119. The Secret Menu of Life
When you imagine what you want for your life, what comes up?
Something wildly, wholly original?
Or perhaps something you’ve seen lots of shiny posts about on instagram?
For many of us, when we daydream and imagine our ideal career, relationship, day, etc, we draw from what we’ve seen or experienced in the past.
We draw from TV shows.
We draw from what our parents did.
We draw from the general culture and society’s ideas about what a good life is.
Some of those things are great. They might be a wonderful fit for you.
But what about all the options that haven’t been modeled?
What about the things it’s never occurred to you to dream of?
What about the things you want but they seem so weird or impossible in our current world?
All that is exactly what we’re talking about this week.
There are always more options available to you than those that appear on the mainstream menu of life, and this week, I’m guiding you through making the selections that speak to you, even if no one has done it before.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What the concept of the secret menu of life means.
Why coaching reveals to you the secret menu that you didn’t know was even available.
Examples of how we make selections on the menu of life based solely on what we know.
Questions to ask yourself about your preconceived ideas about the options you have in life.
How to access the secret menu of life.
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The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about The Secret Menu of Life.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday, wonderful human beings. I'm so excited to talk to you. We have such a fun topic today, but before we get into that, I want to tell you all about a fun little thing that happened in my life, which is that we live in this really beautiful neighborhood.
So it's like kind of this historic neighborhood, we have all these like old, beautiful houses. Our house, I think, was built in something like 1906, which might not be exactly right on the year. But she's old and beautiful, and the high ceilings and the Victorian, and she's gorgeous. And there's a lot of houses like that around.
And there's like, I think, an organization that has meetings and stuff and wonderful things like that. I haven't actually really spent any time at the meetings. I just know they exist. Alex goes to them sometimes because she likes stuff like that. And so one of the people who's part of this group, who's part of our neighborhood, is moving, which is sad. It's always sad when people move away, even when it's happy, even when they're moving for a good reason.
But as part of moving, she decided to give away a bunch of the furniture in her house that she wasn't taking with her. And she just like gave it away to the neighbors. And so we went over there the other day, and I got some really gorgeous furniture. And one of the things she gave me was this beautiful antiquey looking sideboard that's just so pretty and has this really gorgeous half-moon sort of. I guess that's just a semicircle, but I feel very fancy when I call it a half-moon. A half-moon mirror goes on the top of the sideboard.
We got a cool vintagey looking dresser, and we got this cute little side table on wheels. And she gave me her sewing machine that she got like right out of college. And then she even came over to my house and taught me how to use it, which was really interesting because there's a lot to that. And we'll see if I have any successful sewing adventures to report to you later.
But I thought it was such a fun experience and so unexpected. I know people have estate sales when they move, or sometimes people put things out on the curb. But for her just to open her house to her neighbors specifically to see if we wanted anything, I thought it was such a beautiful thing. And I just feel really lucky and delighted that we got some really gorgeous stuff that I'm going to cherish.
And I thought it was really interesting, too, because it's such a good example of how things can come into your life in all kinds of ways. And sometimes the ways that things choose to come into your life, yes, I’m saying choose as though things have willpower, which I don't know if I totally believe they do, but I definitely at least sort of believe they do.
Anyways, things can come into your life in all kinds of ways. And sometimes the ways they come into your life are really kind of weird and surprising. One time I was doing The Artist’s Way, and the author of the book, Julia Cameron, said to write down things you wanted. And I wrote down that I wanted a necklace with quartz on it.
And then, I was working at the farmers market. This was like a million years ago when I used to sell local honey at the farmers market on Sundays after bartending and staying up until God knows what time the night before. But those were the choices I made back then. So I would wake up, probably hungover, and scoot over to the farmers market and sell honey. And this person came by and tasted some honey, and I said, I like your necklace. And it was a necklace with quartz on it.
And she's like. You can have it. And I was like, what? I felt so embarrassed like maybe I'd done something wrong. I was like, oh, you don't have to give it to me. And this woman looked me dead in the eyes and was like, I will die one day, and my children don't want it. And I was just like, what do you say to that? So I said yes. And I had this necklace that was; actually, I still have it. And it was like exactly what I had wanted when I had written it on the list.
