Answering the Call to Change with Katherine Golub & Nancy Gabriel

Transcript (lightly edited for clarity)

SPEAKERS

Beth Tener, Katherine Golub, Nancy Gabriel

Beth Tener 

Welcome to the Living Love podcast, Season Two. This season is called Kinship through Life Transitions. This is the first episode and I’m really grateful to be here today with Nancy Gabriel and Katherine Golub. A little backstory on how we’re going to run this season. One of the core ways create more love, care and connection in the world is to return to the art of conversation and storytelling. We have all the social media, and we’re all in a big rush, but to take the time to think about our own stories, connect our stories to each other and glean the meanings and the patterns out of our stories is such a fundamental way of connecting as human beings.

I have a memoir that I’m getting published called A Rich Life: A Memoir of Transitions, Those You Choose and Those You Don’t. a In the stories of these 10 years of my life, I found important friendship, community, mentoring, accompaniment, and spiritual guides were, as I went through a lot of big life changes. This season, each episode will take a different phase of life changes. I will share some stories that have specifics, but a lot of the patterns might be relatable to many people. Then we’ll talk about them  with my conversation partners, discussing what they heard in the stories relating it to their own experience. Then I’ll continue to the next part of the story. It will be an unfolding narrative over the 10 episodes.

Our theme today is about answering the call to change. We’ll explore that moment you are called to something new from the status quo. We also think of this as the phase of life of spring and the new beginnings of something, which is always an ending as well. I’ll just pause here and invite Nancy and Katherine to each introduce themselves, and maybe related to that theme as to why I invited you to be here talking about that theme.  

Nancy Gabriel

I’s great to be here, Beth. Beth and I have worked together for many years through New Directions. I also run the Schweitzer fellowship in New Hampshire and Vermont, which is working with medical students and law students who do a community based project while they’re in medical school is focused on health equity. They’re in the midst of their calling, such as medicine or law. While they’re engaging in the intellectual piece of that, they’re learning just how important it is to ground it in action, and in relationship. That is much of what they get from those experiences. It’s the stories they tell about the people they meet and the things that they learn from other human beings.

Katherine Golub

I’m also really grateful to get to be here with the both of you today. I’m Katherine Golub. I live many different parts. My work and what brings me to this conversation is that for over a decade, I’ve been coaching folks who are engaged in social change work, who have heard the call to social change, and as a result of their engagement in the world, often grapple with burnout. It may be due to strained relationships or with working too long hours and exhausting themselves. When they come to me, they often are coming with a call to get clear about how to honor their own needs while continuing to honor their values and commitments out in the world. I’m also a City Councilor, and have been engaged in community organizing for over 20 years. I’m also a mother of a 15 year old and that’s been a really important part of an interaction with callings in my own personal life.

Beth Tener 

Thank you. Both of these amazing women are friends and people who I do a lot of the discerning “what is our next calling” questions with. 

So today, we’re going to be talking about the phase of where we get called to something different. The next episode is going to get to the burnout. I’ll start with some stories from my own life of what that looks like when you’re on one path, particularly the path that the culture has laid out for you. We’re in a time of such change, when so many of the institutions and the values of the materialistic, fast-paced American culture are being called into question with what’s happening to the earth and how many people are left behind and the social cost of that.

Beginning with a story…I was in my late 20s.  I grew up in a suburban area that had a lot of emphasis on going to a good school and getting good grades and getting into college and getting a good job. I’d really been on that track and found my way into a corporate management consulting firm. I’d been there nine years and was doing well, making my way up the ladder to Senior Consultant. I worked with companies all over the country, helping them comply with environmental laws and regulations.

It was a lot of travel. Even though it was “successful”  on the outside, in the eyes of many in the world, I wasn’t feeling that happy on the inside.It was a hard lifestyle and it wasn’t fully aligned to what I wanted to do. But I was so oriented outside myself, I didn’t even fully know what I almost wanted to do. I had a chance to go to California to a conference. It was called Ecotech, I think, and it was on this beautiful conference center on the ocean. This was at the early phase of the movement around sustainability and I had never been exposed to these ideas, such as how could business be a force for good in the world? How could we redesign to be like using solar power and wind and create a circular economy? How can we rethink how we meet human needs and social justice?

