EP22: Stop Letting Money Decide— Start Purposeful Work You Love TODAY
In this podcast episode, I invite you to rethink the role money plays in our approach to work. For many of us, money feels like the biggest obstacle standing between us and the work we truly want to do. But what if we dared to imagine a different way—one where money takes a backseat, and passion, purpose, and curiosity take the lead?
I’ll share my experience as an actor, where I learned how to stop waiting for permission to do the work I loved and instead started taking action. I’ll guide you through thought-provoking questions to help you explore what’s possible when we decenter money in our decisions, even just for a moment.
What could you try? Who might you collaborate with? How could you start today?
I also encourage you to take a playful approach: what if you set aside the question of how to make money from regenerative work and simply focused on doing it? I’ll share practical ideas for getting started, building confidence, and finding value in the process itself.
If money feels like a barrier and you’re longing to reconnect with meaningful work, this episode offers a fresh perspective and tangible steps to help you move forward.
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Full Transcript
Alisa: “Hello and welcome back to the podcast. This week I am going to be expanding on a theme that I touched on in the previous podcast when I was talking about the local campaign to try to save an oak tree and two other mature trees in my town.
I was talking about how it had me thinking differently about what we understand to be work, because everyone who has been part of that campaign is engaged in meaningful work and has a job. It just happens that none of us are getting paid for that work. And the more I start with that concept, and in fact, it's also something that's come up with a client this week, the more freeing I found the idea that we have the possibility to separate the concept of meaningful work and our need to make money.
Before I go any further, a quick tree update for those who are kindly following along with our campaign. The tree is still standing. There are an amazing group of people who have set up a rota system so that there are at least two people sat by the tree at every hour of the day. There are people out there at two in the morning, it's freezing outside, you know, we're late January in England, it's cold and people are just not giving up and it gives me so much hope to know that there are people who are so committed to giving a voice to nature and it's been a joy to be amongst them and be part of that. The outcome is still very uncertain but I've really had the opportunity to learn again the power of small, simple actions. And sometimes really all that is required is our presence. Just by being with that tree, these people are preventing that tree from being cut down. That's very empowering.
So let's come back to this theme of how we can separate our need to make money and our desire to do purposeful, sustainable work.
Perhaps I'll offer two disclaimers before we go deeper into this topic. The first thing is I am not saying that earning money is not important. I absolutely understand that it is. And if you go back to Episode 10, you can listen along with Three Easy Ways To Make Money While Pursuing Regenerative Work where I attempt to offer some very straightforward strategies for making sure that that income earning piece is taken care of so that you have the freedom and headspace to pursue new ideas of work.
The second thing I want to say is I am not implying in this separation that you cannot or will not make money from that purposeful impactful work. I know that you can. My point today is that making money should not be your starting point. It's a very unhelpful starting point that roots us straight back into the kind of extractive system that we are trying to move away from. And I don't believe that money should ever be the thing that stops you from making changes, trying new things and exploring new directions in your career.
I'll begin by sharing a bit of a personal story of when this concept really showed up for me. So we're going to go way back in the Alisa archives to when I was an actor. So during that time, there were periods where I got lucky. I got good jobs. I was able to travel. I was able to work with some of my heroes. I had a lot of fun working on screen and on stage. And like the vast majority of actors out there, there was plenty of time in between those jobs when I was not working and when I was very frustrated and when I felt really powerless.
And the thought that I can identify with a bit of distance now that really felt all pervasive at that time was that other people get to decide if I can do the work I love. That is exactly how it felt. It like all the power lay in somebody else's hands. But let's look at that thought again. Other people get to decide if I can do the work I love. Was that true? Now with the benefit of… What are we talking about? 15 years plus hindsight here. I can answer no. No, absolutely no. There was nothing stopping me from acting in my own living room. There was nothing stopping me from doing unpaid work. There was nothing stopping me from creating my own pieces and inviting my own audiences.
The only thing that stood in my way was this thought that somehow it wasn't proper work and I was here to be a proper actor. And it's funny because I know that if I could have gone back and asked myself, I would have said, well, okay, yes, I could do those things, but it's going to be really unsatisfactory because it's going to be, you know, there's no audience or a small audience, or I'm going to be working with people who aren't very experienced. It's going to be more chaotic. And all of that may have been true, but however unsatisfactory it might have felt, it would have been so much more preferable than putting all of my power into the hands of distant casting directors or producers.
And I would spend those quiet periods feeling so frustrated, feeling lost, feeling powerless and increasingly desperate about the time passing between jobs. And I now see that I could have been putting all of that energy into making it happen anyway, into just simply doing my craft or enjoying the ability of others to do theirs, in reading plays, in watching plays, watching films, helping friends with auditions, working on my voice, learning big chunks of text, whatever it was.
There were so many possibilities that would have made me all the more ready for when those paid opportunities did arise. If I had chosen to really commit to all of those kinds of activities, to just get up and do the work regardless every day, I would have been an actor every day, instead of… for those times that I let somebody else tell me that I could be an actor.
So how does this apply to you and your journey and the pursuit of regenerative work? Well, I want to advocate for taking that same approach of just finding a way to do the work. But simply, I want you to take the thought “I have to make money from this work” and I want you to put that thought to one side. And if that feels hard because you're really quite attached to that thought at this point, I want you to remind yourself that you will make money from this work at some time in the future. And in fact, what you're doing in this separation exercise is going to help you get to the point where you will make money from this work.
