nadine: We're here today with Emily Heath. Emily Heath is currently working as a career and grief coach in Manchester and online. She identifies as a multi passionate professional. And is [00:01:00] now enjoying a third career bloom. so she could also, I suppose, be called a serial careerist. You can find her on her website, which is www.

nadine: emilyheath. coach, which is her URL and her Instagram username. So there's no kind of extra bit on the end of that. It is just emilyheath. coach. Uh, hi Emily. Hi. Excellent. Lovely to have you here. Thanks for having me. What we're doing today is, we're talking, we're actually going to do something unusual because we're going to deconstruct a metaphor because we think, Emily thinks, it doesn't really work.

nadine: So, the metaphor that we're starting with is, find your passion. That's the kind of idea that we're going against and we're going to try and decompose it and then hopefully reconstruct something in its place. Um, but before we get to that place, the kind of person who, for whom this might be relevant would be maybe if somebody's lost their vigor, maybe you used to jump out of bed with a bounce, either literally or metaphorically, uh, and you'd go at life, whether that's your work, your social life, or your love life.

nadine: And maybe at some point you've been told we just need to find your passion [00:02:00] and Emily's here to kind of tell us how nonsense that is really. Emily, have you got any thoughts on the first instance? Yes, 

Emily: so the thing about finding your passion is that one of the main problems with it is I think it gets taken And if you take it literally, if you're going to, uh, in fact, as it's presented, it's presented like your passion is out there and you need to go find the thing that has a little label on it that says passion and only you'll be able to see the label.

Emily: But that's the idea that there's something out in the world that is your passion. And the problem with that is that there. Isn't a thing out there that is your passion. Passion is a feeling. It is a strong emotion that we have and, and as you'll probably know, because, uh, we all feel passionate about people, we have passion, feel passionate about things like our hobbies, [00:03:00] so we can feel about all sort sorts of things.

Emily: So the first problem really is taking it literally now then if you. Have identified that passion is a feeling within you and you found yourself having that feeling Towards something in your work and that's considered the dream job, isn't it to feel? passionate about your work then the tricky thing with that is that when you get that you want to hold on to it really tightly and the problem with that is that You can burn yourself out by By throwing so much of yourself, by constantly stoking this fire of passion, you will burn yourself out.

Emily: And the other problem with it is that we do inevitably at some point lose our passion. Then we can feel, take that as a real blow and we, because if we [00:04:00] have identified a kind of conflated the passion with the thing that we're doing, we can then reject the thing. So the feeling's gone and we say, oh, I don't like this job anymore.

Emily: This job is not for me. When it's actually just That the feeling is gone and maybe you need to change some things to get that feeling back. And 

nadine: that feels very similar to how we are with relationships. When we first meet people quite often there can be this sort of buzz of excitement around it and you're saying that that will die, that that essentially will just, well maybe not die, but it will wane.

nadine: It's that it does buzz, that wanes. Yeah. Yeah. With a job, whether it's a job or whether it's a person, it's that bit that wanes. And actually, if you are trying to keep that going, that's where you're gonna burn out. 

Emily: Yeah. In the same way that people who have really fiery relationships are often those people, they break up and they get back together and break up and get back together, and that's exhausting.

Emily: But it 

nadine: keeps that it exciting. Right. Yeah. Which then sort of, I don't know, matches that notion of feed, feeding or fighting your [00:05:00] passion that it, which we do seem to love so much in our society. I would like, maybe now is the ideal opportunity to say that lovely quote that you said to me, that the notion of finding your passion appeals to our desire for a quick fix and our obsession with romance.

nadine: You said that to me when we were just chatting about this episode and I thought it was absolutely brilliant because it is. All films, songs, TV programs, it's all about that. Oh, and the film ends when, when they find that. And it's like, oh no, that's where the work really begins. Like, we 

Emily: don't have, well, there probably are a few actually, but we don't have many, like, films about long term relationships, about that kind of slow burn, consistent, loving relationship.

