Tanya Semerad 0:00
This show is not for the faint of heart. If you're craving personal growth that goes beyond the surface level, then you're in the right place. Get ready to unlock your mind. Unleash your authenticity, ignite your purpose and passion and fortify your emotional resilience. Say goodbye to drum and distraction and hello to new potential. As a former lawyer and business leader turned certified High Performance Coach, I know what it takes to excel in life. I'm here to push you beyond your comfort zone. Challenge your beliefs and spark a transformation that will revolutionize the way you work, have relationships and your well being. You've already taken the first step by being here. So buckle up, because we're about to go on this life changing journey together. Are you ready? Let's do this.
Hello, my friend, and welcome to episode 13. All about how to find your career purpose and passion. Now, a couple of days ago, someone said to me, Tanya, you're lucky that you get to do what you love. I was shocked by this statement. Lucky me. Oh, my goodness, I've faced so much uncertainty and had to work harder than most people I know. Actually, I wasn't sure how to respond. I didn't want to be mean or say something that I didn't mean. So I took a moment to really think about it. I started tracing my steps backwards through my life seeing the bigger milestones and those jewels of clarity I'd gained along the way. I started to smile. If this person knew the highs and lows I'd been through, they wouldn't call me lucky. They call me tenacious tenacious tea. I love that I will take that. So for this episode, I will unpacked as succinctly as I can. The key elements and circumstances that led me to finding my purpose and passion, and also how I created a career and business out of it. Yes, there are many ways to skin a cat. Oh, that's awful. That saying, isn't it? This is my way. And my goal by sharing it with you is that you hear even just a little something, a little idea or action that I had. And I did just to try it for yourself, just to see whether you can increase the amount of passion and purpose you have in your career and your life. Or maybe you're thinking about your next step, you want a change, and you want to know what fires you up. And the ideas don't have to stop with you either. Because if you're guiding someone, you're guiding someone you care about to find their purpose and their passion in the world. And this info will come in handy to stick with me until the end because I will share my six key ideas and actions for finding your purpose and passion. So my work in the world started when I was three. My twin brothers were born and I was mums Little Helper, the oldest sister caring for my brothers. And when my brothers were six, and I was nine, I felt called to my next role. I told them that I wanted to help the kids in the neighborhood to prepare for their upcoming school year. I wanted to set them up for success. I want to share what I already knew about what they were going to start. So I wanted to school to be easy and fun to them. So we found some wheeling grade ones and twos pitch the idea and set up a teaching tent in one of their backyards. Yes, we went straight to the client. I created lesson plans and guides and I'd hand out a four pieces of paper to help them through their work would go through mass. Now, yes, I'm an entrepreneur, but my brothers they were the real OG original entrepreneurs. He convinced me that this was a valuable service and really shouldn't be paid for. So they began collecting coined donations to enter Tanya's teaching tent. Now it worked until it didn't. And it my students kept bringing in their toys and toys into the tent and it was just frustrating the whole endeavor so we scrapped the teaching 10 one day and went home to make lunch. Reflecting on what had happened now my brothers were quite disappointed to find out that I'd given all the money back. Yes, I did. Okay, so my dad he wanted to be I lawyer, a criminal barrister to be exact. And as the first born to immigrant parents who weren't allowed that opportunity in Australia, where I'm from my career was therefore neatly laid out. For me, it was clear that I had to become a lawyer. And as long as I became that lawyer, my dad would feel like he succeeded as a parent. And I didn't want to let him down, did I? So, at 17, I started university studying law and international business, it was full time for five years, and I had to pay my bills, and my car kept breaking down. So I had three to five jobs at once. And earning that that little money, I was really worried about how I was going to pay my massive student loan debt that I had to get anyway, after another post grad degree and another lump sum added to that student debt. I was fully qualified and practicing law in a national firm. I'd worked in many environments by this point, but this is my very first permanent role in a corporate environment. And I got to understand the politics of corporate life real fast, you know what I'm saying, Don't be that girl who gets super wasted at work drinks. Anyway, running to court was fun. And anyone who has ever worn heels, had a coffee in their one hand and documents and another imbalancing, a shoulder bag on the shoulder, knows that running in that fashion is an extreme sport, it is dangerous, especially if you're on Kabul, not just to you, but there could be casualties. But not many days were glamorous, it definitely wasn't like suits. And after a change in the leadership, I found my quality of life deteriorating, I was working