The latest episode of the Happier at Work podcast is a special one. I had an insightful conversation with Dr. Gary Crotaz, speaker, an executive coach, an award-winning author and host of the hit leadership podcast The Unlock Moment. We delve deep into the power of storytelling, the importance of recognising your strengths, and the pursuit of happiness in the workplace.

I share my "unlock moment" during my time in London and reflect on my journey to taking control and making things happen for myself. Meanwhile, Gary discusses the concept of choosing to be happy in the present moment, encouraging listeners to reevaluate their paths and consider making changes that align with their pursuit of fulfillment.

In addition to sharing personal anecdotes, we explore the concept of empowerment, the significance of being true to yourself at work, and the potential for you to have more control over your work environment than you realise.

This episode also delves into the importance of recognising "unlock moments," taking the next step, and not needing to have everything figured out. It's a thought-provoking episode that will challenge you to consider the role of "Unlock Moments" in your own life and career path.

We hope you find inspiration and valuable insights in this episode. It is sure to resonate with anyone seeking fulfillment and happiness in their professional journey.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

• The power of storytelling and the importance of recognising your strengths
• The concept of choosing to be happy in the present moment
• The significance of being true to yourself at work
• The importance of recognising ‘unlock moments’, taking the next step and not needing to have everything figured out.

Connect with Gary

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

Website: https://garycrotaz.com

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie 

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

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HappierAtWorkHQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ 

Previous Episodes:

https://happieratwork.ie/199-reflecting-on-happiness-at-work-with-aoife-obrien/

https://happieratwork.ie/197-the-journey-to-workplace-happiness-with-rob-dubin/

https://happieratwork.ie/178-fulfilling-your-potential-and-finding-joy-in-your-work-with-soma-ghosh/

Aoife, welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited for this, whatever we wanna call it, podcast mashup or whatever it might be. But, I'm I'm so excited because there's no script. There's we don't know what we're gonna be talking about. We have a vague idea. But, yeah, really exciting.

There's literally no script. So for people who don't know Happier at Work, tell us a bit about you and the the work that you do.

Yeah. Absolutely. So I worked in corporate for almost 20 years. I was really ambitious. I always loved what I did, and I reached a stage where I stopped enjoying what I was doing. I started questioning myself, and this happened a couple of times in a couple of different organizations until I finally left without any sort of plan. And I went on. I had no intention of setting up a business, but I went on and I studied coaching and I did a master's in organizational behavior.

And then I set up a business called happier at work, and then I set up my podcast also called happier at work. And from there, it's been a total evolution. I've been doing the podcast for four and a half years now, and I really love every aspect of it. And I suppose the core message is that work doesn't have to suck, that you do have options. And there are scientific proven ways to create happier working environments, happier workplaces, and to impact on your own workplace happiness. How about you? Tell me about your journey.

So, I I go by doctor Gary Crotus because I spent 8 years in medical school many years ago, and I feel like I wanna hold on to the the the, the rewards of the efforts of, of doing that, but I never practiced as a doctor. So, so this is around 20 years ago, I decided to do my first of a few career changes and switch out of medicine into corporate world. Spent 10 years in consulting and 7 in retail, in senior retail leadership positions. And as a as my secret double life, I was a professional ballroom dancer as well. So I've always been somebody who's, enjoyed a really variety of different things in work and home life. I've kind of followed my nose for things that I felt, I had an affinity with, I felt I loved doing. I worried less about the big long term plan, and I didn't really believe in sort of let's spend 10 years being unhappy for the potential promise of sunlit uplands in in the future. That's kind of been my path.

In the pandemic, I finished a role in retail, and I thought I was starting to do some coaching then. And I thought if I was my own coach, what would I say? And as I thought I would say, what's the bit of your working life that you love the most? And for me, it was one to one conversations with people talking about their development and growth. And and so I started getting into professional coaching at that at that time. And then I wrote a book called The Idea Mindset, which is, a book around sort of career and life development. So, it's full of exercises and questions you can ask yourself to figure out your path ahead. And then when I published the book, about 6 weeks later, I felt a bit bored because publishing a book is such a full on thing. And suddenly, when you you launch, it's like, now what am I gonna do? And I and I thought, why don't I launch podcast? That kinda comes out of that. And that's the Unlock Moment podcast.

And and in my own journey, I'd had these moments of remarkable clarity when I suddenly figured out the path ahead. And I'm quite fascinated by moments in people's lives and careers. And I'm quite curious about people, always have been. And so I started to talk to people through the podcast about their journeys and what was a moment when they remember exactly where they were, who they were with, what they were thinking when this Unlock Moment happened? Over the course of the last 2 years, and we've put out 100 and 30 odd episodes so far, I discovered that The Unlock Moment really talked to purpose and fulfillment in a in a very deep way. And one of the reasons why I think we're in this conversation, is because we're both talking about happiness, in similar ways, different ways with different lenses. It's so important today. And I think post pandemic, people are really, you know, waking up to the importance of feeling a sense of purpose, feeling a sense of fulfillment at work. So that's kind of been my my journey.

So now it is I spend a huge amount of my time doing speaking and podcasting around the Unlock Moment and and also a lot of coaching as well.

Something that struck me, Gary, about what you said was this promise. So you were saying you were waiting because there is this promise and you were in this situation for 10 years. And I think so many people can relate to that. So, you know, there's the carrots that's always dangling. It's this next promotion. It's a pay rise. It's a big project. It's a big opportunity.

And we hold on because we think that that thing is coming. And it's often at the expense of what's going on for us right now, and we make terrible decisions because of that. Do you want to kind of elaborate on that a little bit?

Well, Marshall Goldsmith, who's often ranked as the world's number one coach came on the Unlock Moment and, talked about a concept in a book he's written called The Earned Life, which is his book around reflecting back on his life and he's sort of he's he's, older and wiser. And he said, what I realize now is there's what I call the great western disease. And he said, the great western disease is I'll be happy when?

Oh, yes. Yeah.

Oh, that's it. That's it. And when you hear yourself thinking that, I'll be happy when I have more control of my life. I'll be happy when I have more money. I'll be happy when, you know, I'm in a senior management position. I'll be happy when In in actual fact, 1, you can be happy now Yeah. And that's more important. And and 2, you might not be happy when you get all those things.

You know, I think of all the people that I coach right now

Yeah. Well It's so true.

I I can rank the people that I coach today in terms of, for example, what they earn. The ones who earn the most are often the least happy

Yeah. Actually. Mhmm.

Because the the pressure of, but you should achieve more, doesn't go away Yeah. When you're in senior roles. Yeah. It sometimes accelerates even more.

Yeah.

And some of the happiest people that you might know might be people who are not in highly paid positions, not in positions of seniority, but they've got something figured out that the others haven't. And I think that's what Marshall is saying. He's saying that happiness is not tied to all of those things that, societally, we we we feel like we're we're supposed to be aiming for. And I think that that's been my own personal reflection as well. You know, the the most I've ever earned was not in what I do now. The most I've ever earned was working in senior roles in in retail. I'm much, much happier now. Because for me, happiness is around control, around fulfillment, around surrounding myself with the kinds of people that energize me, that grow me, you know, that's that's really important to me.

It's not about power, control, you know, money. You know, control is in sort of the controller's seniority in in in the job. You know, it's not about that. It is about, do I get up in the morning and I think I'm looking forward to what I'm gonna do today? I woke up this morning and I went, we're gonna have this conversation. That's really exciting. Yes. And I have no idea what we're gonna talk about. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. So I I love that unscripted thing. Yeah. I was talking about about it on a recent episode on the Unlock Moment. We're talking about the power of being unscripted, and there's something in that, you know, but it's different for everybody. Yeah. Absolutely.

What for you is happier at work? What does that mean for you?

Do you know what? Because we're coming up on 200 episodes, I have been reflecting, and I'm thinking more about what other people are saying happiness at work means from all of the conversations that I've had. And it's not 200 conversations. It's it's a little bit shy of 200 conversations because I do do solo episodes as well. But for me, it's exactly what you were saying, Gary. It's the people that you interact with. It's it's the the people who you get to work with. And, you know, if I think of 2 client conversations that I've had this week, and I came off both of them, and we had a laugh. We had fun, and it was actually brilliant.