Emily: We also By the same token, we romanticise that kind of exciting jobs, you know, when we look at kind of pop stars and some of those jobs that we kind of think are really exciting, that they're really kind of fiery jobs. We don't kind of get excited about people who just rock up at the same office. 

nadine: Put in the [00:06:00] donkey work.

nadine: I think that's interesting, isn't it? And maybe, maybe now would be a good time as well to move on to the notion of how then do you keep working? How, if, if you are the kind of person who maybe lacks a little bit of confidence, you're the kind of person who, if you've got that huge passion, then that's the thing.

nadine: That's the fuel that's going to keep you going, isn't it? But as soon as that wanes, then, then you need confidence. You need confidence that the thing you're doing is the right thing. You need confidence that the person you're seeing is the right person, whatever that means in inverted commas. And, and that confidence.

nadine: could just shuffle, could just decrease a little bit, and particularly, I remember I was talking before, you said, uh, after a promotion, or after a, a change, or after maybe a significant or stressful event in somebody's life, that passion can kind of, it, it, it's quite a, a vulnerable, fragile 

Emily: thing. Yeah, that's totally it, and that's what I find it comes up a lot in coaching is that I don't.

Emily: It's not that I have many people come and say, I've lost my passion. Help me find it again. [00:07:00] But it comes up when people say, Oh, I'm not feeling very confident in this new role. And it's usually that they've stepped out of their well say comfort zone, but it's also the passion zone. It's like I was You know, I was contributing, I, um, to making, like, often I work with a lot of creatives, so I was there creating the radio program or doing the design work, and now I'm meant to be managing the people who do that, and that doesn't feel as exciting, because you don't, you don't know what you're doing, partly, so you're kind of, you've moved out of your your kind of natural strengths and so that's one of those components when you lose that you start to start to question your confidence and then because you've lost that passion you question am I even doing the right thing.

Emily: So 

nadine: how would you help somebody in that situation if they because people want promotions people want yeah great responsibility they want to climb the ladder [00:08:00] maybe more money they got all sorts of commitments what would you do with somebody in that situation? Yeah, so 

Emily: we talk about What it is that they do get excited about.

Emily: And again, it's in a way it's separating. It's kind of what I said at the start. Like we often think that we are passionate about, so to take a designer point of view, creating designs and being hands on as a designer. But really, if you break down why you're doing that, it's because you're making a thing, like you want to make, put a thing out into the world that people, people like or that they can use, um, really easily in, in terms of like web design and if we can kind of separate out To be happy and to be useful, I have to be doing this particular role, which is designing.

Emily: And remember that it's about making the thing. And then we can realize how whatever new role you're in is also helping [00:09:00] make that thing. But it's helping other people, you know, guiding them to do the design work, say, while you're helping maybe thinking, do some strategic thinking, then you reconnect to the real kind of purpose and that can help.

Emily: So that's 

nadine: purpose more than passion. Yeah. And actually, if we can connect to the purpose of what we're doing. Yeah. Makes 

Emily: sense. Well, it's purpose. I think, yeah, purpose kind of gives you, it's purpose over like a, a hard skill. So it's choosing, putting more importance on, on the end result rather than the way you get there.

nadine: Right, okay, the thing that you're doing day to day is what you're achieving ultimately. I'm interested then in this kind of alternative metaphor that we half came up with that, that sort of stood a little bit in place. It doesn't, it's, it's not, it's not bulletproof is it? But we, we talked about. Instead of finding your passion, maybe we should be trying to build a fire.

nadine: Yeah, 

Emily: well, so that [00:10:00] came out of being able to, um, create passion. I was thinking it's not that passion isn't a good thing to be looking for. It's about figuring out what are the components of passion. And of course, passion, you think of a spark. So you often have a spark of interest. Um, that creates, that creates passion and so then, yeah, we get to the, to the fire building and building a fire is a nice metaphor to think about the long term career or long term relationship, if you go back to the, to the relationship and romance, um, point of view.

Emily: If you don't want to burn out really quickly, like you like to match, that's not going to keep you warm and keep you seeing for very long. Then we need to pay attention to how to build that fire. 

nadine: So the spark is the ideal bit in the first instance. We need the spark in order to light the fire. But then in order to It's [00:11:00] the purpose that kind of made me think of the fire metaphor.

nadine: Because the purpose is, is Why would you build a fire? You're not just going to build a fire because it looks nice. We're building a fire because it heats us, keeps us warm, cooks our food, gives us light. Right, so it's the purpose then. So right now we're building a fire because we want those 

Emily: things. Yeah, I think why the fire building metaphor is good when you think about careers is because Um, maybe it's not good for people in this day and age because no one probably knows how to make fires, but let me tell you, but fire building takes time and practice to get it right.

