Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know

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Erica: Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions at work?

Erica: Clocking in, zoning out, clocking out, repeat? Or maybe you just want to be happier today. It is so easy to get stuck in these routines and just go on autopilot where we are totally disengaged from purpose and meaning. But my amazing and magnificent guest today says it does not have to be like that. Jessica Weiss is on a

Erica: mission to help people thrive at work.

Erica: As a happiness expert, TEDx speaker, and author, she knows that small science fact shifts in our mindset and our habits can completely transform our happiness. Jessica shares insights from years of studying positive psychology and coaching major companies on engagement, creativity, and innovation. She delivers actionable strategies with both humor and win. This conversation, it's

Erica: Jessica is going to challenge you to take control and intentionally create more joy,

Erica: more accomplishment, and more meaning in your life and in your nine to five. We are talking to a happiness expert, a TEDx speaker, author, and coach, and her name is Jessica Weiss. Jessica, how are you today?

Jessica Weiss: I'm good. Thank you so much for having me, Erica.

Erica: I am so pumped that you were here. I feel like I have been following your work for a long time now, but I wanna kick this conversation off with just learning a little bit more about you and your journey. How did we get to this place here today?

Jessica Weiss: Right. How how does one become a happiness expert? Right? Great question. Yeah.

Jessica Weiss: Not not necessarily, like, a career path that many people have taken before. Okay. So this is how I got there. It's sort of a a meeting of two converging paths. So just on a totally personal level, I am someone who has always been obsessed with this idea of happiness.

Jessica Weiss: For probably that probably says a lot about my mental state, which is probably a conversation we should save for another time or maybe in a doctor's office. But you know what I'm saying. I've always been someone who's been obsessed with sort of finding more happiness, how do you do it. I would voraciously read any, you know, article that I could find, any Oprah Winfrey show that came on talking about happiness, you know, anything that was sort sort of just on a very personal level. I I loved learning about anything having to do with that happiness.

Jessica Weiss: And as an undergraduate, I was lucky enough to take a class really very much by accident. I had no idea even the class that I was registering for. It was a psychology class. But it the the whole kind of thesis, let's say, of the class was this idea of instead of studying everything that's wrong with us, all the things that malfunction in our brain, let's instead look at all the people who get it right, right, who are really good at happiness, who are really good at living healthy, full lives. What is it that they're doing, and how do we learn how to do more of that?

Jessica Weiss: So and that class was taught by, doctor Martin Seligman who actually is the founder of this entire positive psychology movement. I didn't know that at the time. I just knew he was a really popular professor, and the class sounded super interesting to me. So that kind of just on a very personal level, it was just something that I was interested in. I then later went on.

Jessica Weiss: I got an MBA. I did what every MBA does, and I went into management consulting, and I worked with big, like, Fortune 500 brands, and we would go into those organizations. The kind of consulting that I did was around organizational design and culture. Not surprising. Right?

Jessica Weiss: That's what I was interested in. And, specifically, the work that we did or my team did was all around going into the Johnson and Johnson's, the Pfizer's, the American Express, Citibank, whatever it is. It was specifically around how can we create a more innovative culture. How can we, spur creativity and growth? What are the things that we need to do and change in these big behemoth organizations?

Jessica Weiss: So I would work with leadership teams, I would work with individual teams, we would work with individuals, and there would be a lot of coaching and a lot of workshopping, but as we would sort of kind of diagnose what all of the problems were, what we would eventually peel back to find is people were like, well, how do I get better at my job? How do I find more happiness in my work? How do I have more satisfaction with what I'm doing? Because if the I can do that. I could do my job so much better.

Jessica Weiss: All this creativity and innovation would flow directly from that. So once that kind of started to be the question that people were saying, how do I find more happiness at work? That was the moment where it sort of married for me. Right? It was my personal interest because I was like, oh, we're gonna talk about happiness, and then my work interest, which was around specifically around generating happiness at work, that's when I found my sweet spot.

Jessica Weiss: Right? That's when I was like, okay. This is what I wanna do. I wanna help people find more happiness at work. So that's how all of this happened.

Jessica Weiss: I eventually left. I was with a big, you know, management consulting firm. I left. I went out on my own, and I now solely do, teaching people how to find more happiness at work, which also means how to find more happiness in life. And that's how one becomes a happiness expert.

