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it's going to require a lot of willpower to continue to deprogram and move forward with your goals.
Even when the limiting beliefs come up, even when maybe naysayers are around you planting doubt in your pivots. Even when you see maybe an opportunity that makes you want to come back, it is you connecting with your, why connecting with your reason at every single step of the way that's going to get you to that end result.
Welcome to the Make Up Your Mind podcast. I'm your host Jahleane Dolne, and I'm here to help you make up your mind - literally and figuratively. I'm a motivational speaker, content creator, subconscious mindset coach, and the founder of The Postgrad Playbook- the only coaching platform and resource center for post-grads and 20 somethings to release mindset blocks and take action towards their chosen career , no matter how, quote unquote, unconventional that might look.
As an expert recognized by Afrotech, LinkedIn news,, and more, I help you identify what you actually want, release what's keeping you [00:01:00] stuck, and have a game plan to take action with clarity, confidence, conviction, and ease. Here we cover all things, paving your own way and how that looks personally and professionally. Get ready to finally make up your mind.
Let's get started.
Hello, happy Wednesday and welcome back to another episode of Make Up Your Mind.
I'm so happy to be back for another week. This is actually episode nine. I'm sure you can see this if you're listening on apple or Spotify, but the reason why I say I'm so excited for episode nine is because I know that statistically, most podcasts fall off after episode three, even more, never get started. And actually episode eight is a huge milestone for podcasts that just keep going and a big pillar for me is just consistency and continuing with this podcast and putting out as much content and as I can week over week.
So that's a really big milestone for me. I think the next big [00:02:00] benchmark is at the 21 episode mark. And that's when the people who did continue that's when you see a lot of podcasts fall off as well. So, I'm going to get to that 21 episodes, but surpassing that eight episode mark is something worth celebrating.
I'm definitely someone who has been falling into the boat over the course of my life, of not celebrating my little wins. And over the last year, I wanted to make sure that that's not something that I continued. So when there is a little win I'm going to have a little celebration, I'm going to write a little post, maybe on LinkedIn, if you follow me on there about it because you should celebrate your wins along the way.
It's not only the big things that are worth attention. It's the little things that get you to the big thing. So I hope that if you have a win you pat yourself on the back for it and you're able to, you know, keep going and let it accumulate.
But anyways, speaking of LinkedIn, I was on the platform this week as I am on that platform a lot, just because there are so many opportunities on there. But I was on the [00:03:00] platform this week and I saw that there was actually a good number of people writing posts about moving into a new opportunities, moving out of their industry and starting businesses, just because the job market is so difficult right now it's causing people to pivot and I've been seeing the same thing on TikTok as well. A lot of people who are finding new opportunities that are outside what they were doing previously.
And it really reminded me of what is the art of the pivot. I remember seeing a video about this that went viral maybe around a year or so ago, and it was this girl talking about the art of the pivot and how she swears by it. It was a trend that completely blew up and her along with so many other people talked about how pivoting completely redirected their lives. And they were able to start over in the ways that meant the most to them and set them back on the right track.
In the past, I've spoken to schools, universities, and students around the country about what it means to pivot and how to pivot successfully and some of that was covered in an episode a couple of weeks [00:04:00] ago, all about how to be lucky AF and increase your surface area and your luck opportunity.
And there I talk about what I created called your luck portfolio and how you can successfully diversify it.
But having luck is a huge piece of the pie when it comes to pivoting, there are multiple different kinds of pivots that you can take and some of them are just pivots you have to be lucky for. You have to be in the right place at the right time. You have to be persistent. You have to create your own opportunity, but there are two other essential kinds of pivots that you can find yourself falling into based off of your life circumstances, which is what we're going to be talking about today.
Those other two pieces of the pie, along with several tangible tips so that way, if you resonate with either of them, you're going to be able to figure out the game plan for exactly what to do, and then start taking action towards it because that's what we do over here at The Postgrad Playbook. We release mindset blocks and we take action towards our goals.