I was coming for the corporate “little box” of compliance. The speakers were blowing my mind, both in how daunting the challenge was, but the spirit that we can reinvent things and do so much better. It was my moment of getting so rattled by taking in the scale of what’s happening to the earth, but also being surrounded by people all saying, we have to do something about this.

One of the hardest moments there was seeing a slideshow about what pollution is doing. This woman put a slide up that had a  huge list of chemicals in tiny font. She explained, these are the synthetic chemicals that we have found in women’s breast milk. It was one of those moments where it just like it hit me in the stomach. I was like, Oh my God, that could be my body. I hadn’t had children yet. I got it. It’s not the environment in some intellectual way. It’s our bodies.

I came home feeling that this is what I want to work on, this is the work I want to do. I’ll pause there. As we think of callings, have you seen moments where the bigger world hits you in an emotional way or the light dawns of “this is what I want to do?” And it might be quite different than what you’re doing.  

Katherine Golub

So I want to share a personal story and a direct answer to that end. But first, I want to share that so often we think of callings and new beginnings as beginning with that energy of this is what I want to do. But just as often or even potentially more often than that. The calling can start with that shock or that exhaustion that you were feeling or that sense of grief or heartache. And in the old stories, stories start just as often with the adventurer being kidnapped, or taken away from their home in a way that they did not decide to goBurnout can begin the calling, burnout can be the calling, and it can come after the calling.

When I think about my own story, back in 2006, which now when I say that sounds like a very long time ago, my partner at the time who was undocumented was racially profiled and picked up while driving to work, and was deported six months later. That for me, was not a wanted situation, right? That was not what I wanted to have happen.  I was working with a hotel workers union doing work that I really loved. I didn’t want that to happen. He had to go back to Mexico and he left in March of 2007. Then I discovered shortly after I’d broken up with him, that I was pregnant. Also not planned. And immediately, I wanted my child.

So it was over a year of being like, “what am I going to do with my life?”  I had to leave home, I moved to Mexico at seven months pregnant. It was a really, really hard moment in my life of all these compounding forces. I couldn’t continue my work with the union. There was a lot of disorientation. It was a beautiful moment, and also a really hard moment. That’s when I decided I wanted to become a birth doula and childbirth educator as my work. that lasted a couple years and brought me to the work that I do now. I think it’s important to recognize that so often the callings don’t feel great when they come in the first place, especially when they have to do with the systemic factors and systems of oppression and destruction.

Beth Tener 

Yeah, that’s a great point. Thank you for sharing that story. And callings may not have the clear sense of what you’re actually going to do. Often you may feel like I have no idea where this is going take me.  

Katherine Golub

Right. And I thought I was going to start this birth center and all this. And yes, I did teach prenatal yoga and was a doula for several years. But that is not the work that I ended up in the long run feeling called to do, It was the first iterative phase.

Beth Tener 

And how about you, Nancy?

Nancy Gabriel

I don’t think there have been events quite like what you described Katherine, wow. I’m a slow burn kind of person. I too, started my professional life in corporate America, I was doing well and doing the climb of the ladder, but it never felt really aligned with my values. I remember saying in my 20s: “I don’t mind working hard, but if I’m going to work this hard, I want it to be for something that I really care about.” For me, that began that journey. This is back in the day when 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the World came out. I’m dating myself now. On the outside of my cubicle, I put up a photocopy of it. Eventually I just said, I can’t do this anymore. I need to take the leap.

So I left and I didn’t know for sure what I wanted. I wanted to go from working in high tech IT to international development, like that was my calling. I had cared about that my whole life. And so I had no idea how I was going to get there. So I got the will engaged and I networked my way across all the international nonprofits in the Boston area. I was meeting with executive directors and opportunities were coming my way. But they were all  focused within the technology area, because that was kind of new, and they needed people.  I didn’t want to go that route. But I could be tenacious.

I heard about a graduate program at Tufts, the Urban and Environmental Policy program. And so I decided to apply and I wrote the application the night before it was due. I thought, well, I’m just going to do it. I wrote it, I submitted it. And not only did I get in when they accepted me, they offered me a job at the Center for Environmental Management at Tufts. So I think that sometimes it is a leap of faith. The will is involved, but we can’t foresee path. We really want to, especially in a time of uncertainty, we want that control. But I think I’ve learned that it will unfold. I joke about it. I was slamming my head against all these doors and I just walked by the graduate school one, and it flew open, so why not go in? And of course, it led to many wonderful things in my personal and professional life.