Erica: I think that's so interesting to me, and I love this because I'm thinking everybody wants to be happy. You are not going to run into a single person that is like, no, Jessica. Thank you. I'd rather be miserable. Everybody is going to say they wanna be happy, but nobody intentionally is like, I'm going to really dig in deep and figure out why and, like, the science behind it.

Erica: But that's what you did. Yeah. Well, you know, this

Jessica Weiss: is an interesting question. Whenever I'm doing any kind of workshop or any kind of coaching, I often ask people, you know, so tell me you know, people will say to me, well, what I really want is I really wanna be happy. And I would say, okay. That's great. Now tell me what that means.

Jessica Weiss: What does that look like? What what does it mean when you say you wanna be happy? And it's a really hard thing for people to articulate. Right? So oftentimes, after a lot of, like, hemming and hawing and, like, oh, jeez.

Jessica Weiss: I don't know. It would be like, oh, I wanna have enough money to pay my bills or I wanna lose x number of pounds. Whatever it is or I really want my kids to be happy. If my kids are happy, I'm happy. And really what all of that is, that's articulating goals or wishes.

Jessica Weiss: Right? That's not really understanding happiness and what is happiness at its heart. Right? So it's an interesting thing. I think everybody wants it.

Jessica Weiss: Even if you have it, you want more of it, but I think that people have a really hard time articulating it.

Erica: Yes. It's like the why behind the why. So Yeah. I used to do a lot of personal training, and, of course, people would come and say, I wanna lose 20 pounds.

Jessica Weiss: Right.

Erica: Well, why? Because I wanna look good in my jeans. Okay. Well, we could all go buy them, buy a bigger pair of jeans. Why?

Erica: And you would start to dig deeper and deeper and peel back that onion, and you would hear that, well, really, it's because I'm really struggling to get up and down off the floor with my kids that I wanna play with. Or I can't go out and do the bike rides, or I'm scared I'm not gonna fit in the roller coaster ride when we go to Disney World in two months. And it's like, that's the why. That's why you want to lose 20 pounds. It's not this I want to lose 20 pounds.

Jessica Weiss: Exactly. And, really, what people are saying there is I wanna work on the relationships in my family. Right? I wanna work on the relationships with my friends. And that that is a happiness question.

Jessica Weiss: You know? That is the stuff that's gonna make you happy, and it's exactly the same thing because the weight loss thing is a funny thing. It it ties into happiness constantly and continually. But it oftentimes when you dig in, that's exactly where you get.

Erica: Well, I'm sure it's the same with money too. I mean, who doesn't want more money? Everybody could use more money. Right? Now when you start to dig why, it's like, well, I want the financial security that maybe you never had as a kid.

Erica: Right? Maybe you were constantly having to wonder if your light bill was gonna be paid or if there was gonna be food on your table. Yeah. So you're looking for that stability and that safety, not just to have more dollars in your bank account.

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Jessica Weiss: No. Because what you find is for the people that are lucky enough to get the more dollars in the bank account, it actually doesn't make you happier. Right? It becomes this moving target of happiness. Like, well, if $10,000 makes me happy, then $20,000 will make me happier.

Jessica Weiss: Right? Or $20,000 are no longer doing it for me. Now I need a $100,000. Right? So it becomes this moving target.

Jessica Weiss: So, clearly, it's not the money. Right? The money is not the thing. It's it's the underlying. It's the it's the why behind the why.

Jessica Weiss: Exactly what you said.

Erica: It is. And so my friend, she was actually a guest on this podcast a couple months ago. Her name is Laura Gassner Otting, and she wrote a book, called wonder hell. And it's why success doesn't feel the way we think it should feel. And it gets back to that whole piece of, like, I'll be happy when.

Erica: I'll be happy if I land in this. I'll be happy when I make 6 figures. I will be happy, but that's never the case. No. Never.

Erica: But, sir, Jessica, I'm a science gal. Love research. I wanna know where is this coming from? You already touched a tiny bit on positive psychology, which I'm always intrigued by. But what kind of research is out there that talks about happiness specifically?

Jessica Weiss: So there is loads of research. And everything that I talk about, whenever I talk about strategies and tools and habits or whatever it is that I'm talking about, it is always based on science. So there are loads of different kinds of studies, and you can look at it from various different perspectives. So economists look at this question constantly, and they come from a very specific point of view. Social scientists, psychologists, every kind of HBR article and MIT review, you know, then there's the whole business and culture kind of perspective.

