There are moments in life when everything feels overwhelming and scattered. Sometimes we see them coming. Sometimes we absolutely do not.
A job ends. A relationship changes. Someone we love dies. We retire from a career that has defined us for decades. A business changes. An opportunity disappears. Or the world around us simply starts moving faster than we feel prepared for. Suddenly there are far more questions than answers.
What now?
What am I supposed to do?
Who am I if I’m not doing that anymore?
My book is called I Just Got Fired: Turning The Worst Career Moment into Your Best Next Chapter. But the more I talk to people about the book, the more convinced I become that it really isn’t just about getting fired. It’s about what happens when the story you thought you were living changes.
And what I have learned, through my own experience, through my research, through coaching people and organizations, and through building The Apiary, is that the answer isn’t always to immediately figure out where you are going next.
Before you can move forward, you need to root yourself.
When the wind blows
Think about a healthy tree. When the wind comes, it moves. It sways. It bends. Its branches get thrown around. It may lose a few leaves. But it doesn’t necessarily break.
What allows it to withstand what is happening above the ground is everything that has been developing underneath it.
Its roots.
I think we need the same thing. We know the winds are coming. Some will be personal. Some professional. Some societal. AI is changing the way we work. Organizations are restructuring. Careers don’t necessarily follow predictable paths anymore. Our families change. Our bodies change. Our priorities change. We cannot control all of that.
But we can, and need to, become much clearer about what is underneath us. For me, those roots are built from three things: strengths, values and purpose.
Know what you are good at
The first root is understanding your strengths. I am a Clifton Strengths coach, so I am admittedly partial to that particular tool. During my master’s research, I explored a few approaches to understanding strengths, and what I continue to appreciate about Clifton Strengths is that it provides a shared, manageable language for discussing what people naturally do well.
Your strengths aren’t simply things you are “good at.” They are patterns in how you think, feel, and behave that, when you invest time, energy, and attention in them, can become incredibly powerful. They are often the things you can reach for when circumstances get difficult.
Another important part of understanding your strengths is knowing how they can get in your way. Our greatest strengths can also become our Achilles’ heels when we aren’t aware that we are in the “shadow” of the strength — like when I have to remind myself that the person on the plane probably doesn’t want to talk to me the entire 5-hour flight (ohhhh. WOO (Winning Others Over) is a tricky one!).
That is why self-awareness matters. When you understand your strengths, you can begin asking: What do I have available to me right now? Instead of only asking: What am I missing? That is a very different place from which to navigate uncertainty.
Know what you stand for
The second root is your values.
Values are the guardrails. There are hundreds of words we could use to describe what matters to us, but the exercise isn’t to create a beautiful list of twenty things we believe are important. The work is figuring out which ones guide us. For me, the two biggest are courage and legacy.
Grit matters to me. Creativity matters to me. Community matters enormously to me. But courage and legacy continually show up in the decisions I make. When I am uncertain, I can throw a decision against those values and see what comes back.
Does this require courage?
Does this contribute to the legacy I am trying to build?
Does this decision move me toward the person I want to be?
I sometimes describe values as an elastic wall. Throw the problem against them and see what bounces back.
If you aren’t sure what your values are, start simply. Find a list of values and circle the words that resonate with you. Then start narrowing. Ask yourself why each one matters. Think about a difficult decision you have made. Which value was underneath it? Think about a time you were incredibly frustrated or angry. Was one of your values being violated? Think about a moment when you felt yourself completely. Which values were you living?
Eventually, you will start seeing the patterns. Those patterns become your guardrails.
Know why you are here
And then there is purpose.
I gave myself the title Chief Purpose Officer at The Apiary Inc. for a reason. Because I have become far less interested in simply asking organizations what they do. I want to know why they exist.
The same is true for people. We can become incredibly attached to the “what.”
What is my job?
What is my title?
What does my company sell?
What do I do every day?
Then the “what” changes and suddenly we think our purpose has disappeared with it. But purpose sits underneath the what. I was speaking with a woman recently whose business has evolved considerably. As she described the different things she had done and where the business was heading now, she said something along the lines of, “My purpose changed as the business grew.”
I had been listening to her talk for several minutes when I said, “I don’t think it did.”
Because underneath every iteration of her business was the same thread: education. She was using education to help women. The products had changed. The activities had changed. The audience had evolved. The what and the how had shifted. The why had been there all along.
We don’t need to invent our purpose. We need to notice it. I believe in your heart; you know what it is. And I don’t mean to “raise a healthy family” – I see that as an outcome. I want to know why – why do you want to raise a healthy family?
Ask yourself: What are the threads that have followed me throughout my life? When do I become so passionate about something that other people can hear it in my voice? What kind of difference do I want to make? When I am no longer here, what do I hope people say was different because I was? What can I say yes or no to because I understand what I am ultimately trying to create?
I don’t necessarily believe we have only one purpose. We may experience purpose differently in our personal lives, our families, our careers, and our communities. But I do believe there are threads connecting them.
This is what it means to be rooted
Strengths tell you what you can draw upon. Values give you guardrails. Purpose gives you a North Star.
Together, they give you roots.
And being rooted doesn’t mean that nothing affects you. That isn’t resilience. The tree still moves. You can grieve, be angry, be scared, and have absolutely no idea of what happens next. Yet, underneath all of that uncertainty is something steadier:
I know who I am, what I am good at, what matters to me, and why I am doing this.
From there, you can begin to rise.
Not by making one enormous transformational decision but instead by simply making the next aligned decision. Then the next one, and the next. Alignment creates steadiness. Steadiness helps us make better decisions. Better decisions create greater fulfillment. And somewhere in there, we create more room for joy.
That is why, as I prepare to speak at the Aligned Yoga Conference in Sault Ste. Marie, my keynote is called Rooted to Rise. I don’t think the answer to an uncertain world is becoming better at predicting what will happen. I think it is becoming more certain about who we are when it does.
The wind will come. So, build the roots that allow you to sway without losing yourself.
Know your strengths.
Know your values.
Know your purpose.
And when life changes, as we know that it will, come back to them.
Root yourself.
Then rise.
If you’re interested in joining my keynote for the conference, here is the link to check it out! https://alignyogamethod.as.me/?appointmentType=97477650
