031: Career Development - Part 1

Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues, and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.

Hi, and welcome to the episode all about career development. I'm so excited about this one. And I said episode but I'm pretty sure it's going to be episodes, maybe two, maybe three, we'll see where it goes. Because I like to keep these short and sweet, given that we're all busy. So but really excited. And the thing that I want to point out before we even jump in, is that really everything we've done and worked on and talked about up to this point is career development. And we'll get into that just a little bit more as we dive in. And we talk about some of the most important things. But the reality is there, this whole concept of work life and personal life and keeping the two separate, has to go, it has to go. And that's controversial. Because those of us who grew up in the core corporate world, we learned exactly the opposite, separate them work life, personal life, keep them separate. Now, what I'm talking about here is not that you should be talking about your religion and your politics at work. It's not that it's that what happens to you in your work life impacts your personal life and what happens to you in your personal life impacts your worth work life, and it's just all one life. And the reality is we spend on average, and this has been like surveyed, we spend 1/3 of our adult lives, waking hours or adult waking hours at work. Now, that's if you work a 40 hour workweek. A lot of us work more hours than that, right? We have different schedules. But a third of your waking hours that doesn't include sleep will be spent at work and your adult life. And I don't say that to sound depressing. If it does sound super depressing, then you're probably in the wrong job I think a lot of us are and well, we can talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And you probably would have already learned that in the beginning of the program, as well as you went through your nine year old self exercise your one year to live exercise, your values, your goals, all of that. So by now, if you started from the beginning, which I highly recommend you probably if you are in the wrong job, you probably know that and I get that it's not the easiest thing to make that change or get into the right job. But hopefully you're already working on that. So I'm not saying the third of the life thing to depress us, I'm saying it to motivate you to start looking at it as all one life. And we're gonna talk about why that's important as we get into it. Before we jump into the agenda, and what I want to cover in these episodes on career development, I want to talk to you a little bit about my own journey high level. And, you know, it'll give you the backdrop for how I've learned career development personally. So I started working for American Express when I was 19 years old, because my mom worked there for 15 years. And she knew they had tuition reimbursement. And so when I was getting ready to start college, she said, Hey, you should come get a job here because they will help pay for college. And I was like, Yeah, that's amazing. So I got the job. I was doing customer service. And I would work from six to 230 doing customer service, so on the phones, taking customer phone calls, and then I would go to school from like three to 10 It was actually really, really super exhausting to be honest. However, I think one of the important components of this for you to know is that I grew up in a blue collar lower middle class, working family, both my parents worked. I definitely had parent privilege. I want to recognize this because both my parents were so loving and supportive, supportive and I always had, you know, everything food, everything I needed. I was always able to play sports. But certainly I my parents didn't have a lot a lot of money. When we traveled. We went camping, that sort of thing. I did not go to an Ivy League school. I went to Westminster College in Salt Lake City. It's it's a good school. We'll, but certainly is not anything close to, you know, a fancy Ivy League school, I do not have an MBA, I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. And so I think the moral of this story is that, if I can do this, you can do this, you know, anyone can do this. And so I started there at 19. And with no plans to have necessarily a corporate career, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I majored in computer science because it quite frankly accepted all of my AP classes from high school and saved me a whole, almost two years of college. So I graduated with a bachelor's degree in two and a half years of college. And that's why I chose that major, because it was all applicable. And I knew computer science could apply to whatever job or career that I chose. So I got the job at AmEx, and up until I hit burnout. Right a year ago. Well, I guess that was two years ago, I've been back to Amex a year after taking a year off for burnout. But up until I hit burnout never left. Because it's an excellent wonderful company, wonderful company who supports Diversity and Inclusion at all the DEI things absolutely walk the talk, put their money where their mouth is, you get women get six months maternity leave, men get five months paternity leave. I just always, always loved it as a company, and I never left. So I continued to grow there. So I've been on the phones, I've been the person who does