Career Stories

12/17/2025

If you’re having the experience questioning what you’re I doing with your life - these three actions move you from inaction towards meaning again.

12/13/2025

An early sketch of The Career 22.

The Career 22 are the 22 aspects of bringing your career character to life, especially during a career transition. A few things to note:

1. There are 10 solo rays. Each represents one aspect of character.

2. There are four rays that have two mini rays off of them. This is because there are four aspects of character that have a base level and an accelerated level.

All 22 dimensions of character are all linked, and like i shared earlier this week, once you learn how to activate them all, at the base level, you can easily light up a few rays with ease.

If you know what you want in your career.

If you know what makes you awesome, what your super skills are, and your less-awesome attributes.

But, you’re not sure about how to bring this to life so that’s it feels real to you and others, the career 22 will support your powerful transition.

If your body and story is still expressing the old identity, use these new pathways to change that.

Your impact is too important to be held back by an old character.

I’m putting the final touches on the program this month to be ready for the new year. But I’ll have a sneak peek next week.

If this is what you need, get your career goals and story ready by doing the first and fifth step in my book, The Career Stories Method.

You’re going to love this.

12/11/2025

Career transitions aren’t just when you’re looking to land a new job. They can happen anytime you intentionally change how you want to be in your work.

This might be noticing you’ve become so rigid in your work, you transition to being a more open and innovative specialist.

Or you are transition from needing to be the star player to setting up others to shine more.

You’re stepping into new career character.

In whatever character you undertake to become, you’ll need a strong technique to fall back on until it becomes automatic.

When I was transitioning from arts educator to HR, it wasn’t enough to rename myself and skills. Inspiration for that was capricious. It demanded strong techniques to fall back on. And it was more than one technique.

You can imagine it like your new career character is the centre of a circle, and surrounded by light bulbs that haven’t turned on yet. Over a few months, you learn about each light & how to turn it on. The lights are things like radiating, style, gestures, and the focus point. All the stuff character is made of. As you get really great at turning on a few different light bulbs, they all start to work together. The new character becomes easier to be.

I think you’re great at turning on a few light bulbs on your own. Maybe it’s style, story, and selling.

Maybe you’re great at imagining and feeling the room.

The way to fuller career character change is knowing about the other bulbs, and getting them to light up too.

This practice, which I call the Career 22, is what I’m finally teaching next year. It’s the heart of inspired presence during career transitions.

The starting place is knowing where you’re headed. What you want to be in your career.

Determine that this year and let’s turn on all the bulbs next.

If you need a quick practice to figure out your “what’s next,” send me a note about what is going on for you, happy to share some resources in the dms

05/22/2025

3 reasons I ask these two questions when a leader wants to channel something new in their presence and expression are:

1. Deep leadership transformation doesn’t happen in the rational space, it happens in the imaginal realm.

2. Leadership actions are often tied to internal archetypes.

3. As leaders develop, they may relate to a different archetype and are living an outdated narrative, the second question brings that into focus.

By answering, exploring, and channeling the new archetype, the leader changes how they show up and influence.

I had this experience. For about three decades I was drawn to the starving artist archetype. In movies, it was often an artist who was quirky and had a cool loft. Part of my professional identity and expression channeled that quirky creative side.

But a few years ago, and even this week while watching “Hacks,” I saw my new archetype ideal and leaned it.
- It’s not the successful comic
- Or the head writer
- Or the successful assistant who bartered incredible deals

It was Debra’s physic hanging out in the boardroom. Now, that doesn’t mean I want to be a psychic. It does mean I am drawn to the healer archetype. That’s looks and feels different than the quirky artist.

These questions might help you know what you want to channel more of in your leadership.

Is there an archetype in movies or films you’re most drawn to?

10/23/2022

When at a career crossroad, it’s useful to ask:

1. Where will I make the most impact?
2. What helps the world more?
3. Which path allows my heart to sing and open the most?
4. What future story do I want to tell?

10/14/2022

You can be good at lots of things and they never need to be your job.

You can be good at your current work, even amazing at it, and still go do something else.

There is more to career contentment than just being good at something.

I’ve dropped all sorts of things I am good at, it leaves space for others to enter.

07/21/2022

Here are five meditations you can do to relieve work stress (and can be done at your desk).

Which one works the best for you?

Here are five meditations to try and relieve work stress, and they can be done at a desk.

12/15/2021

Maybe things aren't clear to you yet, career-wise. And you need more help than a course, but a $3,500 coaching program is outside your budget.

I get that.

I run a program called the Career Intensive where a small group of us work out what's happening in their careers & how to use stories to get what they want. It's the most real conversations.

Sometimes people say, “I figured it out, this is great."

And other times people are like "this sucks. I'll never figure this out.”

And both are fine. For three months I give individual weekly feedback & homework to each person & resources to help them figure out their awesome & drop the old stories. Everyone gets a short monthly 1-1 call with me for three months too.

At the same time you have access to my entire career coaching library.

This is a pre-career transition program, it’s ideal for people who want to make a move, but want to be intentional about the move and message. People who have 15+ years work experience, and are specialists or leaders, do well in this program.

We spend 2 months doing career exploration, mindfulness, and self-story work. By the end of February, you’ll know your story and the ideal place to tell it.

March is pretty much story school, where you practice sharing stories & get specific feedback on what works & what to tweak. You’ll question yourself less and trust yourself more. You’ll know your career stories & how to use them.

It's a more affordable alternative to my 1-1 coaching programs with the same result.

Registration is open now (link in my profile). We start January 17th but if you want to pre-game, I’ve got stuff for you.

If this sounds like something you want to do with me, DM me & I'll send you the program info. I keep the program small to ensure I give individual attention & feedback for everyone.

Structure + stories support + feedback

Over the next week or so, I’ll share stories from people who took it before, including someone who got a 92% salary bump!

And not to be too FOMO, but in the past, this program sells out a week or two after registration opens.

12/10/2021

This week was stressful.

I had my regular workload, increased interest in working with me (I’m grateful for that, but it still adds more work), I gave a few conference talks, and my daughter was at home sick. We took her for a COVID test and I still had to work while waiting for the results.

I had a feeling like, “Can’t I just take time off the regular work while this settles?”

Of course not.

I was busier than usual, but I was also focused on the stress I felt and how it made work hard to do. I was adding to my own stress.

What I needed was a short reset. So, I did this simple mindfulness technique of anchoring my attention elsewhere to help get out of my own mind.

I reset.
I found immediate relief.
I went back to work and got things done.

I made a short video on the technique I used.

Oh, and her test was negative. A relief!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FGUe0jJckM

Stress happens at work. When work stress happens but you don't have time to fully process it, it's helpful to have relief tools.Watch this video to learn a s...

12/08/2021

How to make a great first impression at a job interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWbq2yzpUKo

The first impression at a job interview matters. There are six components to make a positive first impression:1. How you are waiting2. Physical appearance3. ...