The Meaning Movement: Rediscover your Passion, Avoid Burnout, and Do Work You Love.

Jeff Strietzel always wanted to help others — a value he learned from how his parents raised him. That desire guided him to pursue ministry, which then lead him to higher education. Now a professor of leadership, Jeff's found a space that he enjoys and a future that feels wide open.

I really enjoyed my time with Jeff. He's thought long and deep about things like vocation, work, and identity. He's the kind of conversation partner with whom I could easily geek out with about work theory and loose track of time.

We dig into his career journey, how to find a mentor, definitions of leadership, and how identity and work are related but need to be kept separate.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Jeff does
• His career growth possibilities in higher education
• Why having only one job limits yourself
• Why potential is humanities greatest wasted resource
• Where did Jeff's passion for his career came from
• How to find a mentor
• Definition of a mentor
• How to approach someone to be a mentor
• What does leadership means
• What are the characteristic of a strong / good leader
• How to improve your leadership skill
• Difference between work identity and your full identity
• Why is it we don't seek purpose, vocation or meaning until we are forced into it

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/jeff

Hani Cheng is a transformational coach. What does that mean? She helps people embrace change in all forms. I love the holistic approach she takes — incorporating meditation, mindset, and (to use her words) magic into her process. It was a blast to connect with Hani. We got to go places in our conversation that I don't often go with guests, digging into ideas around intuition, the inner voice, and how to live more truthfully. You're in for a treat.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Hani does
• How did she get into with this work
• What is "Multidimensional Level Transitioning"
• How to make transitions successfully
• Why you need to step out of your comfort zone
• The different manifestation of your inner voice
• How to hear your inner voice
• How Hani dealt with transitions when bad things happened
• The importance of understanding the transformational process
• What she means by "the frequency of the future is not what your past is"
• How to thrive in any transition

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/hani

Samantha Alvarez spent the last 15 months in hospitals and ER's as a front line worker helping fight the COVID pandemic. We discussed that experience in length in the last episode of the show. Today, I get the chance to jump back in with her and explore the many facets of her work and life.

In this conversation we explore Samantha's three tiered approach to work and projects and how she decides what to focus on at any given time. She works and lives in a multidisciplinary fashion — which is a lot of fun to explore.

While this could be viewed as a "part 2", it very much stands on its own. If you'd like to tune into our last conversation, just go back an episode in the podcast feed and you should find it.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Samantha does
• The different manifestations of work in her life
• How many language she speaks conversationally
• How to start learning other languages
• Her early career pursuits
• How a sales couch helps businesses
• How she overcame the negativity in sales
• Where the idea of sales being evil came from
• How to embrace the "screw up"
• How she moved through uncertainties in her life
• How to reinvent yourself without fear
• Overcoming the mountain that is keeping us stuck

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/sam2

Samantha Alvarez has done a lot of different work over the course of her career. By her count, she's had 65 jobs.

She also finds herself now pursuing two parallel tracks professional —nursing and sales — along with a few more passion projects that she takes very seriously.

I intended to get into all of that. But this conversation went a surprising and unexpected direction.

Samantha has spent the last 15 months on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, in hospitals and ER's around the united states. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to hear more about that experience, how she's processing it, and how she's moving from it.

This conversation was so fun and unexpected. It definitely wasn't the conversation that I anticipated having, but it was such an exciting and relevant experience to explore that I couldn't help myself.

We'll have Samantha on in our next episode to dig further into her work journey.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Samantha does
• The four pillars of her life
• How she earns a living
• How she's processing Covid trauma
• How mental health became her fuel in battling pandemic
• The experiences she witnessed in the field
• The stress and trauma a frontline worker experiences everyday
• How to recovery from the trauma of pandemic
• How to fight PTSD while working in the field
• How to manage being workaholic
• What is a "Mind Gap Exercise"
• Tips in managing panic attacks

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/sam

Ray Blakney was haunted by a question: If they wrote a book about your life would anyone want to read it? His answer was no. So he stepped outside his comfort zone, quit his job, and had an adventure. That decision lead him down a path that has taken him to a place he could never have imagined. He's now an entrepreneur and lives in Mexico, living a life that is much different from his day job years before. Since starting his first business, with his wife as a business partner, in 2008, he has bootstrapped multiple 6 and 7-figure online businesses.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Ray does
• How he ended up in this career
• How he addressed fear and anxiety during his transition
• How he decided to make a career transition
• What his language school is about
• How he and his wife started their own business
• The hurdles he's faced in his business
• When is the best time to start chasing your dream
• How to find people that will help you become who you want to be
• How he helps podcasters and listeners connect
• Tips and hacks on how to get your business started