Emily: And you have to understand the materials that you're working with. So to, if you're trying to, you know, we're talking kind of survival skills. If you're making fire from nothing, then you need. Some light, fluffy materials that are really dry to start off with, and then you need some small tweaks. And then, you know, slowly, as you build that fire, you will need slightly bigger twigs and slightly than some small logs.

Emily: And so you [00:12:00] need to know. All your materials and you need to be considered and wait and give it time. All these things that just don't fit with the like, oh, I won't find my passion. There's, that's all just so fast. It's that quick fix thing. Mm-Hmm. again. Um, and the other thing with the, with the fire building that's, that's worth remembering is that it needs tending.

Emily: So that it doesn't go out. It needs protecting from the elements, from wind, from, from rain. And so, that's, that's like with our careers, we, you know, our, our, our fire might get blown out by It could be, um, a change in management, it could be a change in personal circumstances. There's so many kind of elements changing in conditions that might come and could potentially almost blow our fire out.

Emily: Really? Yeah. Yeah. 

nadine: And I like that notion as well that the match is [00:13:00] finite. A stick of match is an inch long. Passion is finite, the match is finite. And there's something maybe about recognising that you've found a match. I remember Liz Gilbert in Big Magic talks about the moment, the first kind of quarter of the book is about the moment when inspiration strikes you.

nadine: Actually, the majority of people, we don't even notice it. And so she kind of articulates what it's like for her to have that moment of inspiration hit her, and what she does with it. So yes, the passion is the match, that's the initial thing, but then it needs tending, it needs work, and she talks about, first of all, recognizing it, what it feels like in your body.

nadine: Seize it. Take that moment. Nurture it. Look at it. Think about all the different ways that that idea could work. Is it, is, is that your passion? Does it, does it fit? Does it fit what you've been excited about in your past? The things that you perhaps want from your future? And then think about, yeah, the context.

nadine: Then show some curiosity towards all the bits that you need to then pull in in order to build your fire. Yeah, 

Emily: yeah, I love that. Yeah. And that, that sparks a few [00:14:00] thoughts in me. And one, one is that, that we do tend to just jump. Well, some of us can tend to just jump in like, Oh, I found this new exciting thing.

Emily: And yeah, I don't think I've ever stopped to think how it feels in my body to be excited about something. So that's, that's great. But from, um, Uh, kind of career coaching point of view, that is often the conversation is around, um, exploring lots of, cause normally there are more, um, there's more than one thing that can spark our interest.

Emily: So, uh, what you described there is, is exactly what you want to do in terms of just being, taking your time basically, and really paying attention to, and think, and take, taking your broader than that thing, like 

nadine: how What is that? Take, I'm really interested in that, because that's a curiosity about yourself, it's a curiosity about your relationship to the thing that you're either working on or the relationship that you're embarking on.

nadine: What is that [00:15:00] curiosity? What are all those things that we're paying attention to as we're building? Oh, 

Emily: what are they all? Well, there's a few different things. I was thinking like, there's, there's, what is the environment and the, the context like? Paying attention to that. Is that, is that what you? Yeah, 

nadine: I guess.

nadine: Yeah, that's one thing. Yeah. And what you need to bring as well. There must be certain skills and qualities or, um, states of mind maybe that, that we bring to a, yeah, situation, a job or a relationship. Yeah. That make it either successful or not. Yeah, okay. But it's not in the hands of the gods. Yeah. Actually so much of it comes from 

Emily: us.

Emily: So I break down, when thinking about careers, I break it down to thinking about, So you've got that initial spark, but then you also need to think like, what are your strengths? And by, and I mean like just innate strengths. Now, often when we have a spark of interest or passion for something, it's cause it somehow aligns.

Emily: It can be with our purpose. So there's [00:16:00] a. A female entrepreneur based in Manchester who's set up a business to sell women's football jerseys, football shirts, because partly coming from fans of women's football, couldn't wear their own team's colors. She was passionate about football. So there's that interest there, right?

Emily: But sometimes you can get interested in something because it's in a kind of innate strength. My interest in coaching. It's partly, I think, because I've just had this lifelong thing about talking to people one to one and like really getting to know them, and that's just this, this strength. And I feel quite excited about coaching because it aligns with the strength.

