Recalculating: Your M.A.P. to Joy

Elizabeth Mathieu graduated with an accounting degree. She spent five years at PwC, buried in Excel, working busy-season hours that ate her whole life.

She didn't quit. Not yet.

Her first pivot happened inside the same company. She moved from audit to human-centered design consulting. Same paycheck. Same office. Completely different work.

"I didn't study accounting to think I was going to end up being a life coach," she says.

Five years later, a second pivot found her. This one was scarier: leaving the corporate safety net entirely to build her own coaching and yoga business.

In this episode, Elizabeth breaks down the difference between the warm-up jump and the big leap. She also gets into what actually kept her going when people asked, "are you sure?"

Her answer: celebration. Not the big, showy kind. Small wins, noticed and named, shared with the people who'd cheer for her.

If you've got blinders on right now, if you can't quite see what's possible on the other side of your job, this conversation is for you.

Elizabeth now combines coaching with yoga in a six-month immersive program, and offers 1:1 coaching too, movement optional. Find her at http://elizabethmathieu.com and Linkedin.com/in/elizabethamathieu

Your career GPS says recalculating? That's not failure. That's your path finding you. Come find me at MoveToJoyCoaching.com.

If this episode gave you a little hope, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Lauren Lefkowitz spent 20 years climbing the corporate ladder. HR Assistant. Accountant. VP of whatever-you-need.

Eighty to a hundred hours a week, for years.

Then her Roomba went after an unplugged lamp cord.

She ran to save the lamp, slid on her wood floor, and broke both shoulders. Recovery took almost a year. And somewhere in that year, she got the message she'd been ignoring: fine isn't fine.

Today Lauren runs eight lines of business, including her executive coaching practice, Fine Is a Trap — built for the corporate people who are tired of saying "fine" when they mean burned out, boundaryless, and busy.

In this episode, she and I talk about the fear underneath the leap (spoiler: it's not really about money), why "constructive friends" beat commiserators every time, and the line from her own coach that changed everything: "If you say so."

If you're sitting in the job that's slowly wearing you down, this one's for you.

Your GPS isn't broken. It's recalculating.

Connect with Lauren Lefkowitz: Fine Is a Trap — https://www.fineisatrap.com Free tools — https://www.fineisatrap.com/freetools LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenlefkowitz Email — [email protected]

Leigh Waring worked hard for her dream job. Big Four accounting firm, right out of college. The one everyone told her to want.

She got it. And something never clicked.

No dramatic blowup. No single bad day. Just a slow, quiet feeling that the work didn't have a "why" underneath it. She tried switching lanes — corporate accounting instead of public. Same feeling followed her in.

So she called her recruiter and asked a blunt question: what do people do when they don't want to do this anymore? He told her to come work at Robert Half. She researched it thoroughly (of course she did — she's an accountant) and took the leap into recruiting.

That's zigzag number one. There's a second.

Later, Leigh stepped away to run her own consulting business from home — flexible hours, more time with her kids. It looked right on paper. It wasn't. She missed her coworkers. She missed being around other adults solving problems together. So she zigzagged again, back into a corporate recruiting role, and that's where she's stayed.

In this episode, Leigh talks about the stretch of time she spent ignoring the signs, the moment she realized freedom without community wasn't the win she thought it'd be, and the one piece of advice she wishes someone had given her sooner: pay attention to what actually lights you up at work, even the small stuff. Those are the building blocks for your next move.

If you've ever felt that quiet "this isn't it" and talked yourself out of listening to it — this one's for you.

Connect with Leigh Waring on LinkedIn, or find her through Robert Half's accounting and finance recruiting team in the southeastern PA market.

Your GPS isn't broken. Come find your recalculated route at MoveToJoyCoaching.com. And be sure to like this podcast and subscribe/follow to hear more stories of people who found their career needed a new map.

Paula Gregorowicz biked to work that morning.

She didn't think twice about it. Just another Tuesday, another ten-minute ride, another day at a job that was quietly hollowing her out.

By lunch, it would matter more than she knew.

But first, rewind twenty years.

"I started with a major in accounting, which I didn't really want," Paula told me. Just like that. No softening it, no "in hindsight." She said the thing most of us bury: I built a career on a degree I didn't even want.

She kept building anyway. Internal audit. IT audit. One of the first intranet webmaster jobs at a multinational company, back when "intranet" was still a brand-new word. Web development. Data analysis. Twenty years of skill stacked on skill — and somewhere in there, she got tired enough to tell me this:

"I was kind of hoping that something terrible would befall me, simply so that I could take my long-term disability from my corporate job."

Not hurt badly. Just enough.

Enough to have a reason to stop going in.

That's the sentence I couldn't stop thinking about after we talked. Most people who feel that have never said it out loud — not to a coach, not to a friend, not even to themselves. Paula said it into a microphone.

Then came the morning her calendar filled up with HR meetings.

Paula had audited enough systems to know exactly what root access to the IT network meant on a day like that. She thought about her bike, locked up outside. She thought about walking out with a box.

