How to Stop Ignoring Your Needs and Give Yourself Permission to Pursue the Career You Actually Want | E87

Gino Cordone [00:00:12]:
Hello and welcome back to— oh, sorry. Welcome back to Working Towards Our Purpose. This is episode 87, and in today’s episode, we are going to talk about how to stop ignoring your needs. And giving yourself the permission. So before we get into today’s episode, let’s just take a moment and check in with ourselves, slow down, and see how we’re feeling. Alrighty, hopefully you got a second to do that. And for me, episode back. I suffered from the flu last week, so I was unable to record an episode.

Gino Cordone [00:01:00]:
So we skipped a week and a little bit of the brain fog, I guess, is still here as per the intro. But yeah, I was super sick and was down bedridden for probably like 5 days. And I was trying hard to get a podcast recorded, but I just was not able to do it. And I haven’t been sick like that for a really long time. So it was an interesting experience and gets you to think, you know, every time you’re like stuck and you can’t do anything, at least for me, it always brings up like these questions about your life and like, you know, are you doing the things that you want to be doing? You know, when you finally get better, you have like this almost, well, at least this time I had this renewed lease on life and I was like, wow, I’m so grateful to be healthy. So yeah, kind of led to this episode today about kind of checking in with yourself and seeing if you’re ignoring some needs maybe, or not giving yourself the permission to do something that you want to do. And yeah, just how you’re spending your time. So So yeah, for me personally, I guess, I was thinking about what I’m doing for work and what I want to be doing ideally and just some questions and some thoughts of some new paths.

Gino Cordone [00:02:29]:
I have this interest now in live sound and doing more musical things, even if they’re not my own music or creating music or being creative. So yeah, that’s something that I’m thinking about. And then one thing that like really came up was I just realized that like I always have this want to play drums and I never really do. And I have this desire to like sit down and play drums and want to get good at them. And, you know, I know how to drum and I’ve drummed before, but I don’t really consider myself a drummer. And I would love to like sit down and I could just like play for a year and like learn techniques and like get really good at it. And I asked myself like, well, why are you not doing that? Like if you have that desire, maybe you should do something about it. And you know, the course of the past 5 years have been sort of an evolution of me doing that, like making choice after choice after choice to try to get more closer to like an authentic life that I want to live.

Gino Cordone [00:03:29]:
But yeah, but that’s one thing that’s left behind. It’s like, well, why don’t I play drums more?. So that’s also something I’ll be pursuing a little bit more because it’s something that’s fun to me. It’s this fun thing. I think about it and I’m like, oh, that’d be fun. I want to do it, but I don’t really let myself do it. So yeah, that brings me to this story that’s kind of related, but I thought it would be helpful to share. So I’ve been watching hockey ever since the last Stanley Cup Finals and been really getting into it and I chose a team.

Gino Cordone [00:04:01]:
My favorite team is the Minnesota Wild. And they had some traded players recently. And I was watching the game the other day, the last game they played. And they just acquired this new player, Bobby Brink, who is this kid who grew up in Minnesota, like watching the Minnesota Wild. And now he’s on this team that he dreamed of as a kid. And in the first home game that he played, he scored a goal. And It’s just this really cool kind of moment. I’ve never really been into sports, so kind of new to the whole team sport thing.

Gino Cordone [00:04:34]:
But they interviewed him afterwards and the announcer was asking some really good questions, or the interviewer. And he was like, what would you tell, like, what’s one piece of advice you would tell to some Minnesota girls and boys and people who want to play hockey? What’s like a piece of advice that you would give to them? And his advice was like, go have fun, like play hockey with your friends, have fun. Like that’s where you’ll learn and you’ll learn how to like play hockey better. You’ll want to play better because it’s fun and it’s something you’re enjoying. So like keep it fun was his piece of advice. And yeah, I thought that that was like really important because I think that that’s like such a crucial ingredient into what we do is like having it be fun because when something’s fun, you just, like, you want to dive into it more. You want to learn it. Like, it’s how I was able to learn anything musical because I just had this, like, desire to do it.

Gino Cordone [00:05:30]:
Which brings me back to the idea of playing drums again. So, so yeah, two questions kind of came, getting a little bit back on track. Two questions came from, from this flu that I had that can maybe help you identify if there’s like some sort of need or desire or want that you have that maybe you’re ignoring. And it could be, you know, small, small little thing like me wanting to play drums, or it could be like a major career change and like something you’ve been desiring maybe your whole life. But so the first one is, is there something that feels fun but feels like you can’t do it? And that for me was like kind of almost the drums. Like I, make excuses like, oh, I live in an apartment, I can’t do it. But you know, there’s ways around that. So is there something that’s like, that you know you like doing, but you just give yourself the excuse like, oh, maybe I’m too old or I live in the wrong place or whatever.

