How to Get Paid To Be Yourself
The four part system I've used with thousands of people, including myself, over the past decade to create alignment.
Grab a coffee and tuck in, this is my full career alignment playbook. If you systematically follow the advice and exercises below, you will absolutely create work that feels aligned. It works no matter the state of the economy, your industry, seniority, or life stage. It is the result of a decade of tried and tested wisdom packaged up in the simplest, clearest, most actionable way possible. Please enjoy and feel free to ask questions in the comments. I’m here to help.
For me, it all started with getting fired.
Getting fired is the universe telling us not this way. It’s a spiritual course-correction if we have the courage to listen. This is what happened to me in 2018. And it was a wake-up call, a cold bucket of water on the face. Stop trying to make corporate tech Anne happen the universe shouted. This is not who you are.
Instead, I needed to learn to tune into myself and honor my unique design, which I had spent the first 32 years of my life more or less dismissing as not valuable or serious or responsible enough to build a career around: my ability to effortlessly form relationships, intuitively see people’s potential, and articulate guidance in a friendly, clear, and compelling way.
Luckily in 2017 I had begun coaching and become obsessed. Here was something that required those natural strengths to be successful. Plus it had the potential to provide the kind of freedom and lifestyle I was craving after a decade of intense corporate culture. Getting fired was the permission slip I needed to follow what was at the time an untraditional path.
I joined a training and coaching company and started building my own practice on the side, inspired and lit up by the insane amount of energy, ease, and flow I felt working in a role and industry that fit me instead of making myself miserable by trying to fit in.
Within three years I was running my own thriving coaching practice full time, making more money than I had in tech, and teaching the hard-won wisdom I gained through my own messy, painful process of career reinvention towards something much more energizing and aligned. I wrote about the journey in detail here.
What follows is the philosophy and four part framework I used on myself and thousands of people over the past decade to create aligned careers.
I call it the Career Fulfillment Playbook and I compare it to a house. Just like you need a sturdy foundation to build a house, you need a sturdy foundation to build an aligned, energizing career where you get paid to be yourself. When you feel lost, stuck, bored, gray, or burned out it’s because your foundation needs strengthening.
The Playbook is broken into four section which represent the fundamental themes that come up time and time again in every piece of career fulfillment advice. I did this because this process can be overwhelming - what do you pay attention to and what do you ignore? So the Playbook was designed to be simple, structured, comprehensive, repeatable. Anyone can get paid to be themself if they know what to focus on.
Everyone’s foundation is stronger and weaker in different areas. Don’t beat yourself up if your foundation is weak. None of this stuff was taught to you in school. But of course, it should’ve been.
Because learning how to tune into yourself, trust yourself, and use your creativity as your compass is what creates alignment and fulfillment. Alignment in one area of life acts as the first domino. The feeling is so good, you’ll lose the ability to tolerate things that feel off. We spend a third of our life at work, align here and the rest of your life will follow.
1 YOUR BRAND
It takes less energy to be yourself.
Work should feel like an extension of who you are and how you want to live your life. Of course no job can never ever fulfill every part of you, but to get paid to be yourself you want your natural strengths and interests to be at the heart of what’s required to be successful in whatever you do every day. This way, instead of wasting your finite store of energy figuring out how to get better at things that don’t come naturally to you, or psych yourself up to do things you’re not interested in, all your energy can go toward creating impact. The more you enjoy what you do, the more successful you’ll be.
The challenge to get here is multifaceted.
We exist in a culture where conforming is encouraged. It was likely pressed upon you from a young age to be responsible by following safe, predictable paths through life: a traditional career, with a brand, a ladder, and a pension. And of course that path is great so long as it’s energizing.
But the thing is, who we are and what we want is constantly evolving. The world is changing more rapidly than ever. And discovering your own nature and matching your life to it takes trial and error.
As such, it’s normal to find yourself in a role that doesn’t fit or to outgrow a path that once felt right. If this is you, rest assured: nothing has gone wrong. This is just part of what you’re here to learn. Life is a journey of self-discovery.
The universe doesn’t offer you anything that you don’t need. You might get offered a whole lot of shit you don’t want. But there’s nothing that could possibly happen that doesn’t contain a gift that you need for your comprehension of how to be here joyfully. Every single thing that happens is designed beautifully for you, a perfect curriculum for everything you’ve ever sought.