And yeah, so magical things happen all the time. And things can come into your life in really interesting ways. So I think that's just something to be aware of. And it also sort of relates to our topic today. And today's topic is this concept called The Secret Menu of Life.
And I'm just going to tell you all right now I did not come up with that language. One of my brilliant clients did, who I'm not going to name you because I keep my clients anonymous when I talk about them unless they specifically ask me to name them or say that they feel comfortable being named.
So one of my clients, I don't remember if we were coaching or if they were sharing a win, but they said this phrase like the secret menu of life. And I wrote it down because I knew immediately, oh my fucking God, I'm going to do a podcast on that. Here's the thing, though, I did not write down as much about that phrase as I maybe could have. So I'm pretty sure I remember what the client meant, but it's also possible that I have taken the client's idea and gone in a different direction with it.
So, client, if you're listening, I love this phrase. Thank you so much for sharing it with me and for giving me permission to talk about it on the podcast. And if I'm not talking about it in exactly the same way you talked about it, I'm so sorry. And feel free to text or email me and correct me, and I can issue any kind of correction you would like to see on the podcast.
But basically, the concept, as I remember it, is this. It's that with coaching people gain access to things that they want that they didn't actually realize were available. And so when you think about what's available to you in your life, in your career, in your relationship with your significant other, or in your desire to have a relationship and to meet a significant other, or in your friendships, or in the way you parent your child or children, in the way you relate to your own parents, in where you live geographically, in any of the areas. Even how you choose to cook food and what that looks like for you.
When you think about your options, the way your brain is going to think about them, most of the time, is going to be based on your socialization. Your brain is going to present to you the things that it has seen done before or the things that culture taught you were good or okay. So those are going to be what your brain sees as being on the menu.
The menu, like when you go to a restaurant, you sit down, they give you a menu, they're like, here are your options. And what coaching often reveals to people is the secret menu. And it's the secret menu because it's usually about doing things your way, doing things customized, doing things in a way no one has ever modeled for you before, or doing things in a way that you have seen modeled but you never thought was available to you.
And so there's, of course, a metaphor in here because at a restaurant, sometimes you go and you order, you're like, okay, I want the salmon. And the salmon comes, and it has whatever sides. And sometimes you're like, oh, I want the salmon, but I'm allergic to that side. Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but this happens to me sometimes. And so I'm like, oh, can I get these other, you know, like the sides that go with the chicken?
That's really still ordering on the menu, even if you're asking for it to be a little bit customized. Then sometimes you go somewhere where there's a tasting menu, and that's where you sort of have no idea what you're getting, or sometimes there's some kind of, you get the tasting menu that comes with meat, or you get the tasting menu that's vegetarian, so you don't know, and it's like totally chef's choice.
And then sometimes, there are places where you can go, and I see this less in restaurants, but what I want to offer you is this is true for your life. There are places where you can go where you can say like, what I want is X, even if X isn't on the menu, and then you can have it. Now, I wouldn't necessarily do that in a restaurant. That could be considered rude or inappropriate in certain restaurants.
But sometimes you might do it like with a cocktail, right? If you go to a bar, they usually have like ten cocktails, which are their signature cocktails. But if you're like, oh, I don't see a French 75 on here, can they make a French 75? If you know about a French 75, and they know how to make it, and they're willing to make it, then you can have it even if it's not on the menu.
And I would say drinks are actually a pretty good example where it would be considered kind of more socially appropriate to order off the menu in our interesting and now very extended metaphor. So a restaurant has food that they've planned to make, and they have specials, blah, blah, blah. So we're not necessarily going to go to a place that doesn't serve a burger and ask for a burger and expect to get a burger.
But in life, I think it actually is more available. And a lot of us live lives that just look like what we've learned about, or what we've seen, or what we grew up with, or what was happening in the movies we watched as a kid or the books we read. We do life. We make the selections on the menu of life, often based on what we think is possible, what we think is likely, and what we think is normal, right?
And so a lot of people are running their whole lives this way, like making choices like, oh, I have to work a nine to five. Working a nine-to-five is the only way to get good health insurance. Or working a nine-to-five is the only way to make enough money. Or if I work in a corporate job, I have to work nine to five. I can't work different hours.