Beth Tener 

I’ve been interested in the transitions we choose and those we don’t and even how we think we’re going one way and then like the door that we didn’t even see opens, like you’re saying, Nancy.

I’ll pick back up my story. So I was in California, and I came home thinking, this is the work I want to do. I didn’t know how. I was still traveling all the time and exhausted. At one point, I had a day off from work and I took that book, What Color Is your Parachute, and I sat on the floor of my apartment with the sun streaming in. I went through all the little exercises they have you do. It’s a lot about what’s your unique path for you, rather than like just going out in the world and seeing what’s available.

So I got it all mapped out. I was clear: I want to teach about sustainability, I want to do it locally, where I live in New England, so I’m not getting on planes anymore. What was so funny was once I wrote it out and got clear on what I’d love to do, within two weeks, I actually met a group of people who are coming together to create a new organization, with just that mission. It was pretty amazing. I couldn’t believe the serendipity of it.

So I started attending their meetings whenever I wasn’t out of town. I would be so excited. I was meeting those folks and they were all living this kind of green lifestyle or in different ways than my friends from home and college. They was like growing their own food and gardens. And one of the guys had like one of those diesel cars, he was burning, like used french fry oil. They were living with intention. Once I got into this stream, I joined some the study circles around simple living and thinking through, how much money do you need? It was such a rich learning discovery journey. Seeing  people living the values in real ways, sparked me to want to follow their path or to realize there is a path I didn’t even know was there, from “the box” I was in.

I laughed, because I would come home from these evenings with these colleagues and I couldn’t even sleep, I was so amped up with ideas. One of my colleagues wife said “I thought you were doing this work because you wanted to sleep at night.” There was a contrast of the new work, (which I didn’t know how we were going to fund it, or if that could be livelihood) and then I go to my day job and be in this heavy slog.  It felt like this fire from the inside of potential and movement. But then the stable secure job was where I had my income. It started to feel like a real stretch between them and I was stuck in the tension of “can I stay or go?”. My friend Greta call it straddling the paradigms.

At some point, I’d gone to another conference where I just got all fired up again and met a lot of other people on that other path. I came home and did my business travel routine, which was to unpack and then go to the woods for a walk. I was walking in the woods by myself, It was just a beautiful pine forest. It was was one of those moments where it dropped in. I was thinking, I don’t want to be on this track of the corporate ladder. And like, it’s not that I want to be rich, I want a rich life. In that moment.  I could feel the longing for community, connection, living closer to land nature, being able to have a dog, friends – I had the whole image just there. That  became this compass of: how do I make a rich life on my own terms, not the terms of what society or the path that’s been laid out for me?

I went from You Should, the path of all the expectations, to How could I create a rich life? I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the community part of the change, I started meeting people who were living out what I was yearning for. I could kind of see them living something I didn’t even know was possible, but I was sort of longing towards that. As we think about kinship during these transition times, how do you see the community around you affecting your ability to step into a change?

Nancy Golub

Well, I think it’s so important to have people who support you while you’re stepping into the change. I know for myself, as in our lives have parallels, as I had been working in the sustainability field for a while and living in a more urban area knew. I knew about Donella Meadows work. She was a systems thinker who was one of the authors of Limits to Growth and was one of the early people saying like the Earth has a limited amount of resources. We can’t just live like it doesn’t. She had a vision to develop a co-housing, an intentional community, in Vermont. There were sustainably built homes, co-located with an organic farm, co-located with a nonprofit organization.

I was going to be up in Vermont with my husband and I said we should go look at it. We went to see it in the end of May. And realized, there’s a house for sale. Do you think we should check it out? And he’s said, yeah, why not? We checked out the house and we moved the there in September. That’s a very fast time for move. I think why we made that move, as did many of the other people who live there, is the recognition that to do this work, and to make this change, is really hard. It would be easier and more effective, and lots of learning, could happen by doing it in community.  I think it’s critical. There are lots of stories about the difficulties of that, because, at least in the way that I was raised, we don’t really know how to live in community in our individualistic kind of Western approach. I learned so much living there. And there was so much joy in having that shared vision and set of values. 

