Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Do you know that you spend roughly one third of your life at work?
Well, today we are talking about finding happiness in your career. And I've got a fascinating guest who is talking about three very specific things and asking, are we ready to be energized with our career? Are we ready to embrace change? And lastly, and most importantly, what are your superpowers? Join me today for the Midlife Happiness project.
Well, welcome back. And I have another really, really interesting guest today. Her name is Lucia, and I think what she brings to the table more than anything else is she is going to make you question, is retirement the holy Grail? I think it's something that she has a lot to talk about. Welcome to the show, Lucia.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I am seriously excited to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Absolutely.
So, in a nutshell, Lucia is a consultant. She is an author. She is a TEDx talk superstar. All of these things, she has a lot to talk about. And I guess the theme today would be careers. And we've talked a lot about this on this podcast, this idea that, you know, our whole life, we've been brought up to think. You work hard, you put in your time, all your energy, your sweat and tears, and at the end of this, finally, you get to just relax and do a whole lot of nothing. And I think people, definitely the guests we've had on have really questioned that.
Is that the end game here? And so let's get right into it. Let's talk about your business, what this is all about, what you're all about.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Okay, so, big stuff.
So, based on what you've just said, I see that happening everywhere. And by that, I simply mean that my generation.
So I'm 51, almost 52. So people of my generation, in their forties, fifties, very early sixties, were brought up thinking we just work until we stop working. But I see every day of the week people who have work as part of their identity, and it doesn't even need to be paid work, but that there is a purpose, there is a meaning. There is a function to four, 5810, 12 hours a day. So often 60% of our waking hours. If we spent 40 to 50 years working for 60% of our waking hours, we can't just turn that off. That doesn't make any sense. So. But what I see in my world is I see professionals. So all of the clients I work with are professionals who have spent 15, 2025 years, often in one arena, one function, one discipline, one career, and they wake up one day, almost like waking up from a career coma, going, what is this.
Is this what I've spent two decades doing? Am I going to do this for another two decades or another decade or another? Most people I work with cannot imagine doing the same work for the next year, never mind the next decade. So there's a moment, and I do call it waking up from a career coma.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: I like that.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: That's how it felt to me. So I am exactly the kind of person that I work with. So I was a professional of 20 years, so my life was spent in headhunting. So by headhunting, I mean helping companies find new board members and typically in finance, sometimes broader than that. But I did this for 19 years in Australia and all over the UK.
And at one point, and I cannot tell you, it wasn't a one moment thing, but at one point, I stopped enjoying work that I had previously really enjoyed. And it feels like it was a drip, drip, drip, a very slow dripping tap of dissatisfaction that just started sometime in the past. I don't know when it was, or maybe 18 years in, 17 years in, but by the time it came to 19 years in, this was a gushing of dissatisfaction. And what that looked like from the outside, I don't think you could have told that I was so unhappy. Yeah, I had a family, I had a husband, I had a house, I had a car, I went on holidays. But essentially what I've been doing for years was putting on my armor on a Monday morning and braving it through to Friday night when I could stop working. I took off the armour, took many glasses of wine, and celebrated that I didn't have to work for another two days.
And when there was a night, there was a day, actually, when I had done a fairly typical day of work, which was someone would come to my house to look after the children. I would leave, go on a commuter train to London, do the day's work, leave the work early, feeling guilty that I'd left work early and people were still there and I'd left at five and they weren't leaving till eight. Then I'd come home, relieve the person who was looking after my children, then go back to do a bit of work, try to get the kids to bed really quickly so I could do more work. And at one day, and it was probably 830 at night, husband's still not home from work because he did huge commute and travel. I just sat down and I thought, this isn't the kind of mother I want to be. This isn't the kind of woman I want to be. This certainly is not the kind of worker I want to be. And things have to change.
Did things change overnight? No.
But I had decided and I gave myself a year. I just said, this time next year, I have to be doing something different. But I had zero clue, not one inkling of what I could do, because I was just filled with fear.
I don't know if I can do anything else.
I'm pretty good at this, but I've spent 20 years becoming good at this. How will I ever be good at anything else? I'm going to have to start at the button. I can't afford to. I've got a mortgage to pay. All of these very, very fearful things would come into my mind, which all of those things have been there for years. That's why I was stuck. But at that day, when I decided that this was not the identity I want for the future, I just knew things were going to change. I didn't know what or how, but I was going to be somewhere different in a year.
