career confusion, advice session

Welcome back to Advice Session, a series here on Anything Goes where you send in your current dilemmas or anything you want advice on, and then I give you my unprofessional advice. And today's topic is work life. Or should I say life at work? Or perhaps I could say career, or maybe job. I think you get the idea. I have to start by saying that I've had an incredibly unconventional career path. I started working on Accident at age 16. I posted my first YouTube video, and then I posted another one, and then another one, and then another one. And the next thing I knew by age like 16 and a half, being a YouTuber was my full-time job, and I left school to pursue it. And since then, I've been pursuing it. And I currently work as sort of a public figure, whatever that means. I guess the job of a public figure is to post content of oneself on the internet for people's entertainment and consumption. It's a weird job. And because I started so young, this has always been my job. And I'm very aware of the experiences I haven't had as a result of this unusual career path. However, something interesting that I've noticed over the years of just talking to different types of people about different types of careers is that it seems that regardless of your career path, there's sort of this collection of universal challenges that come with pursuing any career. And I know that because I've had conversations with people who have completely different jobs than I do. And I time and time again find that we're able to relate about certain universal challenges that come with pursuing any career. And so I start off with all of this because, number one, I think you need to take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm warning you, okay? I have had a very bizarre career path. So keep that in mind as you're taking advice from me. But also give me a chance because even though I've had a bizarre career path, I also do think that there are a lot of universal challenges that almost everyone experiences in the pursuit of a career. And so I don't have it all figured out, but maybe give me a little chance while taking everything I say with a grain of salt without further ado. Let's get into it. I briefly interrupt this episode to let you know that this episode is brought to you by Hotels.com. Make your next trip work for you. Hotels.com's new Save Your Way feature lets you choose between instant savings now or banking rewards for later. It's a flexible rewards program that puts you in control, turning every stay into an opportunity. No confusing math, no blackout dates, use your rewards however you choose, only at Hotels.com. Save Your Way is available to loyalty members in the US and UK on Hotels with Member Prices. Other terms apply. Seasite for details. Now back to the episode. Somebody said, I'm losing the passion and motivation I once had for my career and it makes me sad. I thought I would love this forever. What do I do? Well, I want to start by saying that I personally have experienced this in a very big way. The job that I have is my dream job. When I was a kid, I grew up watching internet content instead of television. I mean, I watched a little bit of television and I watched some movies sometimes, but I didn't have cable. So, you know, if I wanted to watch content, that meant going to the library, renting a DVD, and then, you know, plugging it in or whatever. And that was fun and all, but at a certain point, YouTube came out and that was far more stimulating. So I ended up switching over to that as my main form of entertainment. And since I was a child, I was obsessed with YouTube. And fast forward to age 16 and a half, now it's my job to be a YouTuber. You know, that was my dream job. Like, I didn't even... Well, it was like, it wasn't even my dream job fully because I didn't even know it was possible. You know, and then it happened and I was like, whoa, this... I didn't even know this was possible, but now it's my dream job. Like, what's happening? And at a certain point for me, I felt the same way. I started to lose passion for it. I started to lose motivation. And it was incredibly depressing for me because I was like, wait, my dream came true and then some. And yet, I'm not feeling inspired by this. Like, what's wrong with me? Am I broken? How is this possible? And it was an incredibly dark, challenging time for me because there's something about living a dream and it not being what you expected that's really dark, you know? Like, it's depressing because if that doesn't feel good, then what the hell will, right? But as I've matured and had more life experience, I've realized that a lot of times we expect accomplishing goals to bring us some sort of sense of euphoria. We expect to reach nirvana. If I get my dream job, everything is just going to fall into place in my life. All of my problems will be solved and it's going to feel a way that I've never felt before. I'm going to feel a new feeling that I've never felt before, a sense of euphoria. And that doesn't happen, right? That doesn't happen. We only have a certain set of emotions that we can feel and a lot of times accomplishing a goal doesn't... It doesn't... It might give you a feeling of like immense joy in the beginning, like at first, maybe not like full euphoria, you're not going to reach nirvana, but you might feel really good in the beginning, but eventually that allure, that excitement, that energy will wear off and it'll fade a little bit. And what you once strived for, yearned for in your