EP29:Why Your “Messy” Career is Actually Your Biggest Strength - and How to Own It!
What if I told you that the very things you feel awkward or ashamed about in your career could actually be your biggest strengths? What if the aspects you worry will stop people from hiring you, investing in you, or buying from you are the very things that will attract them to you?
In today’s episode, I’ll help you shift your perspective on career “messiness” and show you how to turn it into an advantage.
I’ll share my daily struggle with real-life mess in my home—and how seeing it differently has revealed so many beautiful things about my family life. You can do the same with your career! I’ll walk you through a simple, practical exercise to uncover the potential behind the things you’ve perceived as imperfections or embarrassments in your worklife.
Corporate life teaches us to value unnatural things like linearity and consistency. There’s no room for anything except the relentless climb up the career ladder—a constant push for efficiency, productivity, growth, and profit. But you, my dear listener, are so much more than that.
Let me share a vision of work that supports your life instead of draining it. Whether you’ve taken time to raise children, stepped away from a career path that didn’t serve you, or simply want to create space for exploration and adventure in your work, today’s episode will help you embrace your choices—and turn them into strengths.
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Full Transcript
Alisa: Today I'm going to talk to you about why I believe that the things that you perceive within your career as messy as imperfections, as cracks that you want to cover over are actually your greatest strengths are the very things that are going to attract people to work with you, to hire you, to invest in you, to partner with you, to buy from you.
And I know that idea can be quite a struggle to get on board with. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk about my personal relationship with mess, not the metaphorical kind of mess, the everyday real under your feet. Always there three kids and a dog kind of mess that I really struggle with and how I've been able to do my own work to slowly start to understand that mess in my house is actually a sign of great strength. So, I'll share that experience with you. I'll show you what it looks like to start to turn these difficult thoughts around. I'll talk about why we are so obsessed with this kind of linear perfection in our careers. Hint, it's a purely corporate construct and how you can break free from that.
I'm going to give you a practical exercise so that you can go through these steps and understand for yourself. How your mess can become your strength as you move into a regenerative career. Alright, so we're going to have to do this. Let's talk about mess.
I never considered myself an overly tidy person. I'm actually quite disorganised, particularly outside of my professional life, and it often surprises people. And I wouldn't have thought I was someone who had very high standards of perfect organisation or cleanliness in their home, but I struggle almost every day to accept how messy my house is.
It's an almost constant dialogue as I go through life. I'm constantly thinking. Oh, who walked in here with their shoes on? Oh, I've just cleaned the counter. Now there's crap all over it again. Can't believe I'm back in here cleaning these bedrooms again. I'm sure I swept this floor four or five times today.
What is wrong with us as a family? That we cannot be tidier? I go to other people's houses and they look clean and they have lots of kids and their houses are clean and organised. And it spirals and it becomes something that clearly, I feel a lot of shame around actually. And, it's even something that I let affect my relationship with my family.
I hear myself say things to my kids that I would absolutely judge other people for saying, I'll hear them saying I dunno, don't get that. Don't get that out 'cause it's gonna make too much mess. And I really try to be conscious of it, but when I'm feeling overwhelmed, those kind of things come out and I definitely take this out on my partner. Someone has to get blamed for how messy it is. He is the easiest person to choose.
And let me just say for context that my husband does so much around the house. We absolutely share the balance of work in the house. Whenever there's something there, which I feel, we should be doing better, there shouldn't be clothes left on the bed or whatever it might be. The easiest thing to do is go, oh, why did you leave this? Why didn't you finish doing the laundry and put it away in the drawers? Whatever it might be. Okay, I'm gonna stop talking about this because even talking about it, I can feel the tension building.
I can feel my chest getting tight. I can feel the kind of heat of it. And I imagine you might be familiar with those kind of feelings when it comes to the idea of messiness in your career, because it's something that I hear a lot from people who come to work with me, they are ashamed of I. Breaks that they're taking in their careers, they don't feel like they can make the different pieces of their career fit together.
They feel like they don't have options because even though they may have done extremely well in one area of work, they just can't see how that's going to translate into the area that they want to move into and all the things that are required to successfully make the transition out of corporate and into regenerative work such as time, such as pause, such as stepping away from things and giving yourself space for exploration and all the things that come with exploration, trying different things, not letting yourself be confined or constrained. All of these things are antithetical to how we think and how we've been told that our careers should be mapped out.
