53: A pep talk for your career change

If you need a pep talk today, this episode is for you! Wherever you are in your career change journey, my guest has you covered with practical tools and soulful guidance.

Robyn Moreno is a spiritual coach and author of Get Rooted. In this episode, Robyn shares how you can manage those fears and doubts that often come up with making a career switch—by tapping into your intuition and staying in the present. 

Robyn also reveals the four pillars you can always count on to stay grounded and motivated to keep going with your career change.


Episode Highlights:
• What it means to get rooted
• Feeling unrooted where you are
• Acknowledging your inner voice (or “ser”) that guides you toward change
• Accepting the newness of switching industries or professions
• Networking in a whole new way 
• How to reframe your past experience as fuel for your next chapter
• Four pillars to handle the ups and downs of a career change
• The concept of "susto" and how unprocessed work trauma can hold you back
• Trusting and valuing yourself as you transition into a new field   

Find Robyn Moreno at:

Website: https://www.robynmoreno.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robynnmoreno/

Book: Get Rooted

Need more encouragement? Check out these additional episodes:

Ep 52: Figuring it out as you go

Ep 43: Trying to change careers now

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi, everyone. I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you're considering or working on. Maybe you're trying to switch industries or professions or break out on your own and start a business. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on challenges that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. So I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of advice that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

If you're in need of a pep talk for your career switch, this is the perfect episode for you. Maybe you're just starting to explore the idea of changing careers and need a nudge. Or maybe you've been going at it full speed and could use some encouragement. You might even be on the verge of landing that new job in a new field and need a confidence boost. Wherever you are in your journey, let my guest today be your cheerleader. Robyn Moreno is a spiritual coach and author of Get Rooted. In this episode, Robyn shares how you can manage those fears and doubts that often come up with making a career switch by tapping into your intuition and staying in the present. She also reveals the four pillars you can always count on to stay grounded and motivated to keep going with your career change. Hi, Robyn. Thanks for joining us today. I love the title of your book, Get Rooted. So let's start there. What does it mean to get rooted?

Robyn: What it means to get rooted will be different for everybody. But for me, getting rooted meant coming back home to myself, home to my body, home to my self-trust, and home to, I would say, my intuition or the voice that can tell me like, what is the next step? And I think for the longest time, I felt unrooted. I felt that at some point in my life, maybe when I was younger, I was a kid, someone gave me a map of like, this is how your life is supposed to be, right? And maybe it's society, it's your family. And I, I followed that map and I checked the boxes, right? Like I, I think I had what I would consider a successful career. I, um, I was married, I had children, all the things that I had wanted, and yet I found myself at midlife feeling very unrooted, not really recognizing myself in my life and realizing that I needed to change. And so for me, getting rooted is that coming back. There is also, as I found out and went on this process of getting rooted, I found out it also has a different term, and that was really profound for me. I'm Mexican-American, and the ancient Aztec Mexica, had this saying, they would call the world slippery slick. 

And, you know, maybe, Lixandra, this makes sense to people that are listening. You're walking in your world, things are going on, and then you lose your job, right? The company closes, things change. You might get a divorce. Like, things happen in your life. Like, it's slippery. And sometimes you see it coming, and sometimes you just don't. But they also had an antidote, almost, or a way to combat the slippery slickness of life. And it was a word, it was a Nahuatl word that's called netelitzli, and it means to be well-rooted. And so for me, and I think for everyone listening, we get to ask ourselves these questions, like what roots us? What is going to root us in this world that is ever-changing?

Lixandra: Yeah, and I can definitely see the correlation between the concept of getting rooted and a career change, because like you said, things can change so suddenly, like with layoffs. Also, that feeling of unrootedness, is that even a word? I think that could also be that stirring that you get inside when you're unfulfilled with whatever you're doing. Was career part of feeling unrooted for you?

