REFRAMING THE SIDE HUSTLE
Welcome to The Small Jar, a podcast where we explore how to intentionally design the life that you want in the space between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 23.
Hello, my friends. As I started thinking about this episode, I was sitting in my room on Uluthra in the Bahamas. I had woken up at 5 a.m. to see my son compete in a monster run-swim with 57 of his new best friends, who he has formed incredible bonds with over the past five and a half weeks.
I have the privilege of being here. It's parents weekend, although the weekend runs from Monday to Friday. My husband and I had a laugh that there was nothing weekend-y about this parents weekend.
Most parents have to work, so there's a certain amount of privilege that comes with the opportunity to take a whole week to come experience this not a weekend. In fact, there are many parents like me who are here solo for that very reason. I'm working remotely for part of the week, in addition to investing time in my coaching business.
I work full-time and I'm also a life coach, so I'm intimately familiar with the concept of the side hustle. I found that many of us women at this stage in life are looking for that next opportunity, whether it be starting a new career, launching a business, or getting back into the workforce. But there is this transitional moment where we're still firmly committed to our current position.
Again, whether that be a job or full-time momaging, managing our kids' busy lives, but we're looking ahead to what comes next and are not quite sure how to take that next step. It's scary. There's a large degree of comfort in doing what we know.
However we've been investing our time and energy for the last number of years, we're pretty good at it. It may not always have been fun or easy. It may not have been exactly what we dreamed of doing when we were younger, but it's predictable and probably to a large extent safe.
And safe and predictable is fine. It's been fine. There are reasons why we've stayed in our current situation.
If we're working full-time, we're likely there to some degree because our income is supporting the family. We might be there for the benefits, or it could be that this is the profession we pursued when we were younger and we stuck with it and we've gotten to a place where we know what we're doing. For some of us, we may have made the choice to be in our current job because of its flexibility.
Maybe they allow us to be part-time or to work virtually. We may have chosen our job because it was close to our children's school, or if we're not working, we may be investing a considerable amount of time volunteering at our children's school. Maybe your job, paid or otherwise, wasn't a dream job, but it's been something we can fit in during the hours when our kids have been busy, so we're fully available to support them in the afternoons and during summer or breaks from school.
There's a certain stickiness to being invested in a job that has so many ancillary benefits that allow us to support our families. Of course, the income is valuable, but the flexibility or convenience of our current position is even more valuable to a large extent. In fact, some of us might even have chosen a job or career path that pays us less than we might have if we'd not have kids.
In fact, this choice can leave some of us feeling somewhat resentful. And look, I want to be clear, when I'm referring to the job you've selected, I'm including being a full-time mom and an active volunteer. Whether or not you've been paid for your services, I place the same amount of value and contribution to these important jobs.
And again, each one of us has made the decision whether or not to work and how to invest our time, and a large driver of that decision has been our kids. So let's explore what we're feeling right now. We're in our late 40s or 50s.
Our kids are either on the brink of leaving the nest or have already gone off to college. We're in this job, paid or otherwise, at home or in an office. There are certainly those among us who are lucky enough to have found a job that they love and plan to continue well into the future.
But if you clicked on a podcast relating to the side hustle, I imagine you, like many of my clients and women I know, are looking for something new, something different. And if this is you, you may be feeling stuck and burnt out, maybe bored. You could be feeling insecure, confused, maybe even resentful.
So let's explore why. Because it seems so obvious that we feel these uncomfortable emotions because our kids have left or are leaving, and we just don't know what to do with ourselves. We're not particularly happy, but are also having difficulty motivating to take steps toward what comes next.
For many of us, processing the emotions of letting go of our children seem to eclipse the forward momentum we would love to create for ourselves. I've talked quite a bit about processing the emotions elicited by the empty nest in previous episodes, so I invite you to take a listen if the of letting go is your primary challenge right now. And look, even when we are able to come to terms with the drastic change of having our kids leave, there likely will be times when the sadness comes back in waves, and it's okay.
Sometimes we have to let ourselves be a little sad. I've found even as my clients process the sadness, it's helpful to begin igniting a little hope that there is a beautiful next chapter waiting for us. I love that as our children embark on their first phase of adulthood, we have a chance to recapture for ourselves a little bit of that sense of embarking on our own exciting new adventure.