really long hours sleeping under my desk. And I was developing an autoimmune disease to only found out when my hair started breaking and falling off, and my skin was cracking and bleeding. And I was just so exhausted, you know, more than tired, I was exhausted, I'd sleep through weekends, it was difficult to get up for dinner, to get up and go out and have some kind of social life, I do that. And then it goes straight back to sleep, I started to really dislike my job, I felt trapped in those grade dividing walls. And in my new boss had a horrible personality and even more horrible breath. And he takes this kind of sick pleasure, this sick pleasure in marking changes to my email cover letters that I'd print out for him to sign off on. He'd take his pen and mark so hard, it would tear the paper. And I'd walk back to my desk and, you know, hold my paper up to the fluorescent lights and light would come through light would come through. And it would change his like, hello to Hi, you know, he was clearly board poor man. And it was the tail end of the global financial crisis. And it was difficult, I guess for him to get work in. But then guess what? He didn't get work in my team didn't have work to the firm made me redundant. I get it. It was a small team. I understand from a business perspective. I just couldn't believe I couldn't believe that after the sweat, the blood, the tears I'd put into that job and the auto immune disease that they induced. Now I wish I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. I couldn't believe that they do that to me. So after two weeks of walking around at home with a duvet over my head, I noticed the bills piling up at the front door. I think I kicked into one by accident. I started racking my brain racking my brain, what am I going to do next? I wanted inspiration. I kept asking myself, What do you love to do? It will get you excited. Tanya, come on. What are you passionate about? Girl? You don't want to go back to law, you know that? What are we going to tell dad and all these thoughts are running through my head I felt so confused about what I should be doing with my life. And it may be you haven't had a big event like that. But you're unsure about whether what you're doing really is meant for you whether there's something different, better, more suited to you out there. Now I'd never really asked myself those questions before. I just did what I was told parents, well meaning loving parents by society what society said was successful, even when it felt wrong even when there was that little whisper saying Tanya, I don't think that's for you go over here. Now I disregard other things I liked is something that wouldn't get me enough money wouldn't be enough to make a living from or wouldn't be respected. I tried to answer these questions. I had a bit like an exam, you know, thinking very factually about what I thought my strengths were.
And then I remembered a woman called Steffi, Head of Marketing for BMW head office in Germany, you know, their flagship, she was gorgeous, intelligent, she seemed powerful, she just glide into our lectures glide into our tutorials. And I thought, wow, I want to be like her. So I needed a job. And I wanted some experience at BMW. So I became a receptionist. I became a receptionist at a local BMW dealership because a friend knew someone who worked there. And that was my in it was the global financial crisis. After all, there were no jobs. So I blocked time before work during my lunch break, and after work, to really teach myself marketing. I started with social media because it was super new at the time, copywriting, photo editing, email marketing, that kind of thing. And I started to deliver mail to the managing director at this BMW dealership and I developed a mentor mentee relationship with him. Mr. Martin Rola, if you are listening, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to your leadership team, thank you for taking a chance on me. This was a major turning point in my life that allowed me to change direction and shift up a gear in my career. So I pitched my social media strategy to his leadership team. And they made me a job as a social media manager for that group, which also had many and Lamborghini at the time, fun times for me. So this is all during the financial crisis. So I thought this is an excellent result. Nothing lucky about that here. So I continued to block time for learning, I continued figuring out how to build more of my marketing assets, my marketing skills. So I learned how to put together basic websites, post websites, design logos, and billboards, write long form articles and blogs, post, post these blogs, it was a whole different area, search engine optimization, Seo was learning about SEO, there was a there's a whole dark side to search engine optimization, I had no idea. And also stuff like online ads and a Google social media ads, it was all quite new then still. So after all, I wanted to be like Steffi head or director of marketing. And I knew I needed to know all the tools in the marketing toolbox. Seven months after being a social media manager at this BMW dealership, I moved cities from Brisbane to Melbourne, and I got a job at a small creative agency. They liked my diverse marketing skills, and so I could put them to use there. I saw how my boss was running her business. And I decided that if she could do it, gosh, I could do that, too. To be really honest, she wasn't very good at paying me. I kind of needed to create more income for myself. So I went to my network of lawyers Hello. And I got three