Welcome to the first episode of the Intentional Career Podcast! I’m Karen Styles, host, Career + Life Coach and owner of Flow + Fire Coaching. So, what the heck is an intentional career anyway? I’ll share my thoughts on that question, what to expect from this podcast, and a few of my career theories.

I’m your host, Karen Styles, Career + Life Coach and owner of Flow + Fire Coaching. Ready to create your Intentional Career? Schedule a call with me.

Highlights:

[0:58 ] Why I’m the person talking about this and what to expect from the podcast.

[3:40 ] What is an intentional career anyway?

[4:35 ] You don't have to make a leap to have an intentional career and the pressure to “follow your passion.”

[5:06 ] When it feels like you’re stuck with only crappy choices; tiny little steps can make a big difference.

[7:00 ] I’m willing to be proven wrong in my theories.

[9:55 ] Work and life are not separate. Creating a life that works is important, and work is a big part of life.

[11:24 ] As a Career Coach, I don’t focus mainly on job search. We’ll be looking at the bigger, broader questions of how you can discover and do work that lights you up.

[13:20 ] The three other podcast episodes released today!

Resources:

• Martha Beck - Website | The Way of Integrity | IInstagram
• Check out the other episodes released today!
  • Ep. 2 - Trading Traditional Accounting for Love with Kristine Miguel
  • Ep. 3 - Broadway Dreams to Business Coach with Michelle Ward
  • Ep. 4 - Celebrating Multi-Passionate Entrepreneurs with D’ana Joi

Subscribe Today!

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe on Spotify
• For more episodes, check out The Intentional Career Podcast website
   

Schedule a Call

Ready to create your Intentional Career? Schedule a call with Karen Styles, Career + Life Coach and owner of Flow + Fire Coaching.

Follow Karen

Follow Karen on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
 

---

Transcription - What is an intentional career anyway?  with Karen Styles

[This transcript has been edited for clarity]

Karen: I'm Karen Styles and this is the Intentional Career Podcast. I talk to all kinds of people who take all kinds of paths to work they love. I'm a career and life coach and owner of Flow and Fire coaching. If you're ready to create your intentional career with the support of a coach, schedule a call with me.

There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to intentionalcareer.co and click the blue "Schedule a Call button".

[00:39 ] Karen: Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of The Intentional Career podcast. I'm so happy you're here. And we are here to talk about, well, I guess I'm here to talk about what is an intentional career anyway? But first, let's talk about why I'm the one talking about it and what you can expect from this podcast as a whole. I want to give you a little bit of an idea of what's going to be coming up. 

I've spent the last several years working in career development. And before that, I was a recruiter for a few years. I also went through my own angst and frustration in my career before creating my own intentional career as a career and life coach. I just used the word career a lot of times in those sentences, I realize. 

All that to say, I've learned some things, both personally, and from my clients, about finding your way to work, you love. And I also know that I don't know everything about it. 

[1:51 ] That's why the bulk of these episodes are going to be interviews with folks who created their intentional careers.  And just to ask them how they did that. Because I know that all kinds of people do it in lots of different ways and I want this podcast to be a really inclusive venue, to look at lots of different people and the lots of different paths they took, in particular paths that are not necessarily linear.

I know for myself and maybe for a lot of other people, we might think, oh, I wish I had known back in university. I wish I had, you know, maybe made different choices than I did and then it would have been easier. But, okay, there's a lot of beauty in the things that we learn along the way.

And I think, this is my hunch that, there's a lot of people that have found their way to meaningful work and they may not be all that different from you. My hope is that you will be sparked with ideas and inspiration hearing from stories of real people who have done it in lots of different ways.

I'm really looking forward to learning from these guests as well. I'm always gathering information and looking for patterns in the world around me. I'm going to be paying attention and seeing, you know, are there common themes that come up for these stories? And I might also test out some of my theories on them.

 So let me tell you about some of my theories. 

First of all, let's go into that question I started with, what is an intentional career anyway? For me, an intentional career is a career that you choose. That's the simplest way to put it. And maybe that's really simple or obvious, but I've talked to quite a few people and there are people, whether they're 10 years into their career or whether they're 20 plus years into their career, sometimes they say this just happened to me, I didn't make any of these choices or I didn't know what to do. So, here's where I ended up. 

I want you to know that, you know, if you've ever woken up and had that thought that, here I am, and feel like I didn't choose this, you can choose at any time. You can create your intentional career at any point. You can make the start. 

And that leads to my next theory. It is that you don't have to make a leap to have an intentional career, you can make small steps. And those can really make a difference too. 

[4:49 ]I bring this up because again, because I know I felt this pressure to do something big and bold and dramatic and, follow your passion or something like that.  First of all, I wasn't sure what my passion was, so I didn't exactly know how to follow it. Being bold and taking a leap, which at some points I knew might be quitting a job. [00:04:34 ] I didn't know what I was going to, so it felt impossible, that’s what it felt like for me. 

I've heard this echoed back from clients at times where it feels like you are stuck with two crappy choices, one being take the leap, make the big bold decision. Or the other choice is to stay in the crappy thing.  That's not quite working out for you. And those both feel like really lousy choices. 

I'm here to tell you those are not your only two choices. 

There might be other options in between there. And some of those other options might feel like really tiny, little steps and the tiny little steps can actually make a big difference for you. Small steps for a big change. <...