the work, I've been the person doing the spreadsheets and creating the PowerPoint presentation, spending hours and hours on those. I've also been the leader, and I've been everywhere in between. So now, having these larger roles, I've had global roles across the US leading large teams, I've hired people, I've fired people, I've done all of the things in between there. And what I'm going to share with you in this episode, is what I learned were the most important things for career development along my journey. And what I've now learned over the last few years coaching others well, to be honest with you, I've been coaching others in their careers for years, I mean, literally probably 10 to 15 years since I've been a leader, right, since I've had people reporting to me as a leader, I've been on career development, or and help them and support them and career development. So also what I'm going to share is what I've learned in helping coaching mentoring others through their career. So that's just a little bit about me and my story and kind of where I came from. So hopefully that helps us set the stage for you of where I'm coming from. And then the other thing I want to mention before sort of jumping into, you know, the the official agenda, what I want to cover here is that the two absolutely most important things for career development, in my experience for women, our body image and boundaries. And that might be surprising to you. Because we don't typically hear I think we hear boundaries. But I think when we hear boundaries, we think, Oh, that's scary that if you want career development, you can't have boundaries, and you have to do all the things and prove yourself and create this brand. And yes, you do need to create a brand. But I promise you, it doesn't need to be somebody who works around the clock in order to develop your career.

But we certainly don't think of body image when we think of career development. So body image and boundaries. And here's why. Because as women, society has taught us that our value and our worth comes from how we look, and serving all of those around us doing things for other aka lack of having boundaries. And so we have deep seated subconscious programming related to our own self worth and our value in those two areas. And so if you can overcome your body image issues, and and I don't mean when I say overcome, I don't mean you know, you you never think negatively about your body, or you don't have any struggles. I mean, you learn to accept, appreciate respect and love your current body, and I don't necessarily even mean the way it looks, I mean, the fact that it carries you through life. And remember, remember this is I've said it so many times I'm like a broken record throughout this program. The cure for negative body image is not weight loss, I'll say it again, the cure for negative body image is not weight loss. The cure for negative body image is changing your mindset to believe that your value and your worth in this world in this life have nothing to do with the way that your body looks. You are inherently valuable and worthy and you have value and worth in so many other areas. The least interesting thing about you is how your body looks or how much you weigh, or your body size. And if you don't learn how to chip away at that which by the way we have covered in this program in many episodes, right? So I think you're already working on it. Having that awareness spinning it into more positive spending time looking at you're looking at your body more all of the things that we've talked about. If you don't learn how to do those things, even if you lose a bunch of weight you We'll still think you need to lose weight and you still won't appreciate respect, love your body, right? So that is critical. And And also, if you don't work on that, it is highly unlikely that you will find the confidence you need to have the career development that you want, it is very, very difficult to develop in your career, you can you can develop I mean, I, I did develop a couple of career levels before I fixed my body image. But I was in the same level for eight years. And it wasn't until I started my body image therapy that I really started climbing, getting promoted getting to those in those more. Speaking up in those more senior meetings, that type of a thing, because I started to realize that I didn't have to hide and shrink. And that is what we subconsciously do when we dislike or are embarrassed about our bodies. And I get this is not easy. And I also get it doesn't apply to every single woman, right? Some of some of you don't struggle with body image, which is awesome, but you're rare. And that's why I'm speaking to this. And that's why I'm saying it's so important. And then the boundaries thing we're going to talk about as we jump in here, so important. So what I want to cover is today, today, in this episode, and probably like I said, two to three episodes is What does career development mean to you. We're going to talk about self care. We're going to talk about work psychology, love this topic, leadership, relationships, and then tactics and strategy. So I'm going to cover the whole gamut from the personal life aspect that I talked about, which I think is the most important for career development. But I will also go into just some of the more traditional, what do I do actually, in my job to help develop my career? We're going to talk about that, too. Okay. So first and foremost, where we're going to