And if I think of conversations that I have with potential clients and you come off the phone and you're you're or you come off the Zoom call and you think, you know, I'd love to work with them. But at the same time, is this gonna be a lot of fun? You know, is this gonna be fun for me? So thinking first of all about the people, that's the first aspect. Then it's the impact. What impact do you want to have on the world? And, you know, this has evolved for me over time based on my own experiences and ensuring that other people don't experience those same things. So while I don't consider myself an educator, a teacher, or a coach, or anything like that, for me, I'm a problem solver. I see problems. Maybe some I was gonna say where they don't exist, not necessarily where they don't exist, but I can I'm really good at identifying problems and then come coming up with solutions, finding solutions for those problems. So for me, that's something that particularly lights me up from a purpose perspective.

And and if I apply that from a happiness at work perspective, it's most people are not happy at work. How do I solve that problem of of most people not being happier at work? And it's putting out the message about that. It's working with people typically in groups. I don't do an awful lot of one to one stuff anymore, but a lot of speaking with organizations, a lot of training and workshops and, you know, TBC what this is exactly going to look like. But I'm working on a platform on a some sort of a technology solution to solve that problem as well, because I know that technology and especially AI can help us with those things. So there's the people aspect. There's the the impact that you want to have. And I think it's it's, it's the service, isn't it? So it's not just the people that you work with and the people that you serve, but how are you relieving the world a little bit better than you found us? How are you sir in service to other people? So, you know, if I think about my purpose from a personal perspective, this year, I want to buy a house.

So that's a huge thing for me. You know, that's a big driver of my purpose for this year. I think about my family and how can I provide for my parents who are getting older? How can I fly them out to see me in Tenerife? How can I make sure I get to see them as much as I can? And then, you know, for my partner as well, how do I create a great life for us? But then there's the kind of the the broader context of the clients that you serve as well. So not just the kind of individual purpose of like, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing, what they in service to humanity more generally. So I think that for me, those are some of the key aspects. And as I reflect more on some of the previous podcast episodes, I will definitely look at that. Another, I think, really important thing that is sometimes overlooked is using our strengths at work. So I was in a role where I was really not happy at all because I wasn't thriving.

I wasn't blooming. I'm someone who likes to do a really, really good job at anything that I'm doing, and I wasn't able to do that in that position because it wasn't an area of strength for me. So I do have an entire happier at work framework for anyone who is a long time listener of the podcast. I do talk about that framework very specifically, about the different aspects of it to drive happiness at work. But this is kind of more of a general, like, this is what I'm hearing, and this is what happiness at work means for me.

You said a really interesting thing, which I think is quite reflective of of how we all often think about work, which is you said, I'm helping people to avoid what I experienced. And I think people people look at often look back at their career and they and they see and they notice the negatives more than the positives. Yeah. So if you say to somebody, tell me of a time when you really felt frustrated or you felt under pressure or you felt that you weren't being well managed, that's really easy to do.

So easy. Did you say it? Get the air out here to talk a little bit about that.

Tell me tell me of a time when you felt really at your best at work. Mhmm. People can do that, but it takes a bit more effort to do. I remember working with one of my coaching clients, a couple of years ago. And I said, we we'd recently started working together. And I said, tell me of a time in the last 2 or 3 years when you really felt it was your best at work. And he said, I'm not sure I could tell you of a time in the last decade that I felt it my best at work.

Wow.

And I went, oh, that's interesting. So I went, tell me of a time when you felt it your best at home. And he went, oh, that's easy. Last week, had all my friends around. We had a barbecue in the garden. That was easy. So my next question was, so what happens when you walk out the door to go to work that means that in 10 years, you haven't found anything that feels like that at work. And he went, that's really interesting because when I think about it, when I think in response to that question, I somehow put on a work persona.

I feel like I know how I'm supposed to be. Yeah. And I don't enjoy that. I didn't enjoy that, but it's that's but that's work. And I was like, does it have to be? And it it really opened up his thinking. And there's something about that. You know, I I I like the deep questions in in coaching. You you get that in our conversation today.

I I really like to get to the heart of what's really going on for people to help them feel, you know, deeply fulfilled, deeply connected with with the work that they do. And I think that that question for him was it it it hadn't really struck him to think about how to bring himself into the workplace. He was a senior leader in that organization. And you don't often have full control of your work environment. There's very few people that would say, I have full control unless you're the CEO or you're the, you know, you're the founder of the business, something like that. But, usually, people have more control than they think. Yeah. If you say to them, how much control do you have? They'll often say none or hardly any.

And then as they start to explore that, they go, actually, you know, maybe I have more than I than I thought. Yeah. But I've never asked for help. I've never asked for that thing that really matters for me. I've never found a way to enter into that conversation, and maybe I could. Maybe I could get find a mentor. Maybe I could buddy up with somebody else at work so that we can help each other. Maybe I could, you know, connect more outside of the Excel spreadsheet in PowerPoint to really connect with people more as as some kind of friends at work.

Yeah. You know, those kinds of things are important. Yeah. And I'm doing some work at the moment with, a cohort of very junior people in a team, so people who are in sort of assistant, executive assistant types of roles. And that's very interesting because that's exactly the discovery. It's we have more control than we thought we did. Yeah. But it took somebody else helping us to see that for us to be able to feel empowered to to take it on.

Yeah. That's interesting, I think, in itself. And I'm really curious now about this person who for 10 years basically checked himself at the door on the way into Mhmm. To work. And I think it's so easy to say we shouldn't have to check ourselves at the door. But but maybe I think between the 2 of us, if we have some examples to share around that, because I certainly remember I love to show up as myself at work. I, for anyone who knows me on a personal level, I'm a I'm a huge Simpsons nerd, I can turn any sort of situation in any sort of situation into a memory of an episode of The Simpsons. I mean, like, oh, that reminds me of this episode.

And the same with film quotes and films, you know, that kind of thing. That's who I am. And I do have a very strong recollection of showing up in that way in one particular place. And it was like everyone was sending around memes and it was really funny and that was really great. Back in the day when they were they had those, the Walmart memes or something like that and then doing similar in another organization. And it was just didn't really wash or maybe 1 or 2 people got it, but not everyone. And it just wasn't that fun of a place to work. So I don't know if you have any examples to share around that of, you know, it's easy to say you don't have to check yourself at the door, but actually, sometimes in some organizations, maybe you do.

I I think that's a that's a it's a really interesting observation, a good observation. I think you do in some organizations. And then your question is, is this the organization for me?

Exactly.

If I feel like I'm not able and allowed to be the person I am. So, you know, and and and and I recognize the privilege in saying this, but, you know, I've sometimes been a person who's who's said, it's more important to me to be able to be myself at work, even if that means that this is not a long term career option for me in this role, in this in this organization. Now, lots and lots of people are not in a position to be able to be quite as bold and ruthless in saying that as as I've sometimes been. But I talked recently in a conversation about, a time when I was going to the next meeting and in my head I was going, there's a thing that needs to be said, in terms of talking about a real challenge that the business is facing into. It's real, so we should be talking about it. But, it's very, very challenging for the organization that we could be talking about it and a lot of the people in the room are not comfortable with that level of challenge. But my authentic self says I would feel wrong not to raise it

and

talk about it. At the same time, going into that meeting, I also knew that if I did, it would probably limit my career trajectory in that role. Not because it was the wrong thing to say, but because I wasn't playing the politics of Yeah. There are times to sit in your hands and just keep things ticking along.

Yeah.

You know, my my mindset, and this is a very personal thing, my mindset is, if it needs to be said, it needs to be said. Yeah. You know? And and so I went into the meeting and we had that conversation. And the role didn't last for a long time, and I was okay with that because I said, for me, I did the thing that I felt very clear that I had to do. And in my career path, I think that, you know, and again, there's there's some privilege, I think, in this that that that I've I've been lucky to be in places where if I have stepped off one conveyor belt onto a different one, didn't mean it was always successful, but I've been able to figure out ways to make that work. But I remember coming out of medicine and going, I have no idea whether I will be successful going into the business world, going into consulting, but I kinda back myself to do it. And there are moments when it's okay to stick your hand up and say, I'm not happy doing this. Yeah.

I don't know whether jumping over the fence into the next field is gonna make me happier, but I do know I'm not happy in this field, and I'm not happy in quite a fundamental way. This is not a I'm having a bad week. It's not I've had a bad conversation with my boss, but actually it's all going to get better next week and get back to normal. It's fundamentally, I know deep down it's not a fit. Yeah. And that's a kid's call out. Yeah. In in my medical journey, you know, when I went to medical school and I was there 8 years, I was 7 years in before this thought, which I described as my first unlock moment.

