#68 – Redefining Success: Anne’s Bold Leap from Harvard to Fulfillment & How To Uncover What Truly Matters To You | Empowerment & Career Advice

[00:00:00] Loree Philip: Hi, and welcome to Daring to Leap. I'm your host, Loree Philip. Have you ever paused to ask yourself, what do I really want in my career? It is a question that can redefine your life's trajectory. Today, we're joined by Dr. Anne Welsh, who left a coveted position at Harvard, Harvard. To pursue a path more aligned with her personal aspirations and wellbeing.

[00:00:26] Loree Philip: In this episode, Anne shares her transformative journey and the profound insights on uncovering and pursuing what truly matters Together, we will discover how to ask ourselves the most important question of all. What do I really want? Let's dive in.

[00:00:44] Loree Philip: Dr. Anne Welsh is a distinguished psychologist and executive coach and consultant. Beginning her career at Harvard, Dr. Welsh has since pivoted, dedicating her life to unraveling the interplay between career [00:01:00] aspirations Personal fulfillment and women's mental health throughout the lifespan.

[00:01:07] Loree Philip: Her coaching brings together research and real life experiences to hone leadership skills, improve emotional intelligence, and create work life integration. Welcome to the show, Anne.

[00:01:22] Dr. Anne Welsh: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:24] Loree Philip: Yeah, it's so, so great to have you here. And we're gonna jump right in, and I'm really curious to find out, okay, you were at Harvard, and people put Harvard at, like, the top echelon of aspirations, not only to go, like to either go to school there, but to work there.

[00:01:46] Loree Philip: And having that on your resume and your real life experience, what caused you to decide, you know what, I want to pivot into something else.

[00:01:55] Dr. Anne Welsh: I mean, in the end, it was personal stuff to some extent, [00:02:00] but you know, I should say that wasn't the first unexpected pivot I took actually. So I had spent my entire childhood and adolescence saying I was going to be a doctor and doing all the things to get all the way into medical school and got into medical school and then had this like moment of, I don't, I don't actually want this, right?

[00:02:19] Dr. Anne Welsh: This is not my dream. This is. Maybe it was my dream. I don't think I was blind to myself as a three year old, but things can change from childhood the child of doctors that was modeled for me. There were a lot of things that went into why I pursued it. But so I already had the context of I can make a pivot and figure things out for myself.

[00:02:42] Dr. Anne Welsh: And I ended up at Harvard working in student mental health. And when I Took that job. It was like a dream job, right? I, I loved working with students. The students at Harvard were great. I mean, they were fascinating. They were from all over the world. And there was a part of me that enjoyed it and was aware that this is what I had [00:03:00] kind of worked for in grad school and my postdoc and all of these things and what I had wanted.

[00:03:07] Dr. Anne Welsh: And during the time of grad school and getting into that position, I had two of my, I have four kids now, but I had two of my children. And. It just wasn't working for the work life balance that I wanted. And I was getting into a place where it just didn't feel good anymore. I wasn't enjoying the work.

[00:03:29] Dr. Anne Welsh: And I knew I had to try something else and I really, I struggled because how do you walk away from Harvard? Right? Like, how, how do you do that? There was so much external validation and I, I can't lie and say I wasn't proud to say I worked there. Right. But that only takes a person so far.

[00:03:47] Dr. Anne Welsh: It's not, if you're proud, but you're unfulfilled, that's not a good place to be. And I wasn't able to show up as the mom I wanted to be at that job for a number of reasons. And [00:04:00] so I kind of took a very scary leap and left and said I was going to do. Private practice just as a therapist. And I started that and it was really small and I thought of it as kind of a hobby almost at first.

[00:04:15] Dr. Anne Welsh: I only saw patients on Saturday mornings, while my husband watched the kids and so that I could be with them the rest of the time. And I probably did everything wrong in terms of how you build a business, right? I didn't get any child care. I, Only did it like the paperwork when the kids were napping.

[00:04:31] Dr. Anne Welsh: I mean, really in hindsight, I should have cut myself a lot more slack, but that kind of brew. And then I took another pivot coming out of COVID and added an executive coaching and consulting practice. So in the end, I've made quite a few along the road. But every time it is that same process of kind of getting really quiet and figuring out like, Am I doing what I want or what I'm supposed to be?