Even an example is monogamy is considered the norm in relationships, but increasingly now we're seeing things like ethical non-monogamy, which is when people choose not to be monogamous, but it's ethical because they're in agreement with their significant other about it. Or there's polyamory which is another form of dating and romantic relationships.
Listen, I'm not poly, so I may not be explaining this super clearly, but from what I understand, it's like when you have romantic relationships that are not centered around monogamy and are centered around a relationship only between two people.
So that's an example where when being monogamous is the mainstream, but people are increasingly realizing that there are other options available to them. And so as we see that we have different options available, those different options, I think, sort of get added to the menu.
And so then it's like, originally, maybe we had this like a very small menu where it's like, well, you can be single, or you can be partnered. And you can be an entrepreneur, or you can work for somebody else. Or you can do this, or you can do that, versus the more options we see out there, the more those things come onto the menu as they become things that we understand are possible.
But there are always more things. There are always more options available to you than are ever on the menu because some of the options on the menu haven't been invented yet. And you could be the one to invent them, right?
And some of the options that aren't on the menu could be things that no one else would even ever want, but you might want them because they might be a really good fit for you and your specific preferences, desires, et cetera. So basically, the whole concept is sort of circling around this idea of what would you want your life to be like if you didn't have a preconceived notion of what your life could be like, or should be like, or what a life is like?
What would you want your relationships to be like if you didn't have a preconceived idea of what a relationship even was? What would you want your work to be like? Your work, your job, your whole career, what would you want that to be like? How would you want to relate to that if you didn't have preconceived ideas about what work is, what it means, what counts as work, and what doesn't?
I mean, even in my life, I've seen such a difference in what can count as work. When I was a little kid, the internet probably already existed, but we didn't have the internet until I was in like eighth grade. So it's like being a social media influencer. Social media didn't even exist or didn't exist in any way that I knew about. So that wasn't a job, but now it's a job. Now, it's a career that people have and do and can make a lot of money at, right?
Or, like for me, for a long time, I knew, okay, I want to do a kind of work where I have interesting conversations with people, and I help people have a more enjoyable, satisfying experience in their lives. And I became interested in life coaching because that seemed to be a job I could have or work I could do that would allow me to do that thing that I wanted to.
There were other ways also to do that thing. There were other careers and jobs available, but that one seemed to be the most interesting to me. And so even before I really knew what a coach was deeply, I was like, okay, that could be cool. But it was sort of not on the main menu of life. It was like on a peripheral menu, and I was like, what even is this menu? What does this say? What are these ingredients, right? I'm really going hard with this metaphor, y'all.
So building my business and figuring this out for myself has been, you know, that's been me accessing, first of all, the less common menu of life. And then going all the way over into the secret menu of life, making my coaching career my own. Because, yes, it's true that by the time I became a coach, it was not totally mainstream, but more of a mainstream thing. And there were examples of how to have a coaching business and how to replace my corporate income, blah, blah, blah.
So that was that sort of peripheral menu of life. But as I really made my coaching business my own and made it something that works for me specifically, versus what I've seen modeled in the industry, I got further and further into that secret menu of life where it was really about me thinking about what work even means to me, and how I want to work, and what are the ways work could fit into my life, and what would feel really yummy and delicious to me, versus what's the prefabricated option, right?
So often, the prefabricated option is to get a job and then work at it 40 hours a week. And I have done that, but I didn't really like it. Even in the jobs that I loved the most, I didn't really like going to work. Even when I was a bartender and I was working way less than 40 hours a week, I was always like, I'll do this to make money so I can feed myself and have an apartment. But I don't really want to. And I think that's so true for so many people.
The menu of life that they're used to is that work is something unpleasant that you do because you have to. But on the secret menu of life, you can design what work means to you, and you can design work in a way that's much more fun, much more fulfilling, and much more satisfying while still being something that creates a lot of money for you if that's something you want. I realize it's not something everyone wants.