start is What does career development mean to you? That is, the first step in your career development journey, is really sitting down and thinking deeply about, what does it mean. And I think traditionally, we think about career development as promotion. And that's fine, if that's part of your journey, and what you want in your goals. And then there's this whole aspect of career development that, you know, there, there are a whole group of folks, and maybe you're one of them, where, you know, you are happy in your current role, and you want to continue growing and learning. And that's what helps keep you motivated and excited. And then there are, you know, levels in between where maybe you started a new role. So you're not interested in looking for promotion now. But you do want to stay on that track that journey where you are, you know, continuous improvement and development. So you are ready, once you've been in your role a few years, and you're ready for the next thing, maybe it's promotion, maybe it's a lateral move, whatever it is, but really just sitting down to think deeply about what career development means for you. And maybe some of that came up for you way back in the first module, when we talked about values and what you were thinking about there. So sit down and have a really great think about that. All right, now we're going to talk about self care. And this is going to get even deeper into where I said personal life, work life, it's all one life. So outside of the body image and the boundaries thing that I mentioned. And I think this actually relates to both of those, the single most important thing that you can do for career development, and especially if you feel like you're in a career rut, like if you are somebody who you feel like you're qualified for a promotion, you're undervalued at work, you're ready for that next step, but you keep getting passed up. Like it's not just happening, it's just not happening for you and you don't understand why. The most important thing you can do is your five non negotiables that we've talked about throughout the podcasts from you know, in multiple episodes. So these are drink water, drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, moving your body, getting the nutrition you need eating nutritious foods, foods that make you feel good, and stress management, those five things. So if you are struggling with those five things, start there. Forget about all the traditional career development things I really mean that like forget about those things and start there. And I'm not saying you need to perfect these five things before you know your career can start developing because they're obviously not easy to perfect. But just focusing there getting yourself a fun cute water bottle that you take with you everywhere and you drink your water. Yes, like I mean that might sound crazy or ridiculous to you that drinking water will develop your career. I promise it will. We've talked about it before our bodies three fourths of our bodies are made up of water. If you're not getting enough water, you're not going to feel good your brains not functioning at its top capacity. And if you don't feel good and your brain is not functioning well you're not going to do as well in your career as you could just fact like straight up fact. When I first first heard this, it was kind of like blew my mind that These, these non negotiables would help my career. And they absolutely have this is I have proven this women who I've worked with and coached have proven this 100% You start here, and these things will help you have more confidence, they'll help you have more confidence to set boundaries. And they will also help your body feel better and feel stronger. And when our body feels better and feel stronger, that is a part of helping chip away at negative body image issues. Because you just feel better when you feel bad. It's easier to hate on your body. Okay, so these are huge and massive. So this is the starting point for career development. Okay. And I cannot emphasize that enough boundaries and saying no, you know, I mentioned it before, the fear for most of the women who I work with boundaries is either you're going to come across as a bitch, right? Because society expects women to say yes, and serve all those around us. And when we don't fit that mold, and we have boundaries, we can be labeled as bitchy. And some of that is out of our control. You know, obviously, the way we say things matter, but I don't think most women are saying things in a rude Wait, I don't like the term bitchy, I'm using it because that's what society uses. So I might just actually like, probably not use it that much as we go on. But I want to be very clear that that is a stigma. And I know that women are afraid of that. I think most of us aren't saying things in rude ways. We're just shocking people by having boundaries and standing up for ourselves and speaking up. And that's a societal thing to to give us that label. So I actually think people ask me a lot, one of the most common questions I get with their career development is how do I have boundaries? How do I speak up without sounding bitchy. And a lot of what I tell them is, it's, but just by doing it just by us, as women coming to the table, speaking up, not letting ourselves get interrupted. Doing that more and more, will make it more common in society and take away the stigma more. So it's like exposure therapy, the more you do it, the more comfortable you're going to feel with it, the less you're going to have that fear of coming across that way. And the more all of us collectively do it, the less that we're going to have that societal stigma. I will say that I personally have been lucky enough at my company to actually never have have felt that way. I've always felt well, after I've worked on like my own issues, my own body image and confidence issues, I always felt