This thought came into my head, which is you don't have to do this if you don't want to,

But I

was 7 years in. How many years had I felt unhappy? A long time. A long time. But that unhappiness had never translated into why didn't you seriously explore doing a different Yeah. Career. It was always how can I adjust what I'm doing to try and make myself happy? In this case, Metz.

Yeah. It's the sunk cost fallacy, isn't it? Converted into time. So you think if you've put in so much time into one particular area that you need to keep investing your time, but you have to consider if I had the same choice today, would I make the same decision? You know? And it's

It's something that comes up very, very often when I'm having conversations, like career progression conversations with people who are at some kind of crossroads or they're approaching some kind of crossroads. And wherever you are, whether you're in your twenties, thirties, fifties, or seventies, you always feel like the time to make change finished about 5 years ago. And you always feel a little bit like

I'm past it now. It's too late.

Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to somebody recently and he said, you know, I've invested so much. I've spent my whole career in this specialty. I've become successful, but I just don't know whether I love it. But, you know, I've I've invested so much to get here. Yeah. And I said, can I ask you a really impolite question? How old are you? And he said, late thirties.

And I laughed, and I went, you've got so much time ahead.

Exactly.

That Yeah. You've done some great stuff in the first 15, 20 years of your career, and now you've got another 20 to 30 years ahead, whatever that

looks like. Yeah.

What do you wanna do with that? Yeah. You know? Yeah. I I switched careers from medicine to business in late twenties. I switched careers into retail for the first time, my late thirties. I became a coach and podcaster in my mid forties. Yeah. And I've coached people in their 50, 60, seventies who've gone, well, what do I wanna do the next chapter of my career?

Exactly.

And that's a really sort of freeing thoughts. There's a big thing here around freedom, actually. And, you know, happiness at work is is about finding that freedom. And sometimes the freedom is to be able to package up that last chapter and say, I enjoyed doing it or I enjoyed parts of doing it or it's I've completed what I wanted to do with that, and that's okay. What would I like to do next? And in that, what would I like to bring across from what I've done before?

Yeah.

And what would I like to leave behind? Yeah. And it's as simple as that Yeah. Actually. Yeah. When you came out of that sort of corporate environment, what did you bring with you, and what did you leave behind?

Really good question. I I'd I'd love to kinda pick up on a couple of things that you said and and reflect back because I've had those conversations, and then we'll get on to that question if it's okay. But in relation to this time thing, and I had a conversation a few years ago and someone said, well, I'm thinking of studying this thing, but I don't know if that's what I really want. And it's going to take me 2 years to do that. And I said, those 2 years are going to go by anyway. And at the end of those 2 years, if you've done it, it's either I know that this is what I want to do or I know that this is not what I want to do. And at the end of those 2 years, if you haven't done it, you're still going to be wondering. You're still going to be wondering.

And, you know, this idea of time, and it's never too late. Like, I hope to be doing stuff that I really enjoy until I retire because I'm not waiting until I retire to be happy and to travel the world. I have traveled the world already, and I continue to travel the world. You know, I'm doing stuff now that makes me happy, things that I enjoy. I'm not deferring that. So I hope to continue doing that into my life and having that impact whether I get paid for pay for it and you can consider it a career. That's another question, but I hope to continue doing that sort of stuff. So when I left my corporate career, it was a scary time because I haven't planned to set up in business.

And for me, I've always had a love of learning. And in my most recent corporate role, I found I wasn't learning enough. And I went on, you know, there's these things called MOOCs, the massive open online courses. And so you can access these courses online. They're from Harvard. They're from, like, really prestigious universities. And I went on and I did, I did one in Python, which is computer programing language, and I did one in statistics for fun, if you can imagine, because I didn't feel like I was learning enough in the role that I was doing. So that's something that I've always enjoyed, is learning new things, getting to grips with whether it's software, whether it's processes, just learning new ways of doing things.

And so that's one thing I think that, you know, I actually just thinking about it, I was like, oh, well, I did my coaching and then I went to do masters. But before any of that, I went and I did a bookkeeping course. So, you know, and strangely enough, this is and this is you know, you'll see this problem solving thing coming out. We had, like, some sort of a final exam or something. I think it was a 6 month program, but I finished it in in just a number of weeks because it wasn't working. You could do it all at your own pace. But come to the the final exam, there was actually an error in it, And I could see that there was an error because the books weren't balancing. And I said it to them, and I was like, how did how is no one identified this before? You know, I found it so strange, but but the numbers were incorrect.

The numbers that they had input were were incorrect because they weren't all adding up. And I had to identify that to them and feed it back to them. Anyway yeah. So I went on, and I did a a weekend career certificate. Sorry. Career coaching certificate. And then I went on and I did a 6, 7 month, diploma in coaching and executive and life coaching. And then while I was still doing that, I started my masters.

And when I was doing the masters, that's when it was like, wow. Like, this is where I'm supposed to be. There is the research element, which was my corporate background. There is the people element, which I became so interested in when I was working. You know, how do people actually interact with each other? How do you get the best from people, productivity, all of those kinds of things. And then, there was the the data side. So I'm a total data nerds. You know, I love data.

I love using data to tell stories and to understand what's actually going on much more. Like, I'm much more comfortable with that than, say, a qualitative discussion or something. I'm much more into give me the numbers, you know, give me the the big data and let's find what what patterns are emerging and and that kind of thing. So that's probably they're the things that I took from, from the experiences that I had at work. And, you know, I I put an awful lot of pressure on myself when I first started my business then because I didn't feel like I had the network that I needed. I worked in London for three and a half years, and I worked in Australia for two and a half years. And prior to that, I had worked in Ireland. And subsequent to that, I have worked in Ireland, but I still didn't feel like I had that net the the network that I needed to have in Ireland.

And I still, at times, don't feel like I I have that same level of network because I was gone for so long, whereas there's other people who they've either stayed in that same organization for a long time or they've at least, at the very least, stayed in Ireland and and built up connections from lots of different organizations in Ireland. Whereas for me, I think I worked in 2 different organizations in Ireland. So it made it that much harder, I think, to connect with, with people, from that perspective. I'm trying to think what else what else should I leave behind? Because I I certainly remember feeling so guilty for not working. So there was a year in between where I didn't have a job. I wasn't earning any money. And just the guilt associated with that of, like, I feel like I should be doing something productive. I feel like I should be earning money.

I feel like I should be doing something and being really, really guilty because I wasn't a because I didn't feel like I was contributing. But, yeah, there there are some of the things that I that that I kind of took with me. I'm trying to think of some of the some more things that I that I left behind. And I think it's only after a while when you look back and you reflect, you realize all of the things that you have left behind. And it's not to say that everything I do on a day in, day out basis is really enjoyable and that I'm happy all the time. For me, it's it's a part of the process, isn't it? It's not like I'm going to be happy when when this part is finished. It's this is all part of the same process leading to the same result. Some parts are much more enjoyable than others.

And over time, I can outsource some of the parts that are less enjoyable, let's say, and then continue doing the stuff that really, really lights me up.

And you can hear that thing again, which is the I'll be happy when. And that's that's the voice in in our heads. The other voice that I hear is the is the guilty voice. I think lots of people listening are really gonna tune in and resonate with that. There's a voice there saying something along the lines of, you shouldn't be doing this or you should be doing something else. Why aren't you doing this? That's not the right thing to do. An interesting question, which is not always an answerable question but quite an interesting one to explore is when that voice popped up in your head, the one that made you feel guilty about what you weren't doing, whose voice was it?

Oh, that's deep. We're really getting deep. I don't I don't know. I don't remember. And I'm wondering, was it my own voice? Was it my own voice in my own head saying and it was guilt over free time, having free time, enjoying myself. And I have a very strong recollection of sitting in the back garden and reading my Kindle and thinking I should be working right now. I should be doing something productive. And that's probably, you know, if we go a little bit deeper into that concept, I do one area because I do enjoy what I do and the stuff that I do enjoy doing, and I'll keep doing it.

I find it so hard to switch off. So maybe that's part that's kind of tied up with all of those things that I should always be doing something that is productive, always be doing something that that has an outcome or has a purpose rather than just idle time where, like, I'm not earning money from this or I'm not doing this for a particular reason. I'm just relaxing, not doing anything at all. And from what I see from people who I speak to, this is a huge thing. And maybe we can kind of explore that as a concept more generally, as well. The idea that work in the in the sense of the number of hours that you put in, and what you're actually producing. So work and the the example I always think of is and this was a friend of mine. It wasn't a client.