It is something I want, to make a lot of money and to use that money in ways that feel really good and make a lot of sense to me. And it's also something I want to work way less hours than what people generally consider full-time. It's just like when I go to an actual restaurant, I love it if they have tapas or small plates because I like to try a bunch of different things. And I don't necessarily have room to eat a bunch of full plates of food.
It's been said before that I eat like a bird. I eat often, but not a lot in one setting. So tapas restaurants are great because there are always like six things on the menu I’d like to try, though. So I feel like that's kind of how I relate to my work, too. A lot of people are like, oh, work needs to take up 40 or more hours a week, like it's like some big like steak and potatoes dinner.
And that's just absolutely not the role I want work to take in my life. And so when I design my own experience and order off that secret menu, then I can make work more like a tapas plate. Like it packs a lot of nutrients, it packs a lot of delight, but it takes up less of my time than a lot of people assume that work has to. And I'm really excited to have that be my reality.
And I realize it may sound a little bit too good to be true. I'm like, oh, I want to make a lot of money while working less hours. But when you want to make a lot of money while working less hours, that basically means you want to concentrate on the value that you have to offer. And this may be an unpopular opinion. It may be a popular opinion. I'm not sure which, but having worked in a lot of corporate jobs and other businesses, I think there's a lot of time usually spent in those roles where people aren't actually working or they're doing busy work.
And life is too short for me to want to do that. And I would rather be working deeply and intensively and creating a lot of value or just not working versus sitting at a desk to be butt in chair and showing that I'm there and committed, which I think happens a lot in office jobs. And, again, I think that's the typical menu that most of us get offered is like, this is what work looks like.
And that's just not what I want work to look like for me. And since I want something that is, at least in some ways, unconventional, I can totally have it. And if you want something unconventional, I believe you can totally have it too. But I had to order off the secret menu. And in a lot of ways, I had to build it myself, right?
So when I say order off the secret menu, it kind of makes it seem like you can just click a button, and then it's delivered to you. So let's clear that up right now. It's not like that. I've built my business from the ground up. And also, there's been so much trial and error.
And there's been so many times along the way when I realized that I was building my business in a way that actually reflected the socialization I’d received and the examples I'd seen in a corporate setting or in other work settings and like replicating that. And then I had to pause and often tear down some things I was doing and build it a different way so it could be more of what I wanted and less reflective of what was commonplace or what I'd seen before.
So whether what you want is something that's similar to what I found on my secret menu or what I've built on my secret menu, which may be more accurate, the purpose of this podcast isn't to say you can have what I have. Although, I firmly believe you can have what I have.
The purpose of this podcast is for you to really get into it with yourself and think about if anything's possible, if things don't have to be the way they've been modeled to me, if things don't have to be the way I always was sort of like, well, that's just life, that just works, that's just parents, that's just friends, this is how relationships are or like this is how home-ownership is. If it didn't have to be the way it is, or the way that's commonplace, or the thing that's on the mainstream menu of life, what might be interesting for you to try?
What would you want your career to feel like? What would you want your career to be like? How many hours would you like to work? Because I know for most of us, we don't actually want to work 40 hours a week. We just think we have to. And you can, but I don't think you do have to. And I even think there are ways to work inside of companies in corporate and other settings and not work like that. And I've seen it happen, and I've seen it be successful.
So yeah, it may be different than what other people are doing, but that doesn't mean you can't have it. It may be something a little different than what's on that mainstream menu of life, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.
Okay, so if you walk away with nothing else from this call, what I want you to walk away with is just this idea that there are more options than are being presented to you, pretty much literally all the time. There are more options. There are more customizations. There are ways you can make things really specifically aligned with who you want to be and what you want your life to be like in a variety of areas.
And it can be really hard to see those possibilities. And for a lot of my clients, one of the things we have to work on is their feeling like they deserve to have access to that secret menu of life. Feeling like they deserve to be able to design what they want themselves. And a lot of times, it's feeling like they deserve to rest, feeling like they deserve to have pleasure in their lives, feeling like they deserve to have a good career and a good experience of their career, feeling like they deserve to get to have things be different.
And if that's where you are or if you feel a block in this area, I would invite you to come work with me either in SAF or in one-on-one coaching because I give you so much information on the podcast about how to help yourselves and how to move forward. But sometimes, especially around worthiness issues, people struggle because they don't have someone there to sort of see their blind spots and see the ways that they're stopping themselves from having what they want.
