Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone.

Erica: Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder.

Erica: It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. I'm your host, Eric Rooney. And today, I have Jacqueline Beck with us. And Jacqueline is the founder of Jacqueline Beck Consulting. She is a certified executive coach, a business strategist, and a problem solver.

Erica: Now I met Jacqueline through our journey together with the center for executive coaching, and I worked with her in several small groups, and I've enjoyed getting to know her and watch her journey from corporate to consulting. So Jacqueline, thank you for being here. It's so great to have you.

Jaclyn: Erica, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Erica: Awesome. Well, I would love to just jump right in and just hear a little bit more about you and your story and how you went from years in corporate America to doing what you're doing now and kind of how you got there.

Jaclyn: Yeah, absolutely. So I come from a financial services, private equity, commercial real estate background. And I was on what I call career autopilot for most of my life. So grew up in a family where it was three options, doctor, lawyer, banker. There were high expectations to do well in school, go to a good college, get a big job, make a lot of money, and that would be success to serve your guerra.

Jaclyn: Right. And so I was the good girl and I did everything I was meant to do. And, found my way to Wall Street in a really great organization that I was surrounded by frankly, wonderful people, which I know can be contrary to what we hear about Wall Street a lot. I was enjoying what I was doing, but deep down, I knew something wasn't quite right. And it took me thirteen, fourteen years in that environment, quite frankly, hopping around to different groups within the firm to realize that maybe I was trying to, square peg, round hole it right.

Jaclyn: And fit myself into somewhere that didn't quite fit for me. And that's ultimately what led me on my journey of kind of twofold. One is self discovery, right? And then the second is the journey that ultimately culminated in me launching my own business, leaving corporate and pursuing entrepreneurship. So that's the long winded way of how I've gotten here today, Erica.

Erica: Well, it wasn't that long, so I appreciate it. But no, I, I think it's very interesting and I love the fact that you state that it is, it took you thirteen or fourteen years of, trying and trying and going different avenues and thinking one of these things has to fit, right? Like we're a peg round hole. This one doesn't fit. I'll try another one.

Erica: This one doesn't fit. I'll try another one. You know, just keep going until you finally hit this journey of self discovery. So tell me a little bit more about the journey of self discovery and what did that look like for you?

Jaclyn: Yeah. So I came to the realization I'm going to put the cart before the horse. Okay. The culmination of the entire journey journey of self discovery made me realize that I had never taken a step back and thought about what success looked like to me. I had adopted my family's definition of success, the society that surrounded me's definition of success, whatever external factors were there.

Jaclyn: That's ultimately what I thought was the appropriate path and would get me to a place of fulfillment. Clearly as I was going through the motion, I wasn't fulfilled. And as you said, from the beginning, I'm a problem solver. So when I see a problem, I have a compulsion to fix it. Right.

Jaclyn: So that was my journey of self discovery. At work that looked like trying different groups within my organization. Again, I was very fortunate to be in a place that allowed for mobility, that allowed me to try on different roles to see what fit. And again, I excelled at each of those, but it didn't feel quite right to me. In my personal life, it looked like reading a lot of different books, taking a lot of different courses, trying a lot of different things, workshops, things like that.

Jaclyn: And I think at the end of the day, I was searching. Like so many of us are right for, okay, what's the secret sauce, what's gonna make me happy or content. But I think what it really comes down to is a sense of purpose. Right. And again, the big takeaway for me, which is what I've kind of created my entire business around now is I have a very firm belief that when people live from an intentional place, they come from a place of empowerment.

Jaclyn: They make better decisions. They make more empathetic decisions, more human decision, and they're able to have clarity. And all of those things have really positive implications in particular for a work environment. Absolutely. Of course, in your personal life and a lot of different realms as well.

Jaclyn: But, but that's really the punchline that everything drove me toward.

Erica: Yeah. I think it can be challenging to nail down that purpose sometimes, especially when you're doing all of the things you're supposed to be doing and you're following the steps and you have the good career and it's supposed to be good and you enjoy the people that you work with. So it's not all bad, but it, it, you still it's that itch, right? It's that, okay. This isn't quite great.

Erica: And so you try to scratch it. Like you said, by going to the courses, reading the books, thinking it's going to give you the answer, you can't quite get to it.