Emily: So we've talked a bit about. Um, strength and purpose. So the two other pieces, as well as strengths and purpose, which help create passion, are feeling challenged, and, like [00:17:00] novelty and unpredictability. But those, those are, why I hesitated there, was because those aren't necessarily, they're not, they're not the four ingredients of finding your career path, but they are.

Emily: The ingredients of what you can do to, to recreate a spark for whatever career you're in. That's 

nadine: interesting. So, that notion, you talked about the variety and predictability and the notion of challenge. Because I used to be a teacher and Uh, so many teachers are over challenged in terms of being able to fit everything in.

nadine: So that there's a, um, there's a sweet spot then that we have to be challenged to a certain extent and they call it the zone of proximal development in education. I'm assuming that there's some other phrase for it elsewhere in other domains, but the zone of proximal development is the thing that is kind of just outside what you can do really, really comfortably.

nadine: So it does stretch you, but it's not beyond. Right. And so it doesn't flip you over into that kind of crazy stress, which is where majority of teachers spend their [00:18:00] working life. On the other side of that, where everything is unpredictable, too much is unpredictable, and not enough is, is sufficiently challenging for you to feel like you're kind of hitting the ground running, that you're actually making 

Emily: progress.

Emily: Yeah, those two things are quite closely aligned. You touched on that there, like sometimes you get challenged from unpredictability. But challenge can also come from other places of just feeling like something's a bit beyond your comfort zone, like you've got to grow or stretch a little bit to get there.

Emily: But yeah, in my, where I've talked about this, I always say you want to feel reasonably challenged and have a healthy amount of variety because I have seen. Lots of people get burnt out from too much, too much unpredictability, like constant changing of direction, you know, cancelling of, of products and, you know, redesigns happening.

Emily: And again, that can bring people to, to feel really unhappy burnout. I'm 

making 

nadine: a leap in my head being the therapist in the [00:19:00] room, that I'm making the link relationally now that what that's like when we relate to people and how actually those two elements are kind of present when we build relationships to not just intimate relationships, but you're nodding.

nadine: So this is this is sounding true to you then as a, as a coach. Yeah, 

Emily: totally. I mean, less as a coach, but more as just somebody who's paid attention to how we relate and relating. Yeah, absolutely. Because that's what What feels, you know, I just think about friendships like, you know, a surprise call from a friend.

Emily: How delightful is that? But then, you know, if you never know whether they're gonna call and it seems to be only happening once every couple of years even, then that doesn't feel so good 

nadine: anymore. Hmm, and I'm also thinking about in terms of, um, I don't know whether abuse is too strong a word, but maybe, I mean, in terms of abuse that there is so much that's unpredictable and that, and if we think about parents and children that actually a significant Part of, um, healthy [00:20:00] childhood is a certain amount of predictability.

nadine: That, that any challenge that we get when we're we has to be, uh, an appropriate level of challenge so that we still feel safe. And, and I wonder if actually just as we get bigger, that doesn't necessarily change. We still have to feel, to a certain extent, we have to feel safe. And maybe each of us, we have a different tolerance for safety versus risk.

nadine: I'm sure we all do, but, uh, yeah, it seems to sort of play out in all sorts of different kinds of relationships too. And the notion of challenge, because we like our friends, because they bring us something new, just, there is just something that we love about them that we could never, ever be. You know, I've got friends who are perhaps a little bit chaotic and they throw the rule book out the window and I, I find it just addictive because I can't, I just can't do that, I can't.

nadine: Oh, just play by the rules, please. It, it stresses me out and so to have people in my life that can do that, oh, it's quite energising and perhaps, On the flip side, you know, they would look at me and go, I just [00:21:00] need someone who's an anchor and, uh, you know, and, and, and we bring that to each other, don't we?

nadine: So, and maybe that fits under the sort of challenge umbrella. Yeah, yeah, 

Emily: totally. Yeah. I've not thought about it that way. And, and I'm, I'm, my mind's now going to like, how does that tie back to in our careers and in our. And I think part of the thing with the challenge is just, and it can be the same with friends, if you just get too familiar with them, you know, you become kind of over familiar with somebody, you can just be less excited about the, the, the way that they are in the same way that a workplace can be.