Jessica Weiss: So, I spend so much of my time reading all of that research because I think the thing that I find with research, is research is fine and well and it's great, but I you know, people need a little bit of help translating that research into, like, okay. How do I use this in my life? How do I actually incorporate this so I can make some changes? So that's really what I spend my time on, collecting all of that information and then helping people translate that into action items that they could use.

Erica: Into the tangibles. I love it. What are some of the let's just dive right in. What are some of the tangibles?

Jessica Weiss: Okay. So let's start. We can talk about happiness at work. Right? Let's talk about and there's a really this is one of my favorites because it's really simple.

Jessica Weiss: It's really accessible. You need to spend no money on it at all, and it it doesn't take long to work. So this idea, I think that all of us are kind of, like, attacked by this notion of, like, oh my god. I'm so busy. I'm so busy.

Jessica Weiss: I feel like people wear that busyness thing. Like, if you're busy, that means you're important. Right? And, really, when you dig in and look at why you're so busy, if you're spending your entire day responding to emails and notifications and jumping from meeting to meeting, I don't know if you're anything like me. But when I have those kinds of days, I'm like, what what did I even do today?

Jessica Weiss: Like, where where did my day go? Like, what happened? So this is what I say. If you want to have a great day at work, right, if you and this works. I I say this in my TEDx.

Jessica Weiss: It takes a bad day and makes it a good day. It takes a good day and makes it a great day. You need to build in time into your day to do work that is meaningful to you. By that, I mean and I'm not talking about highfalutin, like, oh my god. I'm going out and solving, you know, the world's problems.

Jessica Weiss: No. It has to be work that's meaningful to you, and you have to feel that you are making progress on that work. So there needs to be some kind of meaningful project that you are working on, and you need to work on that every single day. You need to feel that you are making progress towards that goal every single day, and you need to acknowledge and celebrate that win. So that sense of progress is really the key to feeling like you're accomplishing accomplishing something at work.

Jessica Weiss: So I tell everybody, build in time into your day to work on something, some project that's meaningful to you. Whether you're writing a book, whether you're preparing a study for work, whatever it is, Find time in your day, and it doesn't have to be, like, this huge block of hours because god knows who has a huge block of hours to build into their schedule. But I think, quite honestly, thirty minutes works. Thirty minutes. Block off thirty minutes of your schedule to have this tap into this feeling of a sense of progress and accomplishment because it's that sense of progress and accomplishment that will make you feel good.

Jessica Weiss: The truth is the goal doesn't even need to be accomplished. I mean, I'm kudos to you if you go on to write the book. That's amazing. But the truth is you really don't even have to. You just have to feel that you're making progress towards the goal in order to tap into that, like, good feeling.

Erica: What I think is so important here is it is about filling your own damn cup. Because I think so many people put expectations on the others around them, whether they are at work and, like, well, my boss doesn't give me meaningful work Right. Or my spouse. It is about you finding that meaningful work and you filling your own cup. Would you agree?

Jessica Weiss: Yeah. A 100%. And I think it, like that's a little bit of a question that you need to ask yourself. Right? What is meaningful work to you?

Jessica Weiss: And that's why I kind of try to break it down into just break it into a project, A project that you wanna accomplish. Something really simple. I mean, it can be something as big as a book, but maybe it's really something creating a handbook at work that will help your team work better. Whatever it is, it doesn't necessarily have to be anything that anybody has asked you to do, but something that you think is useful, is meaningful, will bring, you know, success to your team, and do that. Tap into it for half an hour every single day.

Jessica Weiss: And this specifically comes from, a professor at Harvard. Her name is Teresa, and I'm gonna butcher her last name, Amabile. I'm pretty sure I fully pronounced it wrong. But if you go for phonetics, you'll get there with me. And she, did a ton of work around her work is a little bit different.

Jessica Weiss: It's not necessarily around happiness. It's around creativity. But in that work of creativity, she tapped into what is it that people need to do to feel that that happiness at work, that sense of accomplishment. So that's a great one. I love that one.

Jessica Weiss: It's so doable, costs no money, and you could literally start it tomorrow.

