99: Selfish For Success -- Embracing Your Self-Interest as a Leader with Dr. Steve Orma

Ep099 Selfish for Success Embracing Self Interest as a Leader w Dr Steve Orma on TalentGrow Show Halelly Azulay

Selfishness is a word that typically connotes serving oneself at the expense of others. But Dr. Steve Orma, clinical psychologist and host of the Selfish For Success podcast, explains why this definition is a dangerous package-deal that villainizes a healthy concern for one's own self-interest. The result? Guilt and internal conflict.

Selfishness is a word that typically connotes serving oneself at the expense of others. But Dr. Steve Orma, clinical psychologist and host of the Selfish For Success podcast, explains why this definition is a dangerous package-deal that vilifies a healthy concern for one’s own self-interest. The result? Guilt and internal conflict. On this episode of The TalentGrow Show, Steve and I discuss how leaders are negatively impacted by this cultural stigma against selfishness and what steps you can take to upgrade your leadership effectiveness by embracing your self-interest. How much responsibility should you take on as a leader and how much should you leave to your team? What makes a leader respected? What should you do if you start to feel that you’re not on the right career path? Listen to get Dr. Orma’s take on these questions and more. Plus, learn the crucial difference between serving others and being subservient and how that knowledge can impact your success as a leader. Give this a listen and share with others in your network!

ABOUT DR. STEVE ORMA:

Dr. Steve Orma is a California-licensed clinical psychologist and mental health expert specializing in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, and stress. He is the host of the Selfish for Success podcast. Dr. Orma holds a Doctor of Psychology from San Francisco’s Alliant International University and has extensive clinical experience helping individuals of all backgrounds from PTSD war vets to students, moms, young professionals, entrepreneurs, and more. He is widely quoted in the national media for his mental health expertise including ABC News, MSNBC, Fast Company, Women’s Health, Shape, Men’s Journal, and more.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Steve discusses his reasons for naming his podcast “Selfish For Success” despite the typically negative connotation of the word ‘selfish’ (6:26)
  • Taking care of yourself doesn’t have to be at the expense of taking care of others (8:09)
  • The sense of guilt that arises from defining selfishness negatively (9:04)
  • Halelly and Steve dig into the difference between serving others and being subservient, specifically in the context of leadership (11:21)
  • Steve breaks down why Steve Jobs was respected as a leader within the context of this perspective on selfishness (12:15)
  • Why you can’t be a leader if you are selfless in the literal sense (12:43)
  • Pursuing your happiness doesn’t mean hurting others or, on the other hand, sacrificing yourself (13:40)
  • Steve shares an example of a CEO who suffered from anxiety as a result of putting too much pressure on himself (15:34)
  • Halelly talks about a theory from the book The Responsibility Virus, which says that the more excessive responsibility you take on as a leader, the more you teach your team to step back from responsibility (18:31)
  • Being true to yourself about what you want in your career (19:21)
  • Ask yourself: Am I really pursuing the career that I want to pursue, and if not, what’s stopping me? (21:07)
  • How to think about a career-change when there are responsibilities that seem to keep you chained to where you are (22:33)
  • Allow yourself to dream (24:10)
  • How to create a step-by-step career transition plan (24:30)
  • Steve recommends taking ‘thoughtful risks,’ and explains his thinking behind that (26:07)
  • What’s new and exciting on Steve’s horizon? (27:45)

RESOURCES:

  • Check out Steve’s website and listen to his podcast, Selfish For Success! Plus, get his free career guide.
  • Follow Steve on Twitter
  • Check out the book Halelly recommended on balancing the responsibility you take on as a leader: The Responsibility Virus. And for a shorter read - Halelly blogged about it here!
  • Listen to Episode 90 where Halelly discusses getting over the fear of saying “no”

Transcript:

Episode 99 Steve Orma

TEASER CLIP: Halelly: A leader who is truly selfless would be a nothing. They would be a marshmallow. You would have no respect for them. What you have respect for is somebody who has principles, who believes in certain things, who has integrity, who is strong but also fair and just, who has confidence, who has values that they are trying to protect. Selfless literally means no self. It means you have no values, you have no opinions. If you take that literally, because a lot of times people don’t take these literally, they think of selfless as being kind of nice, or kind. That’s not what it is. It literally means not having a self, and you cannot lead if you were selfless. You have to be self-respecting and self-valuing and have self esteem to be a leader.

[MUSIC] Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.