Jaclyn: Well, and I think it's this idea Erica that the answers are outside of ourselves, which kind of goes back to my whole sticky floor. Right. Which is trusting other people over trusting myself. And at the end of the day, the only real answers are inside ourselves.

Erica: Yeah. So let's dive into like that sticky floor.

Jaclyn: Yeah. Sure.

Erica: So you said trusting others more than you trust yourself. Tell me a little bit about that.

Jaclyn: Yeah. So again, it goes back to this concept of being on autopilot. Not taking time for my own introspection to really understand and get clear on my own values. And what I mean by that is I always had big values. I knew that were important to me, but how I really want to live my life and what success really would look like for me.

Jaclyn: And I think a big takeaway for me also that I've subsequently learned is that success, your definition of success evolves over time. And I think particularly for women, which we can talk about, but that's something I ultimately came to. So my sticky floor was always saying I never really stopped to be introspective. I was on this autopilot as I call it. And so I was looking outside of myself, assuming that everyone else had it all together.

Jaclyn: Everyone else had all the answers. So I would look at all these people that were quote unquote successful around me. And I'd say, well, I have to do it the way they did it because that'll get me to the pinnacle of where it should be or where I want to be. And so that came in the form of just blindly taking advice of people either who were superior to me in an organization or who were my peers, assuming that they had been answers without really taking stock of what that meant for me. Yeah.

Jaclyn: It came in the form of blindly taking my family's advice. Right. And that's not to say that those decisions weren't well intentioned nor they didn't serve me well. Right. Because at the end of the day, they did because my entire journey has been instructive for me.

Jaclyn: But it wasn't me. It wasn't what I wanted. And I think that ultimately held me back from clarity, you know, caused a lot of confusion for me, a lot of guilt, frankly, and an identity crisis in a lot of ways. Like this is supposed to make me happy. Why am I not?

Jaclyn: Something's wrong with me. Right. Or I have it good and I'm not happy. Shame on me. Right.

Jaclyn: And I think when you and I both know this, when you make decisions from a place of confusion, when you're living in a place of confusion day in and day out, it's hard. Yeah. You don't make good decisions. You're more reactive than proactive. And, and it, it just, I mean, it doesn't feel good.

Erica: Yeah. Now when you talked about going and taking all the courses and doing all the, all the things, right. Like that really spoke to me because I remember back when I was exiting kind of my. My journey from the fitness and wellness world moving into HR and really I was just moving anywhere at the time. Right.

Erica: Like I got my PMP for project management professionals. There's no way I'm a project manager. Right. But I was like, I'm going to take this course who knows. And I was just, I'll do that.

Erica: I'll do HR. Like I was applying anywhere and just anything. And. I think it's interesting because that was all part of my journey. Right?

Erica: Like crying. There's the praise. I'm going to say the, the PC way, but screw around and find out.

Jaclyn: Like, that's what I'm really. Yeah. I call that row stuff at a wall and see what's going on. Throw and stuff at the wall. It sticks.

Jaclyn: Oh.

Erica: And I remember I got my PMP and I was like, why? Like, why would I do that? And I'll never forget too, if I even go farther back to when I was in college, I got my master's degree and I was like, well, now I'm gonna I gotta get my PhD now. And my mentor at the time was like, why? Like, are you gonna teach?

Erica: And I was like, well, probably not. And she was like, why do you need your PhD? And I was like, well, I don't know. So people can call me doctor, I guess. I don't have a reason.

Erica: She's like, yeah. You might wanna think about that before you invest, like, thousands and thousands of dollars into this. And I was like,

Jaclyn: yeah.

Erica: That's actually good advice. And I ended up never doing that, but it's just that, like, okay, these are all the next steps that I have to do to reach success. And if I wanna be more successful, then I have to go get my PhD. And if I have to be more successful than this, and it's like, that's not always the case.

Jaclyn: It's interesting that you say that because you just made me think of my college experience. And I matriculated into the business school in my sophomore year of undergrad. I double majored in finance and marketing. And I had enough classes to qualify as a minor in classical civilization. And I used to joke that I sold my soul for my major and I kept my soul with my minor.