[00:04:57] Dr. Anne Welsh: And what is it that I want in here? What kind [00:05:00] of lights me up? And what steps do I need to take to pursue that?

[00:05:05] Loree Philip: Yeah. Oh, what a, what a powerful story. This idea that we've, no matter what we've done, built up a career at the same firm for so long whether that's Harvard, whether that's in, in a private company and.

[00:05:22] Loree Philip: There is this identity component where after a while, it's just kind of, it's almost part of who you are and like you said, the external, the, people saw you elevated you likely because of where you worked and all of these things. How did you, once you really got quiet and understood maybe this isn't for me, I want to do something else.

[00:05:49] Loree Philip: How did you navigate everybody else's expectations in starting to talk about it or make the decision [00:06:00] and, and not let that get the best of you, in which case a lot of us would be like, okay, I'm just staying put. Right? I mean, you, you did leave. And so What were some of the things that, that, that you went through to, to make that happen?

[00:06:14] Loree Philip: In all

[00:06:15] Dr. Anne Welsh: of the pivots, I always told myself whether or not this is true. I always told myself I can always go back. Essentially there was an innate confidence of even with turning down med school, it was, I got in once. If I changed my mind, I can get in again. I, if I don't like private practice, I can see if I can get my job back at Harvard.

[00:06:34] Dr. Anne Welsh: That there was always this sense of. This doesn't have to be a totally irreversible decision. When I turned down med school, that was not a popular decision, as you can imagine. And I got, I did get a lot of like, reactions of like, Ooh, are you sure that's the right idea? And in that case, I was sure I just knew I thought, I thought I would be a great doctor and I might really enjoy that [00:07:00] career.

[00:07:00] Dr. Anne Welsh: I don't. Do all the things it takes to get there. I don't think I'm going to enjoy med school and I'm just feeling really called to do this other work. With starting my own practice, it was more supported, I think. Because everyone, I think a lot of people around me could see the value. If a, they could see that I was feeling pretty stressed and burnt out at the job at Harvard and B, they could see the value of Being your own boss and having the flexibility, especially at the time when I had young kids at home.

[00:07:30] Dr. Anne Welsh: Mm hmm.

[00:07:31] Loree Philip: Yeah, that that's really helpful. And, what I was thinking about earlier, you were talking about, Reflecting on well, this was my dream, but not anymore. And I think that point is so critical because it is okay for us to check in and change dreams. And, and maybe it was true for you as a child, but as we evolve as human beings and we evolve as [00:08:00] people and we grow and we all the things have families, there is so much power in that reflection of.

[00:08:08] Loree Philip: Not just what do I want, but what do I want right now and moving forward? And I, I want to shift gears a bit to talk a bit more about that because, this idea of getting really clear for yourself. On what you wanted to do. What came up for me is that when I was leaving my corporate role and people were asking me, wow, how did you get the courage to leave this, to go out and leave, take this leap of faith.

[00:08:35] Loree Philip: And at the time I didn't feel courageous because like you, I was so sure. I was so sure at my core that this wasn't my path anymore. I wasn't so sure that what I was doing was the end all be all path for me, but I just knew that the path I was on. Wasn't mine anymore. And I had to let it go. And I think that that confidence, that [00:09:00] innate confidence you were talking about came to me after months and months and months of deep reflection and a lot of self inquiry, a lot of work digging beneath the surface to get to that point, to feel so clear.

[00:09:17] Loree Philip: So from your perspective. How do we start to tune in to the, what we want internally and let go of some of the external pressures that we have?

[00:09:29] Dr. Anne Welsh: Yeah, I, I think that is such a, it's a really good question and a really important process. And first to kind of contextualize it developmentally, I think we've moved culturally beyond thinking like you figure out who you are at 18 as an adult, and then you are that the rest of your life.

[00:09:46] Dr. Anne Welsh: And we kind of understand that your 20s is really an extension of adolescence and the frontal lobe doesn't even fully develop until you're 25. But I think the reality is. If we pull from the adult learning literature, you learn through [00:10:00] your life and you're going to want to let yourself be changed by that and to grow and to try new things.