Beth Tener

I’m grateful you brought in Donella Meadows. It’s not only the community around us, it’s also the writers, thinkers, poets, singers, and others who, we – we may never meet then but their words and their life inspire us. For me, Donella Meadows was one of those people. She it was a scientist, working at the level of publishing papers and global meetings, but she who also wrote about gardening and taking these ideas into her life. Those kind of people are another part of what surrounds us as we move through change, people we never meet, but who are our teachers.

Another one who influenced me was Joseph Campbell who was a researcher in comparative mythology. He came to the idea of The Hero’s Journey. Getting the calling and follow your bliss. There are critiques of his work. Katherine, I know you have explored that in your work, how would you explain that?

Katherine Golub

There’s the first three steps of the map that Joseph Campbell laid out, that I find very helpful. I don’t know the rest of the steps. And there are many problems with how he presented his work. But I do find the first three steps very helpful. He named them as Hearing the Call, Refusing the Call, and then I think he called it Supernatural Aid. Or you can call it Meeting the Mentor. I just think of it as Finding the Allies. And, of course, the steps are not always sequential or linear.

We are not supposed to go on our journeys alone.  I believe that our ancestors knew this and knew how to live with creating relationships with allies and accomplices and comrades and kins much more than we do. I imagine that we’ve forgotten a lot in our white supremacist capitalist age. But we know that, and I believe that that kinship is necessary. We see that in those old stories.

In an example from my life is that last year, right at the same moment I finished the last draft of my book and had these big visions to bring this book into the world, I received a a phone call from my City Council President letting me know that my precinct Counselor was resigning. In my city, when a counselor resigned before an election period, the Council appoints their successor. And so she asked me if I wanted to do it. And first, I said, no, there’s no way. I refused that call. As many people as I could find in my precinct to do it, everyone else said no. And so I went through a big discernment period of trying to figure out – did I want to do it, I ultimately decided that I did. Part of my decision to do it was because I knew that I would have friends on the City Council who would help mentor me who would help orient me who would help me make good decisions.

I was just at a conference with progressive municipal leaders nationally, and a lot of them are in really conservative areas and are one or one of two on pretty conservative councils and just how lonely that feels and how much harder that is when you don’t have colleagues to support you. For me, having colleagues to step into this work with really made it possible and was a big part of my decision making process. Knowing that I would have that support was a big factor in me stepping into it.

Beth Tener 

I also think of this as part of what we want to look at building community for healing as well.Like I think of 12 Step programs that support people in a transition from being in a lifestyle where you’re addicted, whether it’s food or alcohol, and you’re trying to journey from that to a different life. The 12 step programs offer a the level of social support and the mentorship.  You go into a room full of people holding an intention, and you maybe go back home and no one else is doing it.

We don’t feel comfortable when we’re being different than those around us. It’s just a natural human desire to fit in and belong. What I’ve recently been understanding is, there’s an innocence and an ease to just going with the flow of what everyone else is doing. When we feel called to live in a different way, or do something different, you inherently have a guilt or a chafing, because your loyalty to the group. You want to feel comfortable in the group. In general, in these times, as we are moving to living in healthier ways, or trying to live like Nancy’s example, live in houses closer together and closer to where you get your food, we need mentors. We need community around us as we step into trying to do that, because as you said, it’s just too lonely.

Katherine Golub

Often, we think of the call as like, the mainstream status quo can mean many different things. So when changemakers get the call of burnout, they know that they need to change their lives. The community they are part of are also changemakers. They may not be the mainstream status quo. But it’s a sub community of people who hold certain expectations and agreements to work in certain ways. To say No, I actually, I can’t take on that campaign, can be so painful, individually, and never mind the pain of telling people, no, I can’t do that work. So just no matter what, that leaving home is usually a part of saying no to a call, whether that’s the mainstream status quo, or that’s our subgroup where we have found home. 

Beth Tener 

And yeah, well said.

Nancy Gabriel  

When we’re in community, and we’re doing this work together, we don’t have to know everything, we can bring our part, our gifts, our talents, and you’re bringing yours and you’re bringing yours. We’re each bringing something different in the whole is so much better. Often, in our individualistic culture, we’re supposed to know it all. I was talking with a young person that I work with, who joined the Hartford Resilience Committee. She said, “it’s not what I thought it was going to be. It’s only this, it’s only about gardening, and I don’t know how to garden and I don’t feel like I fit in.” I was just encouraging her, you don’t have to know how to garden, you are bringing something else to the table that they need. So I think just remembering that that’s one of the joys of being in community too.