Will Smith
One of the big things that tripped me up is that the skills we were taught in school - primarily to work hard at all the subjects to get good grades - are not the same skills that make us successful in life. When you treat your career like homework by working hard to achieve in things you’re not that interested in, you move out of alignment and into exhaustion.
The reality is, you will never be able to compete in the long run with people who are naturally suited to and lit up by the work you’re trying to convince yourself you can do too.
I learned this the hard way. I was putting myself in roles that required a brain naturally wired for quantitative analysis and strategic planning, both things I’m fairly weak in but had convinced myself were necessary for success in life. And then I was applying my learned tendency to work harder than everyone else in order to achieve at the thing I didn’t really like. Plus, when you do things you don’t really like, you find yourself surrounded by people whose values and orientation in life will be different than your own. For me, this lead to boredom, burn out, and ultimately getting fired.
Instead, career alignment requires you to own your authentic frequency and find a way to use that to deliver value to the world. This is how you get paid to be yourself.
So how do you do this?
Start with your Strengths
Find the way you naturally add value in the world and put this at the heart of your work. This is about the role you have, how you add value to any community, business, or problem. It’s the very start of how you get paid to be yourself. Of course there’s a ton of strengths test out there, but I found while certainly many of them were insightful, none of them gave me results that were tangible enough to help me take immediate action to reorient my career.
So I spent seven years doing this work manually with my clients, asking the specific questions I knew would help us get useful answers and then using my ability to intuitively read people and patterns to articulate each of their natural strengths in a useful way. This allowed them to define their ideal role, carefully screen opportunities, and talk about how they add value naturally when networking and interviewing.
After doing this with hundreds of clients, I noticed themes. So last year I plugged in seven years of work into ChatGPT and made my own strengths test that I consider the most useful on the market if you’re trying to figure out what you should do next.
If you want clarity on what strengths should be at the heart of your role so you can thrive, take my free Flow Zone Assessment.
Apply your Strengths to the topics that Interest you
Then you want to take your Strengths, the way you add value to the world, and you want to apply them to topics that you’re actually Interested in. This is really about orienting yourself in the right industry.
Work does not have to feel like work. When work is aligned it feels interesting and fun. It feels like an opportunity to grow into a part of yourself you can’t wait to discover.
Don’t confuse this with passion. Follow your passion is terrible advice. Because passion is so weighty, so singular, so all-consuming. And I find that people often feel like well, nothing in my life feels this way so I must not have a passion so therefore I guess I’ll just continue to do this thing I don’t really like because I’m not someone who is passionate about anything. This is why it’s such terrible advice. Because passion doesn’t arrive one day full formed, it emerges slowly, through fostering your interests.
And the good news is, to be aligned your work just has be interesting, it doesn’t have to be a passion. Start by considering the topics you like learning about, what problems you want to solve, what kind of things are fun for you to create. This starts to give you an idea of the communities and companies where you can take your strengths and provide value while having fun.
Some examples
Women’s health
Home organization
Ancient history
Under-served urban communities
Building my own product
Fashion
Human psychology
Experiential events
Food
Interior Design
Don’t know? If you don’t have many interests then it’s time to start turning up your curiosity. Unplug from The Matrix / dopamine drip feed of always-on content and start tickling your brain and nurturing your creativity. Cultivate some hobbies. Start reading more books. Subscribe to Substacks that inspire you. Find new podcasts. Go to the art store and buy whatever supplies spark your interest. Take a class in jewelry making, sewing, wood working. Start writing. Refresh your closet and work on your personal style.
I find that the more space you make for your curiosity and creative self-expression, the more you wake up your soul, connect to yourself, and create the conditions for new ideas to come through. Clarity comes through creation and creative expression, not consumption.
It’s all well and good doing something you love, but if you aren’t able to meet your Lifestyle Priorities then work won’t fit.
You have to ask yourself, what kind of people do you want to work with? Do you want to work for yourself? On a team? In a start-up? A multi-national? What kind of flexibility do you want and need? How much money do you need to make to make the lifestyle you want? Actually do the math.