Like I mentioned, a couple of episodes ago, we only have, [00:05:00] was about five months left. Five months left until the end of the year. And I don't want any of us looking back at this year and seeing how it has come and gone and being like, I wish I did more.
No, we have the game plan to do more now, and this is part of it. So let's get into it.
Whether you're in your twenties listening to this or in your thirties or whoever, right? I find that when I was post-grad in my last couple of years of college leading up into my first couple of years after college, that is when I went through the most immense amount of change that I could not have seen coming.
Like some of you already know I was a collegiate cheerleader at UC Santa Barbara while I attended there for my second and third year.
To take you back a little bit, it was early, early fall, late summer
and my cheer team in the past year we had just gotten off going to Daytona Nationals and this time we were ready to just absolutely conquer do amazing at the competition so everyone was on 10 and in the gym early [00:06:00] ready to go. So I go ahead and head over and start throwing some passes. Unfortunately, one of those passes I had just such a critical misstep, I still can't believe it happened, and I had a clean tear ACL. And that was the start of what became the very first pivot for me.
Having an ACL tear, if you've ever suffered from an injury like that, you know that life sort of starts to slow down a little bit. I was involved in a lot of activities. I was a tour guide, cheerleader. I was working on campus and doing other things. I was in a lab and when you have an injury like that, everything stops except the absolute essentials because you know, you can't walk.
So that's just not a possibility anymore. I remember I was majoring in biology, and having all that extra time in my hand, I realized I didn't even really like it.
As I've talked about before, I'm a daughter of immigrants and doctor, lawyer, engineer, those are very acceptable careers in immigrant cultures. So sometimes deviating from that can be scary, but I [00:07:00] knew I could do it. The problem is I didn't know how, which led me to pivot number one, the kinds of pivots that you absolutely have no experience for. You have no idea how you're going to make it work, but you know you're going to do it somehow. You have no experience for these kinds of pivots and it also seems like they might come out of left field. It seems like other people might not understand what you're trying to do because it's so different from what you have done in the past. So there are a lot of challenges associated with these kinds of pivots.
If you are someone who has your college degree in one subject and you are trying to pivot into something completely different and you feel like there is no hope, I get it, I've been there, but I want to ask you a quick question about what percent of college students do you think are working in a field that is not their field of study? I will give you a second to think, insert Jeopardy music. The answer is 50%. 50 percent of college [00:08:00] grads are not currently working in their field of study, which in my opinion is very shocking.
Maybe you guessed higher and you thought more people wouldn't be doing it. But learning that statistic at the time was shocking to me but it also gave me some peace that making a pivot outside of what I was trained in was very possible.
The thing is to be able to put yourself up for opportunities, the very first tip for the kinds of pivots that you have no experience for is you need to get scrappy.
From what I figured out that biology was just not it, it wasn't for me. I did look at the extracurriculars that I was a part of and realized that between being a cheerleader, a tour guide so on and being so people- oriented, business was a even better segue than what I originally thought.
And from being scrappy, I realized, okay, I don't have to have, or just look at this biology experience and the classes I took, the internships that I had and so on. I can use this extracurricular experience to be able to set myself up for these kinds of [00:09:00] positions. You see what I'm saying?
It's not always the experience that you might think of off the top of your head, that's the experience that will help you get to where you need to go. Getting scrappy and being scrappy, it means pulling from every single thing that you've possibly done to create a story, to create a narrative for the person on the receiving end to bust doors, open down for you. To bust doors open and kick them down.
So that way you can enter in the doors that you want to. Some examples of what you might be able to do now is if you're looking to pivot into something more creative, start a YouTube channel, start posting your content online or maybe intern for somebody, or maybe you already have those things or have started doing those things.
And you can use those obscure experiences that you might consciously not think of off the top of your head and put them on your resume, put those experiences in the limelight and from there, position yourself as the perfect person to make that segue.
This is the number one mistake that people are [00:10:00] making when they want to pivot into something that's different from what they currently do.
They don't use all the experiences that they have available to them, all the experiences that they have under their belt. But now you know, so that won't be you.
