Too often, we women struggle to say no at work to keep our workload reasonable and maintain boundaries because we want to be a “good employee,” which many of us subconsciously believe means we need to be the “perfect employee.” As a result, we say yes to things we don’t want to do, answer emails at night, are always on Teams/Slack, etc.
Let’s talk about how to handle these thoughts so that we can reclaim more control of our time.
To do that, I am thrilled to have Goli Kalkhoran of Lessons from a Quitter join us. I’ve been a big fan of Goli and her work for a long time, so it’s a true honor to have her on the podcast.
For those of you who don’t know her, Goli Kalkhoran is Master Certified Life Coach, and former attorney, who helps unfulfilled professionals create a career (and life) they actually like. She is the host of the Lessons from a Quitter podcast where she uses her platform to de-stigmatize quitting and provide resources and inspiration to individuals looking to pivot in their established careers. She challenges people to exceed their own expectations and guides them through the initial steps of starting over in order to build a more intentional, fulfilling life.
Learn more about Goli’s work at:
https://www.quitterclub.com/class
Quitter Club
And definitely check out her podcast, Lessons from a Quitter.
Enjoy – and let me know what you think!
Full Transcript
Ep 61. Interview with Goli Kalkhoran
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to The Bright Method Podcast where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up The Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all, personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in!
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Kelly Nolan: Hey, hey! All right, so today we are all in for a treat. I am so excited to have Goli Kalkhoran from Lessons From a Quitter here today because what she talks about goes so well hand-in-hand with what we talk about here.
As you know, I teach a time management system that helps you manage all of your personal and professional to-do’s. It helps you lighten the mental load, better understand your capacity and your workload and what a new project might do to those things. It helps you ask for and get better support at home and at work and so much more. But for all of us, there are periods of time where, despite that system, we still know we should say no but we say yes, and we know what we’re being asked to do or what we have come up with of what we want to do is objectively unreasonable and yet we still struggle to say no, and it’s whether it’s to ourselves or people that we are working with or for. And this is where Goli and her work really shines because she really digs into the mindset issues that can cause a lot of us to say yes when we really want to or know we should say no.
Today, we are gonna focus on perfectionism. Now, we’re not going to talk about perfectionism in the traditional sense that I think a lot of us go to trying to do work perfectly. Instead, I want to talk about the broader issue that I think a lot of us experience around trying to be the perfect employee, and because of this, we say yes to everything. We really struggle to say no even though we know it’s not the right fit or it would push us beyond our capacity. We struggle to go dark from email or from Slack or whatever you use. We want to be available all the time and so on. And these mindset issues, as I said, are more outside of my wheelhouse, but they are squarely in Goli’s. So I’m so excited to have her here today!
Now, for those of you who don’t know Goli, she is a master certified life coach and a former attorney who helps unfulfilled professionals create a career and life they actually like. She is the host of the Lessons From a Quitter Podcast where she uses her platform to destigmatize quitting and provide resources and inspiration to individuals looking to pivot in their established careers. She challenges people to exceed their own expectations and guides them through the initial steps of starting over in order to build a more intentional, fulfilling life. I am so excited to have her here today, and let’s dig in!
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Kelly Nolan: All right! Well, Goli, thank you so much for being here! I know the people listening are gonna get so much out of this because I’ve been such a fan of your work for so long. Today we’re here to talk about the tendency a lot of us have to strive to be the perfect employee and the ripple effects that causes on our ability to maintain boundaries and our workload and all of that and hopefully talk some practical strategies on what we can do if you (person listening) relates to that a lot.
But before we dive into that, I would love for you to introduce yourself and kind of talk about the first chapter of your career into how you got into doing the work you do now.
About Goli and Her Career Transformation Journey – 3:34
Goli Kalkhoran: Thank you! Thank you so much for having me, Kelly. It’s such an honor to be here, and I love your work, and I’m excited to be here with you and your people!
My name is Goli. I think like a lot of people probably that listen to you, I was your quintessential, type-A personality, and I was good in school. I was “successful.” I put my head down, didn’t ask many questions, just worked really hard, and I became, again, a “success.” I decided I was gonna go to law school at the ripe old age of 11, and then I just never questioned that again for some reason. And I did exactly that.