So if you've been working on these ideas for a while and you're not getting as much forward momentum as you would like, I would invite you to sign up for a consult call, and we can have a conversation about what's going on, and I will help you see the patterns that you're going through. And if it seems like you're a good fit for coaching, I'll tell you about how I'm currently working with clients. And we will see if you're a good fit and get you signed up if you are.
All right, that's what I have for y'all this week. Happy Wednesday. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday, wonderful human beings. I'm so excited to talk to you. We have such a fun topic today, but before we get into that, I want to tell you all about a fun little thing that happened in my life, which is that we live in this really beautiful neighborhood.
So it's like kind of this historic neighborhood, we have all these like old, beautiful houses. Our house, I think, was built in something like 1906, which might not be exactly right on the year. But she's old and beautiful, and the high ceilings and the Victorian, and she's gorgeous. And there's a lot of houses like that around.
And there's like, I think, an organization that has meetings and stuff and wonderful things like that. I haven't actually really spent any time at the meetings. I just know they exist. Alex goes to them sometimes because she likes stuff like that. And so one of the people who's part of this group, who's part of our neighborhood, is moving, which is sad. It's always sad when people move away, even when it's happy, even when they're moving for a good reason.
But as part of moving, she decided to give away a bunch of the furniture in her house that she wasn't taking with her. And she just like gave it away to the neighbors. And so we went over there the other day, and I got some really gorgeous furniture. And one of the things she gave me was this beautiful antiquey looking sideboard that's just so pretty and has this really gorgeous half-moon sort of. I guess that's just a semicircle, but I feel very fancy when I call it a half-moon. A half-moon mirror goes on the top of the sideboard.
We got a cool vintagey looking dresser, and we got this cute little side table on wheels. And she gave me her sewing machine that she got like right out of college. And then she even came over to my house and taught me how to use it, which was really interesting because there's a lot to that. And we'll see if I have any successful sewing adventures to report to you later.
But I thought it was such a fun experience and so unexpected. I know people have estate sales when they move, or sometimes people put things out on the curb. But for her just to open her house to her neighbors specifically to see if we wanted anything, I thought it was such a beautiful thing. And I just feel really lucky and delighted that we got some really gorgeous stuff that I'm going to cherish.
And I thought it was really interesting, too, because it's such a good example of how things can come into your life in all kinds of ways. And sometimes the ways that things choose to come into your life, yes, I’m saying choose as though things have willpower, which I don't know if I totally believe they do, but I definitely at least sort of believe they do.
Anyways, things can come into your life in all kinds of ways. And sometimes the ways they come into your life are really kind of weird and surprising. One time I was doing The Artist’s Way, and the author of the book, Julia Cameron, said to write down things you wanted. And I wrote down that I wanted a necklace with quartz on it.
And then, I was working at the farmers market. This was like a million years ago when I used to sell local honey at the farmers market on Sundays after bartending and staying up until God knows what time the night before. But those were the choices I made back then. So I would wake up, probably hungover, and scoot over to the farmers market and sell honey. And this person came by and tasted some honey, and I said, I like your necklace. And it was a necklace with quartz on it.
And she's like. You can have it. And I was like, what? I felt so embarrassed like maybe I'd done something wrong. I was like, oh, you don't have to give it to me. And this woman looked me dead in the eyes and was like, I will die one day, and my children don't want it. And I was just like, what do you say to that? So I said yes. And I had this necklace that was; actually, I still have it. And it was like exactly what I had wanted when I had written it on the list.
And yeah, so magical things happen all the time. And things can come into your life in really interesting ways. So I think that's just something to be aware of. And it also sort of relates to our topic today. And today's topic is this concept called The Secret Menu of Life.
And I'm just going to tell you all right now I did not come up with that language. One of my brilliant clients did, who I'm not going to name you because I keep my clients anonymous when I talk about them unless they specifically ask me to name them or say that they feel comfortable being named.