[00:10:06] Dr. Anne Welsh: And so first of all, just giving ourselves permission for ongoing growth and development. Throughout the lifespan is helpful, right? So that like this is not abnormal if you're kind of feeling pulled in a new direction This is quite appropriate Beyond that I think in particular as women We need to recognize that we have been socialized from birth to not question what we want, right?

[00:10:32] Dr. Anne Welsh: You are a marginalized group as women are and particularly if you are a woman of color You are told that to be small and not take up space, you are told you can't have needs, let alone wants, and so if we hold on to that, we can start to understand that this is now going to be maybe a skill we're going to have to develop to ask ourselves what we want and to practice, right?

[00:10:57] Dr. Anne Welsh: It might even be like, what do I want for dinner [00:11:00] tonight? Or what do I want to wear? How do I start to just get to know myself? And. To recognize that when, like you said, when you take that leap, it's not an impulsive jump, right? You use the word leap and it is, but it's probably a well, a relatively well thought out or at least, a voice that you've been reckoning with for a really long time, right?

[00:11:23] Dr. Anne Welsh: It might not be, I know exactly what I'm doing, but I've known for, like you said, I've known for a while that I don't want to keep doing what I am doing, and that I can try things. I can. Decide I don't like the new thing and try something else, right? Like that there's a lot of permission granting for experimentation.

[00:11:43] Dr. Anne Welsh: And maybe even for some failure within there, because those are the things that are going to allow you to grow.

[00:11:49] Loree Philip: Yeah, definitely. I, I resonate so much with this idea of we're not socialized to ask ourselves what we want as women. And. I don't know if it [00:12:00] was culturally for me, or if it was just a byproduct of my upbringing and the role that I played in my own childhood home at that caused me to focus in on external more on supporting other people on being everybody else's cheerleader on being a peacemaker.

[00:12:22] Loree Philip: And so slowly, but surely over the course of my childhood, I. Stopped asking myself what I wanted stopped. Even there wasn't even this conversation. I didn't have that conversation. And so it really was for me as an adult in thinking this through. I was barely scratching the surface of opening that dialogue for myself.

[00:12:47] Loree Philip: And so I do really think it's important and people can be. Yeah any range of the spectrum around how much you do tune in with yourself. And I do think that there's always even more [00:13:00] room for growth, like no matter where you are, you could be checking in with yourself more, especially with the, fast paced nature of our society today with all of the external inputs thrown in our face, we don't have the space.

[00:13:16] Loree Philip: To have a conversation and check in with ourselves day to day, let alone. So we have to be intentional about it. So what can people do to start that conversation?

[00:13:29] Dr. Anne Welsh: I think too, what you just said that with the hustle culture, there is no space and we have to somehow create that and find. Time and ways and rituals to do so.

[00:13:41] Dr. Anne Welsh: But again, it can be something really, really, really small to start. Right? Like I said, it's, I mean, it could be like asking yourself about dinner because that's the equivalent of, I'm going to start lifting weights and I'm going to start with the little teeny, like one pound or maybe, right. And I'm going to lift that until I can lift the five pound.

[00:13:58] Dr. Anne Welsh: Right. And eventually kind [00:14:00] of moving up. It's not, it's not like I sit down for a day and delve deep into my soul. I mean, Sometimes it can work that way, but often it is these little building blocks of tuning in and so maybe it is, taking 5 minutes for, for journaling a day. Maybe it is taking, really kind of tuning into a particular area of bonds.

[00:14:26] Dr. Anne Welsh: Another way I frame it is following, trying to follow the breadcrumbs of joy in your life. Just start to notice where you feel joyful, because that can be a great tool to point you to what you want more of. The other way people can approach it is to start with doing some values work. So whether that's taking an online assessment, there's a million, if people want free ones, they can shoot me an email and I can send you some or a strength assessment.

[00:14:51] Dr. Anne Welsh: Again, those are some free tools you can find online, right? Sometimes it can feel like I don't even know, it's so abstract to think about what I want. I'm [00:15:00] so distanced from it. I don't know how to start. And so doing some sort of assessment like that or a values exercise can help you start to tune in to what might I want based on what I value in life, right?

[00:15:15] Dr. Anne Welsh: Like I can, it gives me something to kind of compare options to. And so that's, I think that's another one that is helpful when it feels really overwhelming, right? When you're just so it's so far from your reality right now.