life will be yours and it'll just become your normal life. And at that point, the magic has sort of gone and you're just left with the work. That is a really hard transition from sort of the honeymoon phase, if you will, to routine. And it's almost like the transition is even more uncomfortable if it's your dream job, if it's the career you've always wanted. Because you have even higher expectations about that than you would if you just got a job that maybe you feel like is sort of a transitionary job, like or it's like a temporary sort of situation. You're not really going to have high expectations about that. There's almost like a higher likelihood that that's just going to be maybe even enjoyable because your expectations are low and who knows, you might make friends or have fun and it might actually be better than you thought. Whereas when it's your dream job, your expectations are high, you're expecting to feel big emotions and then you don't necessarily feel as big of emotions as you thought. And then eventually it becomes routine and then that's even worse than what you originally expected. You thought it was going to be magic, but that's not reality. Eventually, you're just going to be left with the work. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just something you need to get used to. But I think the best way to deal with this sort of feeling is number one, a change in mindset. Many people believe that love is a choice, like especially in romantic relationships, right? You hear like old couples that have been married for 50 years, talk about how it wasn't always easy. And a lot of the times they had to choose to love each other. They had to make a choice because it's just simply unrealistic in my opinion and in many people's opinion that things are going to be sunshine and rainbows and butterflies all the time and love is going to be eternal and bountiful. That is not reality. You're not going to feel that way all the time about something that you love. There are going to be days when it's challenging, it's uncomfortable, and you have to choose to continue to love that person. I think the same thing goes with a career. There are days in this career where I have to choose to love it because it's challenging. And I know to some people it's like, Emma, you have an amazing job, like shut the fuck up. But everything is relative. And there are times where I'm so overwhelmed by this feeling of like, oh, I feel like I wish I could just be anonymous and hide under the ground and burrow under the ground and just feel quiet and I'm not really being perceived. And there's sort of this weight sometimes that comes with being perceived at the level of being a public figure. And sometimes I struggle with that. And what I do is I choose to love this career anyway, because there's so much about this career to love that even when I'm struggling with an element of it, I push myself to find love for it anyway. And that is crucial in continuing to do it. Another thing that you could do is acknowledge the expectations that you had about this job in this situation and recalibrate your expectations now that you're in it and you're living the reality. Recalibrate your expectations to make them a bit more realistic. I kind of talked about this earlier, but it's like, I think we expect getting our dream job to feel a certain way and change our lives in a certain way. And a lot of times it doesn't happen quite like that. And sometimes just by addressing the expectations that you had going into it and saying, okay, this was maybe unrealistic. This made me feel disappointed because this didn't happen, but was that ever even possible? Going in and addressing your original expectations and then kind of creating a new set of expectations can be really helpful because I don't know, I think one of the greatest sources of disappointment for us as human beings is things not living up to our expectations. And so by recalibrating your expectations based on the reality of the situation, you can set yourself up for more success. And I think, or maybe even just remove expectations altogether and instead just be open to experiencing what this job is. Although I don't necessarily think it's always bad to have expectations. I think we should hold our lives to a certain standard, but maybe that's just standards. That's not expectations, right? So maybe it's more like releasing the expectations and more so creating a set of standards for what you want your career to look and feel like and trying to keep them realistic as to not end up disappointed because the truth of the matter is you might be in a really incredible situation right now, but you don't feel like it's as incredible as it is because you have expectations that weren't met. Whereas if you were to not have those expectations, you would be maybe thrilled with where you're at. So that was a really messy way of basically saying that I think it can be incredibly helpful to release expectations and recalibrate the way you look at your career, the way that you think about your career based on the reality of what it is. And reshape it in a way that allows you to see it in a positive light again. If you're looking at it through a lens of disappointment and expectations that weren't met, that's not going to be good. You're going to lose passion and motivation. But if you just kind of change your lens a little bit, maybe approach it in a way that's a little bit more realistic and sets you up to be stoked and excited and passionate and motivated, it might even