So one of my clients, I don't remember if we were coaching or if they were sharing a win, but they said this phrase like the secret menu of life. And I wrote it down because I knew immediately, oh my fucking God, I'm going to do a podcast on that. Here's the thing, though, I did not write down as much about that phrase as I maybe could have. So I'm pretty sure I remember what the client meant, but it's also possible that I have taken the client's idea and gone in a different direction with it.
So, client, if you're listening, I love this phrase. Thank you so much for sharing it with me and for giving me permission to talk about it on the podcast. And if I'm not talking about it in exactly the same way you talked about it, I'm so sorry. And feel free to text or email me and correct me, and I can issue any kind of correction you would like to see on the podcast.
But basically, the concept, as I remember it, is this. It's that with coaching people gain access to things that they want that they didn't actually realize were available. And so when you think about what's available to you in your life, in your career, in your relationship with your significant other, or in your desire to have a relationship and to meet a significant other, or in your friendships, or in the way you parent your child or children, in the way you relate to your own parents, in where you live geographically, in any of the areas. Even how you choose to cook food and what that looks like for you.
When you think about your options, the way your brain is going to think about them, most of the time, is going to be based on your socialization. Your brain is going to present to you the things that it has seen done before or the things that culture taught you were good or okay. So those are going to be what your brain sees as being on the menu.
The menu, like when you go to a restaurant, you sit down, they give you a menu, they're like, here are your options. And what coaching often reveals to people is the secret menu. And it's the secret menu because it's usually about doing things your way, doing things customized, doing things in a way no one has ever modeled for you before, or doing things in a way that you have seen modeled but you never thought was available to you.
And so there's, of course, a metaphor in here because at a restaurant, sometimes you go and you order, you're like, okay, I want the salmon. And the salmon comes, and it has whatever sides. And sometimes you're like, oh, I want the salmon, but I'm allergic to that side. Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but this happens to me sometimes. And so I'm like, oh, can I get these other, you know, like the sides that go with the chicken?
That's really still ordering on the menu, even if you're asking for it to be a little bit customized. Then sometimes you go somewhere where there's a tasting menu, and that's where you sort of have no idea what you're getting, or sometimes there's some kind of, you get the tasting menu that comes with meat, or you get the tasting menu that's vegetarian, so you don't know, and it's like totally chef's choice.
And then sometimes, there are places where you can go, and I see this less in restaurants, but what I want to offer you is this is true for your life. There are places where you can go where you can say like, what I want is X, even if X isn't on the menu, and then you can have it. Now, I wouldn't necessarily do that in a restaurant. That could be considered rude or inappropriate in certain restaurants.
But sometimes you might do it like with a cocktail, right? If you go to a bar, they usually have like ten cocktails, which are their signature cocktails. But if you're like, oh, I don't see a French 75 on here, can they make a French 75? If you know about a French 75, and they know how to make it, and they're willing to make it, then you can have it even if it's not on the menu.
And I would say drinks are actually a pretty good example where it would be considered kind of more socially appropriate to order off the menu in our interesting and now very extended metaphor. So a restaurant has food that they've planned to make, and they have specials, blah, blah, blah. So we're not necessarily going to go to a place that doesn't serve a burger and ask for a burger and expect to get a burger.
But in life, I think it actually is more available. And a lot of us live lives that just look like what we've learned about, or what we've seen, or what we grew up with, or what was happening in the movies we watched as a kid or the books we read. We do life. We make the selections on the menu of life, often based on what we think is possible, what we think is likely, and what we think is normal, right?
And so a lot of people are running their whole lives this way, like making choices like, oh, I have to work a nine to five. Working a nine-to-five is the only way to get good health insurance. Or working a nine-to-five is the only way to make enough money. Or if I work in a corporate job, I have to work nine to five. I can't work different hours.
Even an example is monogamy is considered the norm in relationships, but increasingly now we're seeing things like ethical non-monogamy, which is when people choose not to be monogamous, but it's ethical because they're in agreement with their significant other about it. Or there's polyamory which is another form of dating and romantic relationships.
Listen, I'm not poly, so I may not be explaining this super clearly, but from what I understand, it's like when you have romantic relationships that are not centered around monogamy and are centered around a relationship only between two people.