Halelly: Hey, hey, TalentGrowers. Welcome back to another episode of the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow, and this week I am going to try to get you triggered up. I’m not really trying to do that, but I am talking about something I view as kind of a controversial topic, which is the word selfishness. I’ve brought on a psychologist to actually talk to us about how you can take care of yourself without forsaking the people that you care about and the company that you care about. We talk about this topic. He has a very interesting perspective. His name is Dr. Steve Orma, and he also is a living example of some of the things he talks about, which is being true to yourself and your dreams and taking care of your happiness in a way that allows you to continue to be of service and of value to those around you. I hope that you’ll check it out. I’d love to hear what you thought about it afterwards, and without further ado, here is the TalentGrow Show with my guest, Dr. Steve Orma.

Welcome back TalentGrowers. This week I have an interesting and different guest from some of my previous guests in that he is a California-licensed clinical psychologist and mental health expert, Dr. Steve Orma. He specializes in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety and stress, and he is also a podcast host like me. His podcast is called Selfish for Success. I have been listening and enjoying his podcast, so that was one of the reasons that I chose to reach out to Steve to connect with him and definitely one of the reasons I’ve brought him on the show to share some interesting insights with you. Dr. Orma holds a Dr. of Psychology from San Francisco’s Alliant International University, and has extensive clinical experience helping individuals in all backgrounds, from PTSD war vets to students, moms, young professionals, entrepreneurs and more. He is widely quoted in the national media on his mental health expertise, including ABC News, MSNBC, Fast Company, Women’s Health, Shape, Men’s Journal and more. Steve, welcome to the TalentGrow Show.

Steve: Halelly, thanks so much for having me.

Halelly: I’m really glad that you’ve made time. I look forward to talking with you more about some of the things you’ve been bringing up in your podcast, actually, and of course any other tidbits you can bring to us from your world of treating people as a licensed clinical psychologist. But before we go there, I always ask my guests to introduce themselves and their professional journey very briefly. Where did you start and how did you end up where you are today?

Steve: I started actually at a different career, which was acting. I was a theater actor for 10 years. That’s what my undergraduate degree is. That kind of evolved over about 10 years and a few different cities. Ended up in New York, and I just got to a point where it wasn’t working for me and I wanted to do something where I could impact people more directly and more in an interactive way. I went back to grad school and focused on becoming a psychologist. My specialty areas are what you mentioned – anxiety and insomnia and stress and relationship things – and I specialize working with adults. I use a particular kind of therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. Cognitive just means you’re thinking and have been doing that now for the last 12 years.

Halelly: I know that you have also recently personally transitioned from being based in the San Francisco Bay area, I believe, to Europe? Can you tell us about that a little bit?

Steve: Sure. In 2015, my wife and I kind of fulfilled a dream and decided to leave the Bay Area and go travel around Europe. We did that for close to a year, just hopping from city to city and country to country. We worked remotely and we landed in one city that we fell in love with, which is Bordeaux, France, and we came back here actually a year ago. We’ve been a little more than a year, living, and rented an apartment in Bordeaux, France, and have been living here for that time. Now my practice is 100 percent online. I do therapy and coaching online with people.

Halelly: And mostly your clients are based in the U.S. still?

Steve: Yes, all my therapy clients are in California, just because of the licensing laws. But I see people for coaching in other parts of the U.S. and I’ve seen people actually from all over the world, from different countries. That’s the great thing about technology.

Halelly: So cool. Right now, I’m in California and Steve is in France. I love the possibilities that technology brings to us. The world is becoming much smaller and I did want to share that with you, TalentGrowers, because a lot of times we dream about things and they seem completely out of reach and I love the example that Steve is living by example, and doing something like that. He just reimagined his business and did what he wanted, instead of just dreaming about it. Good for you. I love it. It’s inspiring to me.

Steve: Thanks so much.

Halelly: All right, your podcast has a trigger word in it, the title of it. It’s called Selfish for Success. I can tell you that from my experience, at least, when people hear the word selfish, immediately red flags and alarm sounds go off in their brain. I’m not in their brains, I don’t know, but it seems that it just immediately triggers people into thinking really terrible, awful things. Here you have this beautiful yellow, cheerful podcast that is titled Selfish for Success. So, what made you – and I will disclose, also, that you and I have talked and I know why you’ve chosen that word and I share your perspective – but I thought it would be great to bring you on the show to explain to the listeners why you chose such a word and how do you define selfishness?