Because corporate life teaches us to value distinctly unnatural things in our careers, like linearity, consistency. We're not supposed to take breaks. We're not supposed to have pauses, there shouldn't be any deviations, no exploration. And if you choose to take time to raise a family, then you are left feeling like you've become irrelevant and outdated. If you leave a job that you just cannot stay in any longer because you don't see the meaning in it and because it doesn't align with who you are as a person, and you take that step to leave with really good reasons, but then almost immediately you hear the clock ticking and you give yourself just days or weeks to make a change that really you want to last for a lifetime because you just can't accept this embarrassing blot on your career.
This pause feels like a real mistake or embarrassment. And you ignore your curiosity. You don't let yourself try new things. You're afraid to even start because anything other than that, continual climb up the ladder feels like a failure. And you think you won't be able to explain your choices, that people won't understand, and probably aren’t even going give you the time of day to hear you out.
And look, those things are probably true, actually, when it comes to conventional corporations. Because frankly, as a species, they have very little imagination. But I want to reassure you that for any organisation that is striving to do things differently, and for those of you who are thinking of creating your own regenerative offer, whether as a freelancer or as a business, it's those very quirks and twists in your career path. Those brave decisions, the things that you call messy, are precisely what are going to be attractive to those people that you want to engage.
They are going to become your greatest strengths. If you can just sit in that discomfort moment, twist things round, and start to see things differently.
Now I understand you might be struggling to get on board with that idea. I know that you will hear in the exercise I'm about to do. For me, trying to get on board with the idea that my house being a mess is a great strength, is extremely difficult and I feel a lot of resistance. But don't worry, I've got you.
We're going to talk through this. We're going to go step by step. I'm going to do an example for you with my messy house, and then I'm going to walk you through a practical exercise and show you how, just in a few minutes those things that you perceive as weaknesses, as messiness can be your greatest strength.
That they can be the very things that attract people to hiring you, working with you, partnering with you, investing in you, and buying from you. So, let's go back to my example with the mess in my house, and I'm going to show you what it looks like to turn this around so you can see for yourself how to approach the exercise that I'm going to share with you at the end.
Now, the work that I'm doing here is loosely inspired by the work of Byron Katie. It's quite a simplified version of what Byron Katie does, so if you want to go deeper, there are loads of free resources on her website The Work. If you are new to ‘The Work’, it is essentially a way of questioning your thinking and believing and turning that around.
I can tell you from my own experience and from a lot of experience using these tools with clients, that it is absolutely life changing. So, let's follow this through and I will take you step by step through how you can do this for yourself. So, we start with the thought that is causing you pain. So, for me the thought that I'm getting so caught up in is very simply, my house is always a mess.
Now, what I want to ask is how is that mess a strength? If this was the first time that I'd asked myself that question, I would be feeling, as I mentioned, a lot of resistance. So, if a lot of resistance is coming up for you, just experience that, be ready to come back to the question over time and you will see more possibility each time that you do it.
That has been my experience. I've had to do a lot of work on this one, and it's an ongoing process. Now let me show you what the turnaround can look like. My messy house is my strength because I am raising creative children. And creativity creates a whole lot of mess. My messiness is a strength because we as a family spend a lot of time outdoors and in nature, and we have a dog who we adore, and this means mud.
So much mud everywhere. And then in the summer it means sand and wet clothes and more boots and wellies than you could possibly believe one family could require. My messy house is a strength because we cook and we bake, and we encourage our children to learn to cook and join in and oh my goodness, does that make a lot of mess.
It's a strength because I believe wholeheartedly in the value of play, not just for my children, but for my partner and for myself. And our house gets turned into imagination. Land and forts pop up all over the place and neatly stacked piles of wood quickly get turned into racetracks and toy cars get scattered all over the garden, and my husband can whip up costumes on the sewing machine and build dens out of wooden pallets.
Do you see all of the things that are made possible by my house being a mess? Do you see how beautiful my mess becomes when I can remember those things? When I choose to give those things my attention rather than some societal idea of what my home should look like, and this really frustrating, deeply internalised belief that a tidy home somehow means that I am making it as a successful human.
