🧭 Pivot with Purpose: A Pep Talk, Part One
I had a virtual keynote at noon yesterday, one with heightened importance and the nerves to match. I would be delivering the kick-off session for Georgetown’s Pivot with Purpose series, an offering backed by the Rockefeller Foundation to serve the tens of thousands of development professionals looking for work after U.S.A.I.D. was shuttered cruelly and unceremoniously in February, affecting nearly 20,000 people in the U.S. and over 200,000 globally, not to mention the millions of aid recipients.1
I’ll be delivering a second session, based on Free Time, tomorrow (Thursday, June 26) at noon if you’d like to join us. Register here »
Meticulously, I moved through my morning, timing everything to the minute: wake, coffee, read, walk Ryder, smash into the subway with sweaty commuters, exercise some anxiety out at the spaffice, ponder opening remarks during a ten-minute swim, shower, put the finishing touches on my slides, head to the podcast studio in midtown, finish hair and make-up in the bathroom, change shirts, set-up my presentation station (adjust lighting, prop laptop on a stack of books). Breathe.
While rushing out of the gym locker room, juggling my phone, tote bag, backpack, and several hangers with blouse options, I watched, mortified, as my metal tumbler of iced tea flew out of my hands, clanging down a flight of stairs, bouncing comically like a slinky in slow motion from one stair to the next as fellow gym-goers leapt out of the way. So sorry, I said to all. Chekhov’s tumbler, I mumbled to one man who passed by in a cheesy attempt at humor, how did I know I was going to do that. Worrying about the time, I ran back into the locker room, grabbed some towels, and wiped up the mess.
Nerves are good, I reminded myself, it means you care.
There was so much I wanted to say—so much that I have learned and shared in real-time here on Doh while groping my way through the dark, not yet polished into sparkling spoken words. This wasn’t a typical Pivot talk, as I’ve been delivering those mostly to people within the companies who have hired me for nearly a decade.
Although I can’t imagine the precise emotions these development professionals are feeling after an entire career track seems to evaporate before their eyes, I do know what it’s like to process ambiguous grief while feeling anxious, uncertain, worried about finances, humbled, and overwhelmed; watching as the ghost car of your (former) future self surges past your present day one.
To help organize my introductory remarks before yesterday’s session, I wrote a letter to the group—a bit of a pep talk—and I wanted to share it here too, in case any of you reading (or a friend) might also need to hear it. Dohnuts are such a wise and compassionate bunch: if you feel moved to add any words of wisdom, resources, or encouragement in the comments, I know we would all benefit. 🙏
“You can either go through the door and close it behind you, and enjoy being in the room that no one else is in, or you can stand there and hold the door open to let other people through.”
—Caitlin Moran, author and journalist
First, echoing Dr. Rajiv Shah and the Georgetown team, thank you. You have dedicated your lives and careers to serving others, and no one can take that away from you. This sudden, shocking shutdown is what Nassim Taleb calls a Black Swan event, one that is “high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare beyond the realm of normal expectations.” There is nothing you could have done to predict or prevent this, although now you and your families are the ones who must steer through the fallout.
I know that many of you are grieving the loss not just of a job, but of an entire career path that you previously envisioned stretched out ahead of you.2 You may be worried about your household’s financial needs: career changes affect us deeply, at a limbic level, because they put into precarious balance our most basic survival needs of food, clothing, and shelter. You may be angry, frustrated, and exhausted.
I often remind myself of meditation teacher Ruth King’s words, “Reminding myself that life is not personal, permanent, or perfect has kept me from falling into sinkholes of despair and destroying rooms with rage. It invites me to pause and turn inward.”
You have already been pivoting—by choice and by circumstance—these last five years, and helping others do the same. You are well-equipped in problem-solving skills and making an impact, no matter the resource constraints you’re facing. You have already planted so many seeds throughout your career that will sprout at times you won’t expect. At this time last year, I was hired for a speaking engagement by someone I had trained at Google as a new hire eighteen years earlier.
This pivot process may be messy, and it may take longer than your mind believes it should—that’s okay, and you’re not alone.
You may worry about signals indicating a competitive or frozen job market, but it’s also very possible that the job you want doesn’t exist yet. That doesn’t mean you won’t find something resonant; it just might mean you become part of creating it. So many of us, myself included, are awkwardly feeling our way through, creating some semblance of order from chaos, even though we can’t see the full picture. Be patient with yourself and the process. We are inventing the future of work together.