Steve: A lot to say about that question. The reason I chose it is probably a couple of reasons. One is I would say the main reason is the misunderstanding about what that word means. Because the word, as most people understand it, is what is called a package deal. A package deal is really when you’re combining two different meanings into one word and that happens in a lot of different words in the culture, or concepts. So selfish, as most people understand it, is I’m taking care of myself or I’m looking out for myself, but I’m doing that at the expense of other people. So I’m walking over people, I’m lying to them, cheating them. Like a criminal or someone like that, I’m taking advantage of someone to get what I want. And if you think about that, there’s two things going on there. It’s not really in your self-interest. If you really say, “I’m acting in my self interest,” is it really in yours elf interest to lie, cheat, steal and hurt people? No. I mean, anyone who has tried to do that in their lives realizes that backfires very quickly. You don’t feel good about yourself. It’s very self destructive, actually, not self-valuing.

Selfish just means taking care of yourself or being focused on yourself, but if you adopt it as a lifestyle, which is what I try to do on this show – meaning you apply it to every area of your life including your career, because I know your listeners, this show is focused on career – then what it is is you’re acting in your self interest as a human being, and as a human being you have certain needs and certain actions that are going to lead to success and certain actions that are going to lead to failure or self destruction. The reason I chose the word is because without it, people feel a lot of guilt when they try to do healthy things for themselves. I see this all the time in therapy with clients, and that’s kind of what prompted me. I saw clients over and over, clients that work for companies, who are professionals, who are CEOs, and they felt a lot of guilt because they felt they were being selfish when in reality they were just trying to take care of themselves or say no to someone or kind of pursue their dreams instead of what other people wanted for them. There was this internal conflict and it created a lot of depression or anxiety or relationship problems. And so I wanted to kind of give people a different version or a different definition, a meaning of that word, so it’s not a choice between completely sacrificing yourself or walking over other people, but instead pursuing your dreams and values in a healthy, self-respecting way.

Halelly: And when you think about taking care of yourself, without coupling that with the “at someone else’s expense” it doesn’t negate taking care of others. In fact, as you said, it’s very much in your interest to take care of the people that you work with, that you live with, that you care for, and taking care of your organization and its brand and taking care of making sure that you take care of your clients. You don’t stop taking care of other people when you take care of yourself. You can do both.

Steve: Yeah, because other people are a huge value. This is what people miss or can’t see when their mind goes to that general view of what selfishness means. If you think about it, if you respect your co-workers and you want to have a good relationship with them, it’s a give and take. It should be a win-win. Any kind of relationship should be that way. They’re of value to you. I love my wife. I want her to be happy. I care about her feelings and about her happiness and I support her. But I do that for myself too, so it’s both. It’s taking care of yourself, but also nurturing the relationships and the people and the professional relationships you have in your life as well. All of that is good for you.

Halelly: Yes. And I totally, totally agree. In fact, when people throw around the word selfless – I don’t know if you’ve seen this, like a true leader is selfless or even servant leadership – that kind of triggers me. I feel like if you think serving others is a value, I agree. But if you think being a servant, which means to me subservient or negating yourself and only serving the others, I think that in the end, that brings you a lot of dysfunction to everyone. What do you think?

Steve: I totally agree. I think a leader who is truly selfless would be a nothing. They would be a marshmallow. You would have no respect for them. What you have respect for is somebody who has principles, who believes in certain things, who has integrity, who is strong but also fair and just, who has confidence, who has values that they are trying to protect. Think of someone like Steve Jobs who ran a company. You definitely wouldn’t call him – and maybe he’s not the best example because people have a negative view of him in terms of his management style – but I think he was respected as a leader and he was a strong leader. But if you take any leader that you respect, they have a mind. They have values. Selfless literally means no self. It means you have no values, you have no opinions. If you take that literally, because a lot of times people don’t take these literally, they think of selfless as being kind of nice, or kind. That’s not what it is. It literally means not having a self, and you cannot lead if you were selfless. You have to be self-respecting and self-valuing and have self-esteem to be a leader.

Halelly: I think that when you think about things philosophically like that, and you say check your premise, what does it actually mean in the end? If you take it through its natural course through the outcome that’s going to happen, if you really are selfless, in the end you’re going to burn yourself out to the point that you are no longer helpful or useful in your role. You can’t serve other people in any way when you have allowed yourself to wither, as you said, to become a marshmallow. So you lose the value you bring if you neglect to keep that value going.