"I'll be me, my box, and my Cannondale, on the corner," she said.

She was right. Just not the way anyone expected.

What actually happened that day — and what Paula would say to you if you're sitting exactly where she was — is the rest of this episode. If you've ever quietly hoped for a way out that wasn't quitting, you need to hear this one.

Listen to episode 4 of Recalculating Your Map to Joy.

Connect with Paula at thepaulagcompany.com, take her free Operations Clarity Assessment at thepaulagcompany.com/assessment.html, or find her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/paulagregorowicz.

And if your career GPS is saying "recalculating," come find me at MoveToJoyCoaching.com.

What do you do when the work you love starts to drain everything out of you?

For Paola Vita, the answer came during a walk from the South Bronx to Manhattan — and it changed the entire trajectory of her career.

In this episode, Marie sits down with Paola Vita, nonprofit fundraising consultant and coach, whose career journey took her from drug counseling and Outward Bound to education reform, to leading a capital campaign as Chief Advancement Officer, and finally to building her own consulting practice in Maine. Three major leaps, zero straight lines.

Paola opens up about hitting a wall after years in program management, what burnout actually looks and feels like from the inside, and how a mentor's well-timed conversation led her to say yes to a role she had zero experience in. Her second leap was a completely different story — a deliberate five-year plan built around one simple question: what do I actually love most about my work?

You'll hear Paola talk about:

• Why the fear of failure shows up the same way every single time

• Her belief that there are no mistakes — only choices you lean into

• The "talk to 5 people" strategy before making a big leap

• How to use the "where do I see myself in 5 years?" question as a personal GPS, not just an interview answer

Whether you're deep in burnout or cruising along just fine, this episode is a reminder that your next pivot doesn't have to be a crisis. It can be a plan — and it's never too late to make one.

Connect with Paola Vita: Find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paolavita/  or reach her at [email protected] | Take Root Consulting & Coaching

And if your career GPS is saying "recalculating," visit MoveToJoyCoaching.com.

From IT Career to Swimming the English Channel | Jeannie Zappe

What happens when you spend 20 years climbing a career ladder — only to realize that IT career no longer fits?

In this episode of Recalculating Your Map to Joy, host Marie Clark sits down with Jeannie Zappe — motivational speaker, certified swim coach, and marathon swimmer — to talk about one of the most remarkable career zigzags you'll ever hear.

Jeannie spent nearly two decades as an IT leader in higher education. Respected, accomplished, and completely burned out. When the colleagues she loved moved on and left her holding the weight of an entire organization, she knew something had to change — she just didn't know what.

What followed was a series of terrifying yeses: saying yes to swim coaching again after years away, yes to a week-long swim efficiency training in Florida where she felt completely out of her depth, and eventually, yes to swimming the English Channel at age 55.

In this conversation, Jeannie and Marie talk about:

• Why "I have no transferable skills" is almost always wrong

• The moment Jeannie's friends gave her permission to let go

• How following a chain of scary yeses led her back to her first love

• What it really means to be a marathon swimmer (including completing the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming — Manhattan Island, the Catalina Channel, and the English Channel)

• Her biggest fear when leaving her career: income and identity

• Why you don't have to have it all figured out before you say yes

And now, at 60, Jeannie is preparing to swim the English Channel again — this time as a fundraiser for the Clear Thoughts Foundation, supporting Alzheimer's research after her husband Chris was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease.

🌊 Follow Jeannie's Channel Crossing (July 7–12): https://www.facebook.com/groups/405086924278527

💜 Support the Clear Thoughts Foundation / Donate: https://eternaloptimist.me/donations

🌐 Learn more about Jeannie: https://eternaloptimist.me

If your career GPS is saying "recalculating," find Marie at movetojoycoaching.com

In this episode of Recalculating: Your M.A.P. to Joy, Colleen Patel shares her zigzag career from retail pharmacy to the founder of Colleen Patel Financial Coaching and The Prescription for Financial Health™ where she helps women gain insight into and control of their money so they can lead joyful lives.https://www.colleenpatel.com/

​ @MovetoJoyCoaching  invites you to the launch of our brand new podcast - Recalculating: Your M.A.P. to Joy!This show is about how career zigzags aren't detours or wrong turns — they're actually what creates our path to joyful work and joyful lives.If you're sitting in a job right now that fills your wallet but is slowly sucking your soul — this podcast is FOR you. Because every single guest you'll meet on this show has sat exactly where you're sitting now: stuck, scared, and wondering if "starting over" means starting from zero.In each short 7-10 minute episode, I sit down with someone who took the leap — who zigzagged out of a career that wasn't theirs anymore and into one that actually fits. No fluff, no fairy tales — just honest, real conversations about what it actually took. The fear. The finances. The first scary step. And what was waiting for them on the other side.So if you've ever felt like you're behind, like you took a wrong turn, like everyone else has it figured out except you — I made this show for you. Every story here is proof that joy and stability aren't an either-or. You can have both.www.movetojoycoaching.com