[00:15:27] Loree Philip: Yeah, that is a great tip. And one of the things with the values. This exercise that can be so useful is, In a great place to start is because our values are so important and we can get a lot of clarity around where we should prioritize our time.

[00:15:45] Loree Philip: Where should we prioritize our focus? These types of things. Once you fully understand your values and 1 of the things that I recommend is. Just there's, there's, if you just type in like Google or whatever, and [00:16:00] just list of values, you can get like 250 values, print it out and just glance through them and start highlighting the ones that resonate with you.

[00:16:09] Loree Philip: And what's great about it, it's not a blank piece of paper because I used to want to like journal, but have no ideas on what I should write about right to now. I journal every day, but like you said, it's a habit. It's a practice. It's a, it's a something that you grow over time. And what's useful with the values is that you can have something that will prompt you, and then you can start to notice, and then you'll start to also notice themes like, you know what I highlighted this three times and it's basically saying the same thing three ways and those ones you want to pay attention to and the ones that you highlighted, but you realize.

[00:16:51] Loree Philip: That you're not really, that strong with that value right now in your day to day experience. That would be also a great opportunity to take a look at [00:17:00] why not and what can I do about it?

[00:17:02] Dr. Anne Welsh: Yeah, and similarly even you can notice which ones you don't resonate with and and that's right Sometimes starting with what we don't want is is another way to approach it, too Like sometimes we have more clarity on like that That visceral reaction of no, I do not like this, whereas we maybe don't quite know what the yes looks like.

[00:17:23] Loree Philip: Yeah, that's a great point there. We certainly, I think our minds are trained to look at some of those negative or not great things more quickly, unless you're just born with this. Optimistic personality, seeing all the positives, but for the majority of us, we're like, we see the, the things that aren't going well, pretty easily.

[00:17:45] Loree Philip: And a really great reframe is you see something that you don't want and you think, okay, what would I want instead? And you can start to, to your point, shift, it's a clue. It's a [00:18:00] great clue on an area that's not. Aligned with what you want is a great way to start to say, okay, well, what would success look like in this area if it's not this right and start to kind of dig into that a bit deeper.

[00:18:15] Loree Philip: Yeah. So we, we're going to start building our habit of. getting to know ourselves better and that could be journaling. What is the next step? How do we expand that and, and continue to open up that dialogue with ourselves? Yeah,

[00:18:36] Dr. Anne Welsh: I think this is where a little bit of we tend to come face to face a bit with any people pleasing tendencies, right?

[00:18:44] Dr. Anne Welsh: Because once we name what we want, To practice asking for that may mean that we disappoint other people, right? That what we want isn't what someone else wants. And that's going to be a conflict and maybe it's a small conflict, right? Again, I, I, [00:19:00] maybe it's, I want Thai food for dinner and my partner wants Mexican and we have to resolve that.

[00:19:06] Dr. Anne Welsh: But that's exactly the process over and over again. And I think that's another, it's another skill, right? To learn to tolerate that you can disappoint someone and that can be okay. And that doesn't make you wrong. Right? It. Saying what you want brings up any stuff around external validation because you're not always going to get it.

[00:19:30] Dr. Anne Welsh: And so it's that same process of practicing, saying the little things that you want and kind of being able to move into the bigger things that you want.

[00:19:39] Loree Philip: Oh, yeah, this is, this is so, so important. So, the step one, this is where I was at. I didn't even know what I wanted, one. But, so, practicing knowing that, it's a whole nother step to practice speaking it out loud to others.

[00:19:57] Loree Philip: Yes. And there is a bit of [00:20:00] trust and vulnerability, as you mentioned, in between that, those two steps. So, I love the idea of starting small and as you start to know for yourself, well, I, I want this. You're by speaking it, you're trusting that that is what you want. You're going to ask for it. And if it's not that big of a deal, if it's dinner, but it's a huge dinner.

[00:20:23] Loree Philip: If I want to quit my job and go do X this other thing. And so, this approach makes so much sense to me and Going through it in, in a babysit format, which is. So much easier to wrap our minds and our emotions around than this, these huge leaps, right? Yeah.

[00:20:45] Dr. Anne Welsh: Yeah. And I think to recognize you're gonna, you might get pushback if it's, right?