And she said, I think I worked a couple of hours extra on on Wednesday, so I think it's okay to knock off a couple of hours early on Friday. Makes sense. But that's Mhmm. That whole that's that's a real exchange of time for money as opposed to what are the outcomes we're trying to achieve here? Did I achieve those outcomes I set out to achieve on Wednesday? Did I achieve those outcomes that I set out to achieve on Friday? And did I do it by 12 o'clock? Did I do it by 2 o'clock? Because

Does this person work on a production line in a factory?

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Because that's what it feels like. Yeah. You know? And and and lots of people do. And in those kinds of roles, you know, number of hours equals productivity pretty much Yeah. Give or take. But for many, many people, it isn't like that at all. No. And, I remember watching recently an interview that Jeff Bezos had given to you know, CEO of Amazon or ex CEO of Amazon.

And he was saying, I know what time in the day I am at my best Exactly. And I do my best thinking, and I make my best decisions. Yeah. So I schedule the meetings on the big stuff to be at, whatever it was, 11 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Because that's the time when I'm at my best to be able to do the right thing

Yeah.

In that context. So he's very intentional. And I was talking to somebody recently about, you know, they were feeling quite overwhelmed in a bigger role and they they was like, I'm I'm busier than ever before. It's more overwhelming than ever before. And I said, can you think of people who are in even bigger roles than yours and they manage better than you're managing right now, what do they do to manage better? And it is that intentionality about they're very good at knowing when they're at the best. They're very good at knowing what they need to be doing and only they can do. Yeah. They're very good at knowing what they don't need to doing and somebody else could do or it doesn't need to be done at all.

Yes.

And I'm thinking of you sitting in the garden reading the kindle lamp. I'm going, my question is, well, what were you reading and how was that building and growing new? Yeah. Or equally valid, was that literally the downtime which helps you to be balanced and helps you to be your best at other times? And this is something I'm not very good at, you know, my my wife will will tell you that that, you know, I need to get better at switching off, you know, because I'm so interested in so many things. I do end up going it was all very interesting, but I also didn't sleep enough. And therefore, I'm not at as much as my best as I'd as I'd like to.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this whole concept is so fascinating. I think it's so relatable as well because I don't I was gonna say I don't know anyone who has it figured out because it's it's a consistent thing that you have to do over time. I've always been so fascinated even back to my corporate days of you know, I would devour articles from HBR normally on what's the best day of the week to do certain types of things and what's the best time of day. And I that's that was the extent of my knowledge. And I think as time has gone on, I've learned a little bit more about those things.

But really, fundamentally, it is going back to your earlier point, Gary, it's knowing what stuff needs to be done, what stuff could potentially be delegated, or what stuff doesn't actually need to be done at all. You have that on your list. It's busy work, and you haven't taken the time out. And I say this not as a preachy way. I say this as a I need to learn this lesson as well. So you kind of say it from or sorry, you you need to take that time to really identify what are the top things that that I need to do and how can I show up at my best to do those? So at what time of day do those things need to happen? The other thing I want to to illustrate is that so like, our our work is never done. I think we feel like we're going to get to a stage where we're like, right. I've ticked everything on my to do list today.

But if you finish early, let's say, or if you get everything done, you have 3 things to do. You can always bring in 3 more things from tomorrow's work or from the future. And there's always going to be more stuff that you could be doing. And again, not from a pretty perspective because I don't have this all figured out, but it's consistently doing that analysis of what really needs to be done here. How long is it gonna well, this is the the hard one as well, which I struggle with. How long is it gonna take and when is the best time of day to actually do that for me? And again, speaking from a place of privilege because I control my own time for the most part, and I can open my calendar when when I work at my best when speaking with other people, for example. Not everyone has that privilege and, you know, you could be back to back meetings. This is another thing that I hear a lot.

You're in back to back meetings, which basically the result of those meetings is more work. But then you're in another load of back to back meetings, and you don't have time to do the work that needs to be done. So, again, it's identifying what really, really needs to be done here. And, you know, we could have probably a whole other podcast episode about meetings. But do I really need to be at all of the meetings that I'm attending? Going back to again, to your earlier point, you have more control than you think you do. Are there things that you can decline? Are there things that you can send someone else to instead?

So here's the provocative point of view. Being happy and what we do are 2 fundamentally different things.

Mhmm.

But we feel like one begets the other. Uh-huh. And I don't think it does. Yes. So back to the I'll be happy when Yeah. I figured out how and when to do the things that I need to do. A different way of thinking about it is, are you gonna choose to be happy or not in what you do? Because there's always gonna be stuff. There's always gonna be chores to do.

And but and it's it's so it's important. And, you know, and I and and I acknowledge your point on on on privilege, but it is also very much choice. You have chosen to set your life up the way you

have. Yeah.

You that is not a that is not an easy thing to do. It's, probably a relatively higher risk thing to do compared with other ways you could set up your life. So you have chosen to do that, and maybe not everybody can choose to do that. But many people who would feel themselves unhappy in in where they are at the moment, one of their options, not necessarily the best option, but one of their options is to do what you do, you know, or or or to do what other people who've made other choices have done. And, and I think that one of the things that I've learned over the years is the sense of you think that there's some solution that you haven't found yet or you haven't made your way there or somebody else has found and you're a bit jealous of what they've got. And if you only had that, you'd be happy to it comes back to the you can choose

Hardly agree.

Whether to be happy or not. Yeah. And it's in the moment now. You know, Marshall said, Marshall Goldsmith said, the only place you can be happy is right here.

Yeah.

And the only people you can be happy with are the people you're in conversation with right now, I. E. Me and you. The only time you can be happy is now.

Yeah.

That's the time.

Yeah.

I was like, it's deep, but also so clear.

Yeah.

So clear. You know, so so my challenge to people listening is if you feel that you're not happy now, what would need to change now for you to feel that? And that might be a practical thing. It might be an emotional thing. It might be a letting go thing. I I talk sometimes about an idea that I call a post it note moment. And this comes from one of my own career stories. And I can't tell you where I was, but I can tell you the story. I came out I was in a meeting with my boss at the time, and it was the kind of meeting when it wasn't going well.

And I came out of the meeting room and I walked past my colleague's desk and I picked up a post it note and I wrote, I'm leaving. And I put the post it note down and carried on walking along the room. And she came up to me and she said, when are you going? Where are you going? What's going on? I said, I don't know. I don't know when I'm going or where I'm going, but I know I'm leaving. And it might be now, it might be in 3 months' time, it might be in a year's time. When I reflected back on that, the freeing moment was, I know that this is not my long term destination. So a thing I can let go of immediately is all of the worry and concern about playing the politics correctly to establish myself in the right dynamic, such that I can progress my career here. I stayed in that role for another 6 months, and in that 6 months, I was the happiest I've been because I came into work to do a good job, to do the job I was there to do in my job description, whatever, with the people around me.

And I was very committed to fulfilling my values and purpose in showing up and doing my best. But all the stuff that was frustrating, I just went, well, I didn't mind about that because at some point I'm not gonna be here anymore. That's okay. And I wrote about this idea of this post it note moment, a moment when you know that this isn't your long term plan. And you can let go of all these things that you hate, but you feel like you're holding on to doing. And I've spoken to people on the podcast. You know, there's a there's a guy came on very early on called Michael Lawrence. He's he's now a sort of coach and facilitator in in the US.

And I said, when was a memorable moment in your career? And he said, I I, you know, I remember leaving my job, quitting my job, walking out of my job. You know, that was very fulfilling. And I said, when was your unlock moment? Which is the moment when you knew a thing you didn't know before. He said, 6 years before that. He said, 6 years before, I knew I was gonna leave. I just didn't know when. I didn't know how. I didn't know where I was gonna go.

And I didn't have yet what I needed to be able to move on, but I knew. And so when I talk to people about the unlock moment, it's very different from when is the moment you remember, which is often, you know, the moment you walked out the door or the day you got married or the day you had an argument with somebody, whatever. Sometimes that is also your unlock moment, but the unlock moment is often quite an inconsequential situation, looking out the window, walking the dog, doing the washing up, when suddenly something becomes remarkably clear to you that was previously completely fog. And and when you find that moment, it it gives you clarity. You suddenly let go of things. I let go of 7 years of the pressure of medical training and the pressure of, well, you've done all of this. It's your duty to be a doctor.