The possibilities for your life right now are infinite. They actually always have been, believe it or not. Throughout our kids' lives, we could have picked up and moved with them to another country, taken any number of jobs, put them in schools anywhere in the world.
We could have made any number of choices about the way we raised our kids, whether we realize it or not. We have been choosing among an infinite array of choices for our life all along, although I know it probably didn't feel that way. It probably felt more like we have to live here because that's where our jobs are, or we have to stay here because we don't want our kids to have to move schools and make new friends, or we moved here to be closer to family.
Even the decision to stay where you are and not make a drastic change, that's still a choice. I say all of this because I want to first point out that where you are at this moment is the culmination of a number of decisions you have made up to this point in your life. If you stayed home with your kids, that was a choice.
If you've had a job, that was a choice. If you've changed careers after having kids, that was a choice. Although we don't always like to admit it, many of us can reach this point in our lives and feel a bit of resentment.
It may not necessarily be directed at anyone because we really did want to invest the time, energy, and love that we've given to raise our kids. We certainly don't resent them, but the byproduct of some of the choices we've made to support our kids, one could even say the sacrifices we've made to support our kids, can leave us feeling resentful now that they're gone and we're left in a career that's not particularly satisfying, or without a career altogether, having taken a big step back from our professional lives and feeling like it's impossible to get back into the game. We don't feel as qualified to do even the job we might have had before we had kids.
Our choices don't feel infinite right now. It seems like a fact that we're stuck, without options. We might be thinking, I have to stay in my current job because we still need the income or the benefits, or I've been staying home for so long I'm not qualified for any job, or I just don't know what to do with myself.
I don't like what I'm doing now, but I don't know what else I would be doing. It's interesting too that these thoughts that keep us feeling stuck creep up on us, whether or not we actually need the income. In fact, sometimes having a spouse that earns an income that allows us to not have to make the choice to work can actually serve to limit us.
Not needing the income takes some of the urgency from having the job itself. It also might have contributed to our decision to stay home in the first place. What felt like a luxury in being able to stay home with the now makes the loss of that purpose feel even more significant because there's not an obvious next purpose to dive into.
I want to point out that no matter the circumstances, again, working at a job or if you were a stay-at-home mom, having continued to pursue a career or having volunteered, however you've invested your time, these circumstances are not at all what are leaving you feeling stuck, bored, and potentially resentful. These facts of what your life looks like right now, what it's looked like for the past 20-ish years, there's absolutely nothing inherently good or bad about the series of choices that have created these circumstances until we have a story about it. These stories have many varieties, but if you're feeling stuck, bored, or resentful, your story likely involves some combination of thinking, I don't know what to do, I don't like what I'm currently doing, and I wish I wasn't limited in my choices.
Which of these resonate for you? I don't know what to do, I don't like what I'm currently doing, and I wish I wasn't limited in my choices. If you're not sure what to do next, you may be feeling stuck. If you don't like what you're currently doing, whether that be staying at home or working in your job, you might be feeling bored, uninspired, or frustrated.
And if you find yourself wishing that somehow things might have been different so that the choices in front of you felt less limited, you might be feeling a little frustrated and even resentful. So let's take a moment and play with this for a moment. When you're thinking you're not sure what to do next and you're feeling stuck, what do you do? I would bet you're not making big plans, not motivated to start a job search or start looking for opportunities.
The reality is that when we're feeling stuck, we often don't do much of anything. We feel helpless to get started, we stay confused, and guess what? We stay stuck. And when we don't like what we're currently doing and we feel frustrated and bored, we spend more time wallowing and then not liking where we are.
We're convinced that any place is better than where we are. If we're working, we want to quit or find a better job. If we're at home, we want a job or at least something purposeful to do.
We're focused on changing our circumstances to feel better. If you've already tried this, you might have already experienced the disappointment of starting the new job or quitting the old job and finding that it's not better here than there. And you end up frustrated and bored again.
Finally, if you find yourself wishing that you had more choices, thinking about how your husband strongly encouraged you to stay home with the kids and now you feel professionally unqualified or how you're stuck in the job you hate because your family still needs the income to get the kids through school and you through retirement, when you think you don't have choices and you feel frustrated and resentful, all you see are the limitations to your situation. Your mind will see what you're looking for and if you're looking for your own limitations, you will find them, guaranteed. What you won't find are the infinite array of options in front of you and your result, the one you actually create, is that you don't have more choices.