Jaclyn: But if I really think about it, right, it's very illustrative of my entire journey in terms of square peg where I'm tolling it, but also in the sense of the search for purpose and meaning, because what I was doing in the whole classical civilization piece of what I was doing was studying philosophy and the stoics and things like that, which a lot of the books and the workshops and the stuff, right. All the things are just modern versions of that. Yeah. In a lot of ways. So interesting in the sense that I think this was always percolating in me from a very young age.

Jaclyn: And I knew it, it just took me a long time to see it.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glassy Leads and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your roadmap to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this. Well, and I think too, trusting yourself over trusting others, it's so hard to trust yourself when you see others who've done it in theory.

Erica: Right? They're having, they're living their purpose. They, they, this is what I did. You'll get there. And you're like, okay, well that makes sense.

Erica: They did it. So therefore I must be able to do it. So how could you kind of start to listen to that inner voice and trust your own self over others and maybe go against the grain of what others were saying?

Jaclyn: That's a great question. And, and like you said, I will highlight one thing you pointed out, which that it took me thirteen to fourteen years to do this. So it was a snail's pace and it was baby steps in, in doing it. But I think it ultimately started with creating space for introspection. And I find this with a lot of my clients.

Jaclyn: I find this with a lot of my friends, my family. So infrequently to be stopped to really ask ourselves hard questions that when you do, it can be very confronting. Like what are your values? I asked this to a client the other day and she's an incredibly successful businesswoman who's in real estate. And she paused and she was like, I've never really thought about that.

Jaclyn: I mean, I know that family is important to me, but what do I value? Like what are values? Right? So I think step one was realizing that I needed to ask myself tough questions. Step two was answering the tough questions and figuring out what made me happy.

Jaclyn: And it wasn't just about happiness. I, I, I think that's some simplistic. I think it's for me marrying what I enjoyed doing, because again, this is more in the realm of, of work, right? What I enjoy doing on a daily basis from a task perspective with what I excelled at, what came easy to me, what was something that flowed for me? Right.

Jaclyn: For lack of a better term. And then the third step was the practice of it, which was hard. And a lot of it was pausing. And when I got those external messages, if something fell off saying what's making this feel off and then acknowledging to myself, oh, wait, this belongs to them and this doesn't belong to me. Yeah.

Jaclyn: Instead of taking it as a truth. Right. Cause I, I mean, this may seem a little esoteric, but I had someone once tell me, well, you can't have it all. So you have to choose. That clearly was their belief, right?

Jaclyn: Yes. I don't, I don't have that belief. So instead of my younger self, which would have said, okay, well that's gospel. Clearly they, they know what they're talking about. They've achieved a certain level of success.

Jaclyn: I should trust what they're saying. I got to a place where I finally was able to pause and say, wait, that reflects how they see the world. That's not how I see the world. Right? Like, I don't need to buy into that.

Jaclyn: It's almost like, I mean, you have kids, I have kids. So when we're talking about bullies at school, right? If they're being mean, it's a reflection of them. It has nothing to do with you. Yep.

Jaclyn: It was almost like taking that same playground advice and applying it to my personal life at work.

Erica: Yeah. No, that's a very good point. And I'm I love that you said you brought up the you can't have it all thing, because I think that's such a big thing for women. Right? Like they talk about like, you can't be successful in your career and be this fabulous, Like mom.

Erica: Right. So there's these two, there's this belief that like, if you're going to be this amazing, fabulous mom, like you have to stay home and bake cookies for after school and beyond the PTA and do all of these things. Right.

Jaclyn: And then. By the way, if that's what a fabulous mom is, I will never be

Erica: a fabulous buyer. I've already failed at that. Right. There's no cookies being baked over here. Right.

Erica: But yeah, if you're going to do there's the app world and you can do that, or you can be a VP and climb the corporate ladder, but, like, you're gonna do it to the detriment of your family. You're gonna miss all your kids' plays and school things. And there's this very divided world between successful mom and successful, like, female businesswoman. And I'm with you. Like, I believe that I can have it all.

Erica: I believe that I can be a badass chief people officer and be an amazing mom.

Jaclyn: Because I agree with you.

Erica: A 100%. You have to work hard to find what that balance is. And you do make sacrifices here and there depending on what the situation is. But, like, you have to figure out kinda what you said. Trust yourself.