I went to a great law school, I started working at a big law firm, and I was deeply unhappy. As soon as — I actually loved law school. Up through law school everything was great. Then I started — it was literally day one I was like, “Oh, no. What have I gotten myself into?” And that just sort of progressed. I worked as a lawyer for about seven years. I was in big law first and then I became a federal public defender thinking maybe if I do something I’m passionate about that I feel really called to, then I’ll be happy, and I wasn’t.
And so, I walked away from the law. I decided to quit in 2014 when I had my son. There were some extenuating circumstances that kind of forced me to leave because I was moving, and that was when I sort of took this pause to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. I was very lost for a very long time and a lot of shame and guilt and all the feelings. I’ll save you the whole long, drawn-out version, but I eventually not only reconnected kind of with what I want, who I am, but I really learned mindset work, and I transformed my life.
In 2018, I started my podcast called Lessons From a Quitter, and it was mostly because I wanted to have this conversation that I struggled with for so long about quitting something that you are successful at and that you should be grateful for and that everybody would kill to have and who are you to leave, and all that stuff. I talked to so many people who were struggling with the same things I was struggling with, and I was very confused as to, “Why don’t we talk about this?” Okay, I did this. It wasn’t for me. Now what? Like, I just have to stay for the rest of my life?
So anyways, that led me on this journey. I now have a coaching business. I’m a master certified coach that helps people really figure out who they are, what they want, how to have careers that don’t completely overtake their whole lives, how to work through burnout and stuff. But mostly, I help them figure out what they want to do with their life and what they want to do for the next chapter and how they want to kind of create a life that actually works for them and is not mayered in stress and overwhelmed and anxiety and all the things that so many of us tend to have in our careers.
Kelly Nolan: What I love about your work, too, that you do is — and correct me if I’m wrong — you work with people who are interested in leaving their career and figuring out what’s next but you also help people also stay in their careers and learn to love it as you were saying.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: So, really, for those people who’ve put a lot of time in and truly enjoy their career to an extent but just wish they could enjoy it more, I also love that you help those people get there as well.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of in between and there’s a lot of overlap and a lot of gray area. I think a lot of people come to me just because they’re miserable and they don’t know what to do, and they don’t even know, “Do I want to stay, or do I want to leave?” They can’t really see past the day-to-day of the drudgery and unhappiness.
With everyone, whether they want to leave or not, a lot of the first stage I work with them on is the stuff that we’re gonna talk about today like this perfectionism and the people pleasing and all the stuff that creates so much burnout. To be able to kind of lift that fog, to figure out, “Do I even like it here? Do I want to stay here?” For some people, that answer is, “Yes, when I can manage my own mind and when I can kind of set these boundaries, I actually love the work. It’s very intellectually stimulating,” or, you know, “For whatever reason I want to stay.”
And then there are other people where it becomes very clear and they’re like, “No, I actually hate this and I’m admitting that to myself.” And both are great! There’s no one way that everyone should go. I know the brand is called lessons from a quitter, but I always try to tell people, “I don’t actually want you to quit. I want you to quit if you want to, but if you want to stay, great. I just don’t want you to live this life where the majority of your life is at work and you’re unhappy for all of it.
Kelly Nolan: And I love that, and I think there are a lot of people who suspect, “If I could figure out some things, I wonder if I could make this job something I love.” And so, as you said, that’s what we’re gonna dig into a bit today.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: But for those listening, obviously, this is one episode. I encourage you to check out Goli’s whole podcast (because it’s a treasure trove) and consider working with her.
Goli Kalkhoran: Thank you.
Kelly Nolan: But in terms of today, we are gonna talk about that tendency that I see sometimes with clients of even when you know it’s objectively unreasonable for you to take on more work, your plate is full, you have no capacity, or even when you’re very clear on, “I don’t want to be working after a certain time or answering work emails at a certain time,” many of us have that tendency to cave on those boundaries we’re trying to set because we think that’s either what’s required of us but under that is, “Well, maybe it’s not required, but to be a good employee I have to do that.”