Robyn: Completely it was completely and I think we can use the word unrooted. It could be untethered. It could feel just unfulfilled There's something that I specifically woke I want to say I woke up but like I was basically felt like someone handed me a map got the assignment, let's go, high achiever, run, run, run. I was just exhausted. I like moved from one project to the next. I never took a break like ever. I got married. I had kids. I never stopped working. Like I was just trying to do it all like so many people do. And I feel like I just was exhausted and burnt out. I just had this sense of like, do I want what I thought I wanted? Like, what I thought I wanted wasn't what I wanted. And then I was like, and who said I wanted these things? Like, who was that voice? And maybe I just had changed. I think, Lixandra, we change so much in our lives. We have so many chapters. And I think that as we're looking at career change, I think it's really healthy. It can be scary for people. It is one thing to get laid off or be in an industry that is being disrupted or dismantled and that's happening right now. I think it's another thing that could be scary for people that are in seemingly Good jobs. They have good gigs. Things are going well and yet they can, there's something where they're just not satisfied or there's a voice in them that says, you know what, maybe now's the time to do something different. And just even before you do anything with it, just explore and honor that voice because something is speaking to you. And so maybe just listen to it for a second before you even do anything.

Lixandra: Yes. Yes. Let's get into that voice. I read your book, so I'm familiar with the terms. What is that voice that tells you that something is off?

Robyn: You know, I think that voice is so important, right? And for me, I call it ser, S-E-R. And it's because I have a spiritual teacher and I was talking to her. What happened to me is I had a corporate job and I left my corporate job. My mental health and physical health were not good. Like it was really like something that made sense for me. And so I started on kind of a path to getting rooted and I started studying Gurundirismo, which is a wisdom tradition that was practiced by my grandmothers and maybe people that are listening might understand, but it was a tradition that I kind of ignored when I was younger. I just sort of dismissed it. And as I got older, I was like, wow, this is, and it's basically like an earth-based wisdom tradition that brings you back into wholeness and rooting. And that started to make sense to me. As I started to practice this and was just contemplating new paths, I would have a lot of doubt. And I have a mentor, she's in her seventies. And I would just be like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, this doesn't make sense. Or I do know what I want to do, but no one else is doing it. I'm going to look nuts. And she would say, look, you need to listen to yourself. S E R. And I was like, what is she talking about? I'd never used that word in that term before. It was almost like a noun. And what she was saying that for, you know, the verb means to be right. But it was, it was almost a knowing. It's just, it's that small, still voice inside. Maybe people that are listening might identify it as intuition. It's just that, that gut feeling that you just know, it's an inner knowing that you know, when it's time to leave, you know, when it's time to start something. It doesn't really have to make sense to other people. Like, I don't think it's really like an intellectual thing. It's a body wisdom. And so what was happening is when I was very busy doing a lot, I wasn't listening to these pangs inside or these whispers inside that would say, Robyn, you're really tired. You need to slow down or you're not enjoying this. You're not enjoying, this is not fulfilling you. I kept bypassing all those inner voices that would say, or even one that was like, maybe you want to write a book. I had spent most of my life as a journalist, and so I had spent about 25 years writing other people's stories. But at this point in my life, something very strong spoke to me, whether it was ser, intuition, inner knowing, spirit, who knows, ancestors. But it was like, I think it's time to tell your story. And that was so scary and so profound for me and also inevitably very healing. But I had to listen to that inner voice. And I think that inner voice speaks to us all the time. It's just whether we choose to listen.

Lixandra: I can relate to that inner voice, especially at the beginning when you may be trying to figure things out. I was in publishing too. In fact, that's how we know each other. And when I moved on from publishing after my layoff and moved into pharmaceutical advertising, I knew from the beginning that it was not for me, but I stuck it out. And for three years, I had this inner voice and now I can call it my ser, just saying, this is not the field for you. You know, this is just not for you. And I felt like I was selling my soul and that really bothered me. I also couldn't sleep and all these other symptoms started coming up.