Steve: Exactly. I think another way to think about this is the goal in my view is happiness. It’s for everybody. Everyone goes out and pursues their happiness. Every person on the planet. If everyone is pursuing their happiness and they’re truly doing the things that will lead to happiness, so in your career it’s pursuing a career that you love and becoming very skilled at it and being accomplished and being creative and whatever it is for you that your specific goal is, because that’s going to lead to your happiness. That doesn’t require hurting anyone else. You can do that with integrity, with honesty and with respecting yourself and being strong and being a leader. It doesn’t at all mean sacrificing yourself or being selfless. If everybody does that, then everybody is pursuing their values and everyone is being selfish in this healthy way, because it’s not about hurting or walking over others. It’s about respecting yourself and pursuing your values. Pursuing your happiness.

Halelly: And as you said earlier, you gave an example that your wife is a value, so pursing your values totally includes pursuing the happiness of those that are important to you, like your team, your organization and so forth.

Steve: Absolutely. I’m sure some of your listeners have worked at kind of dysfunctional companies where people don’t get along, where they’re fighting or backstabbing or they just don’t respect people. That’s a miserable environment to work in, just like it would be miserable to live in a home like that. You want to be in a workplace where you respect your coworkers and they respect you, where you’re all pursuing goals for the company and for your individual careers that are going to lead everybody to success and to happiness. And it’s about working more in harmony and working together, rather than everyone for themselves, which is another way people think of as being selfish. But that doesn’t really work in relationships.

Halelly: I know that you help a lot of clients who struggle with that conflict, that internal conflict that is created from trying to pursue a goal that is in their self dis-interest, that goal of being selfless and/or the society teaches us this. Some religions teach us this, so there are so many messages that tell them, “Hey, you should be selfless,” and obviously they have an internal conflict because in your nature it’s to take care of yourself. Your brain’s number one function is to keep you alive. Everything about your biology is rigged for self-preservation, which is selfishness, and that’s a good thing. So guilt you mentioned? Are there any other kinds of common dilemmas that you see and maybe give us one example and how you help people overcome it?

Steve: I’ll give you an example, this is a CEO that I saw a few years ago in San Francisco, and he had a tech company and he came to see me for anxiety. The thing that was making him so anxious is he felt like he had to kind of take care of everything and he had a hard time trusting his managers to do what they were hired to do, either because he felt like he could do it better or he was so nervous that they would mess up and then that would mess up the company and his goal was to eventually sell the company or be acquired. So he had all this anxiety and stress because he was taking on more roles than he should as the CEO, instead of doing what the CEO should do and lead the company and be more of the broader vision. He was trying to take responsibility for everyone else’s job. And so that created a lot of anxiety and stress. He had to learn to let go and just trust the people on his team. I think that I’m trying to tie that to selfishness, because I think where that could come in is, he was so worried about screwing up and messing up that he put this enormous pressure on himself because if he screwed up, then that’s going to reflect on himself, on his self esteem and he felt it was his responsibility to kind of take care of everyone else in his company. And that cost him to kind of put too much on his shoulders, instead of saying, “No, this is my responsibility, as the CEO, it’s this, and that actually is going to help the company run stronger if I’m doing that and not trying to do everyone else’s job. It’s also going to help my health – my mental health, my physical health, my ability to sleep.” And also his relationships with his coworkers and his managers. And let them do their job. He was eventually, through the work, he was eventually able to let go and start trusting the people on his team and that relieved a lot of anxiety and pressure and he felt much better. Of course the relationships he had with his team improved a lot, because he was letting them do what he hired them to do.

Halelly: Totally. Because a lot of times leaders, if you do the hiring, and you hire people that have the competencies and the values that you need, and then you prevent them from putting them to work and using their own judgment and actually doing stuff, you are definitely sending a message, even if not explicitly, but implicitly or subliminally to them that you don’t think that they can do it. So that’s very demotivating, so he was actually creating so much of the dysfunction, or almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s a theory that I like that I’ve described in a blog post before, written about in a book called the responsibility virus, where the more you don’t release responsibility and take on more as the over responsible leader, the more that you actually teach people to step back from responsibility. Because what’s the point?