Beth Tener 

So back to my story. I was going to these meetings of this new organization and being in my day job with the corporate firm. Over some months, I was hanging in that, “should I stay or go?” which I think is very common. We hear a lot now with the quiet quitting, and all the change through COVID. And with all this, I just want to acknowledge I’m in a circumstance where I could choose and I had some savings, right? So could I choose and I was in my late 20s didn’t have children yet, or a partner at that moment.

I felt like a lot of my friends from my college and work, we’re were all on the track. At one point, I had this dream where I was in a road race, kind of like the Boston Marathon. I was living near Boston at the time. Everyone was in this slog, in the last five miles near Cleveland Circle. Everyone’s running in a line towards downtown. I was on a bike. I was saying to my old boyfriend, “But I don’t want to go there.  I want to bike over to Cambridge.” And it really was such a visceral feeling of like, Wow, can I really step out and do something different?

In that time, I  was walking in again in the woods. This is where all my revelations seem to come!   I was walking in the woods with a friend and sharing the excitement of what I really want to do and the   I don’t know,/back and forth. I remember sitting on a rock by a lake and this knowing just came “you can do this.” Even if you step towards it and don’t have it all figured out, like with savings, you can set this up and it came in. And there was something on the deeper level that shifted in me of  like some faith that it would work out, even though I couldn’t see the path. And also at that time, I remember  this quote from William H. Murray “Until one is committed, there’s a hesitancy, the chance to draw back always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. And that can like kill countless ideas and plans. But when you definitely commit yourself, then Providence moves too and all sorts of things start to occur that wouldn’t. “

I saw that quote at just at the right moment. It said “whatever you can do begin it.” The walk with the friend and seeing that quote were key things. And The Universe was serving up just miserable business trips with all kinds of flight delays and one thing after another. I eventually came to that moment of “I think I’m going to leave this job and put both feet in being an entrepreneur with this new initiative.” I would find a way to do freelance consulting and figure it out.

I recall the day, I was so nervous to go in and tell folks at work because I was kind of one of the mid level people that managed a lot of cases. A lot of people relied on me and I’d been there right since college for nine years. I was nervous particularly about telling this one senior manager I did a lot of work for. He had a fiery angry side, and, you know, the whole feeling of being disloyal. And what’s he going to say?

I sat down in his office, and I said, I have some news. Then his phone rang, and he went and got it.  I’m sitting there like my stomach churning, so nervous. So he comes back.  I tell him, I decided I’m leaving to do this, and explain it to him. He was kind of stunned, but then pretty gracious about it and nice. We talked about it for a while and I could feel my body calming down. Then he goes, can you keep a secret? I said yes. He said “I’m actually leaving to go to another consulting firm.” Here  I was,  in a tizzy about telling him. So we ended up having a shared goodbye party. It was pretty funny.

How have you found that moment, when you finally make the decision to take this step? What did you experience or how might friends or colleagues have been helpful to you in that moment?

Nancy Gabriel

It’s funny when you were telling the story, I was thinking about my own. I don’t remember the exact moment when I decided to leave. But I also happened to be in a moment where there was downsizing. I was able to leave with a nice severance package, which enabled me the privilege that comes with being able to take that leap.

I remember, as things weren’t falling into place for me the way that I had hoped and I was really worried about things. I had a conversation with my mom, who I think I was probably worried when I told her, because she’d worked in business. I felt like I was getting to live a life that she didn’t get to, in some ways. I remember talking to her about my doubts. And she said to me, “Nancy, you didn’t have a choice.” It was interesting to hear that outside perspective, where she could see that I would have been miserable if I stayed. So even though it felt like a choice, in a way, it wasn’t a choice because of that inner knowing or that inner sense that this was just the thing I had to do.

Katherine Golub 

I’m thinking a lot about money. You both mentioned the privilege of having the savings and the severance package.  I think that’s really important to acknowledge and think about. Often, when we get a call. I like to use the metaphor of the gates, which is a moment that we do make a choice to say yes to something. Sometimes we have the privilege because we have the savings or the severance package to go all in or dive in or go through that big gate of leaving our previous work behind.