Robyn: Well, I think that's such an important point. Like that idea of, so some, something in there is saying to you, this is not working. This is not for you. But I don't, I think it's really normal. So I just want to normalize that for people that listen out there that we don't always listen and that's okay. It's not like you're like, yep, got the memo. I'm out of here because there's a reality. You have to pay your bills. We don't also allow ourselves often the time of process. Like you almost, I think, had to prove it to yourself. Like, I think you knew probably from the get-go and people say this, people that are listening are like, I knew from the first moment I walked in there, it was a bad idea. I knew from the time I met that person, it wasn't a good idea. But it's almost like we need the evidence to support it, right? Because it's not, it's based in intuition. It's based in gut. It's based in feeling. And we have facts. We live in a world of facts often, right? Especially as journalists. And so I think what happened is you had to mount the evidence. And finally, you're like, yep, yep, that matched what I was saying. That matched what I was saying.

Lixandra: Yeah, but part of the procrastination is also, I think, well, if not this, then what? Yes. Like figuring out what's next.

Robyn: And I think that part comes from the listening, the acknowledgement. And that's why we say like the first step, right? So wherever someone's listening, whether they're actively looking for a job or they're just feeling dissatisfied and that's why they're listening to a podcast like yours, right? But maybe the first step without having to make any big changes is just to acknowledge, just to like, I don't know, right now I'm placing my hand on my heart, you place your hand on your belly and just acknowledge like, okay, ser, knowing, body, what's happening right now? And it's like, just, I don't know, I don't like this. You could write it down. You can journal it. Again, this is, we're not doing anything with this. This is a period of exploration. It could take five minutes in the morning. What are you trying to tell me? I don't know. Like I'm really good at interior decor. Like I always, you know, people love the way that my house looks. Maybe that could be a job. Maybe that sounds crazy. But before you overwrite it with a hundred other voices that are like, How are you going to make a living? And da, da, da, da, da. And how do they do that? Like before you get bogged down in sort of the like realities of it, like maybe just stay there and have the exploration. These ideas, they presented themselves. They, you gave them room, right? They were invited to the table. And I think if you invite them to the table, they realize, Oh, Oh, they're listening. I'm going to keep speaking up. And so then you become in relation and they'll keep speaking up and maybe they'll guide you. Right. And the next best step might be like. I'm going to do some research. If that's in fact my dream to be an interior decorator, I'm going to research three people that I know that do it and ask them, what are the realities of that? Like, how did you start? What do you make? What does one need? And you kind of just go like one step at a time. But I think what can happen is that we shut down that set with the hundred other scared voices. And then we just bottle it up. And then you walk around with a state of. dissatisfaction and confusion and nothing can come from that.

Lixandra: You kind of just dismiss it because real life, right? Like, yeah, if you have a family or if you're if it's your source of income, you got to keep going for for now, at least.

Robyn: Yeah. And so start with the exploration and see what can happen.

Lixandra: Let's explore other ways career changers can get rooted with other situations like switching industries or professions. Some people choose to go back to school. Some want to start a business. What are some other ways that people can get rooted when it comes to these situations?

Robyn: I would say that when a voice that comes up a lot and what was coming up for me was the newness of it. I had spent 25 years in a career that was successful. And by successful, I mean that like outwardly, like I had recognition. I would have an award, like it was proven. It was sort of a proven thing. Right. And I felt very confident in this area. When I decided to move in a different area, of course, I felt like a baby. And this was not fun when you're 45, 48, 51 years old to feel like a baby. This is, it's not a fun feeling, but yet you have to allow yourself the newness of being a beginner. And I think that is really important as we're in a career change. You're going to be a beginner again. If you decide to go back to school, I have, my sister is 45 years old. She was in fashion for, you know, decades and like journalism. heavily disrupted by social media and fast fashion, right? And so trying to figure out what she wanted to do, she went back to her childhood dream of wanting to be a nurse. She actually always wanted to be a nurse. And then from there, she was like trying to figure out what, does she want to be a nurse or does she want to be a therapist? And she started interviewing people because she wanted to do one or the other. She finally decided on nursing. And then after that, she had to decide what school, what's the program. So it had more information. And then she is in school with people that are like half her age. And guess what? It's hard because she's older and you know, but guess what? Your brain is also very elastic and it still works. But she had to throughout that give herself the grace of being new. I think that's a big, big deal for us is give yourself the grace to be a beginner again. Be tender with yourself. Give yourself a break. Like you're not going to know all the things because you don't have the experience. And there's something that could be really exciting about that. There's something that could be very fresh about that. Just understand that imposter syndrome and, you know, fear are going to come in hard when you're doing something new because guess what? It is new. And so there's an allowance that has to happen. And so I just want to acknowledge that as we're changing all the careers, like when you did your podcast, I mean, that must've been scary for you. Oh yeah, of course.