like I could speak up and would be heard. And that's another reason why American Express is just such a fabulous company. But I know that's not the case for everybody. It's probably not even the case for everybody within American Express. But it's certainly not the case for everybody across varying companies. And so we all have to work on this together to help change this societal stigma and help lift each other up in these ways. So but that's a lot of the fear around setting boundaries and around saying No, the other fear is that you will lose the brand or the reputation that you've built. A lot of us become very successful, because we are people pleasing, overachieving perfectionist, and it is really a tricky thing, that corporate society and let's be honest entrepreneurship. And that's the other thing I didn't mention too. In addition to the Career Development, sort of my high level story that I shared with you earlier, I have also been I have had my own business and been an entrepreneur, entrepreneur now coming up on two years so I'm a baby entrepreneur, obviously. But I have felt all of the ups and downs and the roller coaster and the fears with that it is scary. I've so I felt the imposter syndrome within the corporate world, but also within the entrepreneurial world. And I actually think the entrepreneurial one is a little bit scarier if I'm being honest, but they're they're both scary in their own way. Anyway, getting back to the boundaries thing. If people are worried that it will hurt this brand that they've built so the whole overachieving people pleasing perfectionist mindset gets you really far in both the corporate and the entrepreneur, nurturing world. And it's not healthy, it's not sustainable. We, we get a lot of we get a lot of praise from it, you get praise, you can get high ratings in your company for acting that way. But those three things people pleasing, perfectionism, over achieving, they are not healthy, they are not good things. I used to think of them as like good things because I was rewarded in my career for them for the longest time. But what was interesting is it wasn't until I started to gain confidence and stop doing those things that my career really started to take off. And especially after the burnout, especially coming back to the corporate world after burnout with hardcore boundaries, which I've only really been doing for the last year i i did have boundaries before because I was on this journey before I got to burnout. But I like that getting over the fear of leaving, which was the most terrifying decision. I really think of my life. Well, maybe maybe talk to one was more related to my marriage, which I've talked about in the past, but talk to most terrifying decisions of my life when I got past that fear and then was able to truly unravel unlink my value and worth from that over achieving performance at work, coming back in with boundaries, it's been the best year so far of my corporate, you know, 20 years, it's felt amazing. I've done you know, I've done really well, I haven't lost my brand. And I've really been able to have that time to focus on the things that matter to me strategy and leadership. They're really super important things DNI that sort of thing. So this whole thing about if I say, No, if I have boundaries, I'll lose my reputation, I'll lose my brand. That's actually not how it works, you actually come across as more confident when you do those things. And it frees up space for you to basically better utilize your brain be more strategic thinking asks, ask more questions. And then as you start to get the confidence, as I mentioned, from the body image things and all the things that we've been working on the morning routine, the five, non negotiables, all the things in the program, you're going to feel more comfortable speaking up. And that's how you're more likely to get noticed. And that's really, you know, a big part of where career development comes from. Okay. So along with having boundaries, and you get to decide what your boundaries look like, right, we did the whole exercise in my back in module three, the boundaries module module, where you set boundaries with yourself boundaries with friends and family and boundaries at work. So maybe after listening to this career development section of the podcast, you might want to go back and tweak some of your boundaries at work, maybe not, maybe you've got the right ones in play, but you get to decide what they are. And it is a complete game changer. One of the things that I changed coming back with hardcore boundaries and being brave and having the courage is I don't start in the morning as early as I used to start. In fact, I actually, as a as a rule, I don't take meetings before 10am Salt Lake time. And that is terrifying, because 10am Salt Lake time is noon, Eastern. And I work with a lot of folks in New York. So basically what I'm saying is I don't take meetings before noon, Eastern, like cray cray in the corporate world. And I am doing it, and it feels amazing. I'm going to tell you why this has been