clients on retainer in a month. I then went on to a bigger agency as their head of a new social media division. I also disclosed my side hustle to make sure they're all good with that, of course, and they were fine. One thing that was key to change and growth in my life, and in my career, was that I didn't stop learning. Even when I felt I'd learned everything I needed to. I always blocked time for being curious, curious about subjects that piqued my interest that might not even be related to the work I was doing. So at this time in my life, my learning evolved to wanting to understand human behavior. Now, it wasn't for glamorous reasons or human behavior. Let's figure that out. No, I just really wanted to learn how to deal with difficult people and not get so affected by their crap. Really, that's what I wanted. And that's when I really fell in love with self development. I mean, I dabbled in it when I was a lawyer, but I had other I had bigger fish to fry. Now I was more into my physical health, my exercise and nutrition, because I wanted to gain my health back. So now but now that I'd gained it back, and I'd really optimized it, I realized that there was something more there was something greater here that was missing. There was another lever to pull, but I didn't know what that lever was. It was invisible, but I just knew there was something else there to unlock my next level of potential. This is because in order to act on your vision, or a change or gear shift that you want to make ache, the reality is, you need to activate a new level of energy. It's going to take something more than what you're doing now. And if you think you're busy now, well, energy isn't just mental and physical. Now, that's good news and bad news. Because we've been told that that's what energy is, you got mental energy, and you got physical energy, and you optimize that. But my friend, we also have emotional and spiritual energy. So if you're only optimizing your mental and physical health, you will only ever optimizing and maxing up to 50% of your energy potential, this means you've got 50% left on the table. So you need to optimize your emotional and spiritual energy as well. To do that, check out episode nine, where you will understand the four key areas of energy and how to optimize them at a high level. So if you feel called to something greater, learn to level up your energy. So there I was, I had gone from teaching in Chinese tent, to studying law, working three to five jobs, being a lawyer, being a receptionist, to a social media manager to go into a small agency to a bigger agency. And then I made the move from Australia to London. Now, in less than two weeks of making the move, I had my first job as Head of Marketing for an international business. After all the work I'd put into learning that full toolbox of marketing, I'd had finally paid off, I was now being headhunted for my head of marketing roles. And I was also learning to hire and lead teams, I was also still learning self development, because the more I learned about how to unlock my potential, the better my performance became, and the happier and better my team became, because I could help them develop as people and professionals, when you do the work for yourself, you're able to recognize it, and lead other people. So it was actually four weeks after moving to London that I'd taken self development to a whole new level by certifying as a high performance coach in the US, because I really wanted to nail down how to unlock my potential. Now, after I certified, I started to have some really strong visions about becoming a coach becoming a coach for real becoming a coach in my career. That thought intrigued and excited me it felt like a whole new level. Kind of scary, because because it was uncertain, but exciting. With the promise of having greater life satisfaction and engagement in what I was doing. I want that. And I know other people want that too. So I hope this is helpful. So have you ever had a strong vision for something, a strong desire, and you kind of see it playing out in your mind? You're not really sure how to do it. But then some coincidences start to happen, some miracles start to happen. Well, that started to happen for me. I started talking about coaching to my friends and my colleagues, past colleagues as well who are saying, Tony, how did you make all this change is amazing. I just said, Oh, I did this. I did this. I did this. And I was doing that, while working full time as head of marketing. By talking about it. I had clients find me. In 2019, I got talking to a businessman in a cafe. He turned out to be a very generous kind Brit residing in Dubai. He loved the sound of what I did and decided as my side hustle and coaching, I was still working full time. And he decided to buy 10 sessions 10 one on one, three months for signature program sessions for 10 of his senior leaders in one of his businesses. So Mr. Mahesh della Mel, thank you so much for my first corporate coaching opportunity because before that, I've been coaching private individuals one on one without time to scale without time to earn enough and enough money to leave my full time job, that Mahesh with the opportunity. I had enough to live for almost a year. So thank you. So many people deeply appreciate you for your kindness and generosity. This time my friend, I handed in my notice I handed in my notice for voluntary redundancy. What Yes, I volunteered for redundancy. Take that Ah, now, I did this a few weeks before the COVID lock downs you know, remember Do you remember that time?