You know? Yes.

And and when you were talking about, you know, voices and and influences and guilt and all those kinds of things, it's just normal that different for different people, but our parents or our friends or our, teachers or our first bosses, influence us by by making us feel there's a way you should work, there's a way you should study. There's if you've put this time in, then you should see it through. If you listen to the voices that are in the public domain, usually the successful people, that's who you get to hear from, the people that won the gold medal or became the CEO or, you know, became wealthy. And they say, well, you know, there's a moment when I almost quit and I didn't quit, and 1 month later, I won the gold medal, and therefore, you shouldn't quit either. Yeah. And I said, they're going, well, there are moments in your life where you are down some dark, dank tunnel with a rusty teaspoon digging away digging away at the end of the tunnel, hoping that you're just, you know, a few inches away from the the the pot of gold. And maybe you are. And the people you're gonna hear from are gonna say, I almost quit digging with my rusty teaspoon.

And then one moment later, I hit the pot of gold, so keep digging. And I'm sitting there going, okay. You're in you're in this field, in the tunnel, digging with the rest of the teaspoon. What if the pot of gold is actually in the next field? And you're not even digging there. You haven't thought about going digging there because you're obsessively keeping on on this tunnel. You know, there is no shame in sometimes saying, I've decided that I've dug in this tunnel for long enough, and it's okay. Even if there's a pot of gold at the end of this. It's okay to say, I choose not to keep looking for it, and I choose to place my bets elsewhere.

And because I choose that, I'm comfortable if it doesn't work out that that's on me. You You know, at some point, you left your corporate career, and you're now doing what you're doing now, you know, and it's becoming really successful. But it might not have done. And if it didn't, it's on you because you made those choices to figure out what you do next. And that's where you find freedom.

Yes. For

me. That's where you find freedom when you say, I've chosen this path. I know I'm a realist. I've talked to other people who've gone down that path, who've been successful. I've talked to some people where it hasn't worked out. I've I've talked in the past about a moment on my journey, which, you know, I left the corporate world for the last time in a in a corporate role in in 2020, so getting on for 4 years ago. And anyone who's tried to build a coaching practice will will, resonate with the idea that it's really hard and takes a really long time, even when you think, you know, you've got reasons why, you know, you're gonna get ahead of that curve. Generally, you don't.

And I remember a time when I had one pair of shoes with holes in the bottom and another pair of shoes with broken laces and not the money to either buy new laces or new shoes. And so I was very practical and I went, well, I'll put the laces that haven't broken into the shoes without a hole in. And I wore those for another 6 months or or more and on Zoom, of course, nobody knows what shoes you're wearing. And

Or whether you're wearing shoes.

Right. Or or if I'm wearing shoes at all. And I remember that story because, actually, for me, it was it was a crystallization of, commitments to, the path I'd chosen. I'd say, if I would like to buy a new pair of shoes, then I could try and get back into the market and go back into a corporate role. I choose not to today. Yeah. I could choose to do that next week if I'm ready. If I choose not to, then I also choose to put those laces in those shoes Mhmm.

Because that's that's my balance

Yeah.

Right now. And I think it comes back to ownership and accountability and control and freedom to say, I'm comfortable with the choices that it makes. It doesn't mean it's all going great, but I still choose to be here every day. And, again, for for some people and some people who are listening, they'll go, I don't have full control and neither do I. I don't have full control. But what do you have full control over? What do you have a degree of control over? Where could you get more control than you currently have? Are there areas where you have more control than you think you do, but you've never asked for help? Very frequently, I talk to people and they say, you know, you're worrying about whether you're going to, you know, be in line for promotion next year, for example. Do you know do you really know what the people who are gonna make that decision are looking to see from you at the moment they make that decision in a year's time? No. No.

I don't know that well enough. And how could you find out? Well, I could go and ask them. I could go and talk to them. And why don't you? I've never really thought about doing that. And suddenly, they go and have that conversation, and the person might say to them, Ashley, you're doing fine. Well, that gives them control because they stop worrying about all the things they're doing wrong. Or they'll say, I think there's 2 areas for you to focus on over the next 6 to 12 months. Well, that gives them more control because now they've got a clear plan.

And let's check-in again in 6 months time, see how you're getting on. Well, that gives them more control because they feel like they're on a path and people are supporting them and helping them to get there. And I don't know even whether it's usually, but very often, when you ask for help from good people who care about you and your progression and development, they will help you. Yeah. And they will help you find control. Sometimes I talk about the dance world where where we were professional dance. My wife and I met to dance together, around about 20 years ago now, just under 20 years ago. And we we started out sort of, you know, taking lessons on a weekend and going to the odd church hall and town hall in the UK to do little Sunday circuit competitions.

And then it progressed over the years. We started traveling internationally and competing internationally. And then we started training in Italy in a high performance group of of competitive ballroom dancers. And I remember traveling to places like the Czech Republic or Albania or Bulgaria to to compete in amateur and then professional ballroom dancing competitions. And, you know, we didn't have a lot of money in those times. We didn't have sponsorship for dancing, so we had to take the money that we were earning, and put it into our travel and our lessons and our, you know, like, the competition outfits and all of that kind of all that kind of stuff. And then we would and we would feel a little bit sorry for ourselves that we didn't get to go on holidays like other people and didn't have you know, weren't living in a bigger flat or whatever it was because we were spending that money on on our dancing. That's our choice.

And then and and a lot of the people around us in the UK were going, oh, you're very privileged being able to go and travel abroad to these competitions and pay for flights and hotels, whatever. And we went, yeah. No. We we we're quite lucky because the jobs that we do pay enough for us to be able to do that. And then I remember going to a competition in Prague, and we arrived in Prague, and our friend our friends, Jan Willem and Kendra from the Netherlands were were there competing. And they were, like, the number 2 amateur professional couple in in Netherlands. And we'd just flown in on Easyjet or Rhino or something. And I and we just went, oh, you know, which flight did you arrive on to to to get here for the competition? They said, oh, we can't afford flights.

So we drove overnight from Amsterdam to Prague, which is about, I don't know, a 10 hour drive, something like that, to do the competition today. And we went this was on a Saturday, and we went, but tomorrow, you can get up late and drive back so that you're ready for work on Monday. And they went, oh, no. No. We're driving overnight tonight to Paris from Prague, which is another 10, 12 hours to do the Paris championship tomorrow. And then on Sunday night, we're driving back to Amsterdam from Paris. And Okay. We went and and what is your situation in terms of finance and funding? They said, oh, we don't have sponsorship either.

And he was a welder and she was a student. And suddenly, we went, oh, it isn't about having the money Mhmm. As much as it is about having the desire to find a way to make it happen. Yeah. And and, you know, we still looked at our situation. We were more privileged than many others because we were in consulting or, you know, in in in corporate kind of roles. But then we looked differently at the couples in the UK and we said, well, there are other people with a lot less than you. Yeah.

And they are making this happen in their own way. They might not get in the flight. They might not even drive on their own. In Italy, they would hire a minibus and, like, 15 of them would drive across Europe in some rickety minibus we that we would never get in. But but it made me think differently about the workplace because it made me think differently, And I've seen this in the workplace. I've seen people in the workplace like this, where they've gone, I am going to make something of my career. Yeah. One of the very first people that I worked with, with the idea of Mindset, which is my book, when I when we first worked together, before we were working together in coaching, organization.

And over the course of the next 10 years, she progressed into a manager role, in a different organization, got into recruitment, and then migrated into a head of role. And there are other people who were at the same level with the same capability level as her, you know, that 10 years before who were still in those roles and going, my lot is terrible. I don't have control. I don't have choice.

I can't

move forward. And I'm going, well, it is difficult. Absolutely, it's difficult. And here's the person that has gone, I know it's difficult and I'm gonna make it happen.

Yeah. You know, such such a difference. Like, there's there's so much that's opening up for me now when you talk about this unlock moment. The post it moment, I'm not entirely sure about, but certainly, you know, I'm reflecting on my career thinking this is almost the opposite of an unlocked moment. When I went to London, my secret intention that I didn't make known, obviously, when I was interviewing for jobs was I would stay here for a year. I'll earn sterling, which is always really valuable. And then I'll go to Australia and I'm going to work there because it's something I always wanted to do. I wanted to travel and and I wanted to go and live and work in Australia.