To make this even more compelling I found is just using numbers or putting numbers wherever you can, as much as possible.
Unless someone is right next to you, when you're doing your whole job from start to finish, they are going to have no idea about the impact that you had. So it's so important to you quantify your experiences, quantify your results quantify your impact. So that way you can give other people a holistic overview, even if they're not there with you.
Every time that I've added numbers, when it was either saying a pitch or writing a line on my resume to demonstrate my impact or maybe in some other instances, people have always given a better reaction to me and been like, wow, rather than if I had just not included numbers, because there isn't just any way to know what you've actually done.
When I [00:11:00] was navigating this journey from switching from biology into a career in business, I realized okay even though I have all these experiences to pull from, I don't actually have someone to help me get my foot into the door or help me really learn how to make that pivot. And so this is the third and final tip under understanding how to navigate the kinds of quote unquote, no experience pivots that others might not understand.
And this is leveraging the strength of weak ties.
I've talked about this in a couple other podcasts episodes, but it's just because this is so, so, so important. I first learned about this from reading The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, which is a must read for anybody in their twenties.
I swear by it. But essentially within your network and within the world, you have weak ties and strong ties. Strong ties are your first level connections. That's your best friend. That's your uncle. That's your mom. That's your teammates, that's your coworkers. And so on. People who are in your inner circle and are your first level connections typically [00:12:00] have already the same network as you, same opportunities and you probably won't progress as far. If you stick within the circle. However, if you branch out into your network of weak ties, which is second and third level connections, think your mom's coworker or a teacher or someone you met at a networking event, right? These second and third level connections, conversely have access to people, opportunities, resources, and networks that you may have not even dreamed of. Opportunities might seem like they fell from the sky because they're in such different rooms than you, but they might know somebody who is able to help you get to where you're trying to go. So reaching out to your network, talking a little bit about what you want to do. I think LinkedIn and TikTok are such great platforms to you starting to build a brand for yourself, just because of the sheer amount of discoverability and the reach that you can get to tap into second and third level connections easier. There was a stop that went around a while ago, and it says that every single person is connected to every single other [00:13:00] person in the world by at most eight connections.
So if I don't know someone, I might know someone who knows someone. And if I don't know someone who knows someone, they might know someone who knows someone who knows someone. You catch my drift, you're connected by everybody somehow. So putting yourself out there and leveraging this network is going to get you exponentially further than trying to stay in your tight-knit circle, where things might be a little more comfortable.
I get that if you're a high-achiever at, you're probably listening to this podcast, you're probably trying to pave your way for yourself and you're probably trying to establish something big. And usually these kinds of people, I completely resonate have a lot of trouble asking for help.
But I promise you, asking for help will get you where you need to go a lot faster. There is no virtue in struggling. There is no virtue in grinding to the top when you could have gotten there faster and saved a lot of time.
I know sometimes for people it is more a pride thing wanting to get there themselves, but you can get there a lot faster if you just ask for help and who knows, it [00:14:00] might even end up better than you originally thought it might've been.
And that's exactly how it happened for me through leveraging the weak ties through quantifying my achievement and through getting scrappy I was able to land an amazing opportunity within business that yielded a huge return for me and still pays off for me to this day.
Of course that did span over the course of several years, but just setting that foundation was incredibly important. What you do now is incredibly important it's the base work for everything that you're going to be able to accomplish years from now.
Now, if we get back to the story, like I mentioned, those three tips were a success and I was able to land my first job in business.
It was exactly what I wanted to do at the time I excelled, I got promoted and I learned a lot, which was exactly what I needed and in many ways made up for all those years when I didn't have that formal business or communications degree. But then of course, 2020 rolled around and we all know what happened in 2020 COVID.
And as [00:15:00] expected, there are a lot of twists turns, ups, downs, and unforeseen circumstances that really were pushing me to leave this position because it just wasn't supporting my longterm goals anymore. I knew I had bigger dreams and I knew that I had learned, and I had done everything that I could possibly do in that space.