Steve: I agree. I think selfishness, or selflessness, rather, it can lead to you trying to take everything on your shoulders. This is a very common thing I see with clients. They try to take on too much responsibility in their work, in the home as well, but in their job they take on every project someone asks them to do and they get overloaded and anxious and stressed out because they don’t know how to say no. Because if they say no, they’re going to upset somebody and you can’t do that. That’s selfish because part of being selfless is sacrificing yourself to others – that’s what altruism means. Other, putting others before yourself. That’s that that word literally means. That’s what we’ve all been taught – a nice, good person is the one that puts others first and puts themselves second. And if you put yourself first and you say no to a coworker, or if you say, “You know, I have enough on my plate now and I can’t take that on,” that’s really uncomfortable for people to do. So they don’t do it, and that’s the least of the anxiety and the overwhelm. But it also leads to a lot of resentment. Because even though they’re saying yes, they feel resentful, usually for the other person, because that other person asked them to do it and they weren’t able to say no. It just causes all these problems in a relationship.

Halelly: Totally. By the way, TalentGrowers, hopefully you’ve listened to episode 90 where I actually riffed why we are afraid to say no and how to say no. That will be a great follow-up for this one if you haven’t listened to it yet, or re-listen to it. So Steve, we’re coming close to the end here and I want to make sure that we share some of your favorite strategies. You have resources on your website, which we will link to in the show notes, where people can learn more, but what are maybe one, two or three of your favorite strategies that can help leaders and professionals in general experience greater career success? Especially from that perspective that you bring.

Steve: One thing, since we’ve been talking about selfishness that’s kind of been the theme of the show, is to really know and check in with yourself about what you want for your career. Are you pursuing the career that you want. Because a lot of times people default to a certain career that they never really thought through very well or sometimes people kind of get influenced or pushed into a career by someone else in their life like a parent or a friend, and they don’t step back and really think about, “What is my dream career? What am I going for? What am I working toward?” I think that should include, it should be a career you love. You should be passionate about it, you should be interested in it, and something that challenges you and that you enjoy doing and you can put your stamp on it. I guess that first sort of shift is to step back and think, “Am I pursing the career that I really want to pursue? Am I on the track I want to be on? If not, why not? What’s stopping me?” And if so, great. But ask that question every once and a while and check in because it’s very easy to get sort of sidetracked and that keeps you on track toward where you want to go.

Halelly: Let’s just say that deep down inside, you realize that you are in a career that is not ideal for you, whether you knew it from the beginning and forgot or tried to forget, or whether it’s just no longer ideal for you. Like you said, you were an actor and then you changed. What would be something a person could do that would be not too overwhelming, but gets them started to make a change? I find, especially people that are maybe middle aged or more, there’s a lot of responsibilities that you have. You have a mortgage, you have kids, whatever, that tend to keep you chained to the reality you already have established.

Steve: I think that a career change – and as I said, I did that. I was 37 I think when I went back to grad school or 34. Something like that. That can be very challenging, especially if you have to continue working. I would say number one, just take it slow. Don’t put pressure on yourself, step back and just first think. Take some time when you’re not at work, where it’s quiet, where you can just be alone. It’s good to do it on paper because just writing out your thoughts, and ask yourself, “I’m not happy in this career I’m doing. What would I like to do? What is my dream?” And allow yourself to dream. So many times people, they kind of stop letting themselves dream because they think either it’s impractical to do that or as soon as the thing that they really want to do comes up, they immediately dismiss it. You can’t figure out what you really want if you do that. The first step is to allow yourself to dream, even if what comes out is completely unreasonable or ridiculous, whatever it is. Trapeze artist, actor, musician – and just brainstorm what sounds fun to you or interesting. You might already know what that is.

Then once you figure out what it is, and that might take a little while and you might need to do a little research, but once you figure out, “Yeah, this is what I want to do. I want to shift to this other career,” then create a plan. Don’t quit your job right away. But create a plan on your downtime to figure out how you’re going to transition. It depends on what it is. If you have to go back to school or if you have to go take classes or you have to get certification or whatever it is, figure out a plan, step-by-step plan, and slowly start enacting it on the side. If you can afford to quit your job, you have enough money to do that, then great. You can transition to the other thing full time. But if not, a lot of people aren’t in that position and you can do it slowly on the side, and build it up until you’re ready to make the full transition.

Halelly: And part of your plan can be maybe do some more aggressive saving so that you can create that cushion for when the time comes to maybe go to part-time with your current career or even quit completely. Something you can actually create as a goal.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. That can be part of the planning ahead. If you need a certain amount of money to make the transition, then figure out what that is and save that up and that’s what a lot of people do. Then when you quit it’ll give you however much time you need to be able to transition into the other thing.