Is that a story you hear often?
[00:07:21] Speaker A: I think so many people relate to this 100%, and I think, just like you said earlier, that it's almost like people come to terms with this idea that work, by definition, isn't something that you enjoy and you just sort of make peace with it. But considering how much of your life is spent working, is it really selfish or really that outlandish or crazy to say, gee, it would be nice to enjoy this?
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
Or at least hate this less?
[00:07:58] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: We can start there, couldn't we? So if there's 100%, oh, my God, I'm jumping out of bed on a Monday morning. That's 100%. I love my work and I'm. Oh, my God, I'm dreading work on a Friday evening, knowing I'm going to have to do it on Monday, we can start low with our expectations going well, I want to enjoy 20% more of my day. Wonder how I did that. I wonder how I could do that.
[00:08:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: And so what I did, I mean, this, I could not. I didn't know anybody who had changed career at my age, which at that.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Point, how did this all happen? This is really interesting because it's one thing to have this epiphany, so you have to start there and to make. It's one thing to observe it and sort of intellectually make the decision, enough of this. I'm going to do it. But then it's okay, I'm all fired up now. What am I doing?
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Because I was like, frozen with fear. And all I could think about was, I've got to stop doing this. As opposed to any clever thoughts.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: And I'd been talking to competitors about going there and I'd realized, no, same problem, different pitcher.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: And I could see in my work that I had been helping people to move from one work treadmill to another and another work treadmill to. And they weren't thinking deliberately about their career. So I have a hobby. I've literally spent thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds over the years on psychology books.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: So the only one idea, now, this is not what I tell my clients to do, but the only idea I had that I was going towards, instead of going away from was, I'm going to go back to uni. Yes. That's what I'm going to go to do. I'm going to spend all of my savings and go back to uni. Because if I had a different uni degree, a master's in psychology, I'd know what to do.
So I spent nearly 18 months doing that, reading my savings, becoming a less good mother, a less fun wife, a less fun everything. I lost friends. All I did was work kids, work kids, work kids. That's it. So a year later, I had a master's in psychology and I did really well in it and I still didn't know what to do.
I had no clue what to do. And I was poorer.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: So then I thought, as I was walking on my knees, exhausted, metaphorically, I was walking, trying to recover my energy from this most exhausting year of my life. And I thought, oh, my God, I don't know anybody who's changed career.
I don't know how to do it. And I've got a master's in psychology. I used to help people move jobs all the time. There is a gap in the market.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: And that. That's the moment where I thought, I know what I want to do, because I find a way to combine all of. And whilst I was doing the masters in psychology, my focus was older people happiness at work. All of the research I did, my dissertation was on the value of 50 plus year olds in corporate life. So I was very, very focused on work happiness because I thought I was going to find my work happiness there. But I didn't want to become a junior assistant psychologist in a hospital somewhere. I didn't want to train for another seven years to be a qualified psychiatrist. I just didn't want any of that. But I knew that there was no one in the world who had been a headhunter for that long who'd re qualified as a occupational psychologist and who was interested in practical, tangible change. And then I created a business out of it. And so it was less about the thinking, but it's more about the, how do we do career change for people who can't, who haven't got millions, who don't want to retire onto the yacht, who don't want any of that, who really want to work for the rest of their lives, whatever that means.
And so I unpicked all of the psychology of happiness, all of the psychology of change, and I made some changes.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: This is great because I know personally, whether it's with a career change or anything, when you read these books or articles about, take control of your life and, you know, be, you know, it's time that you reclaim your life and make all these decisions, make things happen, it's all fine and well, and I get it. It can be very inspiring to listen to somebody go on about that. But again, at the end of the day, it's like, wonderful, but how do I do that? And then once you're confronted with that overwhelming thought of like, okay, I'm all jazzed up, but I'm really back where I now I'm so deflated because I really don't even know where to go from here. So you are bringing more of a practical side to this. Like, okay, you've made the decision, what are we going to do about it?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: What are we going to do about it? So I created. Now, this is going to sound too simplistic, but I created a, from all of the knowledge and all of my experience as a headhunter, a really simplistic formula to show people the components of happy work that you could maybe work on one at a time.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: And so I call it a formula just because that's a nice word, but it's not enough, but it's a brilliant starting point. So the formula for a lifetime of satisfying work, as defined by me, Lucia Knight, is using your four unique superpowers every day, pointing those superpowers at problems for others that excite you and finding a way to earn enough to live the life that you want to live. So the superpowers bit the language I use.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: So I believe I've met thousands. So something at 3500 people I have interviewed in my career, and I have met no one, almost no one, who could tell me the four things that they do uniquely well in the world. And I don't just mean strengths and I don't mean disciplined stuff I mean, literally, teeny little things that when you do them, they make you feel good. They give you a little buzz of energy.