So how can we actually move forward? The first critical step is to really open your mind to the possibility, the reality that you are in charge of your life and you are responsible for creating the results you see in your life. The circumstances of your life don't limit you without your permission. So ask yourself, how are you limiting yourself right now? Ask yourself, why don't I like what I'm currently doing? Is it that I don't like the parameters of the job, like the hours or the specific tasks or is it the people, your boss? Get really curious about what you think would have to change in order for you to love your job because guaranteed, if you're not honest with yourself about the expectations you have about your current job and what you have to change in order for you to be happy, you will take these expectations into your next job or endeavor and find yourself in the same position once the newness of the next job wears off.
This is equally true if you're staying at home and contemplating getting back into the workforce. Don't just take a job to fill your time, really be honest with yourself about what expectations you have about how your life will be different if you had a job. And here's another thing to consider.
What's the upside of thinking you are limited in your choices? If your child told you that they were limited in their options, how would you encourage them to think differently? How is it that your teen or 20 something year old child has a whole world open to them and you, with all of your life experience, are now limited? What's the upside in believing this? Can you imagine the shift in perspective in just opening your mind a little bit to the possibility that the world is also open to you, that your possibilities are also limitless? We tell ourselves that we don't know what to do and first I want to say it's okay if this is you right now, I get it. Although we may not even realize it, it feels safer to stay unsure. When we're not sure, we keep ourselves in limbo.
We don't feel like we're in a position to make a decision. And when we think we don't know what to do, we feel unsure, conflicted. When we feel this way, we get stuck in confusion.
It feels like there's a wrong choice in front of us. We may also be thinking very narrowly in terms of our options, like quit or don't quit, get a job or stay at home and play tennis, as if the choices in front of us were binary, one or the other. And frankly, neither option sounds that exciting to us.
But what if I suggested to you that your options are not only limitless, but you have the ability to decide what to do and that there is no wrong choice? At first, it may seem to make the decisions ahead of you feel more complicated if you were to consider an infinite array of options. But in fact, opening your mind up to the possibilities of your life may unveil the dream you have not been allowing yourself to consider. When you find yourself choosing between two relatively unexciting options for your life, is it any wonder that you're not motivated to choose one? And if you do happen to have a spark of some dream brewing in your mind, that dream that you find yourself remembering and then immediately talking yourself out of, thinking that it's not possible, that you don't have what it takes, that it'll be too much work, you may even tell yourself you should be more realistic.
But what if it is possible? What if you do have what it takes? So what if it will require hard work? It's not like you've shied away from doing whatever it took to successfully raise your children. What if it is possible? Now, as a coach, I will never tell you what you should do. A coach's job is not to tell you what to do, but rather to help you open your mind to the possibilities of what you could do, and ultimately to help you clear the obstacles standing in your way of making decisions and moving forward.
In exploring one of these possibilities, I want to spend a bit of time on the concept of the side hustle. Again, not because this is something you should do, but rather as an illustration of possibilities that you may not have considered available to you. So typically, a side hustle is thought of as work you do on the side of a traditional job, usually to earn additional income.
But for our purposes, I want to suggest that one of the most interesting benefits of the side hustle is that it offers an opportunity to pursue something you're really passionate about. Consider that an endeavor that allows you to pursue something you're passionate about. It would be amazing to think we could find this in full-time work as well.
And in fact, it probably is one of the reasons why we've loved motherhood. We've been passionate about it. It's kind of no wonder that any nine-to-five job pales in comparison to that level of passion and purpose.
But now that we're thinking about what comes after the children launch themselves into adulthood, I want to plant a seed in your mind that you could pursue something that you are really passionate about. Now, there's something about the concept of the side hustle that implies that it's part-time or that you have to have a full-time job. But again, let's just focus on the aspect of the side hustle that involves doing something that really, truly excites you.
I think there's also something about the concept of the side hustle that allows us to have permission to start at the beginning. To start a little small. And I don't mean little.