Erica: It's so doable. And I actually commented on someone's LinkedIn post today because they specifically were saying that we are not providing Gen z with meaningful work Right. And that they're feeling depleted. And while I see that, and I do think that managers should really try to connect the whys for them Yeah. Part of me was like, well, if they're just starting in the workplace, like, sometimes they need to get into the nitty gritty boring details, and I used HR, which is my expertise, as an example.

Erica: I was like, sometimes it's about the filing. But if you just went to somebody and you plopped a thing of files on their desk and said, here, file these, of course, that's gonna be boring and meaningless. But if you go behind them and you're like, listen. We never can find what we need. It makes everybody's lives so much harder.

Erica: If we can work through this, you know, and file everything, like, we're gonna be so much more efficient. We're gonna get shit done. And you put that reason behind it Exactly. It gives a meaningless project meaning.

Jessica Weiss: Well, that's exactly it. You can find purpose and meaning in almost anything, and that is a critical thing for Gen z. To be honest with you, I kinda feel like it's a critical thing for everybody. I'm not one that loves all of these, like, you know, words of the moment. I always feel like it's just, like, words that were around fifty years ago that are just getting refashioned, right, in a different way.

Jessica Weiss: We all need meaning and purpose at work. But let's say Gen z. Let's focus on this specifically because people really do love to say, they need to feel that they have purpose and meaning in their workplace, and they have no tolerance. If they don't have it, they're leaving there out of there. And exactly what you said, even if it is just a simple organizational project, well, what you're doing, you're making every you're creating a system that our entire team will be able to use.

Jessica Weiss: This will go on in perpetuity. The you're creating the background so that everybody can move forward. And once we see that you can do this, you can create this system, then you and I can start to talk about another system. Right? But, you know, it it bucks up against that idea of, you know, there's a sense of entitlement.

Jessica Weiss: Right? So it's like we need to give people purpose and meaning, yet everybody feels entitled to purpose and meaning. So, you know, there's a little bit of a conflict there, but I agree with you. I think you can find purpose and meaning in any work. It does it is a little bit the role of the manager to kind of present it in that way, though.

Erica: Absolutely. So one thing I saw on your social media that I was instantly intrigued about, but I wanted to save it for today, what is a joy journal?

Jessica Weiss: Okay. I love this. I love this. It's so simple. It's almost stupid.

Jessica Weiss: Like, and I'm really I'm like I'm I I love everything having to do with happiness, but I am not like the I I hate meditate well, I don't hate meditating. I'm terrible

Erica: at meditating. That's okay.

Jessica Weiss: Okay. I'm terrible at meditating. Like, so bad. Horrible. Horrible.

Jessica Weiss: Like, I I take yoga, but I took, like, I take, like, a very athletic kind of yoga. And then at the end of yoga, they do Shavasana, and I'm like, oh my god. This minute is gonna kill me. It's okay.

Erica: Wrenching and itching.

Jessica Weiss: Exactly. I'm like, I I I need to stretch. I need to do something. I need to be active. But I do think so I'm not one.

Jessica Weiss: When I talk about happiness, I don't really do, like, a lot of wellnessy kind of stuff only because from a personal perspective, it doesn't really resonate with me. I like to do things that are much more tangible and concrete. So the joy journal kind of bridges these two worlds. Right? Because you hear the words joy journal, and you're like, what on earth is a joy journal?

Jessica Weiss: So it is this. And this is also comes from science. This comes from, Dr. Martin Seligman. And it has been proven that if you do this actually actually, Dr. Daniel Amen talks about this too, which was very interesting. If you do this for two weeks, just two weeks, so the habit, you need to do it for fourteen days.

Jessica Weiss: The measured effects of increased happiness, decreased depression, studies have found that simply by doing this joy journal, I'm gonna tell you the technique in one sec, will decrease depression and increase happiness. So this is it. At the end of every day, I want you to write down three things that brought you joy that day and why. Now here's the thing about this joy journal. Everybody loves to talk about a a journal.

Jessica Weiss: There's a gratitude journal, a this journal, a that journal. What I like about this, there's a bunch of things. The first thing is, when you keep this joy journal, what it does to you this for me is one of the most significant parts of it. What it does for you is all day long, you know you need to be writing three things three things down in that journal all day. So you are looking for three things that brought you joy that day.