Did we get on the tube? Do we not how transmissible is it? You know, what's gonna happen to us? Everyone at work thought I was super crazy, but I didn't see a better opportunity. And I needed to fulfill that contract with those leaders in Dubai while working from my rented one bedroom flat in London. So yes, I get it from an outsider's perspective, it was a high risk, maybe even slightly negligent decision. But I had the vision, I had the feeling, and I decided to give it a go. So over the last four years or so, I've been coaching, coaching and mix of one to one and then team coaching. And then bigger group coaching, doing workshops. I've also been getting a crash course in being a bootstrapping entrepreneur, learning to give keynote presentations, and I had no idea I'd become a speaker. It was only after I was invited that I had to learn and had to learn on the go. You know, maybe I was lucky that I knew how to unlock my potential. But really, I still think about it. That wasn't luck. I intentionally dedicated time to being curious to exploring and learning things that I heard people talk about or read about that piqued my interest. And that's how that's how I found the world's highest rating coaching practice, the certified High Performance Coaching Program. So yes, I use those principles to unlock my potential. And this is fondly I look back fondly, to see that I've gone full circle, I've gone full circle back to Tanya's teaching tent, guiding people with best practice for unlocking their potential, I still use a4 paper, I use a4 paper for guided reflection, going deeper into certain practices. And instead of the tent, you know, we're on video call, or I'm on site with the client or we're at Soho House. So to discover yourself, to find your purpose and passion and unlock your potential here, you've got to practice five key habits, you don't need to go through the rigmarole, the ups and downs, the uncertainty of what I went through, you can practice five key habits from high performance coaching. And they are these things one, gaining, maintaining and giving clarity to generating and elevating your energy, elevating your positive moods and not being so reactive to stuff, activating your 360 degrees of energy. Three, increasing your productive impacts are the stuff that's going to move the needle on that dashboard. So you can shift up a gear, you got to be able to focus to not be distracted, for good to demonstrate more courage, my friend, you got to lean into the fear and uncertainty but because you've got clarity, because he got energy and you know what you need to focus on, you can do that you can do it with more confidence. And then finally, fifth, and finally you got to level up your influence. You got to level up how you have relationships with people personal and professional. But luckily, they're all people. So what works at home also works at work. I've dedicated the first eight episodes of this podcast to getting you more clarity, specifically self clarity, relationship, clarity, goal clarity, habits, clarity, because your habits, they're either supporting you or they're sabotaging you. So check out episodes one through eight on these topics. I've also started talking and teaching about energy Tanya's teaching tent, so check out episodes nine through 12 There will be more on energy, but those will help you understand the full spectrum the 360 degrees of mental physical, emotional and spiritual energy, how to increase your emotional resilience, how to set healthy boundaries, and also increase your mental energy. Now there will be more on those top on those energy topics. I have thrown this episode 13 here on purpose and passion because for me, purpose and passion a very much linked to clarity and energy, very much clarity and energy related. So I've thrown this in to summarize the steps that I took to get clear on my purpose and passion and turn it into my career. So this is before I knew about certified High Performance Coaching and after I knew about it, so one To become okay with wanting something different, become okay with wanting something more for yourself, you have to be okay with it. If you are going to blame yourself for what you've done already or guilt trip yourself what you think you've done or needed to have done before, then you're just gonna feel crap about the change you want to make and you won't do it, you'll just be a bad, a bad mood, and Ill mood and persons and someone with a bad temper maybe to stay curious about everything that piques your interest. So you got to stay curious. And you also have to lock time for a debt that does just a bump up up or lock time. And if you say, Tanya, gosh, I'm just so busy. Honey, I've got no time. I will say you don't want it badly enough. You don't want it badly enough. You don't want the change enough. So I say How about you make some swaps don't add anything in unless you subtracted something out, subtract out, or just subtract that escapism time, turn that escapism time into exploring time into learning time into finding out more about what has piqued your interest. And what I love about having a calendar and using technology is that you can make this recurring time, you can ring fence protect, block out time in your calendar recurring for this stuff. Step three, start to talk. And I start to tell people about what you're learning about that to tell them about what has piqued your interest and why it gets you excited and what it means to you. You'll find that you'll start to get introductions to people you didn't know before who also have that interest or are related in some way. And you'll start to have some very enlightening conversations. For start a passion project, start a project on this thing, or whatever it is, that is peeking your interest and really exciting you you could feel is your passion. You want to be able to experience it, you want clarity about what it is like. So set that business up, set that project up, turn it into a side hustle, offer it to people do stuff for free charge for it, just do something with it. Fifth step, consider opportunities to be commercial, yes. If what you're doing with your passion, or this purpose of yours provides a simple solution to a complex problem or deep frustration that people have, then this could be a moneymaker for you. So start to think about how you could make this commercial? How would people best consume? Take on board? What you're providing? What are your competitors doing?
