I love Apple. It’s not a perfect company, but you could not imagine how much I wanted to work there. And then, there I was in my bed, scrolling on Twitter, when a DM from an Apple employee popped up asking if I would consider applying for a role there.

 

“No.” — this was the response that immediately came to mind.

 

“Say whaaaa?” — I was surprised at how sure I was. And how I knew it was the right answer. Thinking more about it would just be a pure waste of time and energy.

 

Had they asked me the same question two years before, I’d 100% say yes and move mountains in order to get there — independently of my constraints. My beliefs system and self-care game were not at a place where I could have made a good decision for myself without risking burnout. It had become a cycle.

 

Two years later, I still sucked at self-care, beliefs, imposter syndrome, people-pleasing… But here I was, making a good decision, instinctively — and this was because I had found a new compass:

I learned to get clear on how I wanted to feel in life and work.

 

I learned this as I was in the midst of a career change, dissatisfied with the work I had been doing and the teams I worked for. I was also recovering from a health issue. I was feeling lost and I was looking for a better way to work. Considering that many of us are questioning work, I thought that sharing my experience could be helpful — whether you’re self-employed or working for an employer.

 

 

Emotions are tricky, especially in this society where we put IQ on a pedestal and we don’t develop our connection with our emotions. And feelings are not emotions, which are mostly raw data. Feelings are a conscious experience, and they can be biased or altered by mental misconceptions.

 

We need a tool to develop emotional awareness, and for this, I used Daniele LaPorte’s book “The Desire Map” — if this sounds too “New Age”, please bare with me for a little more.

 

This book helps us define goals from how we want to feel when we attain them, instead of chasing a goal hoping to feel in a specific way when we get there.

 

By inverting the order in which we define our goals, the core feelings become a shortcut to ourselves, to what we really want, freeing us from endless hours rationalising and overthinking, and ignoring all misaligned norms and expectations we absorb from our loved ones and society.

 

And although I don’t think that this is the solution for every person and situation, at its lowest potential, it provides clues. At its highest potential, it can bring visceral clarity.

 

This is particularly important, because we often define and embark on goals completely misaligned with ourselves, because many of our compasses are skewed:

It’s still important to work on all of these elements of ourselves, but in order to get to a point where we master all of them, it will take years of experiences, therapy, conversations with family, friends, mentors, etc.

 

 

So there I was, answering pages and pages of prompts. My ADHD was in “Are we there yet?” mode. But bit by bit I started to see some patterns emerging: I had found my core desire feelings.

 

In this case specifically — and I don’t need to go into all of them:

With freedom and serenity at the core of how I wanted to feel, I knew that working so many hours per day, in such a quick paced company would make me feel limited and constricted. And having to fly so many hours when I have phobia of flying, would make me feel very tormented. I didn’t want that existence, even though I was ecstatic about that opportunity.

 

Could I try to create adjustments to serve my core feelings? Absolutely, but on these specifically, it was a no. But I have done this successfully in other cases.

 

Adding to today’s Einstein’s quote: sometimes the way out to solve a problem, is not by thinking, is by feeling.

P.S.: This newsletter is for you — what topics would you like us to cover next? 🤗

Something to reflect on

I am a firm believer that when we are feeling lost in our careers and we don’t know where to go, the best way is to center ourselves in how we want to feel — and sometimes the best clues come from past experiences:

 

 

This might give you some clues on the things that might be missing on your day to day.

Something to read AND DO

We’re combining the read and the do today, because if this you’re curious about learning your core feelings, I suggest you read Danielle LaPorte’s book “The Desire Map” and answer all those questions — I know, but it’s going to be worth it!

LET'S CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION

 

Do you know your core desire feelings? We’d love to hear about it, and how they benefitted you in your career — just hit reply or join the conversation in the Humankind Works community. 🤗

 

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