What Now? Solve Career Confusion with the Build Your Brave Framework

1. Clarity — Stop asking the same big, vague questions so that you start telling yourself the truth about what you actually want.
2. Momentum — Commit to small, intentional actions that build the confidence and the direction you need to ensure your confusion.
3. Accountability — Decide who you’re becoming and grow into your future you through self-concept and mindset design.

Detailed Transcript

 Welcome to this five part short series I am calling the “What Now” series. These five short episodes are designed to address the most common situations women like you are facing in your careers. So that you can solve them now and build your brave career, a career where you stress less and you enjoy more. Where you work less and create more impact and yes, a career where you earn more.

 Welcome to the Build Your Brave Career Podcast, where we flip the script on the tired stereotype that women in and around the tech industry have to be stressed out, overworked and underpaid. I’m Nicole Trick  Steinbach,  the International Bravery Coach and your host. Forget what you’ve been taught.

Bravery is not a personality trait available only to the brash bravery is a skill and you already have it, which is great because building the skill of bravery is the most powerful way to creating the career and life you really want as you build your brave. You will stress less, work less, and then earn more.

This podcast will help you do just that. Let’s dive in.

If you are listening today, there’s a really good chance that you are currently in a career phase that feels confusing. You’re not in a crisis situation, you’re not at rock bottom, you’re not burnt out, but there’s something quieter. A feeling of confusion and a lingering question:

And that question is what now?

You’ve worked hard. You’ve built expertise and experience and credibility. You’re good at what you do, and yet you are not energized, you’re not clear. You’re definitely not as excited about your future as you thought you’d be at this phase.

That’s what we’re gonna talk about today in our first episode of the What Now series. We’re talking about career confusion.

A lot of people believe that that’s the actual problem, and I’m here to tell you that it’s not a problem. It’s actually the beginning of a solution. Okay, fine. You can call it both, but for me and for my clients, and for you listening to this, this is the beginning of a solution if you know how to use it.

Most women will hit this point at some point in their career and usually in mid-career, especially for women like us, ambitious women with expertise and a desire to craft a legacy we actually care about.

This happens when you’ve checked the boxes, you’ve gotten the promotions, the bigger scope, the bigger impact, the more responsibility. And your stress is going up. Your workload is going up, right when your satisfaction, well, it isn’t.

This is where people start asking themselves questions. Questions like, should I leave? Do I need a new role? Is it my manager? Is it me? Am I even in the right field? Do I wanna open up a cat cafe and serve coffee all day?

Those questions aren’t wrong. But they’re too big to address confusion.

When the questions are too big and too vague and too “somebody told me I should ask this question”, that’s when your brain does what it’s designed to do: it searches for the negative. It searches for the known. It decreases possibility in the search for safety and security. It freezes, it spins, it stays stuck. Instead of clarity, you get more confusion ’cause your brain is doing one thing but. Your body is doing another,

if you’re here, you’re not alone. I really wanna stress that to you. If you are here in this phase of career confusion, you are not alone. In fact, you know more than one client has started with me at that spot. But I wanna share you the story of a specific client that demonstrates this the most.

This client, she had accomplished the biggest career goal she could imagine six years before. She kept her head down. She did an amazing job. She got the title, she got the salary, she was doing it, and then, first crept in the boredom, then the confusion, and right as she started to enter into a phase of frustration and self blame, she actually did something really wise.

She stopped the all too common pattern for women going inside and she actually began to balance the inside with the outside. In her case, she started coaching.

She got curious, she got clear, and she utilized the Build Your Brave Career Framework with me as her one-on-one coach to ask more specific questions, get more specific answers, and take specific action. That brought her through the confusion.

I’m gonna share more about that because if right now, at this exact moment you are where she was, or maybe you kept going past where she got coaching, you are already frozen, stuck, frustrated, blaming yourself, thinking about opening up a cat cafe or raising goats: keep listening. Please keep listening.

I’m going to leverage the Build Your Brave Career Framework and the three parts to help you through this process. You’re going to answer. The what now into I know exactly what I’m doing next, and even more importantly, I know who I am becoming.

When you feel confused, your instinct is to reach for the answer, the perfect next role, the right company, the career path. The first response is to think harder, to answer the same questions you’ve always asked, and you’ve answered the questions that have brought you to this level of success.

But those questions can’t lead you to the next level of success. You gotta ask different questions in different ways and take different action.

So instead of asking, what should I do next? What company do I wanna work with next? I want you to ask:

what do I actually want in my life and in my career right now?

And then who do I want to be at work?

What do I want other people to say about working with me?

And how do I want to build my skills into my legacy?

Not what looks good on paper, not what your manager or your mom would support, not what your peers expect or your partner relies on, not even what former you would have wanted or believed in.

Just you. Today’s you.

If those questions feel too big, that’s okay. Let me give you three more powerful prompts. The first one:

what do you wanna stop? What am I tired of tolerating in my career?

What do you wanna start? If nothing had to make any sense at all, . What I want to try

what do you wanna do differently? What do I do? But I want to do a bit more of, or in a slightly different way in my day-to-day work.

, This is not about making the decision, it’s about telling yourself the truth, your truth. Most career confusion. Is actually you suppressing and hiding your clarity.

For example, the client that I am sharing her story with in this podcast episode, when she allowed herself to get clear and honest with herself, and she needed a coach and a partner to have that level of bravery.

She quickly realized that while she had earned seniority to work across numerous platforms, the goal, she was bored. She wanted, like she really wanted to work on one platform, one problem statement, one client service package, one set of results.

She wanted to, and I’m quoting her here, push up the sleeves and get deep again. End quote.