just be that simple. Another thing that you might want to consider is shifting your focus a little bit from your career to something else in your life for a little bit. Sometimes we can find ourselves feeling unmotivated, burnt out about a particular area of our life because we've put too much focus on it for too long. We've been too obsessed with it for too long. And at a certain point, we run out of energy to give it. It can be sometimes helpful to sort of diversify what you're putting your energy into in your life. And perhaps by focusing on your social life, perhaps by focusing on your hobbies, perhaps by focusing on a side job that you've been interested in starting, perhaps by shifting your energy to other areas of your life, you might then actually find that through that, it might help reinvigorate your excitement about your career. I've found that when I'm focusing 100% on my job and that's it in my life, it really leads me to feeling burnt out. I need to have a collection of things in my life that are interesting and stimulating to me. When I'm just interested and stimulated by one thing in my life, I eventually get sort of bored of that and sick of that. And it makes me kind of dislike that one particular area of my life. If I have a lot of stuff going on, it actually allows me to feel excited about each little thing because I think, like for me, when I'm inspired by hobbies, and I'm also inspired by, say, like dating, and then I'm inspired by, you know, a particular project in my life, that only makes me more excited to sit down and record a podcast because the contrast between the activities makes, they all balance each other out. It's like, if I've been particularly social in my life, that's something I've been focusing on. There's something really nice about the solitude of sitting down in the quiet and just getting to talk to a camera. But also too, it's like, it keeps my brain excited because I'm not just focused on one thing. I don't know. You can really hit burnout when you do that. So that could be something else to try. And last but not least, one more perspective shift that I think could help with this challenge that you're dealing with is, remember that your life is a blank canvas, a book with many pages, okay? We can sometimes make a goal and then accomplish it, in this case, getting your dream job, and then realize later that it's not what we expected it to be, and then have a complete crisis about it because we feel trapped. And because this was our dream and then we accomplished it, that we have to stick to it, we have to be married to it. It has to be our thing forever. That is not the case. We have freedom to switch it up. If we dreamed of something and then accomplished it, and it didn't end up being what we wanted it to be, and through work on oneself, through trying to change lenses, through trying to improve perspective, things aren't getting better, that's okay. You can move on to something else. Is that going to happen overnight? Probably not. Is that a process? Absolutely. But don't feel married to something stuck to something just because it was your goal and your dream. If it ends up being miserable for you, that's okay. That just means that that was simply one page, maybe one chapter in your book. That's one corner of the canvas of your life. You've got a big blank canvas that you have your whole life to fill in. You have a huge book with so many empty pages. The book doesn't end of your life when you accomplish a goal. It is completely normal to accomplish a goal and then be like, wait a minute, I'm glad that I did that, but I need to now make a new goal because there's more I want to do. Or this didn't end up being what I expected. I want to see what else is out there. I think if this was your dream situation and you're just finding yourself a little bit, you're feeling like you're not passionate about it and you're not motivated, that might be because the honeymoon phase is over and you just need to recalibrate a little bit. It might also be because it's just not right for you. So perhaps start thinking about what the case may be for you and try to keep an open mind and not feel trapped in this just because it was your dream. I briefly interrupt this episode to let you know that this episode is brought to you by Tubi. Stop what you're doing. Sidelined 2, Intercepted, is almost here. Following the hit Tubi Original, it's time to dive back into all the drama, romance, and chaos. If you loved Tay Marley's, the Cubi bad boy and me on Wattpad, get ready. Your favorite quarterback and dancer are back, juggling love, distance, and self-discovery. Watch Sidelined 2, Intercepted, premiering free on Tubi Thanksgiving Day. Now back to the episode. Next, somebody said, I'm afraid to ask questions at work because I don't want to seem stupid. How do I get over that? In my opinion, it is an admirable and intelligent trait to admit when you don't know everything. Like, there is nothing wrong with asking a question. Is it a little bit vulnerable because it shows a weaker side of you, you know? Because we obviously like to feel knowledgeable and we like to feel smart and we like to feel intelligent. And so to show a side of ourselves that's not as wise, perhaps a bit confused, is vulnerable. But I think it's an admirable thing to do to show that vulnerable side. I actually think it's more of a sign of unintelligence. Is that a word? Why does that not sound like a word? Why does unintelligence not sound like a word? Very ironic considering that I'm talking