So that's an example where when being monogamous is the mainstream, but people are increasingly realizing that there are other options available to them. And so as we see that we have different options available, those different options, I think, sort of get added to the menu.
And so then it's like, originally, maybe we had this like a very small menu where it's like, well, you can be single, or you can be partnered. And you can be an entrepreneur, or you can work for somebody else. Or you can do this, or you can do that, versus the more options we see out there, the more those things come onto the menu as they become things that we understand are possible.
But there are always more things. There are always more options available to you than are ever on the menu because some of the options on the menu haven't been invented yet. And you could be the one to invent them, right?
And some of the options that aren't on the menu could be things that no one else would even ever want, but you might want them because they might be a really good fit for you and your specific preferences, desires, et cetera. So basically, the whole concept is sort of circling around this idea of what would you want your life to be like if you didn't have a preconceived notion of what your life could be like, or should be like, or what a life is like?
What would you want your relationships to be like if you didn't have a preconceived idea of what a relationship even was? What would you want your work to be like? Your work, your job, your whole career, what would you want that to be like? How would you want to relate to that if you didn't have preconceived ideas about what work is, what it means, what counts as work, and what doesn't?
I mean, even in my life, I've seen such a difference in what can count as work. When I was a little kid, the internet probably already existed, but we didn't have the internet until I was in like eighth grade. So it's like being a social media influencer. Social media didn't even exist or didn't exist in any way that I knew about. So that wasn't a job, but now it's a job. Now, it's a career that people have and do and can make a lot of money at, right?
Or, like for me, for a long time, I knew, okay, I want to do a kind of work where I have interesting conversations with people, and I help people have a more enjoyable, satisfying experience in their lives. And I became interested in life coaching because that seemed to be a job I could have or work I could do that would allow me to do that thing that I wanted to.
There were other ways also to do that thing. There were other careers and jobs available, but that one seemed to be the most interesting to me. And so even before I really knew what a coach was deeply, I was like, okay, that could be cool. But it was sort of not on the main menu of life. It was like on a peripheral menu, and I was like, what even is this menu? What does this say? What are these ingredients, right? I'm really going hard with this metaphor, y'all.
So building my business and figuring this out for myself has been, you know, that's been me accessing, first of all, the less common menu of life. And then going all the way over into the secret menu of life, making my coaching career my own. Because, yes, it's true that by the time I became a coach, it was not totally mainstream, but more of a mainstream thing. And there were examples of how to have a coaching business and how to replace my corporate income, blah, blah, blah.
So that was that sort of peripheral menu of life. But as I really made my coaching business my own and made it something that works for me specifically, versus what I've seen modeled in the industry, I got further and further into that secret menu of life where it was really about me thinking about what work even means to me, and how I want to work, and what are the ways work could fit into my life, and what would feel really yummy and delicious to me, versus what's the prefabricated option, right?
So often, the prefabricated option is to get a job and then work at it 40 hours a week. And I have done that, but I didn't really like it. Even in the jobs that I loved the most, I didn't really like going to work. Even when I was a bartender and I was working way less than 40 hours a week, I was always like, I'll do this to make money so I can feed myself and have an apartment. But I don't really want to. And I think that's so true for so many people.
The menu of life that they're used to is that work is something unpleasant that you do because you have to. But on the secret menu of life, you can design what work means to you, and you can design work in a way that's much more fun, much more fulfilling, and much more satisfying while still being something that creates a lot of money for you if that's something you want. I realize it's not something everyone wants.
It is something I want, to make a lot of money and to use that money in ways that feel really good and make a lot of sense to me. And it's also something I want to work way less hours than what people generally consider full-time. It's just like when I go to an actual restaurant, I love it if they have tapas or small plates because I like to try a bunch of different things. And I don't necessarily have room to eat a bunch of full plates of food.
It's been said before that I eat like a bird. I eat often, but not a lot in one setting. So tapas restaurants are great because there are always like six things on the menu I’d like to try, though. So I feel like that's kind of how I relate to my work, too. A lot of people are like, oh, work needs to take up 40 or more hours a week, like it's like some big like steak and potatoes dinner.
