On today's episode, I chat with Lauren Young Durbin, a Career Strategist for Midcareer Women. She is dishing out the goods for all of us who are thinking about our next career move.
While a lot of advice is floating out there in this category, what I found unique about our talk is what a straight-shooter Lauren is.
Some of the takeaways right at the top of the talk include gems like:
- Your vision might not be your vision. It might be someone else's you adopted.
- We are the biggest wardens of our careers.
- Start by thinking bigger and then think bigger than that.
Lauren lived the advice she coaches. She was struggling in a job working 60 hours a week with two neurodivergent twins, while also building her own business. She straddled as long as she could, and finally left her job to focus on her business.
The end product? She was no longer upset or crying herself to sleep.
When we get the hit to make a career shift, it can be scary to make the move and the leap but the benefits are vast when we listen to what our soul is telling us.
Then how about when we think we want to do something that is more out of the box than what we have been doing? We get to make that gradual shift and it's not a complete toss it over. We can lean into both and observe what we are trying to make work and ignoring the signs.
We think since we are already doing everything for everyone, the idea of doing seven companies seems implausible and we limit our expansion. Lauren says we need to think out of the box – we can demolish the box or expand it since we created it in the first place.
And wouldn't it be nice if we could vision board all the time with all the crafts and glue? With four-year-old twin boys Lauren doesn't have time to do the visualization she wants to do and pepper the walls with vision boards, so she takes time during the day to visualize and think about what she wants.
Ask yourself if something is important, and if you discover it isn't, let it go. Just make room for what your vision truly is.
And the truth is, many women just need to re-configure how they are showing up for themselves at their job, and want to stay. They stay at the company and get promoted, perhaps, because they don't know what that transition is yet.
Lauren's Delicious Advice?
Light one of the 50 candles you have from Ross, and do the small things for and only yourself.
Who is Lauren?
Lauren Young Durbin, Esq. is a career strategist and founder of Tyche Career Coaching, where she helps midcareer professional women stop spinning and start moving. Her specialty? Helping high-achieving women figure out what's actually wrong, how to fix it, and what they want to do next—without burning everything down in the process.
A licensed attorney (JD, New York Law School) and proud Wellesley alum, Lauren has made four career pivots herself, from legal publishing to litigation support to contract management to coaching. She's been the woman in the wrong job, the toxic environment, and the "this looks great on paper but I'm dying inside" situation. Multiple times. She figured it out. Now she helps other women do the same.
Lauren is known for her direct approach, sharp questions, and zero tolerance for the corporate lies that keep smart women stuck.