When she finally let herself feel that clarity, that so-called step back, all that confusion, it was gone. Her thoughts got clear, her energy spiked. She had an enormous smile across her face. Not just the first time, although that was the most spontaneous one, but throughout the entire process. She knew what she wanted, what she yearned for, and she finally let go of the confusion. She allowed herself to be clear.

That’s the first part of the framework, the build your brave career framework. But that’s not enough. ’cause you actually have to take action with the clarity.

Most women, I’m, I’m so sorry to say, but they don’t, they think, okay, I’ll, I’ll take action when I’m confirmed or I’ll take action when I have time, or I’ll take action when the possibility presents itself.

We can’t build brave careers in that way. We have to flip that. You actually emphasize and amplify, deepen, and broaden your clarity by taking action. It doesn’t have to be massive or risky or transformative. My goodness, it doesn’t even have to be outside of you because action can also be in your feelings.

Let me give you an example from the same client instead of the same attitude, right? “I need to have my concrete plan and I have to have the steps and I have to know the training course. I have to know the mentor for me to get that next step.”

No, this is where she began momentum, building momentum by taking action. To start the shift also when she felt really uncomfortable.

Concretely, she started with one interest interview conversation with a person that she knew that had been in multi-platform and then went back into single platform, and who had even more seniority.

She had an open conversation. She said, Hey, I am feeling a little uncomfortable. I started getting frustrated. When I think about going into single platform, I feel really excited. Can you share your experience with me?

Then she shared her goal, single platform with a few of her fro- leagues, right?

Those are friends who are also colleagues or people we know in the industry, right?

To build her confidence to make sure what she was saying was clear, but also let people know she was starting to reenter the job market, the growth market, and based on those two, two steps and the feeling of discomfort and stretch and vulnerability.

That’s how her continued plan became concrete. It’s how she kept building her momentum forward is how she made the shift and balanced the rest of her, quite frankly, very full life.

It’s tiny intentional actions, tiny intentional feeling of feelings. It isn’t about speed or perpetual direction. It’s about getting really clear. And building momentum.

You won’t be stuck anymore. Instead, you’re moving. You’re walking away from frustration, you’re walking away from confusion. You’re walking away from boredom, and you’re meeting your future self.

Which brings us to the third part of the Build Your Brave Career Framework Accountability. In this framework, accountability is for yourself. It’s to yourself. It’s with yourself. It’s of yourself.

Clarity and momentum, ooh, they are power full, but without accountability, deciding who you are going to become and then doing the work to become her, you’re gonna drift back into confusion.

It’s not about pressure, it’s not about governance, it’s about identity: who are you becoming?

If right now you’re stuck in what now? You may be unintentionally practicing. I guess this is who I am. I guess I’m the person who always overthinks. I guess I’m the person who prioritizes other people. I guess this is just who I am.

No, I don’t care how old you are. You’re always growing into that next version of you.

Are you doing it intentionally? That’s the key here.

You decide who you are going to be in that next phase of your career. Like, for example, my client decided:

I’m a woman who experiments.

I’m a woman who pilots things.

I’m a woman who makes decisions before all the data is in.

And then very powerfully. I’m a woman who prioritizes her fulfillment, not just her performance.

She powerfully and over time stepped away from the shoulds and the half tos of a status driven career , and

she became a woman who prioritizes her fulfillment, who makes decisions before the data isn’t who experiments and pilots.

I’m not gonna lie to you, this part of the Build Your Brave Career framework, it was the most effort for her. It took the most time. She got clear, walked away from the confusion in step one, clarity. She took action internally and externally in momentum, and then with accountability, she had to get deep, deep, deep, deep, deep in her self-concept and in her mindset design.

She spent cycles of efforts getting very tangible about what. She wanted and who she wanted to be, including who she was ready to leave behind.

That’s actually where she got into therapy. Coaching and therapy are very complimentary to each other, and that’s an area for her that a therapist engaged with.

Together we all figured out, you know, what did she wanted to become? What does she wanna believe and how is she going to be the woman who allows curiosity and desire to lead her with that?

She stepped forward. Oh, did she step forward and now? About a year. Yeah, I think about a year after we started working together, she is now the head of product for a single platform at a small and growing company, earning more than she imagined was possible, especially in a single platform situation. More importantly, she’s waking up with energy and clear thoughts. She’s going between strategic direction and hiring and client engagements into deep problem solving and engaging with the vendors.

She is a woman who prioritizes her fulfillment and she’s led in part by desire.

That’s the power of taking a ” what now?” Phase of career, building the skill of bravery. And stepping into your next career phase.

In conclusion, career confusion doesn’t mean that you’re lost. In fact, it’s normal. You’ve outgrown your current way of thinking, your current way of being, and that’s a good thing.

You’re ready. You’re ready to get clear. You’re ready to get moving. You’re ready to become that next version of yourself.

You’re ready to build your brave career,

I can help you. So if this episode has resonated with you, if you’re feeling this, if you are seeing yourself inside of my client’s story and you’re ready to move from confusion to clarity.

I have a brand new offer. It’s a focused short term coaching experience. We’re gonna get clear on what you want. We’re gonna build the momentum. We’re not gonna think too much. We’re going to take steps towards your self concept, your mindset, who you want to become. You don’t have to navigate this “what now?” Phase on your own.

You can have support from a qualified and experienced coach. ’cause I have been there and I am helping women all over the world grow in their own unique way. Out of this trench into your peace of mind, your calendar of purpose, and playing the long game for brave Career with satisfaction.

The link to the new offering is in the show notes.

You can also just reach out to me.

If you’ve been waiting, if you’ve been wondering, if you’ve been sitting in confusion, this is your sign.

Take your next brave step

 If the Build Your Brave Career Podcast is helping you flip the script in your own career, if it’s helping you reduce your stress, work smarter or create more income, please share this with a friend. Until next time, you are already brave. Now go build your brave.