Erica: Look introspectively. See what your values are and make the decisions of your everyday life based off that.

Jaclyn: You know, they say that your people find you. Yeah. Right. So 80% of the people that find me, my client are women who are in their thirties and forties and are struggling with climbing the corporate ladder ladder and vying for a quote successful career. While also thinking about, well, is now the right time to shift because I want to have a child or that I have my kids and I want to be home with them enough where I can do the school plays and go to the sporting event.

Jaclyn: And I also want to excel in my career and the way I think about it. And it goes back to what I said before is definitions of success evolve over time.

Erica: Yes.

Jaclyn: The way I saw success at 22 is not the way I see success now. And it's not going to be the way that I see success when I'm 10 years older or 20 older. Right. So I think, I think two things. I think it comes back to people having to check-in with themselves regularly because it's not like you go through this exercise once and up, well, it's what do I want now?

Jaclyn: Right. Who am I in this moment? And this is why identity is such a big thing in this too, because our identities shift over time. I, we can get into that in a second, but there's a whole load of things to talk about there. But the way I see the having it all is like a pendulum.

Jaclyn: Yeah. You can have it all. Maybe it's not all at the same time. Maybe it's sometimes your pendulum swing is more shallow. Maybe seven times a little bit deeper, but it doesn't mean you're not on the continuum of it all.

Jaclyn: Right. Does that make sense?

Erica: No, absolutely. And I love that you talk about the definition of success and how it changes. Right? Because when I graduated college and I got my first job, I literally remember having this thought of like, I can't believe I found a career I'm gonna retire from. Like I've made it.

Erica: And now fast forward 15, twenty years, whatever. It's like, Wow. That's interesting. I even really had that thought that, that I could have been in my head. I'm thinking that I could have been so naive that I thought that was my dream career, fricking 22.

Erica: And even then I think if I were 22 and looking at myself today, I would've been like, oh my God, she's chief people officer. Like she's made it now. But even where I am today, like, I don't feel like I've made it. Like, I feel like I'm happy. I love what I do.

Erica: I love the podcast that I've started, but, like, it's just this ever evolving and changing thing. And it's almost like I've I'm at a point now where I realized that it's always gonna be well, this is how I think now. Who knows how I'll think in ten years? Right. But where I am now, I don't know, just kinda like continuing to grow, evolve, and change.

Erica: So it's it's

Jaclyn: Well, I Yeah. I love that you just said that because I was just thinking we're all evolving. Yeah. And no one's static. And that's that's the point.

Jaclyn: And maybe this is my belief, but it sounds like you have a very similar one. I see the world that if we're not growing and evolving, that's the point. I want to leave this place a better person than I was when I came here. And that's a more empathetic person, a more introspective person, that somebody who has learned and is on a continuous quest of learning and that changes over time. And I want to go back to this idea of identity, if that's okay with you.

Jaclyn: Because I think that's so intrinsically tied to an evolving definition of success. And I joke within a period of three years, I went from Jackie Weinman who works at a big bank for thirteen years and lives in New York City to Jacqueline Beck, who's a mom and has a dog and lives in South Florida and is an entrepreneur. And that all happens in a period of three years.

Erica: Right? Like with lash over here.

Jaclyn: Totally. Totally. And again, I think this is something that is so uniquely female in the sense that the roles that we take on evolve over time, just as much as the, decisions that we make or the way we view the world evolves over time. And the whole identity piece of this is just so big and so important. I haven't heard a lot of people talk about it.

Jaclyn: It. Like I remember I turned to a girlfriend of mine after I got married and I was like, changing my name is a big deal. I never thought it would be, but it was a really confronting big thing for me. Yeah. And it happens in so many different different ways.

Jaclyn: And it, again, it's so linked into how do I define success? What do I believe about the world? What are the different roles that I have? What are the roles that I want in the short, medium, and long term? Right.

Jaclyn: And so that's been a big piece of my personal journey as well.

Erica: Yeah, no, it's, it was interesting. I remember for me when I changed my name, it felt simple. And I, I did the very Southern tradition of I dropped my, my middle name and put my maiden name where my middle name is. So I'm Erica Anderson Rudy now. But it wasn't until I left the job that I had been in when I got married, because everybody knew me as Erica Anderson and they knew I got married.