Jessica Weiss: So there's an immediate kind of shift in perspective that doesn't feel hokey, that doesn't feel meditative. It just feels like, oh god, I need to do this joy journal. I need to find three things that brought me happiness today. Oh, you know what? That guy in Starbucks held the door for me.

Jessica Weiss: I thought that was really nice. It brought me a moment of joy. Like, that works. We don't have to do, like, huge kind of things. But the other thing that the joy journal does, and it's similar to this to kind of refocusing your attention on the things that bring you happiness, is as human beings, we are, like, hardwired we are not hardwired for happiness.

Jessica Weiss: Our reflexes kind of tell us to do the wrong things for happiness continually. Right? There are all of these biases in our brain that actually work against happiness. So the negativity bias, everybody knows what that is. Right?

Jessica Weiss: We all spend so much time focusing on the bad stuff that happens to us, and the good stuff just kinda falls by the wayside. So this is another thing that the joy journal does. It forces you to acknowledge the good stuff, to remember it, to savor it, to look at it again, to really experience it because it is so easy for us to just gloss over the good stuff and only focus on the crappy stuff. So that's why I love it. I love it because, a, it works within two weeks.

Jessica Weiss: I'm a big impatient gal, so that works for me. I love that it makes you spend your day looking for those three things that bring you happiness, and it fights that negativity bias. It forces you to fight it.

Erica: I like it. I've never done it before, but as you were describing it to me, I like it because I think it would force me to be more present. Yes. And, like, really focused on the little things. Like, when you were talking about this, I was immediately already starting to go back through my day, which it's only 02:30 now, guys.

Erica: So

Jessica Weiss: Yeah. Yeah.

Erica: Yeah. But I was thinking, like, you know what really made me joyful today, not just happy, but joyful. I feel like that's different, was my daughter's laugh over something ridiculous. I don't even remember what she was laughing about, but she has the best five year old belly laugh. And so, like, that little tiny thing Yes.

Erica: Was something that brought me joy. But, again, that's so easy to, like, look over, and she's not gonna have that belly laugh forever. Like, she's not gonna you know?

Jessica Weiss: And at night, you'll find yourself writing that down, remembering it. It'll, like, literally bring a smile to your face. Right? And it, like, kind of warms the insides of your heart because you're, like, reacknowledging it. Exactly.

Jessica Weiss: The other thing that's really nice about a joy journal, different from other kinds of journals is I think that there's, people tend to write down the bad stuff in a journal. Right? Like, which there's there's purpose for that. Absolutely. Right?

Jessica Weiss: You wanna get it out of the brain and onto the paper, but this is very different. Right? This is a very different focus. And, honestly, it takes five minutes. Five minutes.

Erica: And let's be real. If somebody's gonna sneak in and read your journal, I'd much rather have them read a joy journal than all this shit I wrote down about Bob and accounting or something. You know?

Jessica Weiss: Exactly. Exactly right. And the thing that's also really good about the joy journal is talking about people reading the journal is when you go back six months, you know, six months later, you'll go back and you'll be like, oh, what was going on with me in September? And then you reread that stuff, it makes you happy again. Like, it really it kinda cements the happiness.

Jessica Weiss: So and there's lots of neuroscience around this idea that when something really beautiful is happening to you, whether it's a tiny moment or a big moment, kind taking the moment to savor it actually rewires neurons in your brain. So by doing that, you're rewiring your brain to have more happiness. I know that sounds a little bit highfalutin, but that's exactly what happens. There's something called neurons that fire together, wire together. So when you savor the experience, you are rewiring your brain for more happiness.

Erica: So have you heard about the reticular activating system in your brain? Yes. So for those people that don't know, I call it the RAS for short because that's a mouthful, But it's like that hair net that sits over your brain. It's like the bouncer of the club that you know, we get so many pieces of information thrown at us in a day. You can only let in and out certain things.

Erica: So you can stop me if I'm wrong here because this is your area of expertise. But if you are constantly working to see the joy and to see the happiness, isn't your reticular activating system going to let in more joy and happiness?

Jessica Weiss: Exactly. A 100%. And that's exactly the same kind of thing that I'm talking about. A 100%. It kind of rewires your subconscious to let those, wires and files and experiences in.

Erica: Yes. So let me ask you this question then because it's got me thinking about it. Like, I am to take it all the way to the top of the podcast, I am a half full kind of girl. My glass is always full. I'm always seeing the bright side of things.