Emily: Maybe it isn't like you can do it with your eyes closed, but somehow the, I suppose that's more about predict, predictability, um, just knowing how it's going to be can, yeah, feel less, less appealing. 

nadine: So we're talking here about a shift in perspective, a shift of a reframing of how we see if we're talking about careers, because it sounds like you're talking about curiosity there.

nadine: If we can have a curiosity about people, maybe if we're going to have a [00:22:00] curiosity about our work. And in different, in different angles, then we can, I don't know, unearth something that if we lose that curiosity through boredom or Yeah, 

Emily: no, I think you're right, actually. You've, we're talking about boredom, actually.

Emily: It's when you get, yeah, when you get bored with things, yeah, you can totally switch off. And that is, I sometimes, I've thought before, well, what's the opposite to feeling passionate about something? It is feeling bored. And then, okay, so how do you solve boredom, is exactly what you just said. It's being curious.

Emily: And that's from in us, that's 

nadine: not something that's externally. Who was it that said, oh I think it might even be Brené Brown, I'm always quoting Brené Brown. She said the opposite of love is not hate, it's ambivalence. So the opposite of passion, you're saying it's boredom, does it? I mean that tallies, and she's got hours and hours of research data that supports that notion.

nadine: Yeah. You're saying the same things. Yeah. Absolutely. [00:23:00] 

Emily: And what's kind of encouraging about that, what, I mean, what is encouraging and why as a coach, I find it so interesting to work with people who often are feeling some, some Level of ambivalence. 'cause look, if you hate your job, you just leave and you, you, you aren't talking to me.

Emily: I'm usually working with people who are feeling, yeah, some sense of ambivalence, frustration with their, their job. They're not completely ready to, to leave and getting interested in, oh, you know, what is it that's making you feel that way? And then almost in turn. They get interested in, oh yeah, well what is it, and looking around them more, and then, then you either find By looking in more detail, you find, Oh, there is a bit over there that interests me.

Emily: Or maybe it does help you make the decision, Oh, actually, no, this isn't 

nadine: for me. But we're, instead of expecting the thing to deliver to us, what we're [00:24:00] doing is we're kind of just reflecting a bit more. It's that curiosity, then. We're showing an interest in the situation that we find ourselves. Yeah. And in our relationship to it.

nadine: Yeah. It reminded me, when you were talking about People often come to you not because they want to leave the job. If they want to leave the job, they would have just done that. This notion of any situation we're faced with, we can either accept it, change it, or leave it. There are three options. We accept where we are, we change it, or we leave it.

nadine: And what I think we're sort of eking out the subtleties of is that notion of change and accept. Because actually what we're saying is we can accept that this is fundamentally the same, but we can change our perspective. We can change our approach or the framing of the way that we look at something. To approach them with curiosity feels to me like an active thing.

nadine: Mm hmm. Isn't it? We are sort of actively involved, then we are engaging with them. The tasks that we're doing at work or the people that we're trying to relate 

Emily: to. Yeah, they teach this in, in [00:25:00] meditation. Like you've just reminded me of because in meditation you are traditionally sitting with your eyes closed.

Emily: Such thing as a walking meditation, but the idea is that that it's it's kind of a repetition, right? There's not much stimulus and one of the very common things to happen if you're on a kind of, especially on like a multi day meditation retreat is you are just falling asleep. And it's so interesting hearing people ask about that because you, you kind of go, I'm feeling sleepy and they reframe it as, Oh, you need to find more interest.

Emily: And it's just like, Oh, okay. So basically you're saying I'm bored, not, not, and, but the thing is you find this out for yourself because okay, if day one you off of a retreat, or even if you just stop meditating, you're not well rested. You probably will fall asleep because you're [00:26:00] tired, but if you do, you know, a multi day retreat by day three, if you're being good, getting your sleep or not being disturbed, which hopefully you aren't, you are actually rested.

Emily: And then if you're falling asleep, you're like, okay, I'm not tired. What, what is this? And so the first thing to do in that instance is to, to just pay attention to like, how you, Is there a way you can change your posture? So there's, there's ways to kind of bring a bit more alertness into you. But the other thing to look for in that case is, I guess, I guess kind of my point is that we can find interest in the tiniest, smallest things because in those moments there is no stimulus because there is no stimulus and, and there, there are.

Emily: People who, and I suppose I'm one of them, who's managed to, to kind of keep largely interested in kind of nothing for seven days straight. [00:27:00] Basically. Um, and it's not that I'm just like running through my thoughts. I mean, there are always thoughts occurring, but I'm trying to kind of be curious about like the quality of the thoughts, where they're coming from and not be kind of pursuing them and generating ideas.