Gino Cordone [00:06:28]:
Is there something that feels fun that you don’t do? So that’s the first question. And then the second question is sort of a bigger one, I guess. And it’s just more of an overarching, like, is your life working for you? And that’s kind of the question that came to me, like, as I was just like having all this time to think sick, was like, is my life working for me? And that sounds like a dramatic question, I guess. And it is, but it also doesn’t have to be. Like, I think There’s— I think there’s always a romanticized version of, like I was talking about the hockey player Brink, getting to the destination of playing for the Minnesota Wild. But your life’s not really a destination. That’s almost kind of romanticized because it looks like he started somewhere and then got somewhere. But I think we, over the course of our life, constantly have to evolve and check in with ourselves to see if our life is going in the direction that we want.

Gino Cordone [00:07:36]:
And even with him, you don’t play in the NHL forever. So when he starts getting older towards retirement, he has to re-ask himself, what do I do now? And what do I want to do now? So I think that constantly asking yourself, is your life working for you? It’s a good question. Um, so, you know, that could be like in your career, like a big thing, like, is your job working for you? Do you need to get a new job? Do you need to switch careers? Do you want to go do something else? Um, maybe a hobby, like, do you have hobbies that give you fulfillment and, uh, fun and enjoyment? Um, maybe like a business. Is your business working for you? Or your friends, even the people that you surround yourself with, your community. Is that working for you? Are you getting kind of what you want out of it? So yeah, just these two kind of questions of trying to see if you’re kind of hindering yourself from something. And I think kind of the, I don’t want to say answer, but I guess for lack of a better term, if there is something that, that like you’re wanting to do and you’re not doing it, well, like, why aren’t you doing it? You know, maybe, maybe there’s a good reason, but at least for me, I know that a lot of times it’s just been me not like really giving myself the permission to do it and not letting myself do it because I’ll make an excuse or I’ll say, you know, this reason’s valid, so I can’t do it. And sometimes there is a valid reason to not do something that you want to do. But I think more often than not, it’s an excuse that we tell ourselves we can’t do it.

Gino Cordone [00:09:25]:
And perhaps that comes from outside influence, like, you know, my boss wouldn’t want me to do this, or my partner, or my parents, or society. And I think that’s been the case for me, like for a lot of the choices that I’ve made. Thinking about when I was leaving my corporate job, I would think like, oh, I can’t do that. What are my coworkers going to think? I don’t have everything figured out. What are they going to— what are my parents going to think? And at the end of the day, in order to actually make that change and to do something, you have to give yourself the permission. And I think that that is kind of the conclusion that I’ve come to with thinking about these pivots in life and these little adjustments and readjustments. And yeah, if there’s something that you wanted to go and work towards and chase after, you have to be the one to decide to do it and to give yourself the permission to do it. Because one thing that came up recently in conversation with I can’t remember who, um, was that like somebody said something to me, it was like, as an adult, that’s the cool part of being an adult, you get to make the choices, you know? And I think at least, at least me, I sometimes take that for granted.

Gino Cordone [00:10:44]:
Like I sometimes forget that like you really have agency over your life and you can choose to do what you want to do. And I think we touched on that in the last episode a little bit. Um, but yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the cool part of being an adult. You don’t have to listen to, you know, an older figure. And yeah, you get to do the thing that like, that you’re desiring and that you need. So, yeah, to conclude this episode, I think maybe this question I could leave you with is that, is there something that you’ve been wanting to do and and you’re not doing it, and how can you do that? And how can you give yourself some space? How can you create some space to do that thing? Whether it’s 5 minutes a day or 1 day a week or something on the weekend, a couple hours, how can you give yourself the space to do that thing that you’ve been desiring, even if it doesn’t make any sense, even if it seems like just a whim or whatever? If you’ve been thinking about it long enough, I think that’s the thing that, you know, what I’m trying to articulate is like, if you’ve been thinking about something long enough and you’ve been like fantasizing it and like thinking about it, like you might as well try it because you’re just going to be resentful if you don’t. And whether that resentment comes out in yourself or on somebody else, it’s not worth it. Like just try the thing that you’ve been thinking about and that you want to do.

Gino Cordone [00:12:18]:
And, you back to my small silly example, like playing drums, it’s like I’ve been thinking about that for a while since I’ve sold my drum kit, which was probably like 8 years ago at this point. And it’s like I’ve been thinking about doing that. So just stop wasting the energy thinking about it and put that energy into doing it, you know, and put your energy into figuring out how you can do it. So yeah, that’s my conclusion or point that I think that I wanna make this week. Yeah. So, so ask yourself those things and thanks for bearing with me this episode. I feel like I’m a little bit still brain fogged, but maybe just in my head or a little rusty. But hopefully this episode was helpful and hopefully it caused you to ask yourself some questions.

Gino Cordone [00:13:06]:
If you enjoyed the episode and you have a friend who you think it might be helpful for, please share it. It’s really helpful for me. And if you have a hard time with your inner critic, as always, I have a free guide to help you soften your inner critic in the link of every— in the show notes of every podcast. And yeah, that’s all I got for you this week. Hopefully you’re having a good week so far, and I will see you on another episode real soon. Take care.