How are they structuring their businesses? What are they charging? How much time is involved? Do you need a team really fun questions. And the sixth and final step is protect and amplify your energy, you're going to amplify the 360 degrees of energy, your mental and physical Yes, and your emotional and spiritual energy, he got to protect that not everyone will support you. But you do need to get support from someone. Now whether that's a mentor, a coach, someone else who's done this before, whether it's via their book via their podcast by them personally, whatever it is, I have had so much guidance from people that are no longer with us that I'd never even met because I'd read it through their books or listen to lectures they made 20 years ago, it was still relevant. This point leads me to some bonus ideas. I've got three bonus side notes for you to discovering your purpose and passion and then being able to act on it. And the first is this idea of support. What if your partner is not supportive? That's a big one, isn't it? We often don't start staff or don't finish staff because we don't have the support that we need at home. The people closest to our heart don't understand. Maybe they think we're selfish. And just they're just being unsupportive of it. They're or they're afraid of change. Really. It's not that they're trying to stop you in a bad way. They're just unsure. They're unclear about what this will look like and how this will impact your relationship. How it'll impact your family if you have one. What it's going to mean moving forward, are they still safe to change brings up all of this fear. You need to have conversations with them you need to learn and how to have influence and conversations with them to give them clarity to maintain clarity to share your excitement and energy with them to involve them if you can, in what you're focusing on and in what you're building, you can make it a team effort. When I was changing jobs from that smaller agency that wasn't paying me very well, or just paying me to bigger Agency, and the difference in my salary was double. My long term partner at the time, we were together for almost six years. He said to me, What makes you think he can get that, and I was crushed. Now, he didn't say it. in a mean way. He was trying to protect me and manage my expectations. However, that's not what I needed. At the time, I needed a champion, I needed someone to help me champion my bigger vision for myself, and what it would mean to our partnership, not just financially, but in me feeling secure and happy and engaged in what I was doing. Now, sadly, that was the first nail in our coffin. It kind of went downhill from there, but do what you can to get support from your partner. So if there's an extra stomping on, I'm kind of hitting my not hitting, but kind of tapping my chest, my heart as I as I say this. My second bonus side note is to remember that your purpose changes and evolves over time, what you're passionate about, and how you deliver that passion, how you express that passion, will change and evolve over time, maybe you really love music, and you're the player of musical instruments, and that's what you do. And then it's evolving to you becoming the teacher of instruments and then involves even more to teaching, not just one to one, but to a whole lecture theatre. And then from a whole lecture theatre, it evolves to teaching online. So your purpose can, your passion and purpose can be different also, from the various roles you play in your life. Maybe your passion in what you do in your career is, excuse me evolving and changing. But then also, you've got different roles and different purposes in your roles. Maybe your purpose is in a role as a parent, maybe you have a purpose, in a role as a carer for your partner. These things and children grow, people heal and get better, it'll change over time. So keep that in mind as well. Don't be so rigid about what you think things should be and how you think they should be done, because that's not evolution or growth. My third and final bonus side note is what if you can't implement the six steps right now? What if you you're working on something really important, or you're hamstrung, and you've got to wait a few months? That's fine. I just say, put a deadline in your calendar, have a D day mark a day that you will start a day to end all dates. That is the end? What if you have to wait more than a few months? What if you are stuck, because society or the market or the economy, whatever it is, is keeping you where you are now there are no opportunities right now there's nothing for you to create. You really, truly are stuck. If that's the case, I only for where you are. But I have a challenge for you. My challenge is that you find something to love about what you're doing. Find something to love about it. Think about what your cog turning means in this bigger machine. That is the company or the industry that you're in, think about if your cogs stopped, how is that going to show bring the whole machine to a standstill, think about your unique contribution and how you can make it better how you can bring yourself to it in a better way with a better attitude with better energy. And if that's still a struggle, then I want you to find someone, someone who is worth doing this all for someone who is worth fighting for. Maybe it's your family. Maybe it's their future that you want to set them up for. Maybe you're fighting for someone at work, who you know is having a really difficult time and your mission is to bring a smile to their face every day. Find someone to fight for that is what high performers do. And really, there are high performers in all walks of life in all stages of life. It's not just the elite, successful people who we see as successful as high performers. We have high performers everywhere. Moms with newborns, Dad is taking care of their kids stay at home dads, people who are stuck in a nine to five or a dead end job because they have to get something pay. They have to support someone or something at that time in their life and that is their purpose. Just don't lose your vision. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you'd like to support my high performance made simple podcast, you know what I'd feel oh, so purposeful and useful. So please help me by sharing it with three awesome people. Maybe they're a group of your mates, maybe they're your colleagues, maybe even your partner in life. To get the latest from me. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Tanya Semerad or Instagram and Tiktok as well at Tanya underscore highperformance and I look forward to tuning in with you again soon. Ciao for now.