You can do them lightly, easily, gently, quickly, faster than most people, you know.
And even successful, I think especially successful people haven't got a clue what these are because they move up the ranks and they do more and more general work. They move people around. They do change work. They do, but they've forgotten the creative, clever, touchy, tangible stuff that they do that make them feel great.
So that's the superpower stuff then, the problems that excite you. So lots of people who work in corporates that I work with go, yes, I've just got to work in a charity or non profit company. That's the way I'll do really valuable work.
I've seen a lot of people who've worked for charities who are on their knees exhausted because they're not using their superpowers. They might be solving problems that are interesting to them, but they're not using their superpowers. So they come home every day from work exhausted.
[00:15:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: And I also know people who do work that they enjoy that solves problems, but they just don't know how to earn more.
So there's three components that you just have to figure out.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: What I like about this is, as you're talking and you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, I don't even know what my four superpowers are. But I will tell you, for starters, I like the word superpowers because we don't think of ourselves that way. It's more like you say, it's, well, what are you good at? What are your interests? Well, I'm not bad at this. And as I've said before, I think women, for the most part, have sort of been told, we don't talk about ourselves. You want to stay modest. We don't, you know, owning that. No, I'm really, really good at this isn't something that we're taught to do. So owning, like, I'm more than just okay at it, I'm actually really good. Just hearing yourself say, that is empowering, because, and I think this is a really great exercise just as a first step. Like, what are your superpowers? Just making people even think about what they're good at as opposed to what they've been told or that they're decent at, or what they've been trained to do.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: And that's the difference. We all can be trained. Look, we're all good at doing hard stuff. Yeah, but we can become good at anything we really, really focus on. But if those things are sucking our soul dry, sucking our energy dry, then we've got nothing to give to the people at home, the ones we love, the people we're supposed to be prioritizing if it's sucking all our energy. And the older we get, sadly, but the more energy we need, yes. We need to conserve it. We need to point it in a direction that feels good to us. But if we spend 8 hours a day, 5 hours a day, it doesn't matter how many hours a day you work trying to do things that we have become good at and their strengths, as opposed to the things that we are naturally, lightly, speedily good at. And it's a big mind shift for people, because then once you know, look, if you knew one of these tomorrow, you could design it into tomorrow. You don't need to know all four, but if you knew one. So let me give you an example of one of mine, and I'll show you how light it is. It really seriously lights stuff.
And we always start at human level.
[00:17:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: So normal language. And then if you need, you can put it into your industry or your specialism. We can make it very specific but normal level. So one of my superpowers is I can't stop asking one more question than is socially acceptable.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: So it's. It's. And I can't. I literally can't stop doing it because I need the answer. So I'll be in the supermarket and someone will tell me a sad story. And I was like, who died? When did they die? How did they die? What did they die off? What was the funeral like? Yeah, that's not right for everybody. But it was brilliant when I was a headhunter. And it's really good in this work.
[00:18:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Because you have to peel through all of the nonsense in life to find the things that you, at your core, love doing.
And often with women, I find it somehow starts with helping people.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: We don't always have to help people. Sometimes we just have to do things that help me feel good. But it's a really nice question if you have audience out there.
What am I great at helping people to do? What can I not stop helping people do?
What could I do all day and have more energy at the end of the day than at the beginning? So when you know these things, they fire you up, which means if you're competing with anybody else in the world to do them, you're gonna do them better, which means you can charge more.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: I think also, what I'm getting from you here, too, and tell me if I'm wrong, but it's also about being authentic and true to yourself in that you're asking yourself, truly, what are you good at and what do you like doing? Which is decidedly very different than what do you want to be good at? Because I think there's that voice, right? Like, well, in order to be successful, I should. Should be interested in this. Okay. If I just focus. Yep, yep. No, that's what I. But again, if that's truly, truly, truly not you, for example, you know, I know people, as I'm sure you do, that would love to be extroverted or have this idea, but truthfully, they're happiest working by themselves, almost isolated, just, you know, doing paperwork or whatever, and they feel less than because of it. But at the same time, it's. If that's what you're good at, then that's what you're good at.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: So I am a very strong introvert. Now, you might not know that or.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Think I'm not picking up on that.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: So I'm super social. Super social. But I'm introverted, which means my energy comes from within me and I re energize alone. So you will see around me this tiny little office. It's my haven, it's my place, where I go, where I get to write, which energizes me.