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: And to a lot of women, I think, good employee means perfect.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: “I need to be the perfect employee.” And so, that’s why I feel like that’s so much in the mindset camp of what you excel at that, candidly, I don’t. And so, I wanted to have you here today to talk about what do you see on that front at first and then we can dig into practical strategies. But what does this look like? How would someone know if this is what they’re doing? And what are some of the ripple effects that it can cause that people might not even fully appreciate are going on in this scenario?
Perfectionism in the Workplace – 9:22
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, that’s such a great question. I do think that for a lot of us, especially as women, it’s really important to understand that maybe consciously we all know certain things.
Intellectually, for instance, as just an example, I can know intellectually that society puts an unreasonable beauty standard and I can know that my body is beautiful and it’s healthy and I’m lucky and I should be grateful, and yet, I’ve been so steeped in messages of what a pretty body should look like that I can still hate myself. I can still look at myself in the mirror and be like, “You’re disgusting,” or say really terrible things to myself. Both of those things are true for a lot of us all the time, and I think it’s sometimes discombobulating because you’re like, “I’m so smart! And I know that I shouldn’t be thinking this, and yet I’m thinking this.” And if it was just intellectually understanding something was enough, then none of us would have any of the problems that we have. But that’s not how it works. It’s because we’re so ingrained with these beliefs that you don’t even know you have.
And so, for a lot of us, especially women, in the culture that we’ve been raised in, both because of capitalism and because of patriarchy, we have been bred and raised to be perfect. We have been told in so many ways that — I mean, you look at school. The entire point is to get as close to 100 as possible. It’s not to, like, “Bring out your creativity,” and “Let’s see what unique features you have,” and “Take care of yourself!” Nobody cares about that. Your formative years are spent drilling into your head, “Do the closest thing you can to be perfect and everyone around you will be happy. You’ll get the pat on the head. You’ll get the gold star. Your teachers will be happy, your family.”
So we start internalizing that like, “Oh, I get this love, I get this reaction, I get this attention when I’m perfect.” And so, it starts becoming, “Okay, how can I be more perfect?” And we start seeing this very young with little girls where they stop doing tasks that they know they can’t be perfect at, which is why a lot of women stop going into STEM and math and stuff because if they’re not gonna be the best at something, we’re just gonna drop it, right?
We also start seeing this because of the patriarchy. Like women’s’ worth is in how valuable you can be to other people, how much you can serve people, and how much you can do it in this perfect way. And so, we see this with women, and it’s not just in work. Now you’re the Pinterest mom and everything has to be perfect.
And so, I say this to say, obviously, it’s not your fault but in the air we breathe, you know, it’s like a fish doesn’t know it’s in water. You literally cannot escape these standards. So to say, you know, when you were asking the question of how do you know if you’re doing this, I promise you you’re doing it! Every one of us is because you’ve been told to do it and that’s the only thing you’ve ever been told is you are only kind of good enough if you’re doing this.
The one thing I will say for you if you really want to figure out — because some people will say, “Well, I don’t think I’m a perfectionist at all. I actually don’t need things to be perfect at all, and I don’t even think I can get to perfect. I never even try,” you know, whatever. A way that this is very sneaky is — and you can kind of tell if you do this in your work or in your life — it’s not that you are trying to achieve perfection. It’s that it’s never good enough. If things are never good enough for you, you’re being a perfectionist. If you haven’t even defined what good enough is, it’s just a nebulous concept that you’re like, “You know what? When I hit it, I’ll know,” and you’re never hitting it. Everyday you’re falling short. Every day you’re telling yourself, “It wasn’t good enough. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t work enough. I wasn’t a good enough mom,” you’re being a perfectionist.
You’ve set up an impossible standard for yourself that you don’t even know what that standard is, really. There’s no clear, “This is what I have to do to be good enough.” It’s just like, “I’m just gonna keep on telling myself I’m not good enough,” and that’s another form of perfectionism that we really try to become conscious of and aware of so that we can reframe it and we can kind of root it out.
Kelly Nolan: Awesome. Well, and so, if someone’s listening to this and is like, “Okay, I at least resonate with part of this or all of it –.”
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: “I check all these boxes,” what are some strategies that you encourage people to at least maybe even start with or notice about themselves or try on a different approach to help them with these issues that we all feel?
