Creating Your Next Chapter

What happens when life throws curveballs, and you find yourself grappling with career burnout, financial struggles, or failed relationships? Christina Hillyard opens up about these often-unspoken challenges through a touching story of a friend navigating financial instability and career uncertainty. This episode sheds light on the emotional toll of feeling like a failure and emphasizes the importance of not letting others' opinions define our self-worth. Christina shares valuable insights and introduces a practical exercise to help you gain clarity on your desires and opportunities, guiding you to envision a fulfilling future that truly matters to you.

Success is often idolized without acknowledging the unseen hard work and resilience that make it possible. Christina peels back the layers to reveal the real story behind success, emphasizing that the polished outcomes we see are just the tip of the iceberg. She encourages you to appreciate the hidden struggles and emotions behind achievements, helping you recognize that your own setbacks are part of the journey. Through personal anecdotes and reflective activities, this episode aims to empower you to overcome disappointment and create your next chapter with confidence and clarity.

Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Disappointment and Creating What's Next
• 8:12 The Real Story Behind Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

We often don't talk about how hard it is when we hit points in life where we're really not sure what to do next. Whether we're experiencing career burnout, a business venture isn't working or a relationship has just led to disappointment, we don't talk a lot about it because I think when we're the one experiencing it, it can feel so much like failure and like you're behind in life or just you're so clueless of what's going on. You don't want people to pity you or you don't want to look like you don't have it all together. If you're new to this podcast, hi, my name is Christina Hilliard. I'm so happy that you can join me. This podcast is full of short, quick, encouraging audio messages to talk about what it takes to get over disappointment and create what's next in our lives. It's full of personal stories from my own experience, as well as clients and friends and family and just people that I bump into who dare to be vulnerable and honest enough with me about being stuck or feeling stagnant. And, if I'm being honest, time and time again in my own life and in the lives of people that I interact with, you hit seasons of not knowing what to do next, something that you hoped for didn't pan out to be what you thought it would be, or it's ended and you're just left with the big question mark.

Speaker 1: 1:47

I was talking to a dear friend of mine and she was opening up to me about how she feels just completely like a failure when it comes to her career and her finances. She had left a company that she was with for a really great opportunity at another company. Unfortunately, she was hit with a lot of personal issues and she was no longer able to fulfill that role. So now she has pursued another business venture and it's just taking longer than expected for things to pick up and she's struggling financially. She called me up the other day and she said Christina, you know I'm the first one to tell people you do whatever it takes to take care of your family, to take care of your family. I have a son who I take care of and family members who I take care of, and yet I just can't seem to take my own advice. I don't want to be working, even part-time, at somewhere in my town and then my parents of kids at my son's school run into me and wonder why I'm working there. She's like I know it's my pride and it's my ego, but I just feel stuck and I'm not sure what to do next. So her and I were talking and kind of brainstorming different options of things that she could do to make a bit of a change, where she wouldn't have to feel embarrassed or she wouldn't have to let her ego take such a hard blow by being seen by people that she knows.

Speaker 1: 3:30

It soon led into deeper conversation and I was talking to her about how I went through my own personal journey. That was similar and I was just kept thinking about what are people at the company that I left going to think and I kept thinking and thinking and overthinking about all of it, as we often do, and then it hit me that why do I care? Why, honestly, why do I care so much? I really don't care about what any of them think, or so I thought. None of them are living a life that I want to live, so all the more so their opinion and view of me really shouldn't matter.

Speaker 1: 4:09

But it's hard when we take pride in the work that we do, when we take pride in relationships that we pour ourselves into, and things just don't work out the way that we had hoped. Just don't work out the way that we had hoped. And so, if any of this resonates with you and where you are in life right now, the thing that I want to just leave with you today is and for you to not allow yourself to continue to get distracted about what other people will think, how it will make you feel if other people know where you really are in life right now and really start to think about what it is that you really want. Stuck, because when what we hoped for doesn't pan out, we have then trouble seeing new things we could hope for and then actually believing that those things will turn out differently, that they could actually pull through, they could actually work. We all are familiar, probably, with the saying that rejection is redirection, and that's all well and good to know that, but a lot of times when we feel rejected, it doesn't feel like a positive redirection. It hurts, it's disappointing, it's hard, it's a challenge, and so I have a fun exercise to leave with you.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Take a sheet of paper and I want you to draw a line down the middle of the paper On the left side. I want you to think about someone's life who you kind of idolize, and I want you to write down all of the parts of their life that you admire, that you love, that resemble a life that you want to live, and then, on the right column, I want you to write the things about their life that you know that you actually don't really like, things that you wouldn't want to be a part of your life. I want you to do this for at least five people. The fun part about this is you'll see, as you start comparing, that there's going to be commonalities and similarities of the things that you do like and the things that you don't like, and you'll find, person after person, those things that repeat that you like and those things that repeat that you don't like give you great insight on the life you want to live and what you want to do next. And with this clarity, then you are left with the challenge, or, dare I say, opportunity, to think outside of the box and say how can I have more of these things that I like in people's lives, more of what I admire? And you get the fresh start To choose things and people and create a life that give opportunity for you to experience More and more of what you like.

Speaker 1: 7:11

And when we feel like we're struggling and we feel like we've just got to get by or this just has to work, that I want to challenge you To just incorporate as many as you can. Maybe you've got to go and you've got to get another job right for a little while that you don't like, while you're working towards a life that you really want. Or maybe you have to choose to not be in a relationship for a while or not put so much pressure on the relationship that you're in for a little while until you adjust, until you find your footing. The biggest lie that we could ever believe is that anyone has it figured out and that you get to go in a direction and it works out perfectly and you're just good. No one in this life is exempt from having to create what's next. No one is exempt from having to pivot, having to do new things, having to start over time and time again in their life. No one is.

Speaker 1: 8:12

The thing is, this is just what is behind closed doors that you often don't see. You see it once. They're like voila, look at this beautiful business I have. Or, voila, look at this new relationship I'm in. Or, voila, look at this major life change that I've made and you get to see the beautiful outcome, but you do not see the behind the doors emotions that they go through, the hard choices that they had to make, their resilience, the way they had to encourage themselves. We don't see that because it's rare. Other people will let you see it, just like you often don't want to let others see it when you're in it, and so I hope this is a fun exercise for you. As always, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me by emailing me it's christinahilliard at gmailcom, or you can follow me on Instagram at it's christina hilliard.