#217 Why “Find a Job You Love” Sends the Work Message to Gen Z Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 0:39
Find a job that you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. It is one of the most quoted pieces of career advice out there. It sounds dreamy, it sounds aspirational, it sounds like the goal. But adults, come on, let’s be honest. This phrase that we’re sharing widely is setting kids up for disappointment. See, even in their very best career fit, there are going to be hard days. There’s still going to be tasks, even in every job, even if you love it like mine, that you’re just not going to enjoy that task. There are still going to be parts of the job that feel like, well, work, work. So today I want to talk about why this advice creates really unrealistic expectations, and we’re going to dissect it, and we’re going to actually look at what can build sustainable career satisfaction for the young people that we love. So remember, this is the last of our four part series on Well, bad advice that we’re giving kids, what they hear and how we can do better by them. So I want to remind everybody I this whole series has not been out of malicious attack or judgment on my part of anybody, right Because we’re all well meaning about these kids, these love that we love, and quite frankly, like this piece of advice, find a job that you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. It sounds poetic beyond being good advice, but the reality is, poetic is not the same as practical. And loving your work does not mean that it stops being work. So this is what this phrase is actually doing. It’s telling kids that if you’re in the right job, it’s never going to feel hard. And guess what If it starts to feel hard, well, you made a really bad choice, so we better undo that, or redo that, or look somewhere else, and frankly, it becomes kind of dangerous for them and their future, because difficulty does not mean misalignment. So let’s get real in this episode, and let’s give you the adults our listeners, whether it’s the kid that you love or it’s the ones that you’re working with tools to actually shift this conversation into something that better serves them their future. And frankly, if you’re a parent, it serves you too, because we’re all working at launching these kids into the real world so that we can all get on living our next chapter happily. Okay, so first of all, let’s begin to normalize the fact that even the best jobs are going to have draining parts. So that could be paperwork, it could be conflict. It might be looming deadlines. You know what I know about personality is some people are going to like the administrative task or the paperwork they’re wired for it. Other people handle conflict beautifully. Deadlines. Well, some people are motivated by them, and other people feel like is just that monkey on their back, right There’s workplace politics, there’s the people that we work with, and people are going to people, right So this is really looking about like how we’re wired. What energizes us, because what is draining to us might be energizing to somebody else. And we need to normalize the fact that even the best job is going to have a bad day. Bad days do exist, and even hard seasons. I mean, think of your accountant. This episode is dropping during tax season. Even the best accountant who loves their job has a hard season, January to April 15, right We have to learn to expect them and get tools in our toolbox to navigate them when we come and the reality is that we bring our whole self to work, right We don’t just bring our professional self to work. We are a whole, integrated person. If we have a bad day at work, we bring that home to our personal life. If we’re having a bad day personally at home, we’re bringing that part of our self. To work, right We cannot separate these two. So maybe it’s your co worker who’s having a bad day, or your boss who’s in a bad season. Maybe they have a sick family member or something else. So those bad days, those bad seasons, are going to show up if they’re even if they’re personal, they’re going to show up professionally as well, we need to begin to manage our expectations, because when our expectations are not grounded in reality, it’s going to undermine success as adults, we know that, but our kids don’t yet have the experience to be able to stick with it. And let me also say this, I’ve started grown and sold companies myself. I’ve had many employees. I tell every new employee, and I tell those companies that I support with hiring that it’s going to take up to a full year for you to be fully grounded in a new job. You’ve got to give it time, so the good fit is not going to eliminate making good effort. Okay, so besides that, let’s also talk about this. Let’s talk about grit. Angela Duckworth, she’s known for talking about grit. You can google her, you’re going to get a lot of great things about grit out there, right I mean, wouldn’t that be a dreamy podcast guest for me to have But let’s talk about what it means. So when young people believe that every workday should feel good, which is what this piece of bad advice is grounded in, they are hearing a lot about feelings. I hear this a lot about feelings like I just, I don’t feel like this is a good fit. I don’t feel like I’m loving my work. I’m not feeling like I should, right So first of all, there’s this idea of feelings, and there’s this idea of another piece of bad advice that we’ve already dissected, that passion should carry me through even those you know, those hard days, so find your passion, right These lies, which, maybe that’s a strong word, but these lies, these pieces of misaligned bad advice, can compile on top of each other and make one piece get amplified, right So when the hard stretches come, when we think that every day should feel good and my passion should carry me through that hard stretch, that bad day, that bad week, because if we’re real, there are bad weeks at work, right They start to make the individual feel like they’re a failure, that they’re not good enough, that shame gets piled on, and then what happens is they begin to look for relief instead of really digging in and getting gritty. What does Angela Duckworth say about grit So she says that it is sustained interest coupled with sustained effort. And see effort is going to include things that you don’t necessarily love or that doesn’t necessarily easily align for you. Remember, that’s always going to be part of work. Resilience is going to grow when our young people begin to expect the friction right now with these bad pieces of advice, they’re expecting butterflies and rainbows. They’re expecting things to be easy. Instead, when we expect some friction to come, not every single day, not