Strategies to Combat Perfectionism – 13:33
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, great question. One of the easiest things you can do just to — so Carl Jung, who’s kind of like the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and a lot of modern psychology, has this quote that’s great. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life, and you will call it fate,” right?
So for a lot of this work, it’s not even actually implementing strategies. It’s truly just becoming aware of what you’re doing. When you can become conscious to it, you start seeing the patterns and you’re like, “Oh, my God.” You start noticing it everywhere, and you’re like, “Holy –.” I cuss a lot of my podcast. I don’t know if you do it on yours, so I won’t but, “Holy moley! I do this everywhere,” you know?
So one of the first things I have people do, and I think it’s one of the most powerful things you can do, is I want you to sit down and write out when you get to feel successful or good enough, however you want to — maybe you don’t resonate with the term success. When do you get to pat yourself on the back for a job well done in each arena?
So I want you to sit down and write, “At work, what are all the things I would have to do to tell myself, ‘Huh, I was pretty badass today. I really did it,’” right? Do it at home too. “What do I have to do as a mom on a day to day? What do I have to do in whatever it is.” Because you will start seeing how impossible that standard is. You will start noticing, “Well, I have to get through all of my to-do’s. There has to be nothing left. I need to have known the answer to every single question my boss asks me. I never can be late on a deadline or anything. I never need to ask for help. Nobody judges me. I turn in perfect work that nobody ever has any criticism of.” It’s this inhuman standard that will never happen. If it’s like, “I never make a mistake. I never drop a ball. I never forget anything. I have the answer to everything. I always feel confident.” It’s like, okay, well, if that’s your standard, there’s a reason why we don’t feel good enough, you know?
Kelly Nolan: You know, it really reminds me of when I work with clients initially, one of the big things I do is we take all the invisible things that we have to do in our life and make them visual and put them in a calendar. And I know it doesn’t encompass everything you’re talking about but even just the logistical things you’re demanding of yourself to do, people almost across the board are like, “Huh, I understand, one, why I’m overwhelmed, and two, I feel pretty amazing how much I am doing, but I also really see it doesn’t all fit.”
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: “No wonder I’m feeling like I’m not getting everything done at the end of the day because I’m trying to do an impossible amount.” So really, as you were talking, I was like that’s a little slice of that.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, right? It’s exactly — we keep piling on more, more demands in more areas of our lives and more that we have to do constantly, and it’s like even if you are sort of killin’ it in one arena, then you start thinking of — let’s say you do feel good about your job. It’s like, “Well, I should be working out more, and I should be doing this, and I should have a hobby by now and I should have made fresh, organic muffins for my kids,” whatever. It’s like we just keep piling on when we’re not conscious of it, and so, then we kind of always put ourselves in this place of deficit of, “I’m not reaching everything. I’m not hitting everything.” And then that makes you feel terrible, and kind of we continue this cycle.
But you’re right. I think it’s all of that. We take on too much, way too much. We’re always doing more, and then we always feel as though we’re not hitting what we should be hitting so then we also feel terrible about ourselves. And it’s like that’s one of the things I constantly work on with women. It’s a losing cycle that we’re stuck in over and over and over again, and it does require getting conscious and being like, “Oh, my God. I’m doing a lot,” right?
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, and it’s the same thing with work. It’s like when people start realizing, “Hey, I’m actually killin’ it most of the time. I am actually getting a lot done. Like, yes, maybe some things on my to-do list don’t get done,” or “I made a mistake once because I’m human,” or whatnot. But it requires you to sort of see that standard first and then you can start — the next step for me is I want you to consciously decide what is good enough, and not perfect, but what would good enough look like? What could we decide is good enough in a day-to-day at my work and make it something that is manageable, make it something that like, “Okay, this is something I can reasonably do.” It’s amazing how good you can feel when you actually just change the standard you’re holding yourself to.
Kelly Nolan: And not that this is the main point, but my suspicion is the work product improves because you’ve protected time and energy to do it well.
Goli Kalkhoran: One hundred percent.
Kelly Nolan: So I love that. And so, speaking of this workload element of it, let’s say someone is like, “Okay, I figured out a standard –.” I’m trying to think of examples, but it varies by industry. “This amount of work is good enough. I feel like I’m hitting that right now. I’m doing it well, but people keep asking me at work to take on more, and I struggle with the pushback,” and there’s an element of, “I don’t want to disappoint them, but I want to be that good team player,” or whatever you want to call it. How would you help someone think about it from that perspective?