Emily: And if so, if we can do that, if we as humans are capable of bringing curiosity to sitting very still with our eyes closed, We can definitely bring curiosity to a, I'm quote, quoting, boring 

nadine: job. So we're also talking about, or are we, I don't know, maybe this is something for later actually, the notion of increasing our tolerance for the uncertainty.

nadine: If we're increasing our tolerance for uncertainty, we don't know where this is going, we don't know what's going to emerge. I'm thinking about the, the kind of, when a person comes to my therapy room, if, one of the things that we do in therapy is increase tolerance for suffering, increase tolerance for, for pain and discomfort, and so much of that comes from [00:28:00] uncertainty, and I, I just wondered how that related to the, the notion of career as well, that if we're in a bit of a lull, if we're in a bit of a slump, Can we see that?

nadine: Or maybe if we have an idea, a spark, there's the match, the matches burnt out. We've got our kindling, we've got a very small fire going. We don't know that the hours and hours and hours that we are gonna put into this. I'm thinking about creative endeavors. Particularly for me, setting up this podcast was a similar thing.

nadine: I had the idea back in April. It just landed. In me, almost fully formed when I was on a train. And then came the work. And I don't, I don't know where this is going. Once it's made, it's out there and that's for the world to decide. And so, I don't know where it's going. And there's an uncertainty in that and there's a discomfort in that.

nadine: I don't know how it's going to be received. I don't know what comments will come back to me. I think there's a, there's a difficulty whether it's going to land with people for me in sitting in that uncertainty. 

Emily: Yeah. Okay. So I encounter that uncertainty in people in the coaching I [00:29:00] do, which is. Talking to people usually about their, um, professional lives, that is what often comes up again as a lack of confidence is, is partly that uncertainty, like, I don't know how it's going to go.

Emily: And that is why you don't feel confident. You, you, you build this confidence, don't you, from doing the same thing over and over again, and it seems to go. pretty well and if it doesn't you know how to quickly fix it and then when you step up and you're doing something that you Don't even know how it's going to go and if it goes wrong, you really don't know what to do And so yeah, that's that's where that lack of confidence comes in for 

nadine: sure I'm just thinking about this notion of find your passion.

nadine: What a secure place that is. Because when we're in the throes of passion, when that has landed in us, there's no way we're looking anywhere else. There's no way we're contemplating that this is not right, because it just feels so right. And all the media that we've ever consumed in our life is telling us that this is it.

nadine: Every film ends with the scene that, you know, [00:30:00] or it starts. You know, the idea of the spark never kind of comes in the middle as a bit of a non event. Well, 

Emily: and this is what, this is why I think we have to be a little bit careful about chasing passion because, or just go, go into it informed, because although when you're in passion, yeah, you're, you're just blind to everything else, aren't you?

Emily: It does end, like there is going to, your passion is going to run 

nadine: out. Bizarrely, there's a certainty in the fact that it's going to end. So actually we know more than we do 

Emily: if we're Yeah, but we don't like to, we don't like to think about that. We don't like to accept it. Neither 

nadine: of us are neuroscientists.

nadine: Is there something of the dopamine going on in our brains when we get that spark? That, that it feels good? Oh, absolutely. Hmm. 

Emily: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there, there, there is some science lurking at the back of my brain, somewhat to do with how, how there's some kind of survival instinct thing to do [00:31:00] with why we want to avoid kind of uncertainty and certainly the end endings, right?

Emily: Survival skills. We don't want to be ended. 

nadine: And safety, the safety. If I know this thing, I can keep it. Yes, exactly. That's what you're saying right at the beginning, isn't it? That we keep hold of things. That, that certainty creates familiarity and that's safety. Although actually, do you know what, 

Emily: maybe it's, maybe there isn't a primitive thing.

Emily: Maybe actually when we're in the throes of passion, we aren't worried about the ending or whether it's going to go wrong or all of those things. That's actually, maybe that is more of a primitive. Like focused state and it's more of the modern condition where we worry about The future because if you think about you know hunter gatherer times You just searched for your food And when you had some food you were just happy you were eating some food and because you you didn't really know did you when you?