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/ray

When you decide to make a career change, how do you choose your new path? While you can't know exactly where the road will lead, but you can know at least the general direction that the path will take you. This is exactly what Ben McAdam decided to do. With a background in music, he wanted to learn business. He followed that thread and it lead to some surprising places — and ultimately to what he's doing today. As a virtual CFO and profits coach, he helps businesses and business owners improve their financials and ultimately, make more money.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Ben does
• How to see opportunities everywhere
• How to pursue both responsibility and passion
• How Ben finds passion in accounting and in his music
• His career path transition
• The role of a Financial Controller
• Ben's process for going through different transitions
• Ways you can monetize your passion
• Ben's advice for Start-ups

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/ben

Catherine Ricafort and Scott McCreary are artists who have seen the top of their fields. And when they did, they saw how difficult of a life it was — even for the best of the best.

So they made a change. And that change lead them to help others make similar changes.

Catherine and Scott founded Artists Who Code — a volunteer-run organization whose mission is to empower artists through tech, and advance tech through artistry.

They are a wife and husband team who first met as a-cappella competitors on NBC's The Sing-Off.

The work that they are doing is so in-line with the Meaning Movement. They're doing anything they can to help artists make the big and often overwhelming transition to tech.

It was a blast to dialogue with them. They're kind, open, and very thoughtful about all things work, art, and meaning related.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Catherine and Scott do
• How they decided to pursue two careers
• How they transitioned
• Their emotional transition after shifting careers
• The challenges they faced during their transitions
• Their current relationship with their art
• The role of COVID in what they're doing now
• The future of Artists Who Code
• The major hurdles people face when making transitions
• How do you get involved with Artists Who Code

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/awc

Gladys Holliday is a collage artist.

When the COVID pandemic caused her to be furloughed, Gladys took the opportunity to explore her creativity. She threw herself into making without expectation of what would come out the other side.

I'll let her tell her story, but ultimately she found something that feels more like what she was made to do than anything else she's experienced.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Gladys does
• How she got into art
• How being too "squiggly" affects her career path
• Her advice for starting a small business
• How to start being more creative
• The most challenging parts of her journey and how she overcame them
• How fear plays a part in her process
• The impact she hopes her art will have
• Why she feels that art is what she is made for
• Her creative process
• How does her experience in studying textiles connect to her art

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/gladys

Holly Ojalvo has had a long career in both digital media and education.

Over the past dozen years, she has been an editorial leader at outlets including The New York Times, Quartz, and USA TODAY, developing and executing content strategy, streamlining processes, launching and running initiatives, and mentoring, coaching, hiring, and training journalists. She also founded and ran Kicker, a digital news outlet aimed at young adults.

Previously, Holly spent a decade in the high school classroom as an award-winning teacher and student newspaper adviser.

She has long been passionate about fostering collaborative and healthy culture for staff and students to thrive.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Holly does
• How nonlinear paths can play a role in your career
• How to frame transitions on resumes
• Linear vs non-linear transitions
• An iterative approach to career
• How Holly thinks about calling and purpose in her life, career, and journey
• How to know when it is the right time to make a career transition

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/holly

Laura Huang is a researcher and professor at Harvard Business School. She researches and teaches on concepts of perception and bias in work and business.

Her work has been featured in all kinds of impressive places: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and a whole bunch of others.

Through her work Laura helps people come to understand how others see them, take control of that narrative, and use it to their advantage.

In our interview we talk about how what she is advocating is an empowering bottom-up approach to the systemic change that a lot people talk about today.

This conversation was a blast. We talk about why "soft-skills" matter so much, how much fun footnotes are, and lots of other great things.

More than anything, Laura's a fantastic conversation partner with so much to offer anyone thinking deeply about who they are, where they're going, and what skills and steps may be needed to get there.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What Laura does
• How she followed her curiosity to her current work
• How to empower individuals facing adversity to create their own edge
• Why hard work and grit leave us frustrated
• Did Laura always hope and plan on being a researcher?
• Why following someone else's path will produce different results
• What is the meaning of "Finding Your Edge"?
• What are "Soft Skills" and how can we develop and leverage them?
• How to improve in self awareness
• What is the difference between self awareness and understanding someone else's perception of you

Show notes at: https://themeaningmovement.com/laurah