Erica: My husband is the complete opposite. Like, he's always like, oh god. Here there's this. And that's the question about this and that. Do you think that people are born that way, or do you think it's just all of life's things happening to us and circumstances and experiences?

Jessica Weiss: So there are studies that show that 50% of our happiness is genetic, and they prove this by looking at a study of twins. It was this is a little bit of a weird fact about the study. But they took 75 twins, and the twins were actually separated at birth and raised by different families. And then they were brought now why that happened and how that happened is a conversation for another time. But they were they were then brought back at the age of 40, and they were interviewed, on a whole bunch of of issues, happiness being one of them.

Jessica Weiss: And what the researchers found was that 50% of our happiness we're born with. So there are people like you that are genetically predisposed to being more cheerful, more happy, more optimistic, and then there are people who are not. Right? So the other 50% are not. But that there's 50% of our happiness that is completely within our control.

Jessica Weiss: So even if you're somebody who's been born a little bit of a malcontent, that's only 50% of your brain. The other 50% is totally within your control. So you can if you want to, and it is a big if you want to, you can do something about 50% of your happiness. So you are saying, like, you are a born optimist. Right?

Jessica Weiss: You always see things very positively. And when I work with people who like your husband, who are a bit more, let's say, pragmatic or realistic, that's how they like to say it.

Erica: I was gonna say that's a polite correct term or politically correct for you.

Jessica Weiss: I try to redefine optimism as less of this, like, cheery disposition or, like, always being like, hey. It's all gonna work out. It's all gonna be great. And more of getting really into more of the nitty gritty of what it means to be an optimist. So at the end of the day, you're gonna look like a person who's cheery and happy and, like, you see the best in situations.

Jessica Weiss: But once you if you're dealing with a realist or a pragmatist and you that person wants to bring more optimism into their life, I feel like they need to understand what that really means. So what that really means is they need to look you look at bad situations and you say, I can do something about this. Right? There's something I can do about this. Also, this is not permanent.

Jessica Weiss: This is not the rest of my life. This is a moment. This is a problem. It's solvable. It's not gonna be forever.

Jessica Weiss: Right? That that's like an essential characteristic of an optimist. It's somebody who feels that they have control over bad stuff. They can do something about it. Right?

Jessica Weiss: So when I talk to somebody who's a bit more pragmatic, that's one of the very practical ways, I will say. Like, if you wanna bring more optimism into your life, instead of thinking of life happening to you, let's actually command a bit more control here and see what we can do about it. Let's, like, do just slight little teeny tiny shifts. So because if you start to tell those people, oh, you need to be super cheery, I also am optimistic. Like, I tend to see the best in situations.

Jessica Weiss: I mean, that's not surprising. But that that's what I do also, but I'm not like a rose colored glass person. Like, I'm not like a I'm I'm realistic, but I tend to see positive. And that's probably through the work that I've done. Right?

Jessica Weiss: I probably, like, retrained my brain to look at things more positively.

Erica: Yeah.

Jessica Weiss: But that's where I would start. I would say, like, you have control over your life. This is not a horrible thing that happened to you that other people are doing to you. Let's talk about how we can fix it and how it's gonna be over probably in a matter of hours, minutes, days, weeks.

Erica: Right. I love that. I love that. Okay. So as a happiness expert and, you know, self proclaimed optimist and always seeing good in things, when you think about sticky floors, right, the limiting beliefs, toxic behaviors that keep people stuck.

Erica: Do you have any as this happiness expert?

Jessica Weiss: Do I have limiting beliefs? And, oh, of course. I mean, who doesn't? I am someone who could spiral at any given moment. Just give me a good crappy thing to fixate on, and I can take a spiral down a deep rabbit hole.

Jessica Weiss: So I, you know, I'm absolutely someone who while I'm I'm an optimist and I tend to see the best in situations, I come to this happiness work probably because I want to generate more happiness in my life. Right? So I'm not someone who is perpetually, positive and cheery. No. Crappy stuff happens.

Jessica Weiss: And, probably one of the most limiting beliefs for me is I have worked on my own now in excess of a decade, let's say. And for me, a big limiting belief and something I needed to learn about myself was it's very important for me to be in control of my own destiny. So when I was part of a team where a manager was the person who was going to decide for me what kind of projects I was gonna have, what my path was gonna be. That to me was an extremely kind of constricting and almost made me pull back and lose all of my motivation. So for me, it was really important to be someone who was in control of their own destiny at all times.