about intelligence. Okay, totally. So the term unintelligence is not a recognized word in the English language or in standard dictionaries. Perfect. I love when that happens. I think it's a sign that someone is perhaps less mature and less wise if they pretend like they know everything. Like, to me, that's a sign of ignorance. It's a sign of emotional intelligence to ask questions, to say, I don't know, I don't understand. It's an emotionally intelligent thing to do to show that vulnerable side that's confused, that doesn't understand whatever. There's nothing stupid about that. And if anyone tries to make you feel stupid about asking a question, I'm sorry, but that's their problem. If you genuinely have a question and you do not know the answer to it and you're in the workplace trying to do the best possible job that you can do, and if somebody gives you a hard time about that, that is their fucking problem. Now, I don't want to, like, I don't want to have you get into like a conflict with someone at work. But if somebody does give you trouble for asking a question, your response should simply be, I just want to do the best I can at my job, and I don't know everything. So that is why I ask questions. And I'm not going to apologize for that, because I'm trying to do the best I possibly can. But you know what the truth is? It is so rare that in the workplace, somebody is going to give you a hard time about asking a question unless they're genuinely like not a good person. I don't know, or like not a good leader in the workplace. That is, that's weird. So like, I think what you're fearing the most is internal judgment from people that you work with. Who cares? Who cares? You know what ultimately will have you coming out on top in the workplace if you ask questions and get better at your job and then can ultimately climb the ladder in your workplace and become an incredibly highly achieving asset to the business, you know? Like, who cares if someone scoffs at you now because you had a question. When 10 years down the line, you've progressed so much in your career and have improved so much and learned so much, nobody's going to remember when you were asking questions 10 years prior, or they're going to be like, well, we all should have been asking more questions because look at them now. Like, asking questions is so important. It's how we learn, and nobody should ever be ashamed of it. And to further seal the deal for you, I have a quote from Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher. Socrates was believed to have said something along the lines of, I'm the wisest man alive for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Did he say that exactly? I don't know. I wasn't there. But supposedly he said something like that, and I really think about this quote a lot, to be honest. Like, this quote really sits with me, and it humbles me daily, to be honest. It's a good one. And I invite you to keep that in your heart and in your mind. Next time you go to work and you have a question, Socrates himself, a very smart guy that we all talk about because he's how smart he was, even he doesn't know everything, even he asks questions. So if that doesn't sell you on asking questions, I don't know what will. Next, somebody said, how do you deal with burnout when your schedule is so packed, and there is no way around it? I think there's a few things you can do here. Immediately, my suggestion would be, accept doing the bare minimum. This is not the time to be over achieving. I am somebody who's constantly trying to overachieve, even when I'm burnt out, honestly, especially when I'm burnt out. Because when I'm burnt out, my self-esteem is low, and I'm like, fuck, I really need to be doing even more. But guess what? That just leads me to being more burnt out, which then leads me to getting even less done. And so I think it can be incredibly helpful to just scale down what's on your daily to-do list. Take it down to the bare minimum. You don't need to be overachieving if you're burnt out. And I think accepting that overachieving during burnout will make burnout worse, can help you find peace in doing the bare minimum. Now, that's in the immediate. That's what you can do immediately, but I think burnout tends to require more drastic change a lot of the times. You can't just go on a vacation and heal burnout. I think the problem with burnout is that it's so deep in the brain that it's like, to truly cure burnout, you have to restructure your life a lot of times. You have to change things around. It's like a systemic issue in your life. That's usually what I think distinguishes, say, burnout from exhaustion. Maybe exhaustion, you can go on a vacation and come back and be rested, but burnout is deeper. It's so much deeper. So you need to make long-term plans on how you're going to solve that, but even more immediately than that. We'll get to that next. But you can start by planning ahead with your time off. When you're experiencing burnout, your time off, like we all have time off, we're not all working 24 hours a day. All of us have at least one hour off a day. I think being intentional with your time off, again, in the short term, not talking about taking time off. I'm not talking about going on vacation. I'm talking about the hour you have after work every day. I'm talking about your weekend. I'm talking about time off that you already have. I think being incredibly intentional with that during a period of burnout is so important, because I think a lot of times, especially when we're