If you can answer these questions and you combine them with your Strengths and Interests, you will have a list grounded in who you are and what you want that you can use to generate hypotheses of what comes next in your career.
Step 1. Take the Flow Zone Assessment, pull out the phrases from your top two Flow Zones that feel most like you and would describe your ideal role.
Step 2. List out your areas of interest
Step 3. List out your Lifestyle Priorities
Step 4. Develop your hypotheses. Consider everything you’ve written and start ideating: what are 3-5 ideas you have on where you could take your career?
Want more help? I go deep with my clients on these questions to get at the heart of who they are and what they want. We plug our work into an AI prompt I wrote from my eight years of doing this work 1x1 with hundreds of people. This produces a North Star tool that allows you to rate opportunities against each other and robust list of hypothetical ideas of all shapes and sizes to catch hidden patterns, unleash your creativity, and expand what you see as possible.
This initial work creates a great level of clarity. But clarity doesn’t come through reflection alone, it comes from taking your dreams and ideas into the real world. And that’s where shit gets messy and where people lose steam. The next three sections address these barriers.
2 YOUR PEOPLE
People are the lifeblood of your career. Connect! Contribute! Collaborate!
I credit most the reason I was eventually able to align my career by myself, without any sort of formal guidance or system, to my natural inclination to talk to people and ask them for help and guidance.
In 2010 when I was trying to get into advertising, I was newly living in London, and knew no one in the industry. So I asked everyone I met if they knew someone in advertising. The barista, the cab driver, the person I’d only just met at a party. Eventually I met someone who knew someone in advertising. I had a chat with him and he gave me some great advice to use in interviews and introduced me to a headhunter who got me interviews at some of the best agencies in town.
This is how I got a job at the top ad agency in London at 25, with a tiny network, two years after moving across the pond.
In 2017 I was curious about coaching so I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone in coaching. A business school classmate introduced me to a friend at Google who ran a volunteer coaching program. She recommended the book that led me to decide to get certified. And she gave me an opportunity to get some early experience that showed me how much coaching energized me. During my certification I built relationships with everyone in my cohort. Eventually, two months after getting fired, a woman from my program hired me to work on her team at a small training and coaching company.
This is how I pivoted my career from marketing and tech to coaching.
I have consistently created clarity, momentum, and opportunity through connection. It’s a fundamental part of career alignment.
We get stuck when we don’t take our ideas out into the real world and test drive them through conversations and experiments, when we stay stuck behind a computer instead embedding ourselves into real world communities.
You literally cannot get clear enough to make significant change at home by yourself with AI and scanning jobs on LinkedIn. I promise this is a recipe for depression and despair as you will make scant progress. You gotta talk to and collaborate with real people.
The more you connect the more you move forward. The more you share what you’re up to with others, the more interesting opportunities come your way. What do highly successful creative people have in common? They surround themselves with people they admire and collaborate with them. Clarity and momentum comes through connection.
Usually people get blocked in this area through one of the following ways
They feel like they don’t know what to ask
They go straight into asking for a job instead of building a relationship
They feel like it’s an imposition to ask for people’s time
They have a lot of nice chats but no momentum
Let’s address these blocks one by one.
Block: You’re not sure what to say
If you do the Brand work in Part 1 you’ll get a list of three hypotheses. You then just need to ask yourself what do I need to figure out about this idea in order to make a decision if it’s the right path for me or not? Turn your curiosities, fears and concerns into questions and identify people you know who can help you answer them - or who can introduce you to someone who could help you answer them.
Be candid and honest about what you’re concerned about. You’ll get the answers you need, appear confident and competent, and build deeper connections faster. Vulnerability isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you aren’t afraid to say when you don’t know something. It connects you to others quickly because it makes other people feel comfortable being imperfect and human around you. People like people they feel comfortable around, it builds trust.
Really good questions are specific and real, like:
I’ve wanted to start my own brand for years but always psych myself out because I’m worried about failing, how did you manage getting the information you needed at the very beginning and mitigate risk along the way? When did you know it was time to go all in? What are some things you’ve learned that you wish you’d done at the start?