I mean to allow ourselves to start with a spark rather than a raging fire. To start with an idea. Not to force ourselves to have it all figured out, but to allow it to start off as a tiny little flame that we nurture and grow as we invest thought and energy into it.
There are a few other aspects of the side hustle that I think are really interesting to consider. A side hustle can mean working for someone else, but frequently side hustles involve being your own boss and setting your own schedule. And this means side hustles are typically pretty flexible in the beginning, particularly as you're getting started and figuring out what you need to know.
Depending on the type of work you want to pursue or impact you want to make, you may not need a degree or certification to get started. And in many cases, even if getting certified or accessing additional training is something you think would be helpful as you get started, this type of education and training is often easily accessible online. In fact, no matter the field, the opportunities for various online trainings and certifications are so robust that the challenge is often in figuring out which one of the many available trainings will actually be beneficial to you.
In addition to exploring a side hustle in a field that might excite you, you may actually have skills in a specific field. You may have been an accountant before having kids or have credentials as a nurse or a physician, an attorney. You may also have skills that you forged as a volunteer or managing your household, home, or the kids' lives.
Consider the things that you are truly good at. What skills have you used in your volunteer work or in past jobs that have made an impact? And how could these skills be used to launch a new career or endeavor that ignites your passion? The possibilities to create a side hustle are literally infinite. They can relate to any skill set.
They can have a local, national, or global reach. Serve any type of customer, individual, schools, businesses, non-profits, entrepreneurs. You could offer your services as a freelancer, getting paid for specific services.
Or you could start your own company to sell goods or services. You could organize people's homes, write a book, teach people how to make things, write grants for non-profits, sell baked goods, be a bookkeeper, sell artwork or crafts. You could become a professional volunteer sitting on boards of non-profits.
You could start your own 501c3 with its own mission and purpose to create change in an area of the world you feel is underserved. The possibilities are literally limitless. The only limitation is, in fact, your own imagination.
Let yourself dream for a minute. Brainstorm. Write down all of the possibilities for what you could do with your life, how you could invest your time in ways that would be truly meaningful for you.
Again, I'm not telling you what you should do. Let the list of possibilities include staying where you are, maybe getting a full-time or part-time job, traveling the world, playing tennis or golf. There is no right or wrong answer.
Your children have left or are leaving the nest and some of the constraints on your time and possibilities for your life have been lifted. Now let yourself lift those constraints that are in your mind. I don't know what to do.
I don't like what I'm currently doing. I wish I wasn't limited in my choices. You are not limited in your choices.
Unshackle your mind first and let the possibilities for your life present themselves to you. Without these constraints, then you can consider your options. You can stay where you are.
There is no requirement to change. In fact, as a coach, I would also tell you there is something powerful about learning to love where you are first and then making a change in your circumstances, not so that you'll feel better doing something different, but because in the pursuit of new challenges, you have the opportunity to grow, to learn who you can become, to get out of your comfort zone. And yes, I know that sounds scary.
Right now, our experience is predictable. It's safe. It's fine, which means staying where you are is comfortable in some ways and there's absolutely nothing wrong with staying comfortable, but I invite you to consider if you feel confused, stuck, frustrated or resentful.
If this is your experience right now, you have an opportunity to really uncover why you feel this way, how to feel better where you are without changing a thing and opening your mind to the possibilities for your life, the opportunity to grow. Think of the side hustle as a little flame that you get to nurture. It represents your dreams, your potential.
You don't have to know exactly where this journey will lead you, but open your mind to the possibility that this flame, your passion, could lead you somewhere beautiful, fulfilling, impactful, magical. And yes, it's a little scary, but fear may also be the currency of your dreams. As I sit here in Yaluthra in the Bahamas, feeling so lucky to be here to witness a small part of my son's incredible experience over the past month and a half, I'm also keeping my commitments to my job while nurturing my passions.
I feel very lucky and it's not these circumstances that make me feel this way. It's my thought that my opportunities are limitless, that I am willing to invest my time so that I can support my children, thrive in my job and build a business. It's not easy.
It's a little scary, but it's possible. What's possible for you and your life? Until next time, friends.
Thanks for listening to The Small Jar Podcast. Please visit us at www.thesmalljar.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at smalljarcoach and subscribe to this podcast. Remember, you are the author of your story.