[00:20:50] Dr. Anne Welsh: You might get no, and that doesn't mean your want is invalid. I mean, that in the end is, is kind of how my story of leaping went. I, I said, I want more flexibility. [00:21:00] I need that in my life. And I came up with a couple of different proposals of how that could happen and I presented them at work and I said, here's some ways I think this could work.

[00:21:09] Dr. Anne Welsh: And they said, we can't be flexible. We can't give you any of that. And so I. Then I had the information at least, right? I had asked for that. It was a valid want. They could say no. They did. And so I walked away, right? I made a different choice because of it, but I had to get that. I had to get what I want here.

[00:21:29] Dr. Anne Welsh: Like, what, what about this is making me a little bit unhappy here? How do I kind of, voice that, how do I not just say, Oh, I I don't like this, I'm going to tolerate it forever. And it was an uncomfortable thing to do, but then that gave me again, that data to say, okay, here's a want, I can't have it here.

[00:21:51] Dr. Anne Welsh: Now I need to make a different choice. Yeah.

[00:21:54] Loree Philip: So we've talked about this step on the show before, and I'm glad you brought this up [00:22:00] because Instead of assuming that Harvard wouldn't allow you flexibility, you did ask, and I think that's so important because for a lot of people, the answer could be yes, and they assume no, and they assume they have to leave the whole thing that they're doing to go do something else to get it when it might not be true.

[00:22:23] Loree Philip: So I, I think that's a really important step. And it also helps you, as you already mentioned, with your decision making. You tried they said, no, now you need to go figure out something else. If you want to stay true to what you're telling yourself that you need. And, and, that, that information is so important in, in helping your conviction, right?

[00:22:49] Loree Philip: Like I'm not just leaving because I want flexibility. No, well, I am. I asked for it. I can't get it here. So I'm going to have to find it elsewhere. And that really does help. Okay. [00:23:00] Just emotionally move on in a sense where the other one kind of keeps it open a bit where you just made an assumption, right?

[00:23:08] Loree Philip: I appreciate that.

[00:23:09] Dr. Anne Welsh: Yeah, and an added beneficial side effect that I didn't anticipate at the time was I said to them in the meeting, essentially, what I wanted to be able to do was to take a maternity leave and come back in a more part time way, at least initially. And I said, look, you've got a bunch of other young women clinicians here, many of whom are actually pregnant right now.

[00:23:33] Dr. Anne Welsh: I'm not the only one that's going to want this. This is going to be a problem for you. And they said no to me. They said no and no, no. And just kept losing clinicians. And my understanding is this is actually shifted there. And so it was part there was a little bit where I can look back and say, me asking for what I wanted actually allowed other people to do it.

[00:23:54] Dr. Anne Welsh: So I could feel proud of that. And it actually became part of the consulting work [00:24:00] fast forward to this point and the consulting work I do is helping companies support working parents and helping women through that parental leave transition. And so again, saying what I wanted all those years ago ended up being these seeds for something now that I could never have seen coming at the time.

[00:24:17] Dr. Anne Welsh: It's, it's only in hindsight, but if I hadn't voiced my wants, then I might not have gotten this kind of beautiful stuff out of it.

[00:24:24] Loree Philip: There is. We can talk about all the reasons why you could should listen to yourself for yourself. Right? And I think, especially as women, and we talked a little bit about how we were raised to believe certain things.

[00:24:40] Loree Philip: This idea of doing something for yourself can come up as selfish, in terms of just not in reality, but how you feel about it, how you think other people will feel about it. But there is so much power in modeling a behavior where other people see it and then [00:25:00] feel empowered to do it themselves. And you leaving, maybe you and we don't know for sure, but maybe other people that left saw you leave and say, you know what, I'm going to leave, too.

[00:25:12] Loree Philip: I don't have to stick it out here and deal with this. And so it goes beyond. Showing ourselves that self love in that listening and the trust and the vulnerability, but also it supports others at the same time. And I think that it can be even more powerful for a person to recognize that and get beyond, Oh, this is kind of me being selfish, me getting what I want is just about me when it's not really.

[00:25:41] Dr. Anne Welsh: Totally. Whether it's thinking about other coworkers or. If you have kids, what they're, what you're modeling for them, or just other women taking up space in the world, it, sometimes it helps to draw on the, the bravery of others.