Erica: So they knew my name changed, but like they still knew me as Erica Anderson. It wasn't until I left that job and took on another when I had that realization that, like, nobody knows me as Erica Anderson anymore. I'm like, this is Us. And that's kinda when it washed over me. And then it was like, this is really weird.

Jaclyn: By the way I did the same thing. I made a name is now my middle name. I grew up in Maryland, right outside of DC. So I do conveniently say that I grew up south of the Mason Dixon line. That's what it's to claim that when you claim that.

Jaclyn: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, but that's such a big thing because the same thing happened to me. So I left, the organization I had been at for thirteen years. And when I think about it, I was 20, I was 20 years old when I started with them.

Jaclyn: Yeah. So they knew me through a lot of personal changes. They knew me when I got engaged in the marriage and had my first house and everything like that. And when I went to my new employer, I had the exact same realization. No one knows me as Jackie Weidman.

Jaclyn: It was very strange.

Erica: That's like the finality of it. Kinda like you're.

Jaclyn: It is.

Erica: It's a new chapter and just in a completely different sense of leaving that previous identity behind.

Jaclyn: I totally agree.

Erica: Right. Yeah. Then you're Jacqueline Beck, the wife, the mom. Right. No maiden name.

Jaclyn: But let me ask you something first. Yeah. Cause you've mentioned that you've also realized that your definitions of success have changed throughout your life. Do you find that is an empowering realization for you?

Erica: It gives me a lot of freedom. Yeah. It gives me a lot of, I think that opens up the doors of freedom. Right? When before I had this constricted view that success would be like C suite top level done.

Erica: K. Well, I'm there. And what does that mean for my life? I'm in my thirties. It's over.

Erica: It's done. I'm never gonna like be successful again because there's nothing else like this is it. So when you, when you realize that your definition of success can change and morph and grow, right? Then you just open up endless possibilities. And part of that is why I started the podcast.

Erica: It's why I started reaching out and talking to other women about their stories is it's like, wow, this is like a way I could continue to grow and explore these things that interest me, that light me up and bring me joy. So, yeah, I think it when I have had that realization that, like, my definition of success can change and that it doesn't have to look like other people's, that it was just a lot more free. And when you talk about trusting yourself over trusting others, right? It's so easy to say for others to say, well, this is what I did. And so if you do what I did, you will be successful.

Erica: And they're speaking for from their perspective and their what they have seen. Right? So it makes sense for them to say that. But I think if more people approached it more of like, well, this is my story of success. I don't know what yours will look like.

Erica: It kind of allows and invites the other person to say, okay, I'm gonna take these bits and pieces of your story and maybe apply them to myself. And maybe I'll take bits and pieces from Jacqueline's story. Maybe I'll take bits and pieces from my mom's story and who had to build your own story of success.

Jaclyn: It's interesting because as you're talking and talking about freedom, I'm realizing that to me, freedom is choice. And I think that's what a lot of my sticky floor came down to was realizing that I had a choice to listen to what my environment and the people around me were saying and advising or not to. Right. To do exactly what you're talking about. Take the tidbits that I like and use it to inform my own story and my own path and to disregard the ones that didn't fit me.

Jaclyn: And that choice is what I think is really empowering. And I think, as I think about my business and what I do in my role as a coach, I think of what I do with helping people get off autopilot and start manning their own controls.

Erica: Right. It's scary to do that. Right. To take a moment and you, you talked about the hardest part is allowing the space for introspection and basically pausing. And that can be very, very scary to do because if you sit there and you're like thirteen years into a very successful career where how the day's gonna go, how everything is, to then have to ask the question.

Erica: It could derail everything you've done potentially, and you don't know what's down that path. So you have to find the courage to not only ask yourself the question, but allow yourself, like you said, to answer honestly, and then potentially explore it. Because I do think a lot of people probably stop stop and ask the question and they realize that maybe, no, this doesn't quite make me happy, but it's good enough. And then they go with that.

Jaclyn: I think it also comes down to, is your good enough, good enough for you? Right? There are plenty of people where that's the case and that's fine. That wasn't it for me. And I agree with you wholeheartedly in terms of the fear that comes with introspection, because it opens the door for change.