So it was time for another pivot. The problem was that it was peak pandemic. As we know the job market was incredibly difficult.
And I wasn't 100% sure what I want you to do next, but I knew that where I had to go, which is not where I want it to be. So this kind of pivot was especially scary. It's a kind of pivot that requires you to take a big step back in order to move forward.
And for me, a big step back meant being unemployed, living at my parents' house and trying to figure out post-grad life as well as my professional situation.
In my opinion, these kinds of pivots are the absolute scariest to go through. And that is because there is so much uncertainty involved. You have no [00:16:00] idea, how your life is going to play out. Quitting on a whim is a lot.
I talk a lot more about this and my episode, all about how to know when it's time to quit your job.
I will link it here that you can go ahead and give that whole thing a listen, but I touched on some of these points and why quitting, like this is so scary because you just don't have a solid plan, but you know that you are supposed to move forward into this unknown. One key tip that you need to know for these kinds of pivots is that it is essential to figure out some kind of game plan before you do leave.
Even if you don't know, 100%, what kind of job you're going to have, how you're going to be making money and so on. You need to lay your bed first. The best way is to obviously have an understanding of your financial situation and see if that's feasible for you right now.
Please don't tell anyone that Jahleane told you to quit your job right now that is not what I'm saying. In this economy, no, we're not doing that without a plan.
I always say, and I think you should remember that you are a business and a brand of [00:17:00] one. Instead of you thinking about yourself, going through all these companies are going through all of these experiences to help them think about what maybe you can get from each company that you work. Of course, it's a give and take relationship. It's symbiotic. You both are helping each other, but think of yourself as a business and a brand of one so every single company that you're going to, you're going there to acquire a certain skillset. What are the skills that you need to learn to achieve whatever long-term goals that you have?
Once you have an idea of the skill set that you need to acquire. The best thing to do is create an action plan for goal setting, to be able to strategically make choices every single day, that align with this big picture vision. I know that when I quit my job, why, and I was searching for a new one, it felt like I was floating in air. There wasn't any real solid foundation under me because there wasn't essentially a finish line that was drawn in the sand. There wasn't a specific end date.
It was just when I landed a job that was [00:18:00] going to be it. That finished line could have shown up next week or next month or one year from now or five years from now. I didn't know. There was so much uncertainty, and because in this process, there's so much of that involved it is so important to know what you're doing every single day to know that you're making some kind of progress towards it. The best way to outline that is through smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based goals and things that you're going to do which will help you map out every single day of your journey so that you know exactly what you're doing and how it's leading to the big picture.
The next piece of advice I have for you is if you've been listening to my last podcast episodes, it's not going to be that much of a surprise, but it is to work with your subconscious mind. During times and periods of uncertainty, that is exactly when we want to go move back.
It's when we feel the most unsafe it's when we feel the most scared, because there, once again is no finish line, there's no guarantee what's going to happen.
And our human nature is to get ourselves [00:19:00] to be in situations that are a safe as possible. Safe meaning familiar. So when I quit that past job, I was in a space where I wasn't happy and I knew that moving forward into the unknown would lead to more expansive opportunities and a more expansive feeling in my spirit. But when I finally got to the other side, I looked back and I was like, oh gosh, maybe the grass isn't greener, but that's not true. There's more opportunity out there, but it's because we want to be safe we want to look back at what is already past. It's in the past for a reason. There's no need to look back, even if you're scared, only look forward. But of course, it's going to take a lot of courage to be able to move forward. A lot of limiting beliefs from your subconscious come up.
Like, I don't think I'm cut out for this. I'm not good enough. What if I never find everything and a whole bunch of what ifs. And this might manifest into maybe not keeping up with your goals or finding a situation that's almost exactly similar to the one that you had left.
It can show up in so many different ways. [00:20:00] I talked a little bit about this in my past episode called You Self-Sabotage Because You Have A Subconcious Block (Here's How To Get Over It) definitely go ahead and give that one a listen, because it really plays into how much of a hold that your subconscious mind has over you and the decision making that you make every single day and also how it keeps us in bad situations, and a lot of times just not even moving forward.