Emily: were next gonna, [00:32:00] you know find something to kill 

nadine: or So the notion of time is It's actually a modern thing. It's a man made construct, isn't it? Yeah. And so it's time. It's our awareness of time. We only have so much time left, I don't want to waste it. That we have to fill our day with the most rewarding job.

nadine: Yeah. And maybe that's also something, isn't it? That when we're hunting and gathering food Our purpose is absolutely inherent and explicit, isn't it? There's no, there's no question over that. 

Emily: And I, I hope I'm not shoehorning this in, but I really keep, feel like Shoehorn away. Mentioning grief here is important because, for a couple of reasons.

Emily: One, because I think part of our fear of death is to do with our discomfort around grief. And the other thing with grief, though, is that it can be a really productive time and it [00:33:00] can be a time when we start to reconsider our purpose. And so another time that That we sometimes question, come to saying, Oh, uh, you know, questioning our passion and our purpose is when we're grieving something and that can be a bereavement.

Emily: It can also just be a massive change in our lives, a breakup, but when we've had a big shift that somehow wakes us up to, that's why that why what we were saying sparked it because I was thinking of kind of the human. That deep primitive awareness of wanting to do something that has meaning, we reconnect with that in times of grief.

nadine: What is it about grief that connects us to that? Is it the sense of the finitude of life? Yeah, it is. That somehow we're connected to that. Yeah, to the universe, 

Emily: innit? That's what was reminding me of it, actually, because we were talking about endings, and [00:34:00] it's, yeah, realising everything does come to an end.

Emily: There's something about 

nadine: being woken up, that seems to, we seem to be, keep coming back to that notion of being woken up. Curiosity, alertness, connecting with something. Just paying attention, and maybe there's something about our boredom that comes from a sort of sleepwalk or a I think 

Emily: you've just made the link.

Emily: I don't know if I've got anything, I don't know if I've got anything more to add to that. 

nadine: And actually that can often come from suffering, which is a kind of brutal 

Emily: truth of our life. So, so what, what can come from suffering? Being woken 

nadine: up. 

Emily: Yeah. Grief is, grief is suffering. 

nadine: And so, so would be if we were in a job and we felt purposeless.

nadine: If we felt like our meaning was evading us and we didn't, or we felt like our relationship perhaps was stagnant or, it's that stuckness that I think you were talking about earlier on. It's how do we get unstuck? If we are stuck, then, okay, can I, can I be curious? Can I be inquisitive? Can I look inside and see?

nadine: What is it that is making me stuck? Am I grabbing too hard to try and hold on to something that actually I need to let go of? Or, I [00:35:00] mean, why else? Why else do we get stuck? 

Emily: I think that is why. And just what you said, just really nicely described, then that process of grieving is a process of 

nadine: letting go.

nadine: Change. And actually change is rarely bad for us, but we do not like it. No. And I wonder, I'm thinking about, again, the kind of people that would come into my room. and how a therapist could help in terms of somebody's stuckness. Because the therapist would kind of look for patterns in somebody's life and look for patterns as to how a person has, maybe a person does continually grab onto, cling to things through fear.

nadine: And so what, where's the fear come from? You know, was there too much change in, in the past? Was there not enough change? Do people not have enough urgency? And, and I think a therapist would, would perhaps shine a light into the background of somebody and kind of identify all those moments in their life when they were stuck.

nadine: And were there any commonalities? You as a coach, you've often said that you look forward, that the coach is kind of looking forward. We're both sort of meeting in the present. We overlap, don't we, you and I, in the present with the people that we work with. But I might [00:36:00] tend more towards the past and you might tend more towards the future.

nadine: But this notion of stuckness. is, is informed by both, isn't it, in the present? Yeah. 

Emily: Yeah.

nadine: Why shouldn't we disregard passion altogether? 

Emily: As well as what we've already discussed, which is that when you have a spark, it's worth exploring and pursuing and it's a good way, it's a foundation to build a career around. It's also important to pay attention to passion for people who are ADHD. Their and our, I include myself in this, brains are wired for interest over importance and interest feels like passion.

Emily: You know, you feel interested in something, you feel passionate about something. And so I. I don't want anyone to take away this thing, Oh, I've got to kind of ignore my passions now because they're going [00:37:00] to be all flighty and I won't be able to hold on to them and they won't give me a stable career. For some of us, we kind of have to follow passions because that's the thing that we will be able to stay engaged in.

