When Boundaries Aren’t Enough: Teacher Burnout Explained 297

Burnout is brutal enough, but the most disorienting version is the kind that lands even when we set boundaries, do the inner work, and try to teach in a grounded way. We talk about why that happens, why burnout is not an accusation, and how misalignment and masking can quietly drain teachers who genuinely care. I’m joined by Miriam Groom, founder and CEO of Mindful Career, a behavioural career therapist and organisational psychologist who has helped thousands of people navigate burnout, career transitions, and work that actually fits.

We dig into what career alignment can look like for students and for educators who feel trapped in the profession. Miriam explains why many common career assessments fall flat for younger kids, and why observation is often a better starting point: noticing strengths in real time, naming what’s unique about a student, and reframing “negative” traits into clues about motivation and values. We also name the bigger system problem: schools and teachers are expected to do everything, while guidance support is thin and testing pressures crowd out the human side of learning.

Then we get practical with Holland Codes (RIASEC), a research-backed framework that connects interests and “brain types” to career families. You’ll hear simple descriptions of Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional patterns, plus how mixed profiles can explain why someone thrives in one environment and burns out in another. We also share a concrete tool you can use today: O*NET Online, including how to explore job matches, training pathways, salaries, and “similar jobs” that reveal real transferable skills for teachers considering their next move.

If this conversation helps you feel seen, share it with a teacher friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review so more educators can find support when they need it most.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

Mindful Career

June Reading Comprehension 2nd Grade | Summer Reading Passages & Questions

Perfect for end-of-year learning, summer school, or preventing summer learning loss, these short, engaging reading passages help students continue to practice comprehension skills.

Transcript

Burnout Without Blame

SPEAKER_01 0:00

One of the most confusing parts about burnout is realizing it can still happen even when you're setting boundaries. Even when you're staying authentic and trying to do everything the healthy way. And sometimes when we hear the word burnout, we feel like it's like an accusation, as if we're doing something incorrectly. And my friend, that is not what it is about. Today we're talking about why burnout persists even when teachers stay grounded. I have a special guest who is here today, and I'm excited for you to meet to meet her. So today I'm excited to introduce Miriam Groom, the founder and CEO of Mindful Career. Miriam is a behavioral career therapist, organizational psychologist, and human behavior specialist who has helped thousands of people navigate burnout, career transitions, and finding work that actually aligns with who they are. Her work blends psychology, neuroscience, and career strategy in a deeply human and practical way. Now, originally, when Miriam and I talked about her coming on the podcast, we were talking about how we could help students with this kind of thinking, how we could help them almost realize that their element, which is a Ken Sir Ken Robinson term where you find the thing you're good at and you can make a living doing it. And we talked about that, but as we were talking, I really started to feel like this was a really good conversation to have with teachers because if there are often times where teachers have felt like they are trapped in a per in the profession, where they don't know what else they could do. Well, there are other options. There are other options if that's where you are in your life. So I want you to know you I want you to think about this conversation in two ways as what you could do in order to help kids determine their path, their element, even if it's younger kids, even if it's elementary age kids. And then what how or what this could do for you. Hope you stick around.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Welcome to One Tired Teacher. And even though she may need a nap, this teacher is ready to wake up and speak her truth about the trials and treasures of teaching. Here she is, wide awake. Wait, she's not asleep right now, is she? She she is awake, right? Okay. From Trina Debori Teaching and Learning, your host, Trina Debori.

Meet Miriam Groom And Her Work

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Hey, so let's get started. So I'm so excited to have a guest with me today, Miriam Groom, and she is going to she's gonna blow your mind, I think. But um, she's has she's a CEO and you're the founder, correct? Yep. Yes, I I think that is so cool. And it's career, it's tell us a little bit actually about your company, what it is, what it means, what it can do for teachers.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Yep. So um my journey here was uh I was actually in corporate. I was a um changed jobs a lot because I, you know, I started off in a family business and then um I went to a large corporation and I