Managing Boundaries in the Workplace – 18:53
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah. Again, it’s a great question, and it’s something that you absolutely — there’s a way to deal with it, but I’m gonna just caveat and say that learning to advocate for yourself, it all sounds great. Setting boundaries sounds wonderful, and we all should do it. I just want you to know that you’re gonna feel like crap doing it. It feels terrible, and I think sometimes we want to do it, but as soon as it’s gonna feel bad or awkward because we don’t want to ruffle feathers, it’s like we retreat because we, again, have also been socialized as women to be people pleasers and to make sure everyone’s happy and never rock the boat. And especially in Corporate America, it’s like you have to break glass ceilings and you have to kind of be in this boy’s club and you have to act the way they do. And so, it’s very difficult for us.
And so, I understand that. It is a very difficult thing, and I’ll give you some thoughts on how to do it. But I want you to know that it’s gonna feel terrible and you still have to do it, right? You have to let that be okay. You have to let it be that it’s gonna feel awkward, that it’s gonna feel bad.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to go in guns blazing and be like, “I’m not gonna do any work!” You know, there are ways to kind of do this in a way that’s more diplomatic and that you can feel comfortable doing, but it does require pushback. And so, the thing that I kind of work with people on boundaries is figuring out for yourself sort of where the line is, what you are willing and what you’re not willing to do, right? We start with really understanding that you’re signing up for a transactional relationship.
When you sign up and you’re going through the interview process, they are telling you a set of tasks that they are gonna pay you for, and there’s a certain amount of hours that you’re supposed to work for those tasks, right? That’s the relationship. Of course, Corporate America is gonna try to get as much free labor out of you as possible, and the more you give them, the more they will take.
And so, for a lot of us, we feel guilty because, again, we’ve been programmed to believe these insane thoughts like, “We’re a family,” and “You’ve got to be a team player,” and “You’ve got to give 110%,” and “When I say jump, you say how high.” All of it’s bullshit, and it’s all meant to extract free labor, and no one’s gonna advocate for you. Nobody’s gonna do that for you. You have to do that for yourself, right? That might ruffle feathers and that might cause some problems. And you truly have to decide, “What am I willing to do, and what am I not?”
I give this example, obviously it’s an extreme example, but when people tell me, “Oh, I can’t set boundaries,” I’m like we all already have boundaries, right? If my boss hit me, I would leave. I think we all can kind of agree that there is a line that I won’t allow to be crossed. I just have to decide where that line is. Is it to the extreme that it’s only when it’s some kind of assault that I’m gonna leave? Or is it like, “No, they’re taking advantage of my time and extracting free labor, and I’m gonna advocate for myself, and that might lead to consequences, that might lead me to realize this isn’t the place for me, and that’s okay.” And I think it’s like the confidence is in knowing, “I will figure it out, but I will not let myself be taken advantage of,” right?
And so, I think for a lot of women, when you can kind of feel more confident in, “No matter what happens, I will figure it out. I’ll get another job. I’ll start working for myself. I’ll work part time somewhere, but this is where my line is,” then you can start figuring out how you’re gonna advocate. It can be simply pointing it out.
Oftentimes, bosses may not even know, so if someone’s giving you another project, it’s as simple as saying, “Okay, I hear you want me to do this. I’m also working on these other matters. Which one is more of a priority because I can’t get them all done this week,” right? Just simply being able to communicate that and putting it back on them to choose which one’s the priority instead of just saying, “Okay, yeah, I’ll get it all done,” and then I’m gonna stay late and work on the weekends is enough for a lot of bosses to be like, “Okay, well, just work on this one,” or “Okay, maybe we’ll push this other one back,” because they can start seeing it’s unreasonable to be like, “Well, within the 40 or 60 hours that I work,” or whatever it is, “I can only do these two matters, so what do you want me to push until next week or next month or whatnot.”