I love the beauty industry but know almost no one working in it, I’m so grateful you made time to chat. If you were me, how would you start building relationships? Do you know any great communities I can plug into or community builders I can meet?
Usually once you’ve spoken to 3-4 people per idea in this intentional way you will get a good sense if this is an idea you want to continue to explore or not. You will literally be able to feel where there is momentum and energy and where there isn’t. When things feel light and energizing and sparkly, they’re aligned. It means go this way. When they feel tedious and heavy, they’re not aligned. It means go do something else.
Block: You’re asking for a job
A lot of people send notes or post to LinkedIn like “if you know of any opportunities let me know”. This is mostly a waste of time.
Firstly, it puts the work on the other person and they will politely smile and say yes but then likely forget about your request, especially if it isn’t specific enough. Secondly, it’s extremely transactional. You’re asking them to do something for you without giving them anything. And you miss out on the opportunity to build a genuine relationship.
Whenever you meet someone you should spend part of the conversation connecting on a shared interest, usually it’s the industry you’re exploring. You can also build a relationship by engaging genuinely with their online content, offering to make an introduction, or simply asking “is there any way I can support you?” Engage in this thoughtful way and they will very likely be willing to continue to stay in touch and think of you for opportunities.
Opportunities come through ongoing relationships so plug yourself into communities with people who share your interests. Breakfasts. Panels. Slack Groups. Happy hours. Members Clubs. Community Initiatives. Conferences. When you engage with people in an organic way over time, they’re more likely to remember you when interesting opportunities crop up.
Block: You feel like you can’t ask people for their time
News flash: people love sharing their hard-won wisdom. Science has shown that we actually get a dopamine hit when we help people. Senior leaders love to give back through mentoring and wisdom if the request is thoughtful and genuine. Consider the last time someone asked you for help or guidance, if you had capacity to help, most likely it made you feel good.
Of course not everyone will say yes, but that’s part of the process. Practice collecting nos or ghosts to increase your tolerance for discomfort, the less you make other people’s actions mean something about you, the further you can go. If this feels very hard, more on this in Part 3 and 4.
Block: You have a lot of chats but don’t feel any momentum
This happens if you haven’t done the work to identify your hypotheses in a grounded way and then the corresponding list of questions you need to answer to figure out if this is the right path for you or not. So your conversations are scattered, surface level, or more like fun getting to know someone and not actually helping you move the boat forward.
Equally, at some point more conversations doesn’t create more clarity and you have to actually start doing to create opportunities. There’s nothing like practical experience to tell you if something is energizing or not. By starting with some volunteer coaching, I was able to feel into how fun it was for me which helped me take the next step to get certified. Through my certification I met a woman who eventually hired me to work at the training and coaching company.
So volunteer. Experiment with an idea by creating a prototype and then sharing it in your communities. Do some pro bono work for friends and family. This plugs you into the spaces you’re interested in exploring and gives you something real to talk about and showcase. When I was getting into advertising I started a blog and put it at the top of my resume. No one was reading it but it showed how I thought and the interviewers liked it. Doing the work in a low-stakes way is especially important if you’re making significant pivot.
Take 3 of the hypotheses you feel most excited about from Step 1 and write out all your questions, concerns and fears. Turn these into specific questions you could ask people in a 20-30 minute conversation.
Identify people you know who can help you answer these questions and start reaching out and plugging into communities. Have 3 conversations per idea.
Once you have a sense of the one or two hero directions start experimenting by building something IRL or virtually or volunteering to do the work for a local charity. See how it feels and continue to build relationships. If it feels good and you’re building relationships all the time, opportunities will come.
Want more help? I work closely with my clients to ensure they’re asking the questions they need and noticing what feels truly aligned vs “responsible”. I help them find the right people to talk to and embed themselves in the communities that will grow them and open doors.
The past two sections are quite tactical. If you struggle to complete them it’s because there’s deeper blocks at play, this is what we dive into next.
3 YOUR MINDSET
When you’re stuck in your career, you’re stuck in your mind.
I knew in 2015 that I wanted to become a coach but I suppressed exploring this and went and got an MBA instead and tried very hard to become a consultant and tech person. I did this because I had a deeply ingrained belief that my people-oriented skills were inferior to quantitative, strategic skills when it came to success in life. I thought I needed to work to ‘improve’ myself instead of realizing the work was to figure out how to get paid to be myself.