Jaclyn: And change can be incredibly scary because it's the unknown. If you take the positive, it's what you said before. It opens the world of possibilities, which is great and empowering and free. And you don't know what's going to happen. So through door number one, it could be great and empowering and possible, or it could be a restart or a lesson or something that doesn't feel so good in the moment.

Jaclyn: But my new favorite saying that I think I've coined, I don't know if I have, but I'll say I have, is that sometimes the best presents come in shitty packaging.

Erica: Excuse me.

Jaclyn: And I, and I've really found that, that sometimes just because something doesn't feel good in the moment doesn't mean it's not good for you in the long term. And you can learn a lot from that. And I do think that perceptual shift for me has changed my relationship to the unknown and fear because there's a lesson to be learned in everything. And, when you talk about courage, in my mind, courage, it's facing the unknown from a place of empowerment and shifting that mindset from, oh, no, something could go wrong to whatever happens is good for me. And I trust myself enough to get through.

Erica: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna ask you this question. I don't know if you have an answer for it because I don't know that there really is an answer, but I think there are a lot of people, a lot of women out there who are probably listening and saying that like, yes, my life right now, is this good enough life? But it's not, it's not, I've got that itch.

Erica: I've got that feeling like you were talking about. It's not a 100% right. But it's good enough. How do you find the courage to explore those questions? And to, to pause for introspection, like you had talked about.

Jaclyn: Gosh, I think I would be a billionaire. No. Well, I mean, I can, I can tell you what works for me? And again, like we've been saying, it won't work for everybody, but it worked for me. And I am incredibly analytical.

Jaclyn: I'm somebody who could get stuck in analysis paralysis all the time. And frankly, I think the reason that this process talks so long for me, talk about another ancillary related sticky floor, is my ability to completely dissect and analyze the situation to try and again, gain certainty around it. Any forward motion I have made in my life comes from doing and trying. And it can start really small or it can be really big. And so something small in a work environment can be something like, and I did this, but what I see this gap in the way that we're hiring, let me go to you senior management and ask you, can I redesign this?

Jaclyn: Let me do it. Right. And I did that. And then that small became, well, we need a way to train people and hire people. Right.

Jaclyn: So it became a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and it ultimately came to, for me, let me go live in London for a year. And I think for me, the, the more risks I took, even though in the grand scheme, they're not risky, but they felt personally risky for me. I got more comfortable with my capacity to deliver and my capacity to thrive in those environments. So I was able to increment mentally take bigger and bigger and bigger quote risks. Right.

Jaclyn: Or challenge myself more or expand my vision of possibilities, whatever you wanna call it, if the word risk feels scary. Right. But the more I did it, the more comfortable I got. And I think that goes back to your question earlier, Erica, the more I started to really trust myself because I started to recognize all these different situations where, but I not only survived, I did pretty well. Yeah.

Jaclyn: And if I could do that, who knows what else I could do. And so it makes the possible in a lot of ways. That's a very long way of saying doing was my answer.

Erica: Yeah. No, no, no. I think it's all good though. I think like that provides a lot of context and I agree. Like, I think if I'm a bigger fan of like the little incremental risks, I've never been one to just like jump all in.

Erica: And that's me. I know there, I know of people who just like quit their job and move to a new city and they're like, I'm tired of here. I want to try to there. And like, that's awesome. I, I don't think I could ever do that.

Erica: Even if I didn't have the, the family and the kids and all that, like, I think that would still be something that for me would just be too scary. But I could do something like take a trip there first. And then by myself, all these lit, like I'm more of the incremental risk person, like you said.

Jaclyn: So it's interesting. If I could tell a little story, please, because I've realized the story has become a metaphor and maybe even in some weird way, it was a pivotal turning point in my life. But my husband and I got married. We went to New Zealand on our honeymoon and we went to the adventure capital of New Zealand and we went by this bungee jumping place. Now I have always been the person that was like, you would never find me jumping off a bridge.

Jaclyn: Like never. I am not a big risk taker. I am risk averse. So my husband and I go, we're like, let's go watch people jump off bridges. Right.

Jaclyn: So little, little incremental response away. Right. So my husband and I are on a zip line next to the five and something like 10 miles. And then we're watching these people jump off this bridge and this 85 year old guy jumps. And we only knew that because we were standing next to his wife who was 84 and filming him.