So it could be as simple as that. It doesn’t have to be like, “I’m not working anymore!” But the other thing I will say in this, more for your own thoughts as you’re going through thinking about a boundary is I think for a lot of us, again, we are programmed to be deeply uncomfortable when other people are having a negative emotion. So if someone else is upset, if someone else gets angry, if someone else is frustrated, we feel really terrible, and a lot of this work is learning to let other people be responsible for their own emotions and be adults. And like, “They’re allowed to be upset, and I still don’t have to do anything. I still don’t have to be the one that fixes that,” right? I think this a lot with a lot of jobs where people tell me, “I’m doing the work for three people,” or whatnot, and it’s like you’re doing that because you don’t want your boss to have to feel uncomfortable and either spend more money and hire someone. But when did that become your responsibility? It’s not your business. It’s their business. Those are your boss’s problems, not yours.
Kelly Nolan: Yep.
Goli Kalkhoran: You know? And you have to get really clear on, “What is my responsibility? What’s my job? And what is my boss, the company’s job? And why am I taking this on?”
And the last thing I will say about this, because I could go on forever, and I could give you so many other things, but I want you to really question. We are so deeply ingrained with this belief of, “No, I have to or I’ll get fired.” It’s like this catastrophizing of, “If I don’t do this, I’ll get fired,” or “I have to do this.” And again, I coach so many people who will tell me, “Oh, my coworkers don’t do anything. I have to take on their work,” and I’m like, “Explain to me how they get away with not doing anything, but you can’t get away with it.” There is clearly some issue there. If other people are not getting fired and they’re not doing their fair share, why are you taking it on?
And I remember when I was in big law, I remember distinctly this one day. I had been working, like, all-nighters that whole week. We had a deal closing, and it was like I’d worked 24 hours the night before. It was just also another podcast for another day of how insane that world is. But anyways, I had gone home at, like, six in the morning to sleep, and I came back at, like, eight. Nobody asked me to come back. We’d basically wrapped it up. It was the end of it. Nobody had said anything. But of course I had anxiety. I felt like, “Well, they might need something, and I should be back in case.”
So I’m sitting in my office. Nothing is really happening. I’m obviously exhausted. There was another associate that was the same year as me, a male associate, and this is, at the time by the way (I’m dating myself), like 2008. So we didn’t have iPhones. You had your Blackberry. Anyways, so at, like, noon, I’m sitting at my desk, working for no reason for, like, four hours even though I have nothing to do, and I very reasonably could have just stayed home and slept. But I had too much anxiety.
And so, at noon I went to go find the other associate to talk to him about, I don’t even know what. And I go and I see his assistant. He’s not in his office, and I ask his assistant, like, “Where is he?” And she’s like, “Oh, he’s surfing.” And I was like, “I’m sorry, what?” And she was like, “He went out to surf for an hour. He said he’ll be back in an hour or two.” And I remember it was a punch to the gut because I was like this man is in the middle of the water where nobody can reach him, and he has not a care in the world, and there’s clearly some disconnect because I am developing an ulcer sitting here so anxious that somebody might need me, and God forbid if they come by and I’m not there and I don’t answer immediately.
And I say this because I think so many of us, again, you just really have to question, “Will I really be fired if I take a couple hours? Will I really be fired if I don’t do this thing or if I’m not at everyone’s beck and call or if I’m not answering email at night all the time.” Oftentimes, it’s much bigger in our head. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve coached who will say, “I stopped answering emails at night and nobody’s even noticed.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know, because they were like, ‘Okay we’re gonna see it the next day anyway.’” You just created a rule that was like, “I’ve got to answer an email within ten minutes or it’s gonna be the end of the world,” you know?
And so, it’s like some of this is really just not even advocating with our bosses. It’s just learning within ourselves to set a boundary and to feel like crap when I’m doing it in the beginning because I’m scared and to see it’s actually not as big of a deal as I was making it.
Kelly Nolan: I so appreciate you saying all of this because I know, I mean, you and I both agree that there’s so much stuff that needs to be changed on the system level.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: But there are things we can control, and we can’t wait for the systems to be made for us to enjoy our lives.
Goli Kalkhoran: Totally.
