Successful On Paper

What if you've spent years playing the career game really well, only to realise it's no longer a game you want to win?

You've worked hard, built a reputation, earned more money and progressed through the ranks. But somewhere along the way, the things that used to motivate you have stopped feeling quite so important.

And yet, you're still chasing the same goals because that's what you've always done.

In this episode, I explore why the career game that worked so well in your 20s and 30s might not feel right in your 40s and 50s, and why working harder isn't necessarily going to make things better.

I explore:

• Why career success can start to feel less satisfying, even when you're doing well.
• The difference between being good at something and still wanting it.
• Why our instinct is often to work harder when something doesn't feel right.
• How your definition of success might have changed over the years.
• Three questions to help you work out what you actually want from your career now.

I also share my own experience of reaching a point in my career where I knew I wanted something different, but had no idea what that looked like.

You might not need a different career. You might just need a different relationship with the one you've already got.

Feeling stuck in your career?

I've created my 1hr Get Unstuck session for exactly this kind of thing. Bring me your career problem and we'll spend an hour pulling it apart, challenging your thinking and you’ll leave knowing exactly what step to take next.

Find out more: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/work-with-me

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

Online fitness coach Adam Richardson joins me for an open and honest conversation about work, mental health, finding purpose and why we spend so much time thinking about making changes rather than actually doing something about them.

Adam spent nearly eight years working in charity fundraising, climbing the career ladder and attempting to quit seven times. Eventually, after struggling with his mental health, he left to become a personal trainer.

His first year was exhausting and he earned just £12,000 - but he'd never been happier.

We talk about:

• How easy it is to climb the wrong career ladder without realising.
• Why being vulnerable and asking for help aren't necessarily the same thing.
• The impact of work on our mental health and relationships.
• Why taking action builds confidence more than overthinking ever will.
• Finding purpose and working out what success looks like for you.
• Why it's never too late to start again.
• A simple exercise to help you imagine your perfect ordinary day.

Adam is refreshingly honest about his struggles, the things he's learned and what he's still figuring out.

As he says, "20 minutes of doing is worth more than 20 hours of thinking".

Where to find Adam:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aadamrichardson

Where to find Jess:

Website: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

If you've spent most of your career in the same industry or type of role, it's easy to assume your experience is too niche to do anything else.

But you've built up far more transferable skills than you realise. The trouble is, you've been using some of them for so long that you barely notice them anymore.

In this episode, I talk about how to look beyond your job title and recognise what you're actually good at.

I cover:

• Why your job title doesn't tell the whole story about what you can do.
• How to spot the strengths you take for granted but other people value.
• Five questions to help you identify your transferable skills.
• How to look at your experience differently and see where else your skills could be useful.
• Why being good at something doesn't mean you have to keep doing it.

If you're wondering what else you could do after 20 or 30 years in one career, this episode will help you start seeing your experience - and your options - differently.

Want some help working out what comes next?

Find out more about my coaching programme: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/work-with-me

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717

If you’ve been telling yourself “I should stick it out until I retire” while quietly wondering “Can I really do another 10 or 15 years of this?”, this one’s for you.

If you’re in your 40s or 50s, earning good money and you’ve spent decades building your career, the idea of changing direction can feel exhausting and risky.

So maybe you should just stick it out until retirement?

The trouble is, 10 or 15 years is still a big chunk of your life. And staying in a job you hate has a cost - to your energy, confidence, relationships and how present you are outside work.

But there’s another side to this.

Staying where you are might actually be the right decision. And there’s a big difference between choosing to stay and feeling like you have no choice.

In this episode, I talk about:

• What your job is giving you and what it’s costing you.
• Why another 10 years at work is still a significant stretch of time.
• The difference between staying deliberately and simply enduring.
• How staying where you are doesn't have to mean changing nothing.
• The question: “If I knew I had options, would I still choose this one?”

I also explain how I work with clients through a 3-step programme, Clarity, Confidence and Action, to help them make a career decision they trust and build a practical plan for what happens next.

Find out more about my coaching programme here: www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/work-with-me

Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717

What if reaching midlife and thinking “something isn’t right here” isn’t a crisis at all?

What if it’s a sign that the way you’ve lived and worked for the first half of your life isn’t what you need for the second?

In this episode, I talk to author and social entrepreneur Trevor Waldock about what he believes can be an extraordinary shift in the second half of life - if we have the courage to face into it.