feeling burnt out, we don't feel motivated to do things that are good for us in our time off. We feel no motivation at all to do anything. And so we tend to dig into stuff that's bad for us. Doom scrolling, rotting on the couch, watching shitty TV. We do stuff that makes us feel ultimately worse. Now, is that to say that there isn't a time and a place for doom scrolling and watching shitty reality TV? That absolutely can be wonderful and recharging sometimes. But if you're already in a place of burnout, chances are you're not feeling so good. Burnout doesn't feel very good. And at least in my experience, doom scrolling, sitting around and watching TV all day, makes those feelings worse. So the key is to find activities to participate in in your time off, that balance two things, relaxation, but also positive impact. So I'll give you an example. You might not have the motivation when you're dealing with burnout to go to the gym. You might be like, fuck that. I can't do that. However, you might have the motivation to go for a walk outside with your roommate and talk some shit. That is so much more fulfilling. You're moving your body a little bit. You're being social. That is a good use of time. It's relaxing. It's rejuvenating. But it's also productive in a way or not even productive, but it's positive. That's a fulfilling experience. It might seem small, but it's fulfilling. You might not have the energy to read a book because that takes too much discipline that you don't have. You're burnt out, but perhaps you do feel inspired to watch a documentary about something interesting and educational. There you go. That's a bit more of a positive form of content. You're learning something, but also you just get to lay there and watch it. But at the end of it, you feel like you learned something and that's a really good feeling. So that is another thing you could do. But now let's address the long-term plan. If you're feeling burnt out, chances are you need to move things around in your life. That requires analysis. Sitting down, perhaps with somebody you love, perhaps with a journal, perhaps just with a bowl of cereal or something, and really thinking about your life, what is the cause of this burnout? Is it the schedule? Is the schedule too intense for you? Is it the type of work that you're doing? Perhaps you're actually an introvert and your work is extroverted. You have to talk to people every day. Is it perhaps your significant other? Is your relationship at home really exhausting and it's causing you to feel burnt out across the board in your life? Figure out where it's coming from. It probably won't be that hard to figure out. If you were to look at your life and what's stressing you out the most, what's the greatest cause of exhaustion and burnout in your life, I think you can figure it out. It might be a few things. Then from there, make a plan. How can you change your situation? Again, it's not going to happen overnight. I said that earlier about something else. These things take time, but they're not going to change unless you make a plan. Make a plan. Perhaps your job is the root of the issue. Start brainstorming on how you can fix that issue either within your job or perhaps by going down a new career path. If the issue is your romantic relationship, perhaps you need to have a conversation with your partner. Perhaps it's time to break up. Start working towards solving the burnout from the source. Okay, next, somebody said, how do I feel better about the job that I hate? It takes so much of my time and energy. I just said this and I'm about to say it again. Start making a plan on how you can leave or how you can change your situation where you're at at work to make it more ideal. Listen, I understand that we can't always just change something because we don't like it. There are financial reasons why that's not always possible. That's pretty much usually the reason. Otherwise, we wouldn't work. The financial element's pretty important. We can't always pick up and go somewhere else. We usually can't. However, we can start to make a plan. Now, when is this plan going to get executed on? Could be a month, could be five years. But I think in the meantime, while you're in this career that you're not loving, while you're working at this job that you're not loving, start planning out a way to switch career paths or bloom where you're planted at your career in a way that's actionable. Figure it out. Start planning it out. Mapping it out. Now, I don't necessarily have tips on how to do that because I think everyone is so incredibly different. So incredibly different. Everybody's career path is so incredibly different. There's a multitude of different ways that you could start planning towards a job that is less horrible for you. I think there's something really empowering about the act of planning, brainstorming, researching. It puts you in control of this situation. A lot of times, I think especially when it comes to career, we can feel like we're stuck. Well, we are stuck in a way because we rely on the money that we make from our job to survive. That can make you feel stuck in it. Like you're not in control of your situation because we all rely so heavily on our job to pay us that it makes us feel like we're not in a position of power. We can't change our lives because we are at the mercy of that paycheck, if you will. For certain periods of time in our lives, we are. But what we can do is come up with a way to get out of that with this particular career situation. Even if it's going to