Lixandra: I was, I was afraid of the whole thing, but booking guests was one of my first fears, I'd say, like, how am I going to book people when there are no episodes out yet? but I turned to the people I knew. After my layoff, I went to all these career seminars at the New York Public Library, and I asked a few of those coaches to be on my show, and that's how I got started.

Robyn: I would say also what's coming up, I would say, especially in a change, right, is, except the newness, except your novice status, is two, is rely on your community. I've learned that so hard, Lixandra, at what I consider kind of a late age, for me, for some reason, and it's okay, I thought I had to do everything myself. I was a very self-made person, right? I didn't have parents that had a lot of money, they didn't pay for my college, stuff like that. So I was a go-getter, and I got really reliant on self, which I think was healthy, right? I propelled myself, I got myself in college, I paid for my own college, I moved from Texas to New York, like I moved up ladders. That said, people are here to help you. people that are listening have probably years and decades in a career. You've built trust. You've built relationships. People know that you're valuable, that you're talented, that you do good work. And so really lean on your community. There is nothing wrong for asking for help. I, I'm just saying this because I had a hard time asking for help. I always wanted to be the giver and not the receiver. And there was something that I think that was, it's very humbling and very strong and very honest and going into your community, whether it's your LinkedIn community, whether it's like a sorority or fraternity, whether it's your family or friends and saying, Do you know anyone that does this? I'm thinking about doing this. Do you have any suggestions? Because we don't live in a vacuum. We live in a collaborative community and people want to help and they're here to help and we shouldn't really do anything alone.

Lixandra: So would you say that others can help you get rooted?

Robyn: Yeah, absolutely. Because we root each other, right? If you think about it, we're going to play with the metaphor of a root, right? Imagine like the aspen trees, like there's these systems of roots, right? They're interconnected roots, right? So you see the trees. like above the soil but underneath what you can't see is that their roots are in fact connected so when one needs nutrients or is in trouble the other system is going to send it like it just has a message and it sends it and then when you have it you give it and so it's working in this sense of interconnectedness and reciprocity. Like you don't know, like all these people that you've hired over the years, you don't know who's going to help you. You don't know who's going to hire you. You don't know who's going to get the job and is going to want to turn around and support you. Like you've put in all of that good work and I think it's okay to tap into that. Like I think it's very healthy to tap into that. I think it feels, I don't know, it's reciprocal.

Lixandra: Yeah. I mean, we call it networking, right? Yeah, networking. That's right. We're a network. But I like the way you've been talking about it. You haven't even used the word. It's more about community.

Robyn: Well, because we understand. I mean, again, you and I are both journalists. We're in publishing for a long time. We understand. what it used to be like, what we went through and what it's like now. Right? So we have that lived experience of I know what you're going through because I'm going through it. So if I'm in a position where if I'm at a different company, wherever I land, if it's nonprofits, pharmaceutical, whatever, and I'm able to support people that I know are doing good work, then yeah, I'm absolutely going to do it. And I would say it also feeds into something else, which is Trust, trust in your own abilities. Trust in all the good work that you've done. I think that sometimes it can be disheartening when you get to be say in your 40s or 50s and you're looking ahead at a new career. I think you could be scared. I think that there's a very healthy thing to think like, what am I going to do? Like what's in front of me? And I think that it's really, you can be very rooted and the fact that like trust your experience. Trust all of the good work that you've been doing, all of the skills that you've learned that are outside. We have a lot more talents and experience that we often don't count in there. And so as you're examining what you can do, like bring all of your talents to the table. Because like you said, how I was translating into pharmaceutical sales, maybe that was not for you, but like, maybe it will be morphed into like a nonprofit or into like, you're going to become a therapist. It's hard to say what's going to turn out, but you're going to use all of the skills that might not even be on your resume. And I think that we can mine our own experience for that.