And that's just absolutely not the role I want work to take in my life. And so when I design my own experience and order off that secret menu, then I can make work more like a tapas plate. Like it packs a lot of nutrients, it packs a lot of delight, but it takes up less of my time than a lot of people assume that work has to. And I'm really excited to have that be my reality.
And I realize it may sound a little bit too good to be true. I'm like, oh, I want to make a lot of money while working less hours. But when you want to make a lot of money while working less hours, that basically means you want to concentrate on the value that you have to offer. And this may be an unpopular opinion. It may be a popular opinion. I'm not sure which, but having worked in a lot of corporate jobs and other businesses, I think there's a lot of time usually spent in those roles where people aren't actually working or they're doing busy work.
And life is too short for me to want to do that. And I would rather be working deeply and intensively and creating a lot of value or just not working versus sitting at a desk to be butt in chair and showing that I'm there and committed, which I think happens a lot in office jobs. And, again, I think that's the typical menu that most of us get offered is like, this is what work looks like.
And that's just not what I want work to look like for me. And since I want something that is, at least in some ways, unconventional, I can totally have it. And if you want something unconventional, I believe you can totally have it too. But I had to order off the secret menu. And in a lot of ways, I had to build it myself, right?
So when I say order off the secret menu, it kind of makes it seem like you can just click a button, and then it's delivered to you. So let's clear that up right now. It's not like that. I've built my business from the ground up. And also, there's been so much trial and error.
And there's been so many times along the way when I realized that I was building my business in a way that actually reflected the socialization I’d received and the examples I'd seen in a corporate setting or in other work settings and like replicating that. And then I had to pause and often tear down some things I was doing and build it a different way so it could be more of what I wanted and less reflective of what was commonplace or what I'd seen before.
So whether what you want is something that's similar to what I found on my secret menu or what I've built on my secret menu, which may be more accurate, the purpose of this podcast isn't to say you can have what I have. Although, I firmly believe you can have what I have.
The purpose of this podcast is for you to really get into it with yourself and think about if anything's possible, if things don't have to be the way they've been modeled to me, if things don't have to be the way I always was sort of like, well, that's just life, that just works, that's just parents, that's just friends, this is how relationships are or like this is how home-ownership is. If it didn't have to be the way it is, or the way that's commonplace, or the thing that's on the mainstream menu of life, what might be interesting for you to try?
What would you want your career to feel like? What would you want your career to be like? How many hours would you like to work? Because I know for most of us, we don't actually want to work 40 hours a week. We just think we have to. And you can, but I don't think you do have to. And I even think there are ways to work inside of companies in corporate and other settings and not work like that. And I've seen it happen, and I've seen it be successful.
So yeah, it may be different than what other people are doing, but that doesn't mean you can't have it. It may be something a little different than what's on that mainstream menu of life, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.
Okay, so if you walk away with nothing else from this call, what I want you to walk away with is just this idea that there are more options than are being presented to you, pretty much literally all the time. There are more options. There are more customizations. There are ways you can make things really specifically aligned with who you want to be and what you want your life to be like in a variety of areas.
And it can be really hard to see those possibilities. And for a lot of my clients, one of the things we have to work on is their feeling like they deserve to have access to that secret menu of life. Feeling like they deserve to be able to design what they want themselves. And a lot of times, it's feeling like they deserve to rest, feeling like they deserve to have pleasure in their lives, feeling like they deserve to have a good career and a good experience of their career, feeling like they deserve to get to have things be different.
And if that's where you are or if you feel a block in this area, I would invite you to come work with me either in SAF or in one-on-one coaching because I give you so much information on the podcast about how to help yourselves and how to move forward. But sometimes, especially around worthiness issues, people struggle because they don't have someone there to sort of see their blind spots and see the ways that they're stopping themselves from having what they want.
So if you've been working on these ideas for a while and you're not getting as much forward momentum as you would like, I would invite you to sign up for a consult call, and we can have a conversation about what's going on, and I will help you see the patterns that you're going through. And if it seems like you're a good fit for coaching, I'll tell you about how I'm currently working with clients. And we will see if you're a good fit and get you signed up if you are.
All right, that's what I have for y'all this week. Happy Wednesday. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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