It took three years of cycling through burnout, living in a constant state of insecurity, stress, and anxiety and eventually getting fired to not let that limiting belief drive my decision making. My wish for every one of you is that you do not have to go through that level of pain and instead use the guidance below to root out whatever’s in your way.
We collect evidence for our beliefs and tell ourselves they’re the truth. These truths stack up on each other and color the way we move through the world. Our thoughts are like a computer program that creates the virtual reality we exist in. If you think you can’t, you will see your life through the lens of I can’t, and so therefore you won’t.
Learn how to change your mind and collect evidence for more productive beliefs and your entire reality changes. This is literally how the game of life works.
Here’s some of the typical belief patterns that get people stuck:
This is scary and uncomfortable so it must be wrong.
What I want isn’t possible - it’s too late / too hard / I don’t have the right experience / I can’t make any money / That’s not responsible
I might fail - I can’t mess up / I don’t know how / I don’t have what it takes / I’m not smart enough
I don’t know what I want to do - I don’t have a passion / I’m too confused / I need to feel more certain / What if I don’t like it?
People will judge me.
You can surface your limiting beliefs by doing a free write using the prompt: what feels hard about creating an energizing career you love?
Write stream of consciousness for three pages and see where that takes you. If you finish your answer to the question just keep writing until you fill three pages. You’ll very quickly see all the ways you’re currently blocking yourself as well as the deepest yearnings of your soul. All of these blocks can be addressed either through introspection and conversation in Parts 1 and 2 or through the mindset and emotional work I explain below.
While it might feel hard, the beginning of the unlock is to realize that your thoughts are simply an optional TV channel you have on inside your brain. And this TV channel, if unmanaged, will make you feel bad (scared, insecure, resigned, confused). When you feel bad you don’t take effective action. Instead you hide, give up, play small, make do which results in a misaligned approach to work.
If you want to align, if you want to get paid to be yourself, the first step is changing the channel in your brain to a new way of looking at the same situation that feels better because it is genuinely believable to you right now. Affirmations and mantras don’t work if you don’t believe they’re true.
For all the proposed reframes below you can add I’m practicing believing that… or I’m open to believing that… to the beginning if this helps them feel more believable.
Here are some useful reframes:
Fear and discomfort are part of growth. They’re the markers of the edge of your comfort zone and you will have to experience them to move through your comfort zone and into new versions of yourself. It takes regular work, time and space, to process that discomfort in a healthy way, which I talk about further below and in Step 4, but if the fear and discomfort is mixed with excitement for what could be, you’re on the right track.
Try: I feel uncomfortable and that’s OK and part of the process. Discomfort is my admission ticket to everything I want.What you want is always possible in some fashion. It’s never too late. You can always find stories of people who have done what you want to do and the age and life stage you’re at right now if you look for them. If your soul keeps nudging you towards this thing, it’s part of what you’re here in this lifetime to do. The question is simply: are you willing to do the work - the exploring and conversations and growing and creative thinking to figure out how you can create what you want? That’s what Step 2 is all about. And the magic of life is that even if you can’t see it right now, your past experience will lend itself to how you build and approach your next chapter. It’s all useful and relevant. There’s always a grander design that’s only clear in hindsight.
Try: I’m committed to exploring and learning and thinking creatively. It’s never too late. And all my past experience will support me.Failure isn’t an end state, it’s a necessary step towards success. Failure intolerance and perfectionism will kill all your dreams. You will need to get messy and make mistakes and iterate until you land on something that works. Of course do the due-diligence you need to figure out what’s required, do your beta tests and experiments on the side until you’ll ready to pull the trigger. So long as you play to your strengths and interests, continue to iterate and learn from what’s not working, get help whenever you need it, and stay committed even when it’s uncomfortable, you will succeed.
I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Thomas Edison
Try: Iteration is a normal part of the creative process. I don’t have to commit until I have gathered more information. I will learn as I go. Asking for help is part of the process. It’s normal for things to not work at first, I’m committed to iterating.Forget passion. As mentioned, this is a red-herring. Focus on what interests you and know that you have to be confused before you are clear. The process of moving through the fog of confusion towards clarity is the creative process. If you’re confused about a topic that interests you, it’s fun because you get to figure it out. This is why it’s so important to orient yourself towards the things that spark your curiosity.