Jessica Weiss: Now that's probably an essential characteristic of, like, an entrepreneur. Right? When I realized that, when I tapped into that, I was like, oh, okay. I cannot have somebody else deciding for me what is you know, where my path is going and what what's gonna happen, if that answers the question.

Erica: Yeah. I wanna dig in a little, though, and I wanna know about, like, the nitty gritty before you realized it because I feel like there are probably a lot of people listening to this podcast that don't even recognize that in themselves right now. So what did that look like for you?

Jessica Weiss: So I was someone who was always very ambitious and always very I'm, like, a very type a personality. I always did super well in school. I was very, like, eager to please. So when I started working, I kind of assumed that if I worked hard and I did what I needed to do, then everything would fall into place naturally. Right?

Jessica Weiss: You would be rewarded for your good deeds or rewarded for your hard work, and therefore, you would, like, progress as you would imagine in your head. But, actually, it doesn't really work like that. That's not enough. So I was dealing with, and I'm thinking about, like, a particular situation early on in my career was I had a manager who, was great, super intelligent. Everyone adored him.

Jessica Weiss: Okay? And, he was super successful at a very young age. And I really liked him on a personal level. Like, we got along great. But he what I learned was that he was extremely threatened.

Jessica Weiss: Probably there's a female male dynamic here too to talk about. But he was extremely threatened by anybody who, also did well and didn't know how to deal with that. So this is exactly where I tapped into this, where I realized this was going on because I was like, hey. You're taking all the good stuff for yourself, and you're not giving anything to anybody else. Like, what's going on here?

Jessica Weiss: And when I confront you know? And it took me a while to kinda figure out. I was like, I don't understand why he's doing everything or or, like, one other person was getting everything. I was like, what's happening here? There's no equity in the way that the work is being distributed, and I was working in a consulting firm.

Jessica Weiss: So it was all around projects that were coming up and then being divvied out. And I was like it took me a while to realize. I was like, hey. Why am I sitting here twiddling my thumbs when there's actually great work to be done, but it's never coming my way? So when I confronted him on it, and I honestly didn't even think of it a comp as a confrontation.

Jessica Weiss: I was just kind of like, hey. I would love to get into these meaty projects, like project a, project b. I understand that those are not possible right now, but the next time it comes up, I would very much like to throw my hat in the ring and to be considered for it. Well, what wound up happening was this very narcissistic individual literally pounded his chest and told me no. All of that work is for me.

Jessica Weiss: And I was like, oh, okay. Okay. I'm seeing what's happening here. So you're threatened by anybody who you feel can do let's not even say, maybe he did a better job and great for him, but you're threatened by anybody who wants to actually do good work too, and you're not gonna let that person get ahead in any way. So it was a very interesting moment for me where I was like, oh, I am not in control of my destiny here, and I need to do something about it.

Jessica Weiss: So that was, like, that was a case of somebody who was a great individual performer, got rewarded for being a great individual performer, was a terrible manager. Terrible.

Erica: Yeah. And there probably is some shit underneath the onion. Like, if you peel it back with that person of why they feel so threatened by sharing these amazing other projects with other people. And if you have success, does that overshine my success Yeah. Exactly.

Erica: Instead of, like, let's be great together. But isn't it so interesting that probably everybody that's listening can go right back to like, you said, there's a particular situation. In my head, I was already back at a particular situation, and I was like, oh my god. But I I know. I was,

Jessica Weiss: like, sitting in the room. I felt the tension. Yes. Exactly.

Erica: Yes. And I think that's a big thing. Like, whether or not you decide to be an entrepreneur or even staying corporate. Right? Like, number one, you still have control over your life and the decisions that you make.

Erica: And when I go back to my particular situation, I was in a situation where I pitched an idea to somebody, and then they went and pitched it as their own. And that kind of we all been there. Unraveling. Right. It started this whole unraveling.

Erica: And what I I realized after I had my moment, right, after I grieved a bit about what was going on, was that that individual probably had something to do from an age complex because I was very young and they were older and farther along in their career, and it was a great fucking idea. Yeah. And then number two, there was probably a bit of of the threatening feeling there. But, to stay in corporate route, like, I made a choice that I didn't have to stay there and sit with that because my happiness absolutely would have been impacted.

