Marni welcomes former Hustle Culture Devotee, Sara McElroy to the Life Check Yourself Studio. Sara is an ex-Chief Marketing Officer, the WSJ poster girl for a pandemic career burn-out, and a two-time member of the great resignation. After a stress-induced shingle diagnosis in 2021, Sara decided to hit the reset button on her life. While looking for alignment in her life, she created Raze to Rise to amplify women’s voices, and inspire others to blaze new trails.
Takeaways:
Sara reveals that during the beginning of her corporate career she didn’t have self-trust. She was the quintessential corporate soldier. She outsourced her power and agency and put her future in the hands of the corporation she worked for.
Sara says we get to the breaking point more quickly when we know what we are willing to tolerate and what we are not. Our dissatisfaction becomes a muscle that flexes when something is not in alignment.
Good-girl conditioning is very real. We are rewarded for being obedient and not asking troublesome questions.
We get stuck in unfulfilling jobs if we have not been taught to make choices that are good for us. She knew she wasn’t the only woman mired in cycles of burn-out.
Sara created the phrase Raze to Rise when she rebuilt her life based on what she wanted, not what she was told to want. She says the belief system we pick up from others can be insidious because we operate our lives based on someone else's belief of what success is.
And, while it is important not to require external validation in general, it is exceptionally important not to have it in your career because it can create a pseudo-addiction to the meaningless atta-girls.
There is nothing wrong with taking baby steps in the direction you want to go.
Marni asks what is driving women to quietly quit. Is it a passive-aggressive maneuver or is it the beginning of a movement toward change? Sara says while it seems counterproductive to some it is a step forward for those who haven’t built up their self-confidence yet.
Sara created a six-stage journey for people ready to go through the process of walking away. The rumbling of quiet quitting can be akin to disillusionment, or not being in alignment with what you are doing at the moment. She says while some people have a lightbulb moment and others approach it as quietly quitting. It is just the first step toward enlightenment.
It is beautiful when we acknowledge the bars of the cage we created for ourselves.
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