But sometimes we don’t have that privilege. In all cases, the idea of the little gates, I find very helpful. So while a big gate, for example, might be leaving your previous work behind, the little gates could be something like deciding to rigorously save or letting go of some type of spending that you’re doing to be able to save more or taking on another job while you’re doing the big job, so that you can save the money so that you can get out or letting go one day per week.

For me, how this looked was when I moved back to the States, when my son was four and a half, I was a single mom. I had to pay the bills immediately by myself. I was lucky and hustled, and started my coaching practice and used that to pay the bills. All along, I had a real longing to focus my work completely on folks who are engaged in social change. But I live in the most rural county in Massachusetts and it’s not like I’m in New York City, or Boston, or a city that has where I could just go out and network with activists.

So for many years, I worked with people I loved, but I wasn’t doing work that was my heart’s work. I was doing business coaching with healers or career clarity work with folks who weren’t engaged in social change. I needed to do that to pay the bills, even though I had a longing to focus on folks who are engaged in social change. I finally made the decision just to let go of the other work, maybe about a year and a half ago, or two years ago. Now I am saying no, those little gates, when people come to me, for work that is not really aligned with the work I’m wanting to do. I’ll refer them to other people. But it took me many, many years to be able to finally close that gate. Because it took me that time to save the money and to build up my practice, and to have the safety net. So I find the idea of little gates, very liberating. Those are choices that we can make, even when those big choices that are allowed by that savings are not yet accessible to us.

Nancy Gabriel

I really appreciate that. Because I think you know, Beth and I both have our stories where we’re in our 20s. I’m in a much different place now.  I’d love to just leave it all behind and go start something new. But, I can’t. I have a home, I have children, I have responsibilities that I didn’t have then. So it is interesting to think about how it happens in different phases of our lives, too. I appreciated what you offered about the smaller gates.

Katherine Golub 

Thinks, yeah, and I mean, I’m 41. Now I made that decision. I don’t know 39, 40. But I was able to do that. I have had a calling to publish this book for a long time. And that’s still ongoing. I’m in the sixth draft now.. I feel good about it. I’ve needed to be there. But it’s still unfolding my career and my clarity about what’s next is hopefully going to continue or emerging until at some point I feel called to not work anymore. I don’t know when that happens if that happens.

I think that a calling is not like we get this one Big Call. It’s about continuously listening to life moving through us and give what is the call today it was just sit on the porch and take a couple of minutes outside and drink a cup of coffee. That’s the calling, talking to you all that’s a calling those big callings come like once in a while.

Beth Tener 

One of my colleagues in the sustainability work, who was also kind of stepping towards it without a lot of financial security…(when we were called to that work, it was well ahead of when anyone was saying this is something we’re ready to fund, we were kind of way out of the early phase of it.) So, both of us ended up like getting freelance consulting, I was continuing some of the corporate work to have a foot in that world where I could kind of get my stable income from that, and then have the other work we were trying to build. It was like a bit of a straddle of keeping both and so you’re not putting all your eggs in on basket, based on how fast this interest in this will grow. I’ve also seen that kind of portfolio approach, as another version of the small gates.  I can build this, try this little pilot thing, while I keep the stable part over here.

Katherine Golub

Now, you talked about straddling and leaving one group and worrying about the approval or the acceptance and, and all of that. I think one of the things that’s so important when you’re making a change and responding to a call, is tuning into your inner voice and your inner sense of what’s right for you. For me, the practice of meditation or time in nature or conversation with friends, or whatever the practice is, is an important aspect of it. Otherwise I find you can get into self-doubt pretty easily,  when people are respond “really? You’re what?” 

Beth Tener 

Thank you. I agree. I know those self-doubt waters well!

Katherine Golub

That’s interesting, I was just thinking about something related to self-doubt that I wanted to share. Thinking about the gap between where we are and where we longed to be, or where we think we should be. Whether that’s because that’s something that society has taught us we have been at, or that’s just because we’re called, and we have this vision that is different than our current reality, right?

