sort of change is difficult, taking a leap, often taking a leap of faith. But sometimes it is you know, like you said before, like finding studying in the evenings, or pursuing something outside of your mainstream job, you know, networking, talking to people, just allowing yourself the opportunity to explore what the options might be.

23:09 And doing that thing. It's really it's really important and something that I've seen happen in my own industry, which is so funny. In the fitness industry, the glamor of Instagram and different online platforms where you have a lot of sports models and fake health and fitness gurus who aren't qualified, you know, And a lot of young people come up to me and they used to want to be i don't know, famous, or an actress or something like that. And in schools, when I asked, now, what do you want to be now? A personal trainer comes up because they look at Instagram it looks really glamorous. But it's I say to them. Mom, well try you've got to train people one on one.

23:51 You've got to get up early. See if you like doing eight nine clients in a day, back to back energy. You've got to have your energy, you know, you've got to do it. You can't just think that that's something it's not. You really do have to put the time in and the grassroots and the legwork. Like a lot of people do try and skate over that. I find, you know, nothing worth it is ever easy, and you have to put that work in. You have to have your flying hours exactly right. That's what I mean about. The clarity has to come from the engagement, not the thought. And we only often know whether we're going to like something and whether we can spend many many years doing something pursuing a job until we've done it. So and if we don't, you know, there's ways, as we've talked about, that you could make your work more meaningful, or you can make it more of interest to you. Thankfully there's those opportunities. But for some people it's a case of you know what, I actually really want to be a primary school teacher, yes, and so you know, taking the risk, embracing that the fear, I suppose, feel the fear, and do it anyway, finding way to make that work and we've got plenty of options available. I think fundamentally, you know, the message that we're sending is to go out there and engage with the world. You know what our theme at the moment seems to be like this is, we have one life.

25:13 We want to live it well, so get out there and you know, take life by the balls. Yeah, because hey balls, Yeah, they get out there and take life by the balls and just make the best of it. You know, you've got to go wise words. And I always learn so much from you cast, and I learned so much from you if I love talking to you, and these have been awesome topics. We hope that you find a little something in there that will help take you from crappy to happy. So that was season two of Crappy to Happy. We hope that you learned a little bit more about yourself and perhaps a little bit more about us. So if you like hanging out with us and listening to these conversations, tell your friends, tell your hairdresser, tell everyone, And if you think someone else might appreciate this show, then send them the link. Get in touch with us through my Instagram or the email Hello at.

25:59 Toi dot com. Cassandra don dot com you and you can ask us questions or give us feedback, and cass you have some really exciting news I do. If you have enjoyed the Crappy to Happy podcast, I will have the Crappy to Happy book coming out hopefully by the end of this year or early next year. So I can't wait to see that in the stores and that'll be picking up on all of these same topics that we have been discussing here together. Can't wait to read at cass I want to sign copy. And if you are interested. In perhaps looking after your nutrition and your training, and you want more from Cass as well online, cass you have a meditation and mindfulness course online. Don't you. Yes, you can find that at my website, Cassandra Done dot com.

26:40 Do you. And if you want me to be your personal trainer, you can find me at tip xo dot com. It's been such a pleasure having these conversations and we can't wait to speak to you soon. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cash Done, produced by Davis Lelenski, Radio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener MHM