Lixandra: Thanks, Robyn. A big part of this podcast, you know, is to encourage people to take action and to stay motivated during those inevitable ups and downs of a career change. So I hope what you said, if anything, is a good pep talk for anyone out there who needs it. It certainly sounded that way to me, and I appreciate that. Let's go into some actual practices, like journaling, which you mentioned earlier. What are some other things listeners can do to stay rooted or to help with getting rooted?

Robyn: So when I was talking about how the ancient Mishika Aztec had this idea that the world was slippery slick, right? And then they also had this idea of the well-rootedness, right? So this really great professor actually was looking at all the things that they did, and he identified four specific things. And I imagine they did way more than that, but four things that he highlighted are really accessible to us now. So the first path I would say to get rooted was this sense of embodiment, to come back to the body. And I think that speaks to our ser because this idea I think of slowing down, of deep listening, of checking in with ourselves, whether it's in like exercise or just even stillness. It's not something that we always do. So every morning I have like a check-in practice, right? So it's just a quieting practice. It doesn't have to be elaborate. It can be five minutes. And it's a literal quieting. It's my kids are going to school. And usually what I do is I sit down, have my cup of coffee and I look out the window and I kind of just, and I'm observing. And I often ask myself like, all right, what's going on? What do you need for today? And it's just this inner dialogue where again, you will be able to speak to you. Like, I don't think we just slow down for enough to even know what it is that we want. And so, I feel like the slowing down, even though it might seem simplistic, is very profound. The second one, how to rootedness, is really about having a sense of balance. It's about allowing your feelings and then kind of moving through them. So, I think what happens when there's any career change or anything is coming up for us, A lot of emotions come up, right? We can be fearful. We can be, I don't know, angry. We can be resentful. We can be inspired. And so to me, emotions are intelligent. They're intelligent. So rather than try to like squash something, I think we allow them. We allow whatever's coming up. There could be a grieving. There could be a genuine grieving for an industry that's changing. There could be a grieving. for something that you wanted and didn't get. There can be a grieving even if it's something great and simply every beginning is also an ending, right? So, sitting with that understanding that I'm changing, that I'm moving in a new cycle and I love that where I was but I'm not there anymore and feeling that and acknowledging that. I do this thing called over and out. Whenever I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, overstressed, I kind of want to move it out. I feel it. I feel that I don't repress it. But I move it and I usually do it through an extended exhale, through breath work, or through getting it out through like writing. To me, because I'm a writer, just putting that pen to paper and just having like free writes where I just write things is very, it's out. And I'm not carrying that emotional weight in the body. And I feel a sense of freedom and spaciousness, then maybe inspiration can come in, right? voices can come in from other people. And that takes me to my third path of rootedness, which is community. And we had talked about that, which is people can help us. People can inspire us. People are there for us. I really believe that in a strong way. So the asking for help that we talked about, the inspiration, people listening to your podcast, right? Like You're offering a service, Lixandra, to people and they're going to be filled by you. They're going to be guided by you, you know? And so thank you. I just want to acknowledge and thank you for the time that you're taking to support other people that you don't even know. You don't even know who's going to help. So that in a way is reciprocal, right? And then the last path to rootedness, it's nature. It's about like really, you know, being in the outside world. So much of our work is internal. It could be inside, right? Like physically inside. I think that we get to open our horizons in a metaphorical way and in an expansive way when we realize there is a big world out there. And oftentimes when we're in a career change, we can only see what we knew. So we can only look at like, well, I was a writer, therefore, what am I going to do? I'm going to do this. Then, you know, it's our view, our worldview can get small. For me, when I go out into the world and I'm able to be present, It gets more vast. I'm able to feel the rootedness with my feet on the ground. I'm able to look at the expansiveness of the sky. I'm able to notice that there is a bunch of different birds, right? And I think that expansiveness and variety can open our perspectives because what you end up doing might never be the thing you thought you were going to do. It might be outside. It might be outside and I think it's really healthy to go outside of yourself to expand your job search, expand what you think you can do.