Emily: So trying to follow, I don't know, some career that just kind of stumbled into somehow, but you find it excruciatingly boring. If, I mean, if somehow you're getting it done, I guess that's, that's fine, but probably if you Uh, having that experience and you have a DHD, you will also be having kind of issues with your performance as in you will not be able to deliver because you're not able to keep yourself engaged enough with the work.

Emily: So that's where looking for things that you can make yourself. Really excited about is actually really useful and happily. It's it doesn't only have to be passion in a kind of Typical way we think about about it Like we can feel kind of excited by a deadline and that can help us [00:38:00] get work done And I guess one other thing to say about passion is also you it can be disregarded In that you don't, if you have a job that you don't feel particularly, you don't or have never felt passionate about, but somehow can do, that's fine because you might have a passion out, your passion might be your family, your passion might be a hobby, like it's also fine to have passion somewhere else in your life and just do work and that is actually sometimes where my coaching conversations go with people like, Oh, well, actually I'm so focused with my family, my young family right now.

Emily: that I actually really haven't got energy with the work, for my, to have the passion for the work that I used to have. So accepting, and it's then, so it's a process of accepting that. That's 

nadine: interesting that you brought that in, because it reminded me of the woman in the football shirts that you were talking about earlier, that she had a passion for that, and, and was able to sort of dovetail the two.

nadine: And then I was thinking as you were talking about sports people, that they do have a passion for their sport, or for [00:39:00] getting sweaty and out of breath on a regular basis, but David Beckham did not get to where David Beckham was. Just being passionate. I mean, how many hours did that man spend? There was, I believe it was a Netflix documentary, but in terms of how many hours he spent on a football field just kicking a ball into a net, it depends where we want to put our energy.

nadine: And you're saying whatever floats your boat. We're talking, the majority of this episode has been about what people come to us with. Okay, I'm having this problem because I can't find this passion where I want to find it. And that quite often is work or relationships.

Emily: So you introduced me, uh, uh, as, as a multi passionate, what did we say? Multi passionate professional. And that is slightly tongue in cheek, um, given the conversation that we've had. But when I first stumbled upon this term, I was quite excited and I felt like. Find it when you kind of find a label for a thing you didn't know was a thing that had a label And I guess I [00:40:00] felt validated a little bit but I say it's tongue in cheek because I have just sat here saying like be careful of passions and you know, don't try and kind of Uh set up your whole life around being passionate and I I think there is some truth But why I like it is because there's also this expectation these days that you must be focused on just one thing, that you've got to be a master, you know, the jack of all trades, the master of one thing is, is more than a jack of all trades, which actually the original expression, the meaning is actually saying You're better to be a jack of all trades than a, than a master of one.

Emily: But that's the sense of mastery and expertise. And you've got to have your special niche. And for some of us, we just are in, we're just into switched on by too many things. You know, probably lots of, well, not probably, definitely lots of career advisors. And I'm not a [00:41:00] career advisor, but. We'll be saying you need to focus on one thing.

Emily: People who give me marketing advice say I should be selling just one specific type of coaching or to one narrow audience. And I reject it. I wholly reject it. I find it, I find it. It just doesn't jibe with me at all. It does make marketing really hard, but I can't help but have though that those all those interests and all that kind of excitement for various different things.

nadine: Vitality in that, I think, in having, you know, all that passion. Oh, there I just let the word slip out. If we can say passion in terms of it is not the be all and end all, passion is the spark and if we can have an interest, I mean that's a curiosity again, isn't it? We keep coming back to this notion of curiosity.

nadine: That if we are interested as people and we see our capacity to connect to things as being something that we can nurture within ourselves, then hell yeah, why would you limit yourself to that? To just one thing. I keep bringing in relationships here and I [00:42:00] suppose there's, there's been a, quite an upturn in people identifying as polyamorous even though it's been around for, um, forever.

nadine: But there's been a kind of change in that, yeah. Wondering if there's a, there's a, there is a shift that. We no longer have one career. We no longer have one partner, you know, on the whole, there's a lot more flexibility. We're not as willing to stick to rules just cause. 

Emily: Yeah. I think if, if my object is, is a career or a job, then I'm definitely a polyamorous for it.

nadine: Uh, Emily Heath, it's been absolutely lovely talking to you. You can find Emily on www. emilyheath. coach. Thanks ever so much for coming. Thank you so much 

Emily: for having me.