And I know as I say that I hear it and I think that's ridiculous. And yet. Almost every time I am enjoying coming home from a walk or baking bread or hosting art club, I'm also scurrying around desperately trying to keep the mess under control and prove that I am capable. Because this stuff is pervasive, my friends, and it's very similar to the unrealistic anti-human ideals of the corporate workplace.
We know we want to find different ways of working. Create new kinds of organisations, find work that brings us joy and freedom, and actually makes a meaningful contribution in a world on fire. And yet we also desperately want our CVs to make sense and impress, and we want to cover over anything that we conceive of as a crack in our careers.
And we try to be more than human, or maybe it's actually less than human because that's exactly what's expected of us. The corporatized world of work is intrinsically linked to the industrial revolution and the constant and unending drive for efficiency and productivity and growth and profit, and you, my dear listener, are so much more than that.
Those cracks that you're trying to cover over those glitches and imperfections that you worry mean you won't stand out for the kind of jobs that you dream of or will mean that people don't value you as a freelancer, or that you'll never be taken seriously by investors or be able to sell to people if and when you finally create your regenerative business.
All the things that you thought of before as messiness have the potential to be your greatest strengths and the very reason that people are compelled to hire you, invest in you, partner with you, and buy from you, so let's do this together. Are you ready? You are going to need a paper and pen. So go and get them.
Now I have a quick message for you and don't worry, it is not, and it never will be an advert, this is an invitation. Making a big career transition can feel lonely, but when you step into a room with people on that same journey, everything changes.
That's why I created the Regenerative Worklife Cafe, a space where we come together, share experiences, and support each other. No social media, no selling, just real conversations with real people.
We held our opening event just last night, and it was gorgeous. I can tell you it was such a pleasure to share a space with these people and see everyone connecting and sharing their experiences. You can find out what it's all about at www.regenerativeworklife.com/community where you can also sign up to be part of the next event.
Okay. Thank you for listening and I really hope you will come and join us in the Regenerative Worklife Cafe. But right now, we've got some turnarounds to do so with your paper and your pen.
Let's take this one thought at a time. One crack, one imperfection at a time. Start by writing down the thought. Keep it as simple as you can. So, mine was my house is always a mess. It could even have just been, my house is a mess.
The next step, and I really don't want you to skip this step. With me, let's take a deep breath in and exhale twice as long.
Here we go. Deep breath in, and exhale twice as long. Let's do that once more. Deep breath in and exhale twice as long now. Shake your body. I don't care if you're in the supermarket, just do it. It'll be liberating, I promise. Shake your arms. Shake your hands. Shake your legs. Shake your feet. Oh, okay. You have already begun to release your attachment to that thought.
Great job. Now I want you to write down all the ways that messy thought is actually a great strength, just go for it, even if what you come up with feels silly or small, just write something, it can help to write with your non-dominant hand, if you're feeling stuck, try and get something on paper and know that you can come back and add to this because we fired up that neural pathway now, and you're going to find that new ideas about how this is a great strength are going to come to you as you go about your day.
So, take your time, write down anything that's coming up for you. Just let it flow and that's it. Go one thought at a time and see what comes up for you. Turn each of them around and you will find that messiness, what you did think of as messiness before is in fact great strength that you can take forward into the new chapter of your work life.
I hope you have found this podcast useful today. Look, this journey that we are on together here, it's so much easier done in community. Just last night I held the private opening of the Regenerative Worklife Cafe and it was just the most joyful experience to bring together these incredible people in one space.
These people who were united despite the fact that they were from different countries and different backgrounds and all kinds of different experiences were united by their willingness to step out of the corporatised world of work and pursue regenerative work with meaning and with purpose. And we shared our experiences and we connected over all kinds of different ideas.
And things that we had lived through and struggled with, and that is what I want to offer you as part of the Regenerative Worklife Cafe Community. It's just a really, easy, relaxed space to come together to share if you want to listen, if you don't, just to be around other people who get it so that you know you are not alone, and you have people around you who are going to cheer you on every step of the way.
So don't forget to go to www.regenerativeworklife.com/community and then you can get on the list to sign up and get announcements for future cafe events. That's me done for today. Thank you for listening, and I'll be back here, of course, as always, next Wednesday.