Some of you may take this as an opportunity to strike out on your own, maybe by temporarily taking on contract work to bridge financial gaps, or perhaps finally giving yourself permission to pursue a long-held dream of self-employment.
For those of you seeking full-time work, you might get lucky and land a new gig right away; congratulations to those of you who already have! Others are already well-acquainted with the fact that the job search process can be deeply frustrating: it’s opaque, far too light on feedback, and opportunities may fall through for reasons having nothing to do with you. But of course, there’s no way for you to know that, so the absence of information can provoke deep anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity as you muster the willpower to continue forging ahead with your search.3
I love James Clear’s metaphor for persisting through the “valley of disappointment,” of an ice cube melting one degree at a time. In his book, Atomic Habits, he writes:
“Imagine that you have an ice cube sitting on the table in front of you. The room is cold and you can see your breath. It is currently twenty-five degrees. Ever so slowly, the room begins to heat up.
Twenty-six degrees.
Twenty-seven.
Twenty-eight.
The ice cube is still sitting on the table in front of you.
Twenty-nine degrees.
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
Still, nothing has happened.
Then, thirty-two degrees. The ice begins to melt. A one-degree shift, seemingly no different from the temperature increases before it, has unlocked a huge change.Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.”
Hold the faith that with every small action you take, you are getting closer, even if it’s an interim pivot to help buy time as you work toward a vision two or three moves out. I know you will find a way through. This is a pivotal point in your career, and one you will look back on someday from the other side with pride.
Still, there is no doubt that these times are humbling. I’ve come to think of these career moments as the Great Humbling, demarcating a clear before and after of our lives, and not in a bad way—as author Elizabeth Stout said in a recent interview about her newest book:
“It brings to mind the ways in which really painful experiences in life can make people much more human. It can. I have often thought that. I have often thought that if you’re lucky, you go through something that just cuts you off at the knees, and you’re humbled. And as a result of that, you’re going to be a bigger person. That’s the best-case scenario. As opposed to becoming bitter. So to be humbled, I think, can be a very good thing ultimately.”
Some pivots take longer than our mind thinks they should, or that our savings allow for. You might need to ask for more help than you are comfortable with, stretching yourself in terms of receiving, after lives dedicated to giving and serving others.
It reminds me of something a jiu-jitsu black belt friend said after experiencing a rare competition loss: “You have more fun when you win, but you learn more when you lose.”
Susan David’s research on Emotional Agility proves this to be true. Throughout her book, she outlines myriad ways that trying times deliver unexpected benefits, including making us more polite, generous, and attentive, as well as improving our memory. One study found that shoppers remembered significantly more information about the interior of a store on cold, gloomy days when they were not feeling so exuberant than they did on sunny and warm days when life felt like a breeze.
This time can open new channels of creativity if you let it (I love Julia Cameron’s book and twelve-week process, The Artist’s Way, for facilitating this). When I lost one of the last of my major licensing contracts two years ago, representing nearly $200K in annual income, I started writing twice weekly here on Doh and haven’t stopped.
Although it’s easy to fall into compare-and-despair, especially with so many others in the same boat, I have always loved holding onto the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. You have experienced a career tsunami, but you can rise together. You can and will lift each other up, as many of you already have, and just as Georgetown is doing throughout the summer with this Pivot with Purpose series and accompanying resources.
Settling into what’s next—what’s meant for you, in your unique timing, delivered alongside your particular next set of Earth School lessons—will not happen at the same time for everyone. So remember, if you can: when you do find your next opportunity, even a portfolio of them, see if you can turn back and hold the door open to let a few others through.4
❤️
Continue reading part two on Free Time:
🎧 For more context on DOGE and the shutdowns, I appreciated these summary episodes:
🎧 For those navigating layoffs, a few related resources and podcast episodes.
’s features, Layoffs.fyi, and the Substack.📧 In an earlier post for one of my other newsletters, , I shared an article from
, “Everyone I know is worried about work,” whether “finding a job, keeping the one they have, or what will happen when the work they do no longer exists.”If you are looking for more support, learn more about working 1:1 with a Pivot Coach, or for a fantastic group program, I highly recommend my friend (and first career coach) ’s Career Pathfinder. Apply promo code PIVOT for a discounted rate, and 🎧listen to our Pivot podcast conversation playlist here »
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Thank you Jenny, I’m tracking with this in my own way 💖
I truly appreciate your letter/pep talk to this group. It helps me as I begin another pivot to new income sources! Also, it speaks highly of Georgetown that they are sponsoring this series!