take a lot of time, years even, I think that the act of working towards leaving or towards drastically changing your situation can make you feel less hopeless in the meantime. You can change your situation. We often convince ourselves that we can't, that we're stuck. We're never stuck. There's always another idea. There's always another option. Again, it might take a long time. It might take a lot of creativity to figure it out, but we all can do it. You can do it. Believe that you can do it. Don't feel silly for thinking big and trying to figure out what you could do instead. Plan it out. I think too that it's interesting how a lot of times, not even small changes, but as we grow older and we mature and we learn more about ourselves and we become more self-aware, we learn what works for us and what doesn't. A great example of that would be perhaps the reason why you hate this job is not even because it's a bad job necessarily. It's just not a job that works for you. If you're introverted and you're working an extroverted job, you're going to hate that job because it doesn't align with who you are as a person. Give that job to somebody else and make a plan on how you can get a job that works better for you as an introverted person. Don't feel stuck doing that job just because it's a good job or just because you're kind of comfortable there and it's like a lot of work to think of somewhere new. If it's not working, come up with a plan. Somebody said, I feel like I'll be wasting my talent if I don't pursue an art career, but I really don't want to struggle financially. What do I do? I'm stuck. I think the key to this is to take it really, really slow. I think a lot of times we can go into this type of situation with an all-or-nothing mindset. Like, I'm either going to only do art or I'm only going to work this corporate job. I'm only going to do one or the other because I think in a lot of ways, that's easier for us to manage in our brains. A lot of us, myself included, just like to dedicate ourselves to one thing. My advice would be, instead of quitting your job and starting your art career immediately, figure out the safest and most responsible way to ease into it and test it out. Perhaps start by keeping your full-time job, but taking on small, art-related freelance projects in your spare time. See how that goes. If it goes well, okay, well, maybe it's time to take the next step. If it doesn't go well, keep experimenting with these freelance projects until eventually you start to figure out what's working and what is sort of lucrative in the art space. Then from there, if it's starting to bring in some money, perhaps see if you can reduce your hours to a part-time position or find a new job that's less demanding and then put a bit more effort into your art career. Now, maybe you're doing 50-50. Once that gets to a successful place and you're like, okay, I think I could actually do this full-time comfortably, then dig into it. If it's working, lean in. I think a slow evolution is the best bet because it gives you the security of a job, of a consistent job, while giving you the space to experiment without pressure because nothing is worse for creativity than pressure. If you quit everything and then try to be a full-time artist all of a sudden, you're going to have a mental breakdown, most likely, because at least in my experience, I am the least creative when the pressure's on. I'm the most creative when I don't need to be. If you still maintain your job and you are financially comfortable, that's going to allow you to be more creative and experiment more effectively. It's very hard to work under pressure. I think figuring out what works before you even have to, I think will really set you up for success. You can work out all the kinks and there's no pressure to make it, to figure it out, to rely on that. I think if you slowly transition from corporate job to artist, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly until you're a full-time artist, you're not going to have this jarring moment of like, oh, fuck, now what? Now I have to do this all the time. If you, that happens to many artists, and then there's this moment of burnout with art, and then there's this, a lot of times with artists, there's a moment of like, oh my god, I don't even know if I love this anymore. Now it's become a job. Now I don't love it anymore. If you can slowly ease into it, you can control every step of the way to ensure that you don't get burnt out. You don't lose your passion for art. You don't have a meltdown about all of a sudden this like immense amount of pressure, which then causes a mental breakdown, which then causes creative block, which then causes you to be unable to make art at all. You can avoid that if you just take it slow. So that would be my suggestion. And that's it for today. That is it for today's advice session. If you enjoyed it, new episode of advice session every other Sunday. Tune in. I give advice. It's unprofessional, but you take it with a grain of salt and everything turns out fine. New episodes of Anything Goes Every Thursday and Sunday, every other Sunday advice session. Listen anywhere, watch on YouTube and Spotify. Anything goes on social media. Anything goes. I'm on the internet at Emma Chamberlain and my coffee company is on the internet and in the world. A Chamberlain coffee. That's all I have for today. I love you all. I appreciate you all. And I'll talk to you in a few days, like literally in a few days. So I can't wait. Talk to you then. Love you and TTYL.