But the opposite thing happened. I enjoyed my time in London so much. I enjoyed my job so much that I stayed for three and a half years. And the only reason I left was at that time, you had to apply for your Australian visa before you turned 30, and then you had a year to use the visa. So I applied before I turned 30, but then I had to leave because I knew I was going to travel for 6 months and then arrive in Australia. So that was kind of almost the opposite. I enjoyed myself so much, and I stayed there. Now there was another time when I was in Australia, so I got to Australia.

I worked with people who I had previously worked with in London, so I made the incorrect assumption that the culture was gonna be quite similar. It was gonna be quite a, a positive place to work. And within a couple of months, I noticed that there is something not quite right here. There is a lot of people leaving the organization. People were coming to me asking me questions even though I was still relatively new compared to them. They've been there for years. And, again, this you know, I got into the software. I learned the systems, and then people were coming to me asking me, how do you do this? Or can you how do you make that work? Or, you know, things like this.

Now prior to this this, you know, part of my interview discussion, you're going to be promoted to be director. What kind of director? I had so many conversations. What kind of director would you like to be? Would you like to manage your team? Like, all of this kind of stuff. And that never happened. So there was a restructure. We knew that there was a restructure happening in the organization, and they promoted my friend and colleague to be my manager, but did not communicate that to me. And so we had a conversation one day, and he pulled me into a room, and he said, you know, he started talking about my clients. And I was like, why are you talking about my clients? Like, this is you know, he's got nothing to do with my clients.

He goes, oh, I'm your boss now. So what What is going on here? So, I I'm trying to pinpoint the exact unlock moment, but everything was kind of building up to this. I made sure I made his life hell. He made my life hell. He was micromanaging me within an inch of my life. Excuse me. And it got to a stage. I think I had a scheduled holiday, so I was gone for 4 weeks.

And then I came back, and it was just I was like, I'm I'm absolutely not staying here. And it being Australia, and they had sponsored my visa very kindly. They were paying me a high salary at the time, and there was a really favorable exchange rate for Australian dollars as well. So they probably thought, go to handcuffs. She's not going anywhere. We can do what we like, and we can treat people how we like. And I did end up leaving. So I left that role in less than 18 months.

You know, they'd invested in my visa. They paid me the salary and trained me and and all the rest. And I left, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I did look for other jobs there. I was looking at one in particular. You know, I went for an interview, and, this is with a recruiter, and she was saying all the right things. And at the end, she said, and, this is for a cigarette company. And I thought, no way.

Cannot do it. Absolutely not. So after that conversation, I was like, there's nothing here for me in Sydney, and I think it's it's time it's time to go. So I left, and I I traveled the world after that. And I went into another organization, and I won't say it was the same thing. It wasn't toxic. I just wasn't thriving. I wasn't working to my strengths.

I was, as I had mentioned at the start, I I just studied in my own time, stuff that I, you know, I didn't feel like I was learning a whole lot when I was there. I had all of this global experience to offer, wasn't really being utilized or recognized in any way. I did say to my boss that I wasn't happy. And about 3 months later, then I handed in my 3 months notice. The other interesting thing that from what you were saying and and what kind of I was like, oh, that's happened to me so, so hard when you're starting out as a coach to to set up coaching business. And I don't think I appreciated that enough how hard it was going to be attracting all sorts of the wrong clients for me because you need money, you need to make a living, and you sort of take anything and work with anyone. And I was really hard on myself at that time as well. I think I'm not I'm not a great coach, but at the same time, going back to your analogy, and I just love that analogy of the the rusty spoon down the down the dark tunnel because it's it's so evocative, isn't it? Yeah.

Maybe had I stuck with the coaching element, maybe I would have struck gold. Maybe if I kept going because when I was doing my coach training, I always got really great feedback on my approach and all of those kinds of things. However, again, going back to your maybe I would have, but I'm really not happy here right now, and I need to do something about this. And this is all tied in, by the way, with the the arrival of the pandemic. Everything shut down. I started doing a lot more speaking, and that was much easier. It became so much easier to do that during the pandemic. I set a a goal for myself.

I said, this year, I'm going to do I think it was 20, 20 speaking engagements. And I don't mind if they're free speaking engagements because I want to build up my experience. I want to get my name out there. And that really paid off doing that. So people kind of come to me now, and they're they're wondering how to get started. That's how I got started. I just said, who can I speak to? And I was at the time, it was again, it was just anyone. I'm like, I'm this is just for practice, so So I'm just gonna speak to anyone, any groups.

They don't have to be relevant to me. Looking back now, it would have been so much more beneficial to me if they were much more relevant to what I what I'm doing now. However, that's all part of the learning experience, isn't it?

I think it is a brilliant articulation of why unlock moments are hard to get to. Because in that story, there almost certainly was one, and I and I wanna go digging.

Yeah.

But it's not the memorable bit. Because you talked about all the memorable bits. The day that that person walked in and said, I'm your boss now. That's memorable. The moment when you walked out, that's memorable. The moment when you left Australia, that's memorable. In that situation where it was a very challenging situation, you've been overlooked for the promotion, or that other person had been taken from being your peer to being your boss, and it hadn't been communicated to you. And you're in this sort of golden handcuff situation where, you know, there's lots of reasons why it was difficult to leave and you did eventually leave.

What was the moment when you knew you were going to?

It must it's obviously somewhere in between where he told me that, and I was having a terrible time. There was a time when I was on the phone to my mom, and I was crying down the phone saying this is awful. And again, going back to your earlier point of, do I want to stay here? And I really questioned, do even when I was looking for other roles in Sydney, do I really want to stay in Sydney? Because and, again, I had this conversation the other day. You always want your CV to look at its best. And so if you move to a new role, you wanna make sure that you're gonna be in that role for 2 or 3 years. And I thought, do I want to stay in Sydney for another 2 or 3 years? If I'm being brutally honest, my overall experience of Sydney wasn't a hun wasn't brilliant. I found it a little bit soulless. I don't know.

Is that because of my experience at work? And that's not to say anything bad about the people I worked with. For me, I made some really great friendships there. It was more at that kind of senior leadership level, let's say. But I I called into question, do I want to really stay in Sydney? And do I want to stay therefore in Australia, or do I call it a day here and say, now's the time? And I had a particularly challenging, let's say, meeting with my boss and his boss. So, obviously, I stood up for my myself being who I am. I went back to the to the senior leader who had made all of these promises, and I said, what's going on here? Because this is our conversation. And I even had it in writing from my contract saying we would expect that you to be promoted within 6 months. And he said, oh, well, really, he is just your supervisor.

If you want if you want to get mentoring, if you want to get to the next level, you speak to his boss, which then, like, for me, sorry, that he's just completely backtracked on everything. He's just exposed himself for who he is. And so that was another aspect of it. But anyway so that was prior to this. And then I had I wanted to set up a meeting directly with my boss's boss to talk, like, this you know, can we have a chat about what's going on? He brought my direct boss without telling me in advance, and we were in some really sketchy meeting room. And do you know when you look back on things and you think this, there's something really weird going on here? It was a two way mirror room because it was a market research agency, and some of that market research in the past had been focus groups and things. So it was one of those rooms where people could sit on the other side of a mirror and watch what's going on. Like, why would we have a meeting in that room? No reason.

And I'm not saying explicitly that that's what happened, but that's what it felt like to me. When I look back and I go, why would we have a meeting in that really weird boardroom sized room that has a a, like, a double mirror thing there. Really weird. And so the next day on my way the the the day after that meeting, on my way in, on the train into work, I wrote out my resignation letter. I printed it, and I handed us in that very morning. And the first thing my boss did was run down to HR and hand in my my letter. There was no why are you leaving? There was no can we do anything to change your mind? There was none of that. It was just like, let's make sure that HR see this first thing, and we know that she's on her way out.

Wow. What a story. What did you know about yourself in that time that you didn't know before?

In that moment, I think that I that I stand up for myself. There was no way that I was putting up with that type of behaviour. I knew that I was behaving really poorly as well. Like, I was giving as good I was as I was getting. He was micromanaging me, but I was I was being downright rude to him as well. I did not like that situation at all, but I did. Like, you know, I asked the questions, like, these are the promises that were made. What is what's going on here?

And here's the, here's what I'm discovering is really the power of the unluck moment. When you really think about that moment, you know, being on the phone to your mom, being in that meeting room with the, you know, the two way mirror, and how they're making you feel and how you're feeling inside. The questions you're asking, but even more importantly, what you know about yourself. What is the link between those stories that you that that come up when you think about this Unlock Moment and why you do what you do today?