There will always be this gap between where we are and where we think we should be. So for example, I wanted this book done for a very long time and there’s still this gap. I often think of self-doubt as like before the gap. “Can I do it? Do I have the ability? What if I can’t do it? Self-criticism is “I’m not doing it well enough” from comparing myself to others. And self-blame is, “oh, wow, there’s a gap between how I showed up and how I wish I what I wish I had done.”

When we can bring our awareness to those voices of self-blame, self-criticism, and self-doubt,  without judging them, without judging ourselves for being self-judgmental. There’s so much more I could say about this. So this is shorthand, it’s best to know that that gap is inevitable and does not mean that there’s anything wrong with us. Also, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with anyone else. Because we can often go into blame of others when there’s a gap between where we are and where we want our relationships to be. For example, I really love the Amelia and Emily Nagurski’s book Burnout, They call the part of ourselves that is always examining the gap and analyzing how well we’re living up to it, they call it The Monitor. I find it very helpful to give a name to that inner critic or that inner judge. Since learning their term, I’ve called my voice The Monitor because it’s that constant assessment.

Beth Tener 

I’ll bring in one more note here, which is around right timing. It relates to my book because I also have sat on getting this book in the world a long time. One of the things I find helpful is talking with healers, intuitives, or good friends. I was talking to one recently, who was just saying, “think of right timing.” When I was working on the sustainability stuff, I was well ahead of the curve. You can go into self-blame that it’s not happening fast enough, or I haven’t done enough, but honestly, it was probably five or six years after I jumped over there that there were enough people in the space to fill workshops and things. So it’s a question of when and how is the world ready for what I’m feeling called to do.

Sometimes, we’re awakened to something that’s moving in a lot of people, but it might take time to have the moment of fertile ground. It’s like a seed in the forest that falls, but there’s not enough sunlight in the the canopy over the soil. Then a tree falls and it opens up the light, so then it’s that seed’s moment. I try to think about right timing related to how harshly I’m going to judge myself for how things work or don’t work.  

Nancy Gabriel 

Katherine, you use the words “where I should be.” For me, that’s where I get caught up. It’s the “should” that can be a creative tension, that gap. Or it can just feel really bad because it’s a “should” that’s often external. If I’m comparing or thinking that people will say, Oh, I should be so much farther along in this”,that doesn’t help me get there.

Katherine Golub

I think of the creative tension model from Peter Sense. I don’t know if he got it from somewhere else, If listeners can visualize this, you have a rubber band between your thumb and a finger you’re holding that and that their thumb is your Current Reality. Your finger is The Future and just holding that tension is uncomfortable. Then he adds a second rubber band that hooks onto the thumb and pulls backwards and with your index finger and pulls it backward and then that second rubber band represents Thoughts related to Worthlessness and Powerlessness. That extra rubber band can make things uncomfortable. It’s already uncomfortable to live in the gap, never mind all the comparison to other people.

Beth, you had asked what our favorite quote was. The quote that I quote most frequently is “love is 90% pacing.” (I’m don’t know where it comes from.)

Beth Tener 

I love it. Love is 90% pacing. That’s beautiful. Well, I want to thank you both for this great conversation. And this is the beginning of the journey. So as we get into future episodes, we will get more into burnout and discuss what happens when you step towards some new path.

Now, as we come to a close, as I mentioned at the beginning, I’m so grateful to have Nancy and Katherine in my life to help me navigating all those little gates and big gates of callings. And Katherine is a life coach, and her center is called the Center for Callings and Courage. She has a weekly newsletter, and learn so much with her clear thinking on these topics of discerning and navigating calling. Katherine, can you share where people can find your work?

Katherine Golub 

I’d love to share with folks my podcast and my love letter. So each Saturday I write a love letter to change makers with guidance about how to take care of ourselves and how to make choices that honor our needs, in the midst of all of it, and people can sign up for that on my website, which is callings and courage.com. And my podcast is the Radical Discernment podcast. Radical discernment is how I named the body of work that I’ve developed and discovered over the last many years of working with clients. The podcast can be found wherever you get your podcasts.

Beth Tener 

Wonderful. Thank you, Katherine. I’m a big fan of Katherine’s work and very practical tips you get every week on Saturday morning. This is been a great beginning to season two and I want to thank you both for being here.

In the spirit of living love, in the show notes, we have a lot of links for you for many of the ideas mentioned today if you want to follow up.