Erica: Oh gosh.

Jaclyn: And pairing him along. And it was like in that moment, my husband and I looked at each other. We were like, oh crap, we have to do this. Don't we?

Erica: If his 85 year old could do it, I could certainly jump off. Exactly.

Jaclyn: And it was his birthday present to himself. It was something he always wanted to do and he wanted to prove to himself he could do it. And I think there's so much power in that love statement. I want to prove to myself I could do it. Right.

Jaclyn: And so I remember we climbed up this like ladder to a bridge. They start strapping me up. I'm trembling. Right. My feet are like tied together.

Jaclyn: I don't know if you've been bungee jumping, so you can only take really minuscule steps off until like the plank. Right? And I'm standing there and they counted me down three, two, one, nothing. I could not go. I froze.

Jaclyn: I completely froze. And the guy turned to me in this thick New Zealand accent. And he said to me, he said, you just do it and then you get through it. And he counted me down again, three, two, one. And I jumped.

Jaclyn: And if I tell you, it was the most freeing, exhilarating thing I have ever done in my life. The second, it was over a river. So these rafts came out and got us. I started crying in a metal's tray. Okay.

Jaclyn: And I think back on that sometimes because I had so much pride in myself in that moment because I had overcome something that was so scary to me. Now I'm not advocating that people go into for it. Okay. That

Erica: is first.

Jaclyn: I've done it one of them every time as you can. Like I'm done. I don't need to repeat that. But the only time I've really ever replicated that feeling in myself is when I did something I never thought I could do. And so this idea of pushing ourselves, right?

Jaclyn: Like when I left corporate America, I had such a sense of pride in myself because I overcame this really big fear, frankly, that I had. Right. Who am I if not this successful businesswoman in a corporate construct, yada, yada. Right. And it was so empowering.

Jaclyn: And again, I think it comes back to choice and being deliberate and intentional. So I share that today. That probably was a more meaningful experience that I could take credit for.

Erica: Oh, no, I think I'd love it. It's a perfect story, right? The inching, the inching, the little baby

Jaclyn: teeth, Inching, very, very slow. Walking the plank and

Erica: then the jump, but the exhilaration in the, in the fall. I think it's amazing. So I think that's the perfect story.

Jaclyn: And I think, I think I even said to them, if I fall, my husband will Sue and he said, this is New Zealand, not America.

Erica: And I

Jaclyn: was like, well, that makes me feel good.

Erica: Yeah. Here I go. Oh my God. Well, one question I love to wrap up every session with is what advice would you give Jacqueline who was just feeling this itch, but trusting everybody else's intuition and trusting everybody else's words, but her own. What advice would you give her now that everything

Jaclyn: You can do it and you just gotta get through it. Yeah. And I can probably make that into a song. I would say that I would also say observe. I'm a big believer that there are patterns in all of our lives and what we enjoy doing, what gives us energy, what depletes us.

Jaclyn: All those things are little messages. So again, if we really look at them and we get that clarity, we can change that into direction and then we can implement that and we can grow. So that's what I would say.

Erica: I love that. I think that's so important too, because I think so many women out there too, just think that they have to just get through the work day. I just have to get through it and then I can be home. Yeah. Do the things like you said that give you energy, that give you joy, find those things and receive the messages.

Jaclyn: Well, when you think about it, what is it? Five sevenths of our week are spent at work, right? Five sevenths of our life. Yeah.. Are spent at work.

Jaclyn: And so again, I am a believer that we should be doing things that give us energy, not deplete us. Absolutely. And so if we start at least making small incremental shifts toward that, right? The little baby steps off the plank before you jump off the bridge, it can be empowering. It can be the shift from reactive to proacting.

Jaclyn: It can be the shift toward freedom and choice.

Erica: And

Jaclyn: it could be the difference between surviving and thriving.

Erica: Yep. I love it. Well, awesome. Well, Jacqueline, thank you. I think those are amazing words of wisdom.

Erica: I'm so happy that, you joined me today and shared all of those wisdoms that I love the analogy. I'm gonna think about that all day today. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.

Jaclyn: Oh, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for having me, Erica.

Erica: Awesome.