Kelly Nolan: So we’ve got to figure it out within our own control. And I had those moments too. This was, like, in my first or second year of practicing law, and I was just constantly choked up with deadlines and workload, and what really was one day, long story short, me realizing, “Oh, I’m trying to be eager and show that I’m so on top of it so they say, ‘When can you have this to me,’ and I’m like, ‘Tomorrow at noon!’” And no one needed it tomorrow at noon.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, exactly.
Kelly Nolan: But I’m trying to prove that I’m an eager beaver. And over time, I didn’t even make it a formal announcement or tell anybody, I just started being like, “Pad it by a day. Let’s pad it by another day. Let’s pad it by some wiggle room days.”
Goli Kalkhoran: Totally.
Kelly Nolan: And sometimes people pushed back but maybe 5% of the time and even then it was later than I would have initially said the deadline. And all that to say, we can’t fix everything perfectly within a work culture by any means. Some are worse than others. But there are things we can do, I truly believe, that can help us enjoy our jobs or know that we’ve done everything we could to try and enjoy it, and it’s not the right job for me, and you can move on.
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah!
Kelly Nolan: But there’s more ownership on it then instead of just being defeated by it.
Goli Kalkhoran: Totally. Well, and the reason I work with so many people on, “Let’s slow down where we are and work on this, whether you’re gonna stay or leave,” is because even if you end up not — okay, you don’t have to love the job, but you’re gonna take that same brain with you, and I’m telling you as somebody who is still very much a people pleaser, my perfectionism has gotten much better than my people pleasing, but even in my own business, I still notice the tendency of I get an email and I’m like, “Oh, my God! I’ve got to respond!” And I’m like, “No, you don’t. You can respond tomorrow.” But it’s just this reaction of I sort of set my brain up to like, “Well, you have to be responsive, and you have to do it right now.”
And so, it really is realizing it has nothing to do with just this specific job. It has to do with how do I interact with work or with other people? How do I guard my own time? How do I allow myself — the biggest thing for me and for a lot of people is how do I become okay with not being the A+ employee? What if that was okay? What if I don’t need to be the star employee? What if I don’t need the pats on the back all the time? What if I could be a solid B-? And for so many of us who never were that, were always the A student, it’s a whole identity shift. It’s like, “No, I want to give my all,” and you can, you’re just gonna burn yourself out.
So the question becomes, “Do I want to be able to balance everything and not get the constant praise and accolades and be the first –.” And it’s so funny. What’s that saying like, “The prize for winning the pie-eating contest is more pie”?
Kelly Nolan: Yes, exactly.
Goli Kalkhoran: It’s the same thing! Like, okay, well, now you’re the most reliable, so they’re gonna keep coming to you. That’s what you’re creating for yourself, and so, it’s kind of learning, “Maybe I can not.” How do I feel okay with myself if everybody isn’t telling me I’m the best employee? That’s what I need to work on.
Kelly Nolan: Absolutely. Well, I do think that you and I could talk for days on end about all of this, so I will force us to wrap it up. But I’m sure there are people listening who would love to learn more about your work and potentially working with you. Where should people go next?
Goli Kalkhoran: Yeah, well, I have a free class that helps you kind of go through the three stages that you need to work though in order to kind of create a career you love. It’s called The Secret to Creating a Career You Love, and you can go to www.quitterclub.com/class to get that. You can also check out really anything that I have anywhere at www.lessonsfromaquitter.com. I’m on Instagram with the same handle @lessonsfromaquitter. Come say hi! And I have a membership called The Quitter Club where I help people through these same things, through these same issues and learning how to kind of set these boundaries and love where they’re at and stop all the madness of perfectionism and people pleasing. So you can check that out at the same place, www.lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub.
Kelly Nolan: And, obviously, definitely check out the podcast as well because it’s an excellent podcast, Lessons From a Quitter as well!
Goli Kalkhoran: Thank you!
Kelly Nolan: Well, thank you so much, Goli! I really, really appreciate you taking the time to be here, and I’m excited for the people listening to get to be introduced to you if they hadn’t already!
Goli Kalkhoran: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so excited to see if hopefully this helps people, and if it does, come tell me what you liked about it, what you didn’t. Say hi! I promise I’m friendly. And I appreciate you having me here, Kelly!
Kelly Nolan: Awesome, thank you! And for you at home, thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you in the next episode!
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