I mean, that's that is abundantly clear to me. It's going back to what we talked about at the very start. I do what I do because I don't want anyone else to experience what I experienced. So if I think about if I think about it from a way when I experienced those things, I called into question, how could I have made this decision in my career? How could I I walked into this situation. How did I end up here? And I blamed myself, completely blamed myself. It knocked my confidence. And, again, I had this conversation with someone yesterday, and my confidence was shot for probably for about 10 years. And I didn't realize that it went on so long until I came out the other side and I was able to look back and go, wow, that really lasted a long time.

And it's only in the last number of years that I'm starting to feel like I can shine again and I can promote myself, and I can talk about how bloody brilliant I am because I am. You know, so and I and I don't mean that in a in an arrogant way. But I get to recognize now all of the brilliant things that I'm really capable of doing for for a long time, I did not do that. And so that's kind of one aspect of it. The other aspect is from an organizational perspective, I started question things like what should HR have done? What should the leadership team have done in that situation? How could they have made the best out of this situation? What can what should they have done? And so that planted the seed at that stage. I didn't know what it was going to become. I just had those questions. And as I said, my confidence was shot.

I traveled for a year. I ended up back in Dublin. I took another role, and I stayed there for four and a half years. And not exactly the same thing happened, but similar enough where I wasn't in an environment where I was really thriving. I had so much to offer, so much to give, and I wasn't I was gonna say I wasn't afforded that opportunity. I didn't feel like I had that opportunity. It was a small office. Maybe there would have been potential, and this is what I spoke to my boss about when we had that conversation prior to me resigning was an opportunity in a global role, but still remain in Dublin.

Like, there were there were opportunities if I wanted them. But did I really want to stay there? And I think that was that was the question. It was when it was great, it was really great. But when it was crap, it was really crap. So do I really want to stay in this situation? And that then led me to well, when it was really crap, I was researching all of these. And, you know, how can I do an MBA? How can I do I was looking to do an MBA? I was looking at doing a master's in organizational behavior and randomly skip forward. I had left my role. I was in the middle of doing my coaching diploma, and I had an epiphany one weekend.

I was like, wait a minute. When I was thinking of leaving my role, there was a master's I was looking into. And at the time, I didn't want to do it because they ran it every 2 years, and I would have had to wait a year and a half before I could start. So I didn't even think to apply. I was like, no. That's too far. I want something now. I want something immediate.

And this happened during the summer, and I thought, wow. I must look into that master's again. And I looked into it, and it was starting in September, like, 2 months later. And I applied, and I got in. And that's where I started to talk about all of these experiences that I had had at work. So I said to one of my lecturers, this is what happened in organization 1. This is what happened in organization 2. And she said, I think that's a fish issue.

It's about organizational fish and environmental fish, and I became obsessed with this topic. And that's what I did all of my research on, and that's what I build all of my programs from. This is what the technology solution is going to be based upon. It'll be looking at things like values, needs, and strengths. I think the the initial focus will be on our strengths and how do we recognize our strengths? How do you make sure people are in the right roles for the skills that they have? How do we empower people to take responsibility for that? How do we have conversations about that? How do we recognize people for what they bring to the organization? And if they're not in the right place, how do we find something else for them, whether that's in our organization or whether it is outside of our organization? So this work that I'm doing now has been a culmination of everything that I have experienced to date. And I continue to to kind of draw on that experience and learn from the experiences that I'm having so that I can share those experiences so that I can push those things into whatever solution it is that I am doing, whether that is the technology, whether it's a tool I produce, whatever that might be.

I think this is the power of storytelling that that suddenly it's really clear, in a very different way from maybe when we started the conversation, really why you're doing happier at work. Mhmm. It's not because you want people to be happy at work, although you do. Yeah. It's it's it's it's got this rich deep meaning to it. It's personal. Yeah. And this is, you know, for people who are listening to this, I want them to hear that too and think, you know, for me as a listener, for me, really, why do I do what I do today? Or if I can't put my finger on why I do what I do today, what would I wanna be doing? What would need to be different for me to feel that sense of commitment and purpose and and connection in the way that we can hear in in in your story, you know, Aoife? If you're thinking about the listeners and thinking there's maybe one question you'd like them to ask of themselves, having listened to our conversation today, what what would that be for you?

I think based on our conversation, it's probably a 2 a 2 pronged question, actually. Am I happy doing what I'm doing now in the moment and not? I'll be happy when I get promoted. I'll be happy when I earn more money. I'll be happy when I lose weight. I'll be happy when I feel healthier. I'll be happy when insert whatever excuse you're using currently to not be happy now. And then building on that and kind of reflecting exactly what you said moments ago, Gary, is what do I need to do to be happy right now in this moment?

And for me, the 2 questions I ask of people to get in touch with their own Unlock Moment. The first is, if we were to understand the person you are today, where would we need to start in your story to be able to understand you today? And for some people, the answer is gonna be, this is who I was as a 6 year old, the tomboy, the, you know, mischief maker. Maybe it's when I graduated from university and I decided I wanted to pivot Or, you know, maybe it's a memorable moment in in in a conversation with somebody important to me or not important to me. And then the second question is, if you think about a moment that is that vivid that you remember where you were, who, with what you were thinking in that moment, when you had remarkable clarity, and you knew something you didn't know before, which is not necessarily like a famous moment, a high profile moment, but it's that, yeah, then I knew I was worth more than they thought I was. Or then I knew I had agency. I have permission to choose my own path, whatever that is. What comes up for you? And then you'll start to draw connections and draw the lines, you know, as you have so eloquently here. Talk about happiness at work is a thing, is is important to you.

Unlock Moments are deeply important to me to help people find theirs and make those kind of connections. And I think that that can be really powerful that, you know, with with the work that both of us do, there's it's not complicated, and it's not rocket science. And if it feels complicated, then try and take a step back and ask yourself simpler questions. Am I happy? If not, what would need to be different for me to be happy, not in the future, but now? Because imagine you could be happy now, where you are with people you're with, you're doing what you do. And if you fundamentally can't find a way to do that, it's okay to say what needs to change. Yeah. You know, and and and recognizing facing into that can be one of the hardest things to do, but also one of the most fulfilling things you can ever

do. There's there's a couple of more things that are coming up for me now based on that. So I think listeners may take something from this as well. Another unlock moment, if you will, because I kind of assumed maybe we just have one. But I'm like, no. This so I remember where I was, and I remember the thought that I had. And I was still living in Dublin. I was working in Dublin, and I think I had just moved home because there was some reason I had moved home that my the the house I was living in was gone up for sale.

So I just moved home back with my parents. And for a long, long time, I knew that I wanted to live in London. I had an aunt and cousins who lived in London, and we used to regularly visit them when I was a kid. And to me, coming from Dublin, London was the big smoke. And I I just always knew. I always had this aspiration. And I assumed, vastly assumed, that everyone else had the same aspiration. And it was only a matter of time before a group of my friends would say, come on.

We're heading over to London. Are you coming over to London? And I was, let me think how old was I. I was 26 going on 27, and I realized that no one was gonna come and grab me by the hand and say, are you coming to London? If I want to do this, I need to make that happen myself. And I did. I quit my job. I booked a flight. And my aunt's poor partner, when I arrived with all of my suitcases, he was like, oh, how long are you staying for?

It's like,

I don't know. Anyway, I come over, and I in the best way I knew how, I just, again, scattergun approach. I know better now, but scattergun approach with my CV. I had a whole load of places. I did some temp work, and I eventually landed in what turned out to be one of the best organizations I've ever worked in. And I stayed there for three and a half years, and I loved London. I loved living in London so much. And when I look back, I'm like, what? What was I waiting for? What was I waiting for? I have this control all the time.

I could have gone to London much, much earlier, but I assumed that that's what other people wanted. And I suppose it's you're waiting for other people's permission or you're waiting for someone else to do something so that you can tag along. It's like and I've brought that energy into everything that I've done since. So I left London. My intention was to travel by myself, but it just happens that I ran into an old college friend who wanted to do the same thing, and we did it together. When I left to travel all over the world, I did that by my you know, I brought that same energy. I'm not waiting for someone else to give me permission. I'm not waiting for someone else to do something with me.