[00:20:58] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Where I get to think, which energizes me. And I control who I speak to, where I speak to, because I do all my work internationally by Zoom. And I find one to one, introverts by one to one conversations, massively energizing, group conversations, the opposite. So actually, there's loads and loads of nuance, even just around introvert, extrovert, there's loads of nuance that once you become really understanding of what energizes you, what drains you, what you can do when you need to do it, and what you just should never do, it just creates a different picture of what your potential, it includes, you know? And so I think that's a super powerful thing done. But then let's talk about a bit more about the problems that are interesting to you. The second part of the formula, because what I get clients to do is to write down, and sometimes we have to do this together because it's not a natural thing to do, write down a hundred problems in the world that are super interesting to them. And sometimes they start with, like, homelessness, something giant homelessness. And pick something. Sustainability.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: But then everybody's sort of interested in homelessness and sustainability. So we go down to, like, tiny little details of level. What is it about homelessness? What kind of homeless people? Where are the people homeless? What bit of the homeless journey really irks you? What bit are you particularly interested in? What do you read about homelessness? I'm just picking. Just picking one.
[00:22:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: So then again, it all comes down to ridiculous levels of detail and then we can see patterns. So every idea we've looked at, you're always interested in this little bit.
So then we go, well, that's the bit that energizes you. And we take it from there, go back to the superpowers. And I think the final bit about how do you earn as much as you need to earn? You can't do that. You know, you can't package yourself up until you know what your superpowers are and what problems you want to solve. And the packaging bit then becomes very natural, very. Oh, almost never does anybody I work with need to go back to school? I did not need to go back to school. What ridiculous thing that I did that put stress on my family, stress on my financials?
I regret doing that, but I'm a very positive thinker, so of course I'm going to turn it into a positive. Nobody at our age needs to go back to university if it's going to cause their lives huge stress. So the retraining, going back to the bottom of something, I'm not sure we need to do that. I think we need to repackage the things in the way that I've just said. And that means we don't have to go back to the beginning, because often these superpowers are with us from childhood. I was always asking questions. Always, always. And there would be awkward silences when my mum heard me asking these questions.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: So we've been doing this forever, so we're really, really good at our superpowers.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: This is really interesting, of course, as you're talking, I just keep thinking about this. Geez, who knows? The next time you talk to me, I might have a completely different career.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: You feel pretty comfortable where you are, actually. There's something you're doing that's very right for you.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: We ask this of all the people that we have on this show, and that is. And again, it seems like such a simple thing, but it's really, really not. And that's. What does happiness mean to you? And more importantly, in the context of what you do, how does happiness relate specifically to your career?
[00:24:45] Speaker B: So in my previous career, I never talked about work at home. I barely talked at home because I was so tired.
I didn't have much energy on a Friday night. So I just have four or five glasses of wine. I would block things out instead of exploring things. So it feels to me that happiness as related to my work. I'll maybe tell you generally in a minute, but happiness related to my work means that I spend 8 hours a day doing energized work, but energising enough so that I can be at my best with my real people.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Outside of work, I don't give my best to my work, but because I'm giving lightly and more energetically, I have more of it to give to others. So happiness to me means being at my best for my children, husband. But I certainly see my parents, my very elderly, very sick parents more often because I've prioritized them. And I think that the people I work with tend to say that they do their work differently because of the work that we've done together. Which means that they can be themselves more at the weekend. And that's what I. That makes me excited to work with.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Them so they can be more present.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: I love this word you're using, energize. So this is actually really quite profound in what you're saying is that if you really like what you're doing, you're good at what you're doing, you're invested in what you're doing, you are present in what you're doing, that it will energize you such that despite the fact that you're working maybe the same hours, longer hours, as opposed to leaving a job that you are unsatisfied by, you actually might leave that day feeling just the opposite. You are turned on and energized.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: So that you leave the day actually feeling more lit up having done it than not having done it at all.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Yes. And I am aware that that does sound a little. That's the ideal. Of course. It's the absolute ideal.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: And of course you're still going to be tired. Such as it's work.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: It's work. You're going to be tired. But we're not talking that. You know that inner drain where you just haven't got energy to speak? It's not that kind of drain, just tired. Hey, I was doing something for 8 hours. I'm kind of tired. I need to put my feet up for half an hour and then let's have dinner and talk and do whatever.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: And I guess I don't want to leave it on a Cinderella note. So one of the easiest things that I don't see people do when they're feeling stuck in their work life is I don't see them getting granular on what's wrong.