life changing for me and why a morning routine. Well, I already told you why a morning routine can be life changing back in that episode. But I'm going to tell you a special reason as it relates to this. It gives me the time in the morning because I'm not like sleeping in now that I start work later. It gives me the time in the morning, I still get up early to be present with my kids, I make their lunches, I make them breakfast, I talked to them during that time. First thing I do is get up and do my morning routine that we talked about. And then in the middle of that I talked to them make their breakfast, have quality time with them in the morning, which is awesome because I have their attention to that's not the time where they're like doing other things are distracted by things. And then I'm able to move my body and that looks like either going to an exercise class or going out and walking my dog and I love getting outside and going for a walk in the morning. I think that's great. There are lots of benefits to everything I just described one of the massive benefits that I have learned over the last year from taking back control of my mornings. It makes you feel like your job doesn't take up your entire day. So old me before I would commonly start at 6:30am 7am anywhere around that 7:30am Because you know working more on eastern time here in the Mountain Time Zone. And when you start work that way and you roll out of bed, you look at your phone first thing you're scrolling social media, right, you're looking at your email. First of all, you start your mindset out on a negative spiral, you start with stress and negativity. And that is not how we want to start our day. I talk all about this in the morning routine episode. So go back and listen, if you didn't listen to that one yet. You start your day negatively, but then you just immediately roll into getting ready getting kids ready getting them off to like if you take them to daycare or whatever. And then you just go to work. And so really your whole morning feels like a mad rush. And then it just feels like work. The whole purpose is I gotta go I gotta get ready, I gotta start work, right. Whereas when you take back control of your mornings and you start them on a positive spiral and you do a few things for yourself, it starts to then feel like work doesn't take over my entire life. I have some time for myself and my life in the morning and I have some time for myself and my life after work. It's life changing. I mean, just that I It sounds simple. I know it's not simple. It's a lot easier said than done to execute this. But just breaking up your day in that way where you're you're Week doesn't feel like work, it gets rid of like the, what is it the Sunday scaries. Right where you're dreading Monday morning, because I know that Monday morning, I'm going to wake up and I have this routine I'm going to do and it's going to feel much more similar to a weekend morning, except I do wake up earlier on the weekdays because I need to get the kids out and get them ready for school, I wake up earlier than I do. But the feel of it is still very much the same. It's not get up and rush into work and distressful things, because I really do ignore work until that like, nine 930 rolls around. And that's when I get started. Whereas before it was legit two to three hours before that. So that is has been a game changer. And one of my most successful boundaries around work that I'm loving, okay, so those are really an all important self care things as it relates to career development. The other thing that I love is planning your days off and your vacation early in the year I do this over the holiday break, which is actually we're just about to start as I'm recording this, it's late December, and I have this week coming up and then I'm off for two weeks at the end. And that's when I like to sit down with my husband and we plan out our vacations for the year. And I get those on the calendar. Because having those to look forward to those vacations and days off, is so great for your brain to have something to look forward to coming up. So get them on the calendar. If you book them earlier in the year, you're going to be way less likely to have things that come up where you can't take them or you can't do them. So that has been just a game changer for me. And it's helped me stick to boundaries, even when important things come up. Like for me, one of the important things in my job would be for example,

if regulators were coming in coming in to examine us, that would be very important. But if I have a whole week long vacation that was booked months before that regulatory exam was even on the calendar, then everybody's going to understand that I'm still taking that vacation, I'm not going to cancel that vacation. And that's a boundary that I have, I'm still going to take that vacation. You know, even if something big pops up at work, I'm not going to cancel it. And that's been an excellent boundary. And all these things lend themselves to you feeling better overall in life, which will lead you to better performance at work. Protecting your energy and planning accordingly is huge. We talked about this back in the episode on protecting your energy, but I want to bring it up and remind you here because it is game changing for career development. There's a book I'm going to talk about two books I'm gonna talk about later Eat That Frog and the one thing that lend themselves towards this, and I highly