[00:25:58] Loree Philip: It, it really does. [00:26:00] I want to shift gears here a bit, Ann, and I'm very, very curious about the term you had used before with me, that ambitious identity paradox.

[00:26:12] Loree Philip: Can you talk to me about what that is and why is it important?

[00:26:18] Dr. Anne Welsh: Yeah, I'm happy to, and it really does overlap so much with what we've already talked about. Okay. And, and essentially the, for, for ambitious Women in particular, I mean really anybody, but we end up sometimes chasing after things that we think we're supposed to want and we just get further and further from what would actually be fulfilling.

[00:26:40] Dr. Anne Welsh: And so the things we reach for, that ambition, when we're not aligned with ourselves. Ends up holding us back and we get stuck in the spiral where you achieve, but maybe you feel totally empty, right? You get the promotion and then 30 seconds later you're on to what's the next thing I [00:27:00] have to do because it doesn't actually feel good.

[00:27:04] Dr. Anne Welsh: And so I really talk with women about the idea that, that That they're not failing. It's that their role models are failing them, right? It is that process that we already talked about being so socialized to read other people and to meet their needs and quiet our owns. And we stop asking ourselves what we want.

[00:27:24] Dr. Anne Welsh: And so to get out of that is essentially this process you and I've started talking about where you start. Labeling where are all these other voices, right? Is that me? Is that my mom? Is that my father? Is that a cultural belief? Is that a gender stereotype, right? Start putting these voices in boxes so that you can get Kind of rid of the perfectionism burdens that you're carrying around and shed Identities that just don't fit for you, right?

[00:27:56] Dr. Anne Welsh: Almost like cleaning out your closet, right? Do these jeans fit? Nope. Send them [00:28:00] away Don't hang on to them in case you fit them later, right? That's just gonna make you unhealthy And then you can really start to do that questioning of what do I want? What are my values? What are those breadcrumbs of joy?

[00:28:14] Dr. Anne Welsh: What drives me? What do I need? And then once you have that established, you can practice it. You can start to make aligned choices with new behaviors and that's where the rubber really meets the road because your brain likes routine. It's going to want to keep you stuck in what you're doing, right? It's, I tell people, your brain's kind of like a sledding hill.

[00:28:36] Dr. Anne Welsh: And if you've been going down the same hill 20 times in the same space, there's going to be like a nice deep groove in that snow. And if your sled's anywhere near it, it's just going to keep going down the same chute. And you have to be really, really intentional and pick that sled up and move it somewhere else.

[00:28:52] Dr. Anne Welsh: To start forming new neural pathways, right? And so that's where you need kind of support and accountability. And [00:29:00] that's where all this other stuff we started talking about, right? Getting aware of our people pleasing tendencies, tolerating that making these new choices might disappoint other people or make them uncomfortable or feel risky and scary to us.

[00:29:14] Dr. Anne Welsh: But as long as we've done that inner work of like, is this my value or is it someone else's? Then it gets a little bit easier to make those different aligned choices. Mm hmm.

[00:29:25] Loree Philip: Yeah. This, I love the term of The terminology you put around it, because I think we all see it. It's like, my resume looks great on paper, but it doesn't feel great.

[00:29:39] Loree Philip: It's, I did everything I thought I was supposed to be, to do to get the successful career and I'm here, but why don't I feel great about it? Why am I torn? Why am I, yeah, it's fine. Like these types of things, it's not what I thought it was. And so I think that that is a great [00:30:00] clue and a place where we can see if, if you're listening to this and you're feeling that way.

[00:30:07] Loree Philip: It is a really good indication that it's important next step is to start to really get clear about what do you want, go through the process that, that, that Ann laid out and, and follow the steps and get back to the core of what you need and where you really want to go so that you can feel great in your career and your life and, and what you're doing day to day.

[00:30:33] Loree Philip: Because one of the things and one of the reasons why I left my career and switched to do something else to do this which is completely different. I don't know, you probably don't know, but I was doing, strategy for in the defense, military defense space within Boeing. And so it was like completely night and day to what I'm doing now.

[00:30:55] Loree Philip: But it was during COVID that I. started to [00:31:00] question the importance and the meaningfulness of what I was doing and where I wanted to go. And it was really that idea of our time on this planet is so short and limited. And because people were dying and getting sick and getting concerned about things that really matter, family health all these kinds of things.