Try: Confusion is normal. I’m going to have fun exploring my interests and see where that takes me. I’m going to experiment and play and see what happens through that.Not everyone will get what you’re doing and that’s OK. Let them misunderstand you. And you don’t need to tell everyone what you’re up to. I had many people question my decision to become a coach back in 2017. They didn’t get it. Or they judged it. I’ve had countless people unsubscribe from me because of my interest in Tarot. I recently lost a referral partner because I mentioned I had used psychedelics. When people leave your orbit it’s because they don’t align with your frequency, you’re making space for new opportunities and relationships that fit you better. Alignment requires you to release what doesn’t match your frequency, trust what feels sparkly to you and ignore everyone else.
Try: My vibe attracts my tribe. Not everyone will understand and that’s OK. So long as I’m interested and having fun I’m on the right path. Whatever feels sparkly is aligned.
Look at the limiting beliefs you identified in your free write and find new beliefs that feel better. Put them somewhere you’ll regularly see them. On a Post-It on your bathroom mirror, on your desktop monitor. On your lock screen. Or write them in your journal every day. Neurons that fire together wire together. The more you practice, the more it’ll feel true and become your new reality. This must be intentionally repeated. Thinking it once won’t change anything.
The essential work of learning to feel
I learned how to feel when I was 35. And it has been the most important skill I’ve ever learned; it’s critical if you want to find alignment. Most people repress their emotions which means you aren’t feeling. This winds up your nervous system to create constant anxiety and very low tolerance for discomfort, which keeps you trapped in your current reality.
Very often a change in mindset is only available once you’ve processed the uncomfortable emotion that’s been triggered by brushing up against your comfort zone.
Frequently last year I’d wake up with anxiety in my stomach, so I’d sit down and open myself up to really feel it and beneath the anxiety I’d find fear - of looking stupid, spending all my savings, never figuring out my next step. Anxiety is a cover emotion that is masking something deeper you aren’t allowing yourself to feel. So I’d look that fear square in the face, cry it out, and it would clear. Only then would I feel grounded enough to come back to my commitment to myself, my business, and my life. Then I’d get up make my coffee and start my day.
Think about a hard break up, it’s only after you’ve cried it all out and let yourself feel sad that you’re genuinely ready to move on. If you’re struggling to change your mind, you need to feel through whatever uncomfortable emotion is blocking you.
Plus, your feelings are your compass through life - light and sparkly = go this way, heavy and dull = not this way.
If you want to learn how to feel, I wrote a step by step guide here and also included an audio guide to support processing uncomfortable things.
When deeper healing work is needed
If your thoughts feel impossible to change, if this whole process feels overwhelming and scary, if you feel like you’re doing the work but struggling to make progress, you likely have emotions trapped in your nervous system since childhood that are blocking you. These need to be released through deeper healing work.
We exist in a culture where mental and emotional health is really at its infancy. Meaning we all grew up with parents and teachers and caregivers who were emotionally stunted themselves. Things were said or modeled to you as a kid that made you believe that who you are isn’t enough and what you want in your soul isn’t possible. Your parents likely didn’t mean to emotionally stunt you, but they did. Accepting that they loved you AND hurt you is an essential part of the healing journey.
You normally have to address these deep-seated belief systems on a somatic level to align. To do this effectively, you’ll need to safely reconnect to the trapped emotion in your body and allow yourself to feel and express the residual hurt, shame, sadness, or anger so that it can be released. Once you release you will feel so much lighter and you can then start imprinting better, healthier narratives that help you feel worthy, lovable, and enough so you can stay true to yourself, feel at peace, trust yourself, and grow into the next version of yourself.
This is how healing works.
It can be done through so many different modalities - breathwork, bodywork, psychedelics, ecstatic dance, EMDR, hypnosis, guided meditation and the list goes on forever - but it needs to go beyond talking. If you’re only talking with your therapist you will achieve an intellectual understanding of your blocks, but not feel the energetic release, peace, and confidence you crave.