[00:27:48] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: So actually getting out of their head, because it's easy to complain, isn't it? This isn't working. I hate my work, or I don't enjoy my work, or my work's not exciting enough. Stop. Write down, this is, this would be my advice. Write down the specific people, places, processes, meetings, functions. Which day of the week is worse? Why is it bad? Who, when somebody says that word to you, what does it do to you? Why does it get you angry? Why does it, what? Sucks your soul dry? Everything out on a page. And that is completely. That will energize you. It's an awful thing to do, but you only do it once and it's out and it's done. Which means that if you ever look at another job, if you never do anything else clever about career design, but you just look at another job and you go, does it have any of these 1500 things that drain my soul dry? Oh, it has ten. I'm not doing it. I'm not even going to apply. I'm not even looking. And that would be the very earliest, earliest starting point before you even think about superpowers, to go figure out what's wrong and then figure out what your superpowers are.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: And to your point about, you don't want to present this as a Cinderella, you know, story. No, I do appreciate that because I think it kind of goes without saying, but has to be said nonetheless, that any time you implement real change, first of all, it's scary. Let's just own that change is scary, especially as you get older and there's work involved, you might really want something, really, really want it, but just wanting it isn't enough. There's going to be steps, there's going to be days that you say, maybe it's just easier just to go back. It's going to be work, and frankly, might be a giant pain in the ass along the way, but you keep your eyes on the prize and ultimately, if you do it right, it will render positive results. But I do think it's worthy of mention that, you know, just the idea of change in itself can be terrifying for people, actually.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It's like saber tooth Tiger.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: And that reacts and that can be tiny change or giant change, but most people, when they're thinking about, I'm going to do some messing around with my work situation. Crikey. That's like that. That is fear. Light bulbs going off.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: So our brain likes us to stay in our familiar, even when our familiar is bad for us, it prefers that. So we have to work a little bit very regularly to show and to prove that change can be something else. It can be fun, it can be silly, it can be nothing, it can be the same. So one of the ideas we play with in the work that I do is just experimenting and it's so easy and light and can be absolutely ridiculous. So if someone has huge fear of failure, and so the kind of things that are going on in their head when you've got around the work situation is, I'd never be good at that. It took me so long to be good at this. I could never do that. Or I'll wait till I have the perfect idea and then I'll make the change. All of that stuff is just your brain saying, please stay in your familiar. So how we change that is really light. I asked, we've got a couple of layers on it, but the very first layer is I want you to experiment three times, five times, 20 times today. And by experiment I mean, as you're sitting, could you please put your head on your hand?
[00:31:29] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: If you're standing with your cup of tea, could you put it in the other hand?
[00:31:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Could you put your watch on the other side? That messes with people's mind. Most people can't do that.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Really?
[00:31:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Can you walk around your car once before you get in the car? Can you touch your toes before you go to the loo? I mean, just as silly and outrageous, but something can be done in a second.
If you did 20 of those every day for the next week, your fear of failure would be ridiculously low. Now, you're still afraid of changing career, because that's not what we're talking about. But we've taken one step to reduce the fear of failure in your brain, and you have communicated 20 times per day with your brain for a week to say, hey, brain, this is important. I want to be able to do some change that's bigger in the future, but I just want to hold my cup in the wrong hand and brush my teeth on 1ft. And utterly ridiculous things. Now, that sounds ridiculous. Could you see that working with people?
[00:32:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: No, absolutely. And you just said. Alluded to this, which I've always said, which is you kind of have to just decide to do it. There is never a good time to do anything when people, oh, well, I should do this.