For years, many of us are focused on building: a career, a reputation, financial security, expertise, a family, a life. We get good at achieving, doing and proving ourselves.

But Trevor believes there can come a point when those things stop being enough. We get what he calls a tap on the shoulder: something that stops us in our tracks and demands our attention. We shouldn’t dismiss this calling because it's an invitation to start our real life's work.

Trevor shares his own experience of this transition, when he reached a point where he couldn't carry on as he had been.

He talks about how this links in with eldership, why it's so beneficial to get elder, not just older, and how elders can help us navigate our midlife shift.

We also talk about thresholds: the transitions we all go through where we're no longer the person we were but we don't yet know exactly who we're becoming.

For people used to achieving, fixing and knowing what comes next, sitting in that uncertainty can be incredibly uncomfortable. But Trevor believes there’s important work to be done there rather than rushing straight through it.

This is a rich conversation about success, identity, ageing, purpose and what we want to do with the years we have left.

Where to find Trevor:

Website: https://www.trevorwaldock.net/

Trevor's books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Trevor-Waldock/author/B001KDCF8G?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Connect with Jess:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

Website: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/

If there’s something about your career you’ve been circling around for longer than you’d like, this is the episode for you.

It could be a job you’re not sure whether to apply for. A conversation with your manager you keep avoiding. A promotion you’re not convinced you want. An idea about going freelance or consulting. Or perhaps the bigger question of whether you want to stay where you are at all.

You haven’t made a decision but you haven’t stopped thinking about it either.

In this episode, I explore why we can get stuck waiting for certainty that may never come and how making the decision smaller can help you move forward.

I cover:

• Why not making a decision isn’t as neutral as you might think.
• What you might really be waiting for before you decide.
• How to turn a huge career question into a much smaller next step.
• Why you don’t need to know where everything ends before you move forward.
• The difference between staying because you’re stuck and actively deciding to stay.
• Why another three months of thinking probably won’t help if you’re not gathering any new information.

I also share two questions to think about:

What career decision is taking up more space in your head than it deserves?

And:

What are you actually waiting for before you make it?

This is also exactly why I created my new Get Unstuck session.

It’s one focused hour for the career decision, problem or question that’s been going round and round in your head. I’ll ask the questions other people won’t, challenge your thinking and help you work out what needs to happen next.

You might leave having made the decision. Or you might leave knowing exactly what information you need before you can make it.

Either way, you’re moving forward rather than going round in circles.

Book a Get Unstuck session here: https://tidycal.com/3o42vom/get-unstuck-1hr-session

Connect with Jess:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717

Website: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk

When you’re unhappy at work, it can feel like getting unstuck is going to take months.

But an hour can be enough to change everything.

In this episode, I look at what can actually happen in one focused coaching session: making a decision you’ve been putting off, creating a much-needed plan, shifting your perspective or simply working out what you need to do next.

I share my own recent experience of going into a coaching session with lots of looping thoughts and coming out an hour later with a tangible plan through to the end of the year.

I also share three real examples from my coaching: a client deciding whether to accept a new job, a senior leader finding the time for something he’d thought was impossible and a client completely changing the way he saw himself as a leader.

I explore:

• What you can realistically achieve in one hour.
• How getting your thoughts out of your head can change everything.
• Three examples of what clients have achieved in a single session.

I’ve also just launched a new Get Unstuck session: a powerful one-hour coaching session for when you’ve got one particular career problem or decision going round and round in your head.

Bring me the thing you can't stop thinking about and we'll spend an hour pulling it apart.

I'll listen, challenge your thinking, help you see what you might be missing and you’ll leave knowing exactly what to do next.

Book your Get Unstuck session here: https://tidycal.com/3o42vom/get-unstuck-1hr-session

And if you know someone who might be interested, please share the link with them.

Connect with Jess:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

Website: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/

What happens when you’ve built a successful corporate career, reached senior leadership and you realise you don’t actually want the next promotion?

In this episode, I’m joined by Jimmy Barber, who left the corporate world in his early 50s after a career that took him all the way to COO and Board level.

We talk about why it’s so easy to keep following the career path in front of you without stopping to ask whether you actually want where it’s taking you.

Jimmy shares his experience of turning down opportunities that looked great on paper, the promotion that made him less happy and worse at his job and what leaving corporate life taught him about how much of our identity can become wrapped up in our job title.