[00:31:20] Loree Philip: And the stuff I was doing started to feel meaningless. In the grand scheme of things, and so I just want to remind people that we get this life and it's ours. And the point isn't to go get a trophy that somebody else told you to get if you're not going to enjoy it, like the, the, be the star of your own show.

[00:31:43] Loree Philip: And in order to do that, you kind of really have to know what success would look like for you now, not when you were a kid, not where you were even 10 minutes ago. It's this evolving process and it's okay to [00:32:00] shift.

[00:32:00] Dr. Anne Welsh: I always like to frame like ambition for what, right? Not just blind ambition.

[00:32:05] Dr. Anne Welsh: That's great. If your ambition is for CEO, please go get it. And I will a hundred percent support you. And if it's not, oh, so great. And I will a hundred percent support you. Right. It's just, it's going to be a little harder to listen to that, to that voice.

[00:32:22] Loree Philip: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's, it's so, so important. Well, we're going to start to wrap up and I'd love to hear any last, closing thoughts you have for our listeners, women looking at advancing in their careers.

[00:32:38] Loree Philip: A lot of which I think would really love to step into more fulfilling work. What do you have any last thoughts for them?

[00:32:45] Dr. Anne Welsh: I mean, I think the only other piece I would add is, well, two pieces. One is support. Right. Get support. If you're questioning leaving, it can be so, so helpful, whether it's a coach or a therapist or whatever to, or a good, a [00:33:00] friend, that's a good listener or spouse that's 100 percent behind you.

[00:33:03] Dr. Anne Welsh: Get support because this stuff is hard and you don't need to do it alone. And so I think that recognizing you're not, you're not meant to do it alone and that you can question things out loud and get feedback and can be a really powerful part of this process. And the other thing I would say is we didn't talk a ton about perfectionism, but I think that is the other layer that shows up in all of this.

[00:33:31] Dr. Anne Welsh: And I think some people say, well, I don't have to get the A plus I'm not a perfectionist. And I would say, but do you have really black and white thinking about. Good and bad or success and failure. Because I know I didn't have to get a pluses, but a B was a failure in my mind as a, as a teenager.

[00:33:48] Dr. Anne Welsh: Right. And that's very perfectionistic thinking. And so getting comfortable with making mistakes, with taking risks, right. That, Challenging that part of you that says I have [00:34:00] to achieve that if I leap, I have to leap into something equally successful, right? I think the more you can get comfortable with.

[00:34:08] Dr. Anne Welsh: Being human, essentially, the better and so starting to just notice that for yourself too. Yeah,

[00:34:15] Loree Philip: I love you brought in perfectionism and it's near and dear to my heart, the topic. I, I'm certainly, Managing my own instincts around that, for sure. would you mind sharing with our audience where they could connect with you, learn more about you and your work?

[00:34:35] Dr. Anne Welsh: Yeah, I would love to. So they can find me, my website is DrAnnWelsh. com, and I actually just released a free webinar for you. On this ambitious identity paradox. If people want to check that out and you can get to it at drannwalsh. com slash masterclass. And people can also email me. My email's on the website.

[00:34:55] Dr. Anne Welsh: They can find me on Instagram. It's dr. walsh. coaching. And they can find me at [00:35:00] LinkedIn at drannwalsh as well. So love to hear from listeners, just even a quick conversation. If you have thoughts on the episode, happy to always connect with. Anybody in any of those means and I should also add for any particular working mothers, we do have a group coaching program that is taking new folks and they can find more about that on my website as well.

[00:35:23] Dr. Anne Welsh: And it's called Working Mothers Lifeline.

[00:35:26] Loree Philip: Awesome. Sounds amazing. I hope everybody reaches out to Anne. Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate your experience, your wisdom, and thoughtfulness in our conversation.

[00:35:39] Dr. Anne Welsh: Awesome. Thank you again for having me. This was fun.

[00:35:42] Loree Philip: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, I would love for you to subscribe. If you're already a subscriber, don't forget to share the podcast with a friend.

[00:35:54] Loree Philip: Make sure to tune in next week. We will be speaking with Zandra Zura about [00:36:00] building creativity and confidence through the style of your home. I hope you have an amazing week. It's your time to shine. Bye.