It'll keep you from moving forward and it'll keep you complacent in a space of life where you're consciously not happy, but sorta confused from why you can't move forward. And this is the reason why, like I've mentioned in past episodes, your subconscious is about 90 to 95% of your brain and our conscious mind is about five to 10%.
And you're subconscious really does run the show with your decision-making, your intuition, your deepest thoughts, beliefs, and so on. So you need to work with it to make sure that it is aligned with the goals and where you moving towards.
Again, sometimes this night not seem as obvious. But I want to ask [00:21:00] you this question really quick, and I want you to answer the question as fast as you can. That way we are bypassing your conscious mind and moving through your subconscious to get to the root of the problem. If you find yourself in a period of self-sabotage in stagnation, I want you to answer very quickly. How do you benefit from remaining
stagnant? How do you benefit from remaining stuck? And whatever is the first thing that came to your head, just jot it down really quick. And ponder on that, explore it, journal on it because that is what the subconscious limiting belief is. That's keeping you from your end goal.
It is so important to always get to the root cause of whatever it is that might be holding you back because until the root cause is figured out and reprogrammed and released, you're going to be kept in that same cycle of self-sabotage, and as I've said before, and I'm going to say it again: potential unexpressed turns to pain, Robin Sharma. It's going to be a very vicious cycle and unfulfilling cycle and a cycle that's going to lead to maybe even some self [00:22:00] resentment, low confidence issues, because you're not able to move forward.
To get to the root cause I do have a 14 question printable that I will send right your way, that will help you identify exactly what the limiting beliefs are, keeping you stuck from, where you want to go. All you have to do to get the link to this is leave me a quick review on apple podcasts and send me a screenshot at, @thepostgradsplaybook on Instagram, and I will send you the link and I'll be on your way, and you're going to be able to rewire and move forward.
The last tip that I'm going to give you when it comes to making the kinds of pivots that require a step back to move forward is that you will have to be the one to consciously make this change every step of the way. Of course, we talked about the conscious versus subconscious and how you might be able to work with yourself and yes, you need to work and reprogram what's going on in your subconscious mind. But at some point, it's going to require a lot of willpower to continue to deprogram and move forward with your goals.
Even when the limiting beliefs come [00:23:00] up, even when maybe naysayers are around you planting doubt in your pivots. Even when you see maybe an opportunity that makes you want to come back, it is you connecting with your, why connecting with your reason at every single step of the way that's going to get you to that end result.
Even if it's hard, getting there.
is so hard to be brave in these moments, but you can do it even in the face of dissenters and be persistent in creating your own opportunities.
If you follow those main tips, when it comes to you actively navigating those kinds of pivots and then also going back into the how to manufacture your own luck episode, and you continue with it, and you're persistent. There is no way you will not get to where you're trying to go. If you're listening to this, or if you're in The Postgrad Playbook community, you are most likely someone who is incredibly dissatisfied with their current professional situation or life situation and you're looking for a pivot.
And hopefully one of these scenarios resonated with you or maybe in my story and let me know, send me a message. If you have any questions, send [00:24:00] me some blocks that you might be facing, and I'll give you some advice on Instagram.
And I promise you, we have the resources between the newsletter, the podcast, the social content, LinkedIn content, and so on to help you overcome. What's keeping you stuck and moving forward.
Pivoting is super hard. It is uncomfortable and no one really wants to do it. Everyone wants their life to be rainbows and sunshine right off the bat, but that's not the case. And sometimes we really do have to take it back into our own hands and rewrite the story.
But a lot of fears associated with that, but now you have the tools to overcome it. So that's really all I have for you today about all things pivoting. I am rooting for you once again and if you are on YouTube, subscribe, if you're on Apple, Spotify, make sure you're following the podcast for immediate downloads and leave me a review.
So that way the show can reach the people who need it most. So. Thank you so much. If you have some other topics that you think would be helpful to learn a little bit more about send me a DM and I will speak with you next week. Bye.