I got a lot on my plate, you know, now wouldn't be a good time. But here's the thing. When in your life is there, do you get up in the morning, you look at your calendar and go, huh, I've got nothing on the calendar for the next two weeks. Now would be a perfect time to do something. It just doesn't happen. There's always something. So there really, in essence, is never a good time to do good, meaning it's convenient time to do anything. You just sort of decide it's happening. And.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: That second, with the experiment, I am going to be somewhere different in a time in the future.
You just need to say those words. It doesn't matter. I said a year because I like times, I like a deadline. But you could say, I'm going to be somewhere different. I'm going to do some kind of different work. And that's a decision that you've made this second.
And I know it's going to be hard because you've heard, you've read, your brain is telling you, so I'm going to experiment five times today or 20 times today, right? And then in that second, you pick up your pen and you put it in a different hand. You do something in that second and it's so tiny, but it's a message to your brain.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: You're breaking it down into small parts, you're making this more digestible, and you're.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: Building an evidence file. When you do that once and the world doesn't die, and then you stand on your feet whilst you're on the phone, that doesn't die. Or, like, it's an evidence file. It's a full document that I've now been creating a document for eight years because I knew that I was so afraid I would do nothing different. And now I write an article and I update it every six months with the ridiculous things that I've done, and it could just get big now it's really big. The stuff I can do with zero fear of failure because I'm not attached to the outcome, I'm attached to the jolt of joy I get from trying different things. And that was not the case eight years ago.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: I mean, and the topic, you just like the fear of failure. We've talked about this before in that, you know, sometimes that's debilitating, right? Like, people are so obsessed with the outcome, the end game, and, you know, I better be awesome at this, or this was an epic waste of my time and it better happen by this time. And it's all. You listen and it's like, well, you've already set yourself up for disaster. It's like you can hear your. There's that voice talking yourself out of it. Whereas I think what you're saying is, yes, you're prepared, that it's work, but you take joy in the steps and the simple, like, small successes along the way, and you have to embrace that. Otherwise, of course, you talk yourself out of it before it even started.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Which is why in that 1 second, you have to start, right. And it doesn't matter if you're sitting, standing, you just do something different right now. And if that is lift, I keep saying lift your foot. You just lift your foot off the ground. That's it. That's all you have to do. And that's different. And that evidence document what allows your brain to make bigger changes in the future. And most people that what you've just talked about, procrastination, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, all of those things are pure fear of failure. That's all they are.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: So when you see it, I can smell it from a mile off. Because we're human, of course it's scary, but that's why you never hear me saying, let's take a leap of faith. Most humans of our age need to take small movements, so you just need to get used to taking small movements. Because the end game, I want to change career is fine, but once you say, I want to retrain as this, and I want to earn this match at this time, I have to do this. I have to. You don't do anything. You just stay stuck in. In your familiar safe, but not safe.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: I feel like we could talk quite literally forever, honestly. I mean, this is just like scratching the surface.
You are really very inspiring, so interesting to talk to. And I know everybody out there is thinking the same thing, and I encourage you. Let's plug into midlifeunstuck.com, which is Lucia's website.
And, you know, obviously there's a lot more to discuss with regards to her books, her TEDx talk, which is online. You can find those. But you have been so refreshing to talk to. And just listening to you in the time we've had together, it's sort of made me be more introspective. And I think rather than look at this kind of conversation as overwhelming and scary, it's actually more empowering. I think I'm going to spend the better part of the day. What am I good at? I'm not. So, which is like a good thing to do. It's a good exercise that I don't really think I've thought of for a very long time. But I think it's really refreshing. And I think a lot of people out there probably will be doing the same thing today.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: So if there's someone listening, I'm going to send you personally a little free document that is available on my website called the Superpower Starter. And it just asks you five questions and guides you through that because it's a bit scary going, what am I good at? Blank sheet of paper. So I'm going to send it to you. But you're brilliant at lots of things already, I can see.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Well, thank you. You have a lot of superpowers yourself. We can just sit here and compliment each other all day. You're fabulous. No, you're fabulous. You're more fabulous.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Sorry, but you're fabulous.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Lucia, for being a guest. So appreciate it. And to all you listening watching today, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Midlife Happiness Project. I'm Sarah, and again, I encourage you to subscribe. Subscribe, subscribe. We love bringing these shows to you, and I love meeting these interesting people right along the way with you. We will see you again next time on the midlife Happiness project.