Jessica Weiss: Yeah.

Erica: So I took that control and I was like, I'm gonna go find another job and be really freaking amazing at it. And I got job, and I climbed all the way to the c suite.

Jessica Weiss: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the right way to do it. And I remember even, like, when I was in that situation and there if I wonder if this is, like, if this feels more real for women than it does for men. Although I'm sure men have been in this situation too, but I I just feel like so many women have this feeling and this story.

Jessica Weiss: And it's, like, could be with a female boss. It could be with a male boss. I just feel like is there is there something that we could do? Like, maybe is there someone that we can talk to to kind of fix that situation before it becomes a tragedy? So, like, in my situation, my boss's boss came to me, and she was like, what's going on?

Jessica Weiss: What's the matter? Like, you know, she kind of read the the writing on the wall, and she helped me out. She was like, okay. I see it, and we're gonna do something about it. But, like, you needed someone to kind of take you out of the micro and look at it from a bigger point of view.

Jessica Weiss: And it needs to be there needs to be some kind of level of, like, accountability, I guess, is what it is.

Erica: What I think is necessary. Right? Because here's the deal. Every manager is not going to be a manager.

Jessica Weiss: And every

Erica: person that you're working with is not going to be a person, and they're going to have these very human moments where, for example, my person to pitch my idea as his own. He very easily could have come to me and said, you know what? I shouldn't done that. That was wrong. Here's how I'm gonna write that wrong.

Jessica Weiss: Yeah. Exactly. Or even just giving you some kind of explanation. What I think is so funny in those situations is we as human beings need the tiniest bit of of reassurance to take away all of that horrible feeling. Like, literally literally, just like an acknowledgment of the feeling of the mistake is almost enough to wash it away.

Jessica Weiss: Right? If the person would have come to you and been like, listen. I was a jerk. That was the wrong thing to do. I should not have done that.

Jessica Weiss: And going forward, I'm not gonna do that. And you know what? That would I at least for me, I would have been like, okay. I get it. Cool.

Jessica Weiss: That works that makes sense. And I would have assumed that going forward, it would have been different. So all we need is, like, the tiniest bit. Like, we just need a tiny bit.

Erica: That's amazing. Well, this conversation is super fascinating, Jessica. I feel like I could talk to you all day. But if people want to work with you, where can they find you?

Jessica Weiss: So, pretty much everything lives on my website. So that's www.jessicaweiss.com. So that's the easiest place that you can kind of do emails, and that will kind of take you to my Instagram and my TikTok. But I am the thejessicaweiss on Instagram if you guys wanna find me there, and I would love to have you.

Erica: I do. I've got one more question, though, before you go. And this is the question that I ask all my guests, and that is, if you could give one piece of advice maybe to the Jessica who's in consulting who she knows she loves happiness and it's super interesting to her, but she's not quite there yet. What piece of advice would that be now that you know everything you know?

Jessica Weiss: I would say give people another chance. I was very quick to make decisions and to be, like, really stuck in my decision, and in my convictions, and I don't think that that necessarily serves 25 year old people all that well. So I would say give people another chance. Open your mind. Let there be other possibilities and options.

Jessica Weiss: You don't know everything for sure. You might be right, but I would say give people another chance.

Erica: I love that. Well, Jessica, what I will tell you is there's probably not a lot of careers that I think I would be like, you know what? I would do that one if I could do it all over. But I think yours might be one of it because I love everything that you're saying. I love that it's all based in science.

Erica: It has been an absolute pleasure having you on today, so thank you so much.

Jessica Weiss: Oh, thank you so much. This was so much fun, Erica. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Who doesn't want to

Erica: be happier now? And I loved this conversation because Jessica gave us some tangibles. And I don't know about you, but I am going to start a joy journal, and I'm gonna make my husband start one too. I'm here to say, make sure that you are following me on my email list. I'm about to drop some really big and exciting stuff, so I wanna make sure that you are getting all of the insider information.

Erica: So if you've not signed up for the email list, head over to my website, www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Sign up there or just hit me up on any of my socials, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram. I'm all over those, and I'm super easy to connect with. And I love to hear from you. So my final reminder for the day, make sure that you stop putting a ceiling on what is possible, and you start breaking through it.

Erica: Talk to you next time.