Want to heal and learn to feel? All my clients practice feeling daily and do deep healing work with me to release their stickiest limiting beliefs. I also offer specific healing packages to address the deepest core wounds: lovability, trust, worthiness, and acceptance.
4 YOUR RITUALS
Change needs space and space is created through ritual.
It’s impossible to do any of the three parts I outlined above if you do not have ritual in your life. Change takes work. And the work will require additional time, energy, emotional processing, and mental management. You have to create space in your life for all of this. And you create space through ritual.
I use the word ritual because ritual has love, devotion, and ceremony. This isn’t about time management or productivity or efficiency. This is about creating habits that make you feel great, are devoted to the future you’re calling in, and crafted with love and ceremony so that they’re enjoyable to routinely do.
Sleep.
My whole life changed when I made getting 8 hours of sleep a night my number one priority. Most people need 7-9. Don’t kid yourself and pretend you can consistently perform on less. Sleep is the most fundamental life hack there is. Ask yourself what time you want to wake up and then work backwards.
Create a ritual around going to sleep. My alarm pings me at 9.30pm. This cues me to start cleaning up the house, heading to the bedroom, brushing my teeth and getting into bed. I try and always have a book I’m enjoying on my nightstand and I usually have time for 15-20 minutes of reading before I turn the lights out at 10.30pm. Of course I’m often not perfect. But this is my ritual and life flows better when I follow it.
I’ve had clients signal their wind-down by making tea, by putting on a playlist they love, by changing the warmth and color of their lights, by putting on silk pajamas. Make it luxurious, sexy, interesting and you will look forward to it.
If you struggle with sleep in general, this podcast is good.
Movement.
You’ll think clearer and have more energy if you move your body. Everyone’s version of this is different and the key is picking something you’ll do at a cadence that keeps your energy up throughout the week. It could be walks, yoga, gym, pilates, bike rides… whatever feels best for you and keeps you healthy. There was a time when I was feeling sluggish and my knees were aching, it was because I wasn’t exercising enough.
Create a ritual around movement. I do 20 minutes of light yoga in the morning first thing because it feels good. I go to the gym 3-6 times a week because I’m following a longevity program. You do you. I definitely don’t always love going to the gym. But I make it fun for myself by making it the time I get to listen to podcasts I love. Or I watch a show. Or I combine it with a trip to the sauna. Plus I go to the YMCA in Bed-Stuy and it’s a total vibe in there. When you make something that can be hard fun and playful, you increase your chance of doing it. If your movement ritual is depressing you won’t do it. Simple.
Mental and Emotional Processing.
Building on the guidance I outlined in Section 3, remaking your approach to work will most likely require you to move through your existing comfort zone. This means you’ll need to manage a whole host of uncomfortable feelings that come with becoming someone new. You’ll need to clear out deep-seated blocks. You’ll need to practice believing in yourself, and in the new version of your career and life to keep going through the discomfort. And this will require you to create time and space to do this.
If you don’t exercise you’ll feel sluggish. If you don’t actively manage your mental and emotional health you’ll feel anxious and default to fear. Last year I was processing so much that I had to reduce my socializing by about 85%. You can’t change your life without changing your life.
Create a ritual for mental health and emotional processing. I do an exercise called Morning Pages, from The Artist’s Way, which is writing 3 pages stream of consciousness whatever’s on my mind. This gets the negativity out, helps with reframing, and primes me for writing and creative work.
I also sit in stillness and scan my body for trapped emotions. If I find them I process them out of my body. I wrote here about how to release feelings. If I don’t find any trapped emotions I meditate or visualize the future I want to call in.
This is the time of the day I light incense, I pull Tarot, I make coffee, I put on music that inspires me. In the spring and summer before the mosquitoes descend, I like to write in my garden.
Creative Expression.
The more you express your creativity, the more you get to know yourself, the more you wake up your soul. You’re honoring parts of yourself that maybe aren’t activated in the rest of your life. You’re creating new neural pathways. Your creativity lays the groundwork for new ideas and surprising connections. All my clients start our work together by cultivating creative play and stimulation. If you think you aren’t creative it’s simply that you haven’t nurtured your creativity. Creativity is the most human act. It’s your disconnection from your creativity that is keeping you stuck and lost. The more you see yourself as creative, and honor yourself as a creative being, the more you align.
Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.
John Cleese
Create a ritual for creative play. Thirty minutes a week is enough to start. I take photos on an automatic film camera. I’m having fun life drawing. I write this Substack. I design graphics in Canva. I’m hosting a collage night at mine with a client in a few weeks. I tried kintsugi recently. I play around with outfits in my wardrobe. Your soul needs a creative outlet. You’ll be surprised how alive you start to feel when you honor your creative urges and have fun creating for fun.
This Work.
The work of reimagining work is work. This process usually takes 3-6 months to get clarity and momentum and 9-12 months to make a change if that’s what you decide you want. Depending on how fast you want to move through the process, you need at least a couple hours a week. Decide when those times will be.
Don’t treat this like homework. Create a ritual for this work that is sacred, sexy, and fun. Get a posh coffee. Put on your favorite tunes. Put on clothes you feel great working in. Sit in your favorite corner of your home. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Visualize the fabulous future you’re calling in. Make the time you do this work sacred time that feels good. Make this time where you feel deeply connected to yourself and like you’re honoring what you’re here to contribute.
All these rituals require boundaries. Because people will ask you to commit time you don’t have. Friends will want you to hang out. Your family will demand your attention. Your boss will ask for extra work. Social media will suck you in. As such you will have to be intentional about your rituals so you can say no with confidence.
Go through your rituals for Sleep, Movement, Mental and Emotional Processing, Creative Expression, and This Work. When do they happen? How long do they take? And critically, block them on your calendar. Sure, you might need to move them around, but seeing the time you set aside visually blocked on your calendar helps you understand what you actually have time for outside of your rituals and where you need to cut back.
Have whatever conversations you need with work, your partner, your friends and family so that your rituals can happen. Get used to saying no and feeling uncomfortable.
You cannot get where you’re going next without sacrificing the life you’re living now.
Want more help? I work with my clients tune into themselves and systematically iterate until they’ve created effective rituals that feel fun and sexy and that they love to honor.
If you made it here congratulations, your whole life is about to change.
Reading to the end of this extensive Playbook means you’re committed. You’re someone who wants to do the work. And changing your life is work. But when it’s in pursuit of alignment, it’s the very best work you can do.
Because magic happens when you apply your hard work to yourself and your dreams.
When I let go of working hard to create the career I assumed I needed to be successful and instead gave myself permission to go all in on who I actually was and what I actually wanted, my whole life started to change. It feels so good to get paid to be yourself that you become less tolerant for misalignment.
I broke up with a man who was about to propose and would’ve been so very wrong for me. I completely remade my social life and found myself amongst a community of artists and creators that felt like coming home. Dormant and under-developed parts of me started to percolate to the surface. I found my personal style and started honing my photography skills. It was like my soul woke up.
I truly believe getting into alignment is our life’s work, it’s how we find out who we are and what we’re here to do. Yet so many of us are living on autopilot, putting up with a gap between how we feel on the inside and what our life looks like on the outside. We accept this version of reality because we think it’s responsible to not like what we do in exchange for money.
But what if the most responsible thing you could do was prioritize finding a way to get paid to be lit up? Because when you light yourself up you create more impact, you’re not leaking energy so it can all go towards creating the things that matter to you. And if they matter to you, you will put your heart and soul into it. And when you put your heart and soul into it, you create work that moves people and creates change. And the result of that is fulfillment and success.
When you’re lit up you inspire the people around you to tolerate less and demand more from themselves and their life, a butterfly effect which ripples through space and time to improve our societies and planet for the better. I can’t tell you how many people over the past decade have told me my decision to create a career that feels like an extension of who I am and how I want to live my life has inspired them to do the same.
Don’t kid yourself. Your alignment fucking matters. So follow the sparkle. Wake up your creativity. Wake up your soul. Go become the artist of your life. The world depends on it.
PS. If you liked this essay you might also like: I got fired (twice). It was the wake-up call I needed. or How to release any feeling. or I burned down my social life and started again.
PPS. If you’re a podcast person I have an old podcast called The Career Studio which packages all this information and more into 37 potent episodes. Check it out.