all day long, but when we expect that there’s going to be friction, then we’re going to navigate it better. So I’ve got this rule. It’s the 75 to 80% rule, and it actually can be applied to a lot of things in life. The reality is and we need to get real with how we talk about our jobs, adults, with young people. We need to get vulnerable instead of painting the butterfly in rainbow picture or the opposite is every day being misery, right The truth lies somewhere between. Okay, so let’s dig into this 75 to 80% rule. If you enjoy 75 to 80% of your work, that is strong alignment. It’s not going to be 100% all the time. You might have 100% days, but on the average, if 75 to 80% of our time feels right, is aligned, we’re in a good place. Let’s manage that expectation. Now, what about the other 20 to 25% Well, there’s trade offs right There’s opportunity cost for every good thing that we want. There’s a cost of entry. So that’s what I talked about. It’s going to take a full year before you’re grounded in what the job’s actually going to be, because there’s a growth edge when we first start something, right So these growth edges are when we’re new to a job, when we’re new to a team. Maybe you’ve been with that employer for a while, but you join a new team, there’s a growth edge. Maybe you have to take on new responsibilities or learn a new technical skill. There is a growth edge. So this healthy career identity. We’ve got to ground it in the truth that there are going to be trade offs and that over time, things get easier.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 10:29
They really do. So when you’re telling let’s go back about the hidden pressure that this talks about. So when we’re telling these kids that it’s possible to never feel like we’ve worked a day in our lives This is what it starts to this is what they hear. This is what they’re interpreting. If it feels like work I failed, if I’m tired or worn out at the end of the day, it’s wrong. If I struggle, I’m not in my thing yet. And then here’s what happens. They interpret the reality of what’s just hard and expected as if this is true, then I need to hop to another job. I need to avoid working too hard for mastery, they start to abandon growth too soon. And when these things start to happen, when they shut down to look for comfort, or when they begin to Job hop, or they become stalled out, and they’re floundering and falling behind where you and honestly, they thought they would be that’s what I start to hear from you guys. That’s when you guys start sending me emails and you show up in my DMs, or you meet me out in the wild at the grocery store. And that’s when parents begin to see that we have a real problem. So let’s avoid getting there in the first place. Let’s stop giving our young people these unrealistic pieces of advice, like, it’s possible to feel like you’re never going to work a day in your life, right And if you are like, gosh, we’ve been doing this and and I don’t know a better way to do it, go over and get my video, my free video. It’s our career identification compass is how to show you a better way to do this, right And you find it at flourish coaching, code.com, forward slash, video, right, easy to get. It will help you do a better way and find a better way to support your young person so that things are no longer feeling catastrophic. Okay, so aside from what you’ll get in the video, let’s talk about a better reframe. Instead of this is possible to feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life. Instead, maybe our conversations can start to include things like this. If you can find work that is meaningful enough to stay committed to even when things get hard, you’re on the right path, right Or let’s find work that energizes you more than it drains you. There’s that 75 to 80% right more than maybe you just haven’t found it yet. But it’s out there find work where even when those hard parts come, even when you’re having a bad personal day and it shows up at work, or that happens for your co worker, or you have to dedicate a day to doing the thing that you don’t want to do, it still feels worth it. Two three days from now, when you’re having a good day, where the tasks that are at hand align, or let’s be sure that we separate the work of the job from the people or from a company culture. I don’t rule out the fact that sometimes people need to move on. Sometimes they are working for a bad boss, but this idea of rooting in feelings that things should never feel bad, what I’m finding is kids jump too soon, instead of sticking with it for I would suggest a year. Okay I heard from my mom recently, her kid landed an apprenticeship, and within three days, he quit. And I said, three days, how do you even know Right So fulfillment is going to come from meaning, not from constant enjoyment, okay For long term fulfillment, not temporary, good day fulfillment. So we started this whole series. Let’s do a quick recap here with episode number one of this series. I think it was number 214, if you want to go back and listen to it, if you missed it, telling kids that you can be anything that serves to overwhelm them. The next one that we unpacked was punch. All your passion that creates undue pressure. And then last week, we talked about your job hasn’t even been invented yet, and what that allows for is stalled movement and momentum for them, and ultimately for you. And then this last piece that we’re ending with is you’ll you can feel like you’ll never work a day in your life, which creates unrealistic expectations. These phrases, when we first say them as adults, feel inspiring. They are undermining the young people that we love the most. So I already gave you the questions that you can reframe things that we should be talking about at home, and we need to be mindful adults of how we’re talking about our own work and the advice that we’re giving. So if you’ve noticed that the common advice or the way that you’re trying to go at this launch of your young person in the future is not helping your family move forward. Go over there and get the career identification, compass. Video, it’s at flourish coaching, code.com, forward slash video, it is going to give you practical, grounded, not hype, advice and a structured path that will create calm. Because when we work together to solve this, I this way. I believe in community. Everybody’s going to do better. But the bottom line is, work will always require effort. The goal is finding that the effort is worth it and it’s meaningful. Okay, we’ll be back next episode, back to having a guest, but I told you guys, I’m going to show up solo more this year, and I want to hear what you think about it. Send me your emails. Drop into my DMs. I love the work that we’re doing together.