Careers Out There Host Marc Luber: Hey everyone – welcome to Careers Out There – I’m
your host, Marc Luber, and we’re helping you find a career that fits you so you can
love what you do. Today we’re talking to popular blogger and author Jenny Blake, whose
blog and book Life After College help you find the right career for yourself and live
the best life you can live. Jenny’s a really inspirational person and I’m glad she’s
here with us today to share her advice with you. Jenny, welcome to Careers Out There!
Jenny Blake: Thank you so much! Great to be here.
Luber: Definitely. Thank you for being here. So Jenny, I’m a big fan of your book Life
After College. Some of you might have seen the review that I put on Amazon dot com. I’m
a huge fan of this book. And I really think that it’s important reading for anyone trying
to find their way in life, but especially people who are in college and who are 20-somethings
right now. So tell us this – what do you want the main take-away to be from the book?
Jenny: 2 things: live big and start small. What do I mean by that? Live big is go for
it, take some risks, figure out what you want in your life and don’t be afraid to go after
big things. To me, living big doesn’t mean that everyone has to quit their job and travel
the world for a year. Your version of that might be totally different. But live to the
fullest extent of YOU that you can. So whatever the biggest version, the most expressed version
of you that there is, keep seeking that out and keep doing things that make you feel alive.
And the start small piece is about – that can be really overwhelming – when someone
just says “go after your big dreams, go do big things, take risks” – we can get
paralyzed by fear and get into this all or nothing mentality. So the start small piece
is really about take some baby steps. Do 1 thing today or tomorrow but it’s going to
start building your momentum. The analogy I make is that at first it feels like you’re
pushing a giant boulder and it’s so hard to move and every action feels painstaking,
but eventually you’ll get the ball rolling and you’ll build up that momentum and it
will become a snowball of success to where whatever you set out to do becomes possible.
Luber: I like that! One little piece at a time, that way it’s not too overwhelming!
Jenny! Yeah! Exactly.
Luber: So what’s a little tip that you could leave people with? You coach people all the
time. What kind of coaching tip could you give everyone today so that they could walk
away and start doing something right now?
Jenny: I’m gonna cheat and do 2. One of my favorite exercises is the Passion Mindmap,
which is put the word passions right in the middle – I learned this from my friend Paul
Williams at Idea Sandbox – and go crazy with it. Keep writing – do not lift your
hand from the paper – until you’ve written everything in life that interests you. And
if you write things like running, yoga, organizing, reading – for each of those spokes, go in
and say “what’s important to me about that” and draw some tertiary spokes. And
from THERE you can say “what do I enjoy about THAT?” And you go crazy with it until
you fill up a piece of paper. That’s great for people who are feeling a little bit lost
or they’re not sure what they’re passionate about or what their goals might be. And the
second thing is: do some visioning. One of my favorite exercises in the book is an Ideal
Day Mad Lib. Think about what your ideal day looks like. There’s probably a gap between
what your current days are like and what your ideal day would be. Well one thing I’ve
noticed is we really have a lot more control over moving ourselves towards that ideal day
than we think. So the first step is actually writing it down and if you can start taking
ownership over your days and shaping them to be a little bit closer to that ideal, those
changes will really add up over time.
Luber: That’s great! The always inspirational Jenny Blake! I love it!
Jenny: Aw, thank you.
Luber: So Jenny I’d love if you’d stick around and we could talk a little bit more.
We’ll go in-depth into how people could find careers that fit them. Does that sound
good?
Jenny: Absolutely.
Luber: Excellent! So we’ll do that. You guys want to watch us have a full, in=depth
discussion on finding the right career fit, come on over to Careers Out There dot com
and we’ll be going that there. You can find videos from us all over YouTube, where what
we do is interview professionals from all kinds of career paths about what THEY do so
you could learn right from the horse’s mouth what it’s really like to have that career.
What’s a typical day? How do you break in? And then how do you succeed once you’re
there. We’re all over YouTube and there’s also a free podcast that you could download
at iTunes and of course we’re at Careers Out There dot com. So Jenny, thanks again
for joining us.
Jenny: Thank you!
Luber: And thanks again for watching everybody. I’m Marc Luber and look forward to seeing
you again soon. Take care. [theme music]