We also have a really honest conversation about the less visible side of senior leadership - including a period of intense pressure when Jimmy appeared completely in control to everyone around him while privately struggling to cope.

We cover:

• Why automatically chasing the next promotion isn't always progress.
• The difference between being busy and doing work that actually matters.
• How much identity and status can become tied to your job.
• Why comparison at work can make you miserable.
• The downside of being fiercely independent and finding it difficult to ask for help.
• Why your definition of success might need to change as you do.
• The value of making intentional career choices, even if the choice is to stay exactly where you are.

Jimmy's biggest message is a simple one: make time to think about what actually matters to you and be intentional about the choices you make.

You don't necessarily need to change everything. But there's a big difference between staying somewhere because you've chosen it and staying because you've never stopped to consider the alternative.

How to find Jimmy:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmybarber/

A Job Done Well podcast: https://ajobdonewell.com/category/podcast/

Connect with Jess:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

Website: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/

When something isn't right at work, it's easy to focus on the obvious solution: find a new job.

But if you haven't worked out what's really making you unhappy, there's a risk you take the same problems with you.

Different job. Same feeling.

In this episode, I talk about why it's worth fixing the foundations of your career before automatically reaching for the shiny new job.

Those foundations are the things that aren't necessarily visible from the outside: the Sunday night dread, feeling exhausted and numb, work constantly occupying your head, or that nagging feeling that there must be more to life than this.

I know what that feels like because I've been there myself. I know first-hand how life-changing this work is.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why changing jobs can feel like the obvious answer when work isn't making you happy.
• How easy it is to recreate the same problems in a completely different role.
• What I mean by your career foundations and why they matter.
• Why you need to understand who you are now, rather than who you were when you chose your career 20 odd years ago.
• How to think about what you actually want to feel different about work.
• Why doing the work underneath gives you new information – and helps the decisions about what comes next flow much more naturally.

You might do this work and still decide you need a new job. You might become more certain than ever that it's time to leave.

Or you might discover that the changes you need are about boundaries, responsibilities, where and when you work, or how much of yourself you give to your job.

Either way, you're no longer guessing.

If you're ready to do this work, please do book a free 30-minute discovery call with me.

It's a relaxed conversation to get to know each other, talk about what's happening for you and see whether I can help.

Book your free discovery call: https://tidycal.com/3o42vom/30-minute-meeting

Try my free Career Audit for men in their 40s & 50s: get clear on where you are now, where you want to be and the non-negotiables for your next chapter: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

If you know a man who might need to hear this episode, please share it with him. And don't forget to follow or subscribe to Successful On Paper so you never miss an episode.

This week I'm talking about kindness – but not kindness towards other people. Kindness towards yourself.

Most of the men I coach are good at being there for everyone else. They're supportive partners, good friends and reliable colleagues.

But they often hold themselves to a completely different standard.

They expect themselves to cope, keep striving, have the answers and get things right. And when they don't, they can be incredibly hard on themselves.

In this episode, I talk about self-compassion and why it isn't the same as letting yourself off the hook.

You can be ambitious, driven and want more from your life while still treating yourself with a bit more kindness along the way.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why we often speak to ourselves in ways we'd never speak to someone we care about.
• How self-compassion doesn't mean lowering your standards or making excuses.
• The particular pressures that can build up for men in their 40s and 50s.
• Why this stage of life might be exactly when you need to give yourself a break.
• Some simple questions to help you notice where you're being too hard on yourself.
• Why giving yourself permission to explore a happier, more fulfilling career can be an act of self-compassion too.

Wanting a career that fits you better doesn't make you greedy or ungrateful.

Sometimes one of the kindest things you can do for yourself is admit that something isn't working and give yourself permission to explore what could.

Want to talk it through?

If you'd like some space to think about what's going on for you and what you might need to change, you can book a free 30-minute discovery call with me.

It's a relaxed conversation to get to know each other, talk about what's happening for you and see whether I can help.

Book your free discovery call: https://tidycal.com/3o42vom/30-minute-meeting

Visit my website: https://www.twentytwentycoaching.co.uk/

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-spiers-19760717/

If you know a man who might need to hear this episode, please share it with him. And don't forget to follow or subscribe to Successful On Paper so you never miss an episode.