Halelly: You only have one life, and happiness, as you said, should be your goal. So if you’re living in a miserable situation and feeling like there’s nothing you can do, we’ve got to change that. Give us one more.

Steve: I would say take risks. But thoughtful risks. Don’t go into work tomorrow – because I said take risks – and do something crazy. But a lot of times, as we get older, we get really safe and we’re so careful about what we say and what we do and the goals we’ve set, and I think to keep your career exciting and challenging and fun and actually to create juice and motivation, you need to have some exciting goals. Otherwise you’ll get bored and you can get kind of stuck. So make sure you’re going after kind of big, exciting goals that challenge you, that maybe make you a little scared, and then start going after them and take some risks. Risks might be speaking up. Maybe if you want to move up, let’s say you want to move up in the company, eventually run the company, communicate that to your manager. Hopefully you’re working with someone who will work with you and help you, and tell them, “This is my goal. I would really like to run the company one day,” or whatever it is. “What can I do to help me move toward that? Are there things that I can do? Responsibilities, skills I can learn.” But really be thoughtful about what you want and set those big, exciting goals and then go for them. That makes things exciting and it’s also, we underestimate ourselves so much that when you do that, you end up accomplishing things that you couldn’t imagine.

Halelly: Yes. You end up rising to the occasion. I love it. Speaking of exciting, what is one thing that’s exciting and new on your horizon, Steve? What’s got you energized these days?

Steve: What’s got me energized is I’m creating, I guess it’s a coaching program is what it is. It’s called the Ambitious Dreamer coaching program. Basically, what it is, it’s going to be an eight-week group coaching program for people who have dreams, kind of some of the stuff that I talked about today, so it could be career dreams, any dreams – you’re trying to find your dream romantic partner – but you’re being stopped by fear or self doubt or limiting beliefs. That’s 90 percent of the time what stops people from actually going after their dreams. It’s not intelligence or skill or knowledge. It’s just you’re afraid or you don’t think you have what it takes. So this is my specialty area so I’m adopting that to help people actually achieve their dreams and so I’m building that program right now. Hopefully it will come out in the next few months.

Halelly: Wow, that sounds super exciting. I love it. You’re going to help so many people actually maximize their potential and have that true happiness. Or at least live without regrets, which is one of the things I suggest. And so I know people are going to want to learn more from you and about you. Where can do they do that?

Steve: Just go to my website, which is DrOrma.com and you can sign up there for, I have a career guide, a couple of things that I talked about are in there, but it goes over about 13 different ways to be successful in your career to actually be more selfish in that healthy way. Or you could reach out if you want to contact me to work with me.

Halelly: Great. Do you do social media at all? Should people follow you anywhere?

Steve: I wish I knew, Twitter is probably the best place. I think it’s @DrSteveOrma. I think that’s what it is.

Halelly: We’ll double check and link to it in the show notes. And of course, folks, check out Steve’s podcast called Selfish for Success. It’s right over wherever you’re listening to this, somewhere next door. Steve, thank you so much for taking time and speaking with us today, all the way from Bordeaux, France. We appreciate your insights.

Steve: Great, Halelly, it was really fun being here. Appreciate it.

Halelly: Okay, you made it this far. What did you think? I hope that you enjoyed this episode, TalentGrowers, and I’m really glad that you came along for the ride and entertained this idea. I hope that you found it valuable and that you will take action. I think that Steve is very inspiring. I personally am very inspired to think some more about the challenge that he issued to us, to really think about are you in a career that makes you happy? Is this what you want to do? Have you let go of some of your dreams? If you have, pick them back up. This is your one life to live. It’s way too short and you don’t want to live with regrets. So hopefully this has given you practical information you can use and also inspired you a little bit.

As always, I’m super eager to hear what you thought, and if you leave me a voicemail on my website, you just go to any page of my website, whether you use your smartphone or your computer, on the right side there’s a black tab. You just record a short message and send it to me, and we can correspond that way. Certainly if it’s a comment or question or feedback, I can also play it on a future episode of the TalentGrow Show with your permission of course. You can also leave a comment on the show notes page, TalentGrow.com is where that is, or on social media. Looking forward to hearing from you. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow. This is another episode of the TalentGrow Show and until the next time, make today great.

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Intro/outro music: "Why-Y" by Esta

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