Then with that thought over to one side, think afresh about all the different ways that you can do the work that you want to do right now. And if you're not yet clear on exactly what that work looks like, that doesn't need to stop you from taking this approach. If you're still in that exploratory phase, then think about how you can explore ideas, how you can get inspired by other career paths, how you can learn about what might be needed out there, how you can think about your skills and experience and the things that light you up. But you can do all of that without the filter of “how will this make me money”, which is what holds so many people back from really and truly exploring new possibilities for their career.
I mentioned that this concept had also come up with a client this week and I wanted to share a little bit more about that because I think it shows another example of what happens when we don't take things seriously if they're not attached to our ideas of “proper work” and proper work almost always means work that is paid or the work that is paid to a level that we expect.
So my client, we have worked together for a little while now and she is at the point where she's quite clear about the type of work that she wants to do. She's developed some really beautiful ideas for the business that she wants to build and it's all around a very community-rooted approach to marketing and her real belief about people's desire to be in connection with each other, to be in a room together and how you can create live experiences and even digitally how you can create that feeling of being in community and in connection with each other.
And of course now that that clarity is there, she is finding that more and more the limiting beliefs want to start showing up and telling her that, even though she's developed this concept, maybe no one else is going to understand it. And even though she has this beautiful idea for a business, well, no one's going to really want to pay for that. Or the only people who will want to do it are people who can't afford to do it. And suddenly everything becomes very limited and quite scary.
Together we uncovered the fact that she already has several clients who really understand this new methodology and this unique approach that she has to marketing. It just so happens that those clients aren't paying her in a conventional way. But she hadn't even been thinking of them as clients. When she described them to me, she said things like, yes, I'm helping a friend out with this project, or another friend asked me to look at this website, their website and their messaging and see if I could tweak it a little bit. And you can see all of the language that's used to sort of help out, tweak a little bit, take a look. And I asked, what would it be like if you approached those opportunities with the same commitment and the same excitement that you would if someone came along and offered you a fully paid opportunity. What might that be like because you're going to do the work anyway.
Suddenly you have a client base. Suddenly you have people who really understand and respect this concept. Suddenly you have opportunities to test your ideas, to validate your business, to build your confidence, build your experience. And it's only that idea that this doesn't really count because it's not making me money that was getting in her way. And she will make money. Those opportunities will come. But she won't get to that point if she lets that need make all of her decisions and control her mindset at this point of embarking on this new journey. So I invite you to check your mindset around regenerative work. And if you can step away from those constant thoughts about money, which is, I acknowledge, not easy to do, maybe like my client, you will find that you are already doing the work you wish for, or that there are opportunities around you that you just weren't seeing, or that in fact you do have many ideas for how to get started, but you were discounting them because you couldn't make them make sense financially.
So how does your energy change when you treat all of those things with the same respect, when you give it the same energy that you would paying work? Look, I have spoken before about how weighty money is. It is by far and away the biggest challenge that people face in stepping out of the corporatized world and into a regenerative business or career. Ultimately I believe we have a choice to make. We can let money continue to control us. We can let money decide what work we get to do. We can even let money define what work means. Or… we can decide to try and disaggregate work and money and let the two stand alongside each other, both necessary, both valuable, but finding a real freedom and possibility in that space between them.
And of course, this takes creativity and tenacity and effort. It may mean finding time that you don't think you have. It may mean making compromises. It will definitely challenge your conditioned beliefs. And I suggest that you try to work through the thoughts that come up around this and work with them. See if you can question them. As I showed with the example of back when I was acting, ask, they really true? Because if you can really work with this concept, and by work I mean play with it, I believe it offers a wonderful, unconstrained path into that purposeful work that has real impact in the world that you are seeking.
Don't let the ready availability of a monetary return stop you from pursuing that work. It matters too much. Don't wait or even allow for the concept that somebody else gets to give you permission to do the work you were called to do. You can start doing that work today, even if it's reading one page of a book or putting your hand on the soil or just giving space in your head to the ideas that you've been pushing away.
I invite you to find a way to do the work you love today and then keep building from there. The more you do this work and treat it like your job, the more your confidence will grow that you can do this. The more you will believe in this work, the more proof you will have that others value this work. And then, with those solid foundations in place, then you can start to work out the financial piece of the puzzle. And you know what? You might find that it's much easier than you expected, particularly with those limiting beliefs out of the way.
I am so excited for you to begin today. And I want to remind you that redefining work in the way that we talk about here on the podcast is so much easier to do in community. And if you would like to be an active part of the Regenerative Worklife community, which is a concept that is very dear to me and also very much in development at the moment, if you'd like to join us for gatherings and mutual support, then please send me an email and I'll share what I'm working on behind the scenes and I would love for you to share your ideas about what would serve you. You can reach me at alisa@regenerativeworklife.com.
If you are looking for one-to-one support on your career journey, I offer dedicated career transition coaching as well as regenerative business mentorship. And if you'd like to talk that through with me, then please book a discovery call. Thank you for listening to the podcast today. Now let's roll up our sleeves together and get to regenerative work. I'll see you next week.”