recommended, I can link them in the show notes too. But I'll talk about them a little bit late probably in the next episode, because we're getting close to our 30 minute mark here, I'm probably going to wrap this up in just a minute for this episode. But understanding your energy understanding for you for your own sort of like circadian rhythms. When do you have more energy, when you have less energy planning hard things in the day when you have more energy or, or for most of us earlier in the day, not all of us but most. And then planning easier, more mindless tasks for when you have less energy and then also planning around your period. So planning around your monthly cycle, put on your calendar, when you're, you know, most sort of significant PMS feeling days are, for me, that's two days before my period and the two days, the first two days of it, I put those on my calendar. And then that tells me in advance, not to book hard things not to go to, you know, big events, those days to really more, try to take it easy and leave those days as free as I possibly can. Because I'm going to be exhausted, I'm going to not be as you know, in as good of a mood or feeling as high energy as I normally do. And that's for me, I don't even actually my Honestly, my periods like aren't even that bad. But it really helps. And it's really been a game changer. And you can use period tracking apps, which I highly recommend. I use one called flow to plan that out to two to three months in advance. So as soon as you stay on, as long as you stay on top of it, you're gonna have that set up and you're gonna know what those days are. Okay. And then just the the thing I'll leave you with before I wrap up this episode is all of the most successful people. Okay, all is a strong word. A lot of most many the ones that we've all heard of the biggest, you know, most successful, most famous people for being successful. They have morning routines. And, you know, I've seen this come up. I don't know if it's lately but recently I've been seeing it on my feed like entrepreneurs who are saying, Oh, you don't have to have an a morning routine to be successful, especially if you're not a morning person. I just sort of like do whatever I go with the flow and that and that's fine. Like, you can customize this and do what works for you. But the reality is, especially if you're in the corporate world, our world runs on a nine to five clock, right, this sort of nine to five corporate world and to be honest with you, it's all based on men, men hormones big shocker, right men run on a daily hormonal cycle versus our monthly hormonal cycle. But it's all based on that. And that is the way the world runs. And I don't see that changing anytime super soon. So if you can create a morning routine, and you can get up and start your day with a positive spiral instead of a negative one, and that doesn't even mean you have to work wake up super early. If that's hard for you, some of us will do that in order to make this work. And some of us won't. If you can start your day off that way, I promise. And especially if you follow the morning routine that I recommend in the morning routine episode, and you create your best life master plan document, which we talk about, specifically, in episode three, you get a link to that. And that's where I introduce it, go go take a look. It will change your life and it will change your career and it will lead you to becoming more successful. Like I promise I have no doubt it has done that for 100% of the people who I work with. So get I am up on my soapbox a little bit about that. But I believe so. So incredibly passionately in it because it changed my life. And it's changed many of the lives of the women who I've worked with. So alright, we're gonna stop it there because I think I'm actually over 30 minutes at this point. And then we are going to cover the next topics in probably the next two episodes, I think. Alright, so thank you so much for listening. As always, if you're getting value from this, please please share it with others. That's the whole goal of putting all of this out here for free on the podcast is to just help as many women humans, moms people as possible. And the other thing too, that I want to just throw out a reminder is that I have moved my program into companies. And I am so so excited about it. So what that looks like is the 10 week working mom happiness Method program where we cover all the things we cover here on the podcast, can be done in a group at your company. So if you think your company might be interested in me coming and running this as a group program there, please reach out to me on Instagram, I'm at Katy Blommer. That's in the show notes or the website, which is in the show notes, you can contact me there. But please reach out to me and connect me with whoever I would need to talk to to do that, because I'm so excited about it. And we can do it with big groups at your company too. It doesn't have to be a small group. And I feel like this is such a great way for companies to support d&i initiatives and to make women's working moms lives better and happier. So let me know if your company might be interested in that. And I'll talk to you in the next episode. Thanks so much for listening to the working mom happiness method. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from listening for show notes or to enroll in the working mom happiness method coaching courses, visit www dot women's best life university.com