If I want to do something, I'm going to do that myself. So that's the first kind of enlightening thing that I hope people can take something from. The other is your current situation. And if people have been listening to the podcast for a while, I I think I've touched on this occasionally, but where we're living in Tenerife at the moment is quite isolated. You need a car for literally everything. I can drive, but I'm not insured over here, so I don't have access to a car. That's, you know, I feel a huge lack of independence. But another thing, I was making excuses for a long time as, oh, we live on top of a hill.

I can't possibly go out for my walk every day because we're on a hill and, well, it's a bit awkward and it's a country and, you know, it's country road and all of these excuses. And then I had a conversation with someone probably about 6 weeks ago, when I was back in Ireland, and I recalled her saying that she had spent time in Lanzarote and lived on top of a hill, basically. And she had to go out for to buy water on a day to day basis by walking up and down this hill. And I just thought I had forgotten about this conversation. If she can do that, I certainly can too. So instead of making up all of these excuses of why I can't do something, I'm like, how do I bring this into my day to day, and how do I make this some me time? So I put in my earphones, I listen to podcasts, and I walk literally walk up and down, up and down, up and down that hill that we live on top of. And, you know, it it it's going back to this idea of how can you find us now rather than saying, well, I'll wait to get back into my daily walks until we find a a more permanent solution of where we're going to live or I'll wait. I'll put those things off.

It's like, no. How can I make this happen now?

Amazing. We could talk forever.

We could.

But we do need to draw to a close at some point. Aoife, how can people find out more about you and the work that you do?

Absolutely. So the best way, since you're listening or watching a podcast right now, you can look up happier at work. So you should find that in whatever podcast platform you are tuned into. I'm also on YouTube as well, happier at work HQ. My website is happier at work dot IE. So that those are the best places to find me. The question I ask everyone who comes on the happier at work podcast, Gary, is what does being happier at work mean to you? And this could probably be a whole other podcast episode, but maybe drawing from some of the insights from our conversation today.

It's a great question. For me, and we've talked a lot about this idea, it's letting go of the materiality. Letting go of the happiness is to do with success. It's to do with role. It's to do with power. It's to do with money. I think about happiness at work is, do I get up in the morning on average and go, I'm looking forward to what I'm gonna do today, who it's with, what it's for. And at the end of the day, I'm sitting in bed or sitting in study, editing a podcast, one or the other, and I go, have I had a good day today? And it's kind of as simple as that.

Mhmm. There's a really powerful question going back to Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall phrases a question that is really useful, and it is not, did I achieve my goals today? It's, did I do my best to achieve my goals today? Yeah. And I found that incredibly helpful because there are so many people who go, I've worked really hard, I absolutely did my best, I didn't achieve it today.

Yeah. You

know, and often that's because it's not entirely in your control.

Yeah.

And so being able to say, did I do my best today

Yeah.

To achieve my goals? Yeah. That is an amazing lens on true happiness.

Love that.

You know, I feel now I'm in a place that I didn't design, I didn't aim for, I didn't know was there until I was probably in my mid forties. I didn't go on a podcast until 2021. It's the first time I ever went on a podcast. I didn't start recording this podcast until a couple of years ago, and I can't. I just love it.

I just

love being in these conversations. And it has opened up a global network of people that I'm now friends with who I never would have met. I never would have met if it hadn't been for doing what I'm doing now. And so the thing I know is I couldn't have designed it at the age of 21, 20 2 looking at my career. He said, I didn't know this existed or something. Yeah. Yeah. Neither if I tried to do it at that time, would it have been successful.

Yeah. I'd been in a place to do it well. Mhmm. So I'm a great believer in time is important, as in you have to wait. The best things take time.

Yeah.

And when it's the right time, I think you can try and trust more that things will come together in the way you want. Yeah. I would probably say I would almost certainly say, I'm happier now in what I do than at any time in my career. I think the only other times when I think back and I think other times when I felt this fulfilled was actually in dancing. When I was training, when I was competing, not all the time, but moments. And those moments felt like this, felt like inflow just in the right place, just with the right people, doing something that was really important to us at that time. Were we super successful? We were quite successful, but not super successful. Did it make us money? No.

Not at all. There's there's no money in dancing, but we loved it. Yeah. Podcasting is the same. There's no money in podcasting. Those of us who are obsessed about podcasting know that all too well, but we love it. Yeah. We just love what we're doing.

And and, you know, I found this conversation with you just incredibly fulfilling because, you know, we're we're light minded Yeah. On on this stuff. And I think that and I hope listeners pick up, you know, that that that, yes, it's about the ideas and about tips and tricks and habit forming and those kinds of things. But more fundamentally than that, it's about trust your judgment that you'll know when you're happy. You'll also know when you're not. Yeah. And facing into that, there's moments when I've asked you questions in this conversation where you can hear they're quite hard questions.

Mhmm.

And that's intentional, I suppose it's not. But but but people have got to face into what those hard questions are for them Yeah. To really get to the answers for for whether what's gonna make them happy. And I think that, it's important to know that you don't have to tell your answers to another person. You don't have to write them down. You don't have to say them out loud. You don't have to get a therapist or a coach or a mentor or a buddy. You can just think about it for yourself.

And those moments, there's a phrase that I talk about a lot in the Unlock Moment, which probably will be a chapter heading in the book that I'm writing called The Unlock Moment that is very nascent at the moment, but it's an idea called Alone With Others. And alone with others, I've heard many, many times when people talk about their unlock moments, they are surrounded by people who love them, care for them, support them, are advisors, are helpers. And also in that moment, the only person who can make the decision to do the thing that's gonna change your life is you. First time I heard that story was in a conversation with O. Hackett, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 28 and went on after her successful treatment for breast cancer to found an amazing charity called Little Lifts, which makes boxes of the important things that people need when they're going through chemotherapy and radiotherapy for for breast cancer and other cancer treatment. And I said, what was your unlock moment? And she said, sitting in my first chemotherapy planning meeting with the oncologist ahead of me, my mom to one side, my husband to the other side, and I felt so alone. And I said, and what did you know in that moment you didn't know before? And she said, I knew I was strong enough to get through this myself. Wow.

And that's the thing that when listeners are thinking big fundamental questions, am I happy? It's only you. It's only you that gets to know the answer to that question. It's the only you that gets to make the choices to change if you wanna change. And, and, and, and my takeaway to people listening to this conversation is think about that for you. Yeah. And feel that you do have agency, you do have control. Other people might not agree with you. Other people might have a different opinion.

They might say, keep digging this tunnel with that rusty teaspoon. You might go, I'm gonna choose to climb out, go into the next field and go digging. Yeah. And maybe there's no pot of gold there at all either, but you can still choose.

The other thing I was going to say that's coming from what you're saying now is that you don't have to have it all figured out. It's just that next step. That's all you need to do is that next step. And, again, something that I'd love to share based going based on what you said about, did I try my best to achieve my goals today? And yesterday, I had a long list of things to do as I usually do most days, and I didn't get everything done. But at the end of the day, I felt like I had achieved loads because there was something that was sitting there for a while. And I knew it was taking up a lot of headspace, and it was going to take a little bit of time, but not a huge amount of time. And I did it, and I got it done. And so I definitely noticed that yesterday, and I was very conscious of the fact that I feel like I've achieved a lot today because I got that one thing done.

Mhmm. If you're listening to us on the Happy at Work podcast and you'd like to find out more about the Unlock Moment, you can find The Unlock Moment on all the major podcast platforms, and on the unlockmoment.com and on YouTube under my name, doctor Gary Crotaz, and newly on TikTok. That's very exciting. Also, under doctor Gary Crotaz, I'm putting some little clips out there too. And I'd love you to come and listen into some of these other conversations with people exploring their own Unlock Moments and the underlying purpose for work and life. The Unlock Moment is that flash of remarkable clarity when you suddenly know the right path ahead. For speaker and world leading podcaster Aoife O'Brien, it was the day she was overlooked for promotion that sparked her decision to prioritize becoming happier at work and then to help other people to become happy too, and the rest is history. Find the Happier at Work podcast and the Unlock Moment podcast on Spotify, Apple, and all major podcast platforms.

Aoife, it's been such a pleasure to bring together the Happier at Work and The Unlock Moment podcast today to all of our over a 100000 listeners in over a 100 countries around the world. Really hope you've enjoyed this conversation. Do find and follow our podcast for more great interviews and insights on, on unlocking happiness and purpose at work.

Thank you so much, Gary. It's been an absolute pleasure to have this conversation.

Fantastic.