Lixandra: Yes, I love that nature can root us. I live by a wooded park and oh, what a difference it makes to have so much greenery around me when I go there for a walk. It's just, just so calming.

Robyn: And science shows this, like literally science shows that nature brings you more peace, right? It lessens stress and anxiety. And I think what nature does is it brings you to the moment, right? Because there's like, say that you let yourself go walk in that woods at your lunch break for 20 minutes. You gave that gift to yourself, right? And say that you were preoccupied by work, you know, the rumination in your head, what am I going to do? Oh my gosh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden, a giant cardinal flies by and you see this flash of red. Then boom, you're in the present. Boom, you stopped the rumination, you stopped the thoughts and the worry, and you were there and you were present to what's in front of you. And so often in life, I think we miss opportunities. We can't always see what's just around us because we're a little stuck in our heads. And I think it's giving you that, that blueprint that, oh wait, hold on. I'm fully present. Now I'm on my main street. I'm realizing there's a bookstore, right? Like how can I work at the bookstore? Can I open the bookstore? Do I want to buy a journal? Like who knows what's going to happen, but there's myriad possibilities are in front of you when you have the practice of presence, right? And I think that nature very much brings you into the present moment.

Lixandra: I've had the bird experience that you just mentioned where some beautiful bird catches my eye and I'm like, wow, it really gets me out of my head and into the present. And that actually helps clear my head so I can have new thoughts instead of just ruminating on whatever negative thoughts I'm having at the time.

Robyn: It stops the rumination. It cuts it. And then all of a sudden, the moment, the present moment is it's like a clean slate. All of a sudden, it's like, whoa, I'm here. And then what can arise, what inspiration can rise when you're not bogged down in that same old repetitive story, right? It's like, oh, oh, and that's what we're talking about is like a lot of this as we're moving into new chapters is this presence, this newness and this allowance of life and working with life. So I think it makes good sense.

Lixandra: Another concept, Robyn, that I want to bring up from your book that applies to all things that we go through with career change is susto. Can you tell us what that is and the role it may play with all the newness and the fears that come with a career change?

Robyn: Susto as I understand it, it comes from the word asustar, which means to fright or to scare. And so in curlerismo, there's this idea that a shock, a trauma, an unexpected experience can actually shock you out of your body. And so then you have this sense, it's almost like maybe like a fight or flight, you know, like there's a gone-ness. And you know that you have a susto because you feel a little incomplete. So, in Cura de Dismal, they speak on more of a soul, a spiritual level. And so it's this idea that you have like a soul loss, right? But if we bring it to, say, I don't know, present terms or modern terms or just now, I think this can be applied to like work. Like we don't probably talk about this enough, but work can be kind of traumatizing. Like you can have like bad experiences, like you could have got laid off, right? Even just getting laid off, whether it has nothing to do with simply because they're downsizing, that can affect you, that can affect your ego, that can really throw you for a loop, right? Where you're just like, oh my gosh, what's going on? if you had a bad interaction with a boss or maybe someone that reported to you, whether you worked in an environment that was toxic, that wasn't great. If you made mistakes, we make mistakes. We don't talk about this enough, Lixandra. Any endeavor, any humanness, incorporates us making a mistake. We're human. And if we're going to do anything, we're going to probably make a mistake. It's okay. Like it happens. I know it's not fun, but how do you learn? You learn mostly because of the mistakes you made. And I think we're really hard on ourselves. We're perfectionists. Nobody wants to make a mistake. Nobody wants to have been laid off. Nobody wants that, right? And if you get to a certain age, it's just going to have happened because it's just life. You're going to slip. Someone pulled the rug up from under you. And so this idea of susto, I would say it's like that soul loss. And I think as we move into a new career path, I think it can be very healthy to look back And be like, okay, where were the places that I really lost myself? I, you know, in that job, I did not act the way that I wanted to. I did not like the way that I talked to that person. I didn't like it. There could be a level of like forgiveness. And then move on, be able to move on. And I think that that's a really good question because even me, as I was, it's my birthday next month. And I often do a tradition where I kind of like go through the year, years. And it was like, what was I still dragging into my new year? And there's some things. There was a, there was a, there was a work thing that I wanted to work out. The collaborators couldn't figure it out. It ended. And I was very surprised and disappointed. And it was like, you know what? Let it go. I needed time. It wasn't, didn't happen yesterday. It happened like, you know, over a year ago, but I was, I finally felt ready, like enough. Now you can move on. Don't let it impede your ability and your inspiration to think that you can still do things. Does that make sense?

Lixandra: I think we get caught up with our own thoughts that we forget that they come from somewhere. And that's why I wanted to bring up Susto. I think Susto plays a part even with some of the challenges that we've covered today, like imposter syndrome. Also setting boundaries and valuing yourself when it comes time to negotiate a job offer in a new field. Yeah, we may be starting over, but we've got all this experience and all these skills that we've earned throughout the years. And I think that's when we have to address our fears and be like, hey, I don't have to get the low end of the pay range because I'm new in this industry.

Robyn: I love that. I love that. And I think that is, that's the healthy part of the susto, right? And that's what I think I'm trying to say is that you just have learned, right? And like you said, Trust yourself that you're not going to do it again. Like, I have that regret, Lixandra. I have that regret that I was underpaid and I'm like, ah, I hate that. I get so mad. Like, why didn't I ask for this? And why didn't I negotiate? I was just, took what I got. I was just happy to be, you know, in the room, whatever. And you know what? Not again. The reality is you always have an opportunity to do things different. And the benefit of the new career, the new opportunity is that you will do, you will, you will do it different. You will, you're not going to do the same thing again. And that's beautiful. That shows that you can change. That shows that we have the willingness to change. That shows that we can be there for ourselves. We can be our best advocates. We can have healthy boundaries. There is, I mean, the person I am today is not the person I was when I was 25 or 35 or even 45. I think at this point, and this is such a gift, is we know our value. Every year that you've been in the workforce, every time that you turned something in, you guided a mentee, you were able to navigate, you know, like a boss. You were able to start something within a company. You were able to leave and start something again. Like, that is valuable. You have banked all of that. And in that way, you're rich. And so trust in that, like sit in that, like revel in that and let it inform you and you will, you will. So thank you for that. I love that.

Lixandra: Wow. What a way to wrap up Robyn. So tell us, how can listeners find you and what services do you offer?

Robyn: There is nothing that I've talked about that I have not done. Like this, I come from a very rooted experience in everything that I'm saying. Right. And I really know what it's like to be changing careers. and to be both excited and scared. I really, really understand that. And so I do coaching. I do spiritual coaching as well. I teach writing classes. There's so many people that are discovering at midlife that they have a voice, that they have a story they want to tell. I lead workshops and I lead retreats. And so I bring people together. that we can, you know, answer these questions or even just feel these thoughts, right? Like these ideas of sustos, these ideas of ser, these ideas of change, these ideas of imposter syndrome, these ideas of like, what do I want to root in? So there's many ways that people can find me if they just go to Robynmoreno.com. There's a work with me section and there's a lot of different ways that I work with people.

Lixandra: And how can we get your book?

Robyn: So everyone can pick up a copy of Get Rooted. It's a really beautiful memoir-esque book that does have very real-world practices about how to root.

Lixandra: Wonderful. All right, Robyn, this has been an amazing pep talk for anyone out there working on their career switch. What last words do you have for us?

Robyn: So many people are walking this path, and so I just want everyone else out there that's listening, wherever you are, we get you. like you are seen, you are heard, you are supported. And as long as you're just able to just articulate and say, I need help, or I'm thinking about this, you know, that there is always really a blueprint available that you get to write your own new map now, and that other people can support you in that.

Lixandra: Thanks to Robyn Moreno for being our guest today. You can find Robyn, that's Robyn with a Y, at Robynmoreno.com, LinkedIn, and on Instagram. You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. So what's your career switch? Are you motivated to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. Let us know too if you'd like to be a guest. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at careerswitchpod. And please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.