Career Relaunch®
Joseph Liu
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Being Honest With Yourself with Melody Mack
What happens when the initial excitement of your new job starts to wear off? Or the work you’re doing becomes misaligned with the person you want to be? In episode 88 of the Career Relaunch® podcast, Melody Mack, an neurodiagnostics business owner turned project manager shares her thoughts on managing your relationship with work, letting go of a business you created, and taking an honest look at who you are. During the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll also share a glimpse into a few of the issues I seem to have dragged around with me from job to job. Key Career Takeaways Divorcing yourself from your professional identity is extremely difficult, which is one reason why saying farewell to your job can be so difficult. When the challenges and frustrations you’re feeling in your professional life seem to follow you from job to job, the issue may have more to do with you than your employer or work itself. While professional transitions and gaps in your CV can feel uncertain and stressful, those periods of transition are a part of the journey. Slowing down and taking the time to figure things out is not only okay but also necessary to make the right career choices moving forward. If you focus too much on what other people are saying, thinking, or doing, you can lose track of yourself. It’s important to stay true to yourself in order to feel at peace in your career. Tweetables When you blame and criticize others, you are avoiding some truth about yourself. Deepak Chopra Tweet This Resources Mentioned I talked briefly about Attribution Theory, which you can read more about here. Listener Challenge During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, my challenge to you was to take an honest look at one of the persistent issues you’ve been struggling with in your career for quite some time. How much of your work struggles are a result of the specific environment you’re in at this moment? How much of them actually have to do with you—your expectations, your beliefs, your blueprint of how things should be. Take 1 action over something you can control to help you manage those things you can’t control at this moment in your career. About Our Guest Melody Mack Melody Mack left a successful career in healthcare as a provider and business owner so she could focus on project management in a different industry. One thing she’s learned is that working hard in a job that doesn’t give you joy is simply not sustainable. I caught Melody in the middle of her transition, and in spite of facing some tough challenges along the way, she’s still hopeful for the future. I first crossed paths with Melody when she sent me a note on LinkedIn after being a long-time listener of this podcast. She mentioned feeling burned out by her last job, the challenges of walking away from a lucrative role, and the complications of transitioning into something else–all universal challenges many career changers face. I was really excited to get her onto the show so she could share in her own words what I think is a very relatable career transition journey. Did You Enjoy This Episode? Please Let Us Know! Tweet: If you enjoyed this episode and have a few seconds to spare, Tweet to let me and Melody know! Tweet a thank you! Review: I’d also love for you to leave a positive review and rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, which helps my show reach more people who want to relaunch their careers. Follow: Be sure to follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Android to automatically get each new episode on your device. Full instructions. Stay in touch: Follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow host Joseph on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Comments, Suggestions, or Questions? If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered on future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners! Leave Joseph a Voicemail You can also leave a comment below. Thanks! Thanks to A2 Hosting for Supporting the Career Relaunch® podcast A2 Hosting is the web host provider I use and trust for my own websites, and they even offer 100% carbon neutral green hosting. For an easy, fast, and affordable way to get your personal website online today, visit careerrelaunch.net/a2 to get 50% off your web hosting plan. Interview Segment Music Credits Dog And Pony Show – Podington Bear Planet – Infraction Signal To Noise – Scott Buckley Temporary Stop – Jay Varton Ethereal – Punch Deck New Ambitions – Trevor Kowalski Rand Aldo – Open Atmos TV Show 2021 – Infraction Episode Interview Transcript Teaser: I had to recognize that I brought some of my bad habits that led to burnout and resentment in my last career into my new career that is also possibly why I’m not happy yet where I’ve landed. Joseph: Let’s get started by talking a little bit about what you’re up to at this moment. Can you just give me a glimpse into what’s been keeping you busy in your personal life and also your professional life? Melody: [02:29] Actually, this is the first time in 14 years that I haven’t been on-call in some capacity. So, my greatest joy is being able to not have my phone on me. I’m spending time reading and taking long walks, and I’ve even started taking cooking classes. In my career, I am a senior project management consultant for a small group out of Denver Colorado. My current contract is with a school district. I’m having a lot of fun working with some incredible people and learning every single day. That keeps me very much on my toes. Joseph: You mentioned that you were on-call a lot in your past life. We are going to get into more detail about your history in a moment. But what sort of things would you be on-call for? Melody: [03:26] I was working in two leadership roles. One as a provider in healthcare and one as a business owner. At any point in time, either there was a fire to put out for the business, or I was actually on-call to provide services for a hospital. Joseph: The other thing I wanted to ask you about is just like personally, you said you’ve got a little bit of space for hobbies right now and to kind of have a little bit of breathing room. What are you enjoying doing in your free time right now? Melody: [03:54] Naps are great. Joseph: It never hurts, yeah. Melody: [03:59] Reading. I’ve been looking for new opportunities to learn something that I haven’t done before. A lot of it is interjected with just fun. For example, there’s an event in a couple of weeks where there’s an outdoor movie being shown, but they’ll also have goats running around. Things like that that are a little outside of the norm, but something that will just be fun. I had lost a little bit of joy in my career. And now, I’m just seeking new opportunities and having fun. Joseph: Very good to hear. Okay. Well, let’s talk about your past and let’s talk about your previous career chapters. You have not always been a senior project manager. Could you tell me a little bit about your time back in the day when you were working in neurodiagnostics? And then, we can move forward from there. Melody: [04:52] Well, I got a great opportunity 14 years ago to apply to be an interoperative neuromonitoring technologist, which is a healthcare technology position where you work in the operating room monitoring brain and spine. I got that opportunity without having a graduate degree, which was a dream for me to be in healthcare. It required a lot of calls, a lot of travel, and a lot of agility. But along the way, I got a chance to co-found a company with one of my bosses. And, that’s where that second role came in where I was working as a provider, but I also co-founded a neurodiagnostics company. It was exciting. It was something I never thought I’d get a chance to do, but it was good old-fashioned hard work. Joseph: You mentioned that you were really excited to work in healthcare when you think back to when you were a kid. Was this something you wanted to do when you grew up? Melody: [05:58] It was. I was that little girl who said, “When I grew up, I’m going to be a doctor.” I got the chance to apply for medical school, and I was most interested in alternative medicine. I applied for a program to get a Doctorate in Alternative Health. The estimated cost of the education would have been $500,000. And, that was the biggest barrier to entry for me. In hindsight, it was the right decision to not take on the debt. But it did leave me thinking I could not be in health care unless I got some sort of higher degree. Joseph: You moved into this area of neurodiagnostics, and you also co-founded a company. Can you tell me how things started off for you? What did you enjoy about that role? Melody: [06:53] Well, first and foremost, I love science. Getting the chance to integrate technology, and caring for patients was exciting. Being in the operating room behind those doors that a lot of people don’t get to see, it was a dream come true. But again, it was very demanding and a lot of hard work. I compare it a lot to what it’s like to travel on a plane. If you’re not on the first flight of the day and you get delayed, you never know when you’re going to leave or arrive. That’s how a lot of the operating room time schedules work. So, there were a lot of times when I had no idea when I would start or end my day. But everything becomes routine after a while, and a lot of the work I did was elective. I wasn’t saving lives. I wasn’t the one doing the operation. I was ancillary to the team, which was good, but it also stripped some of the meaning of being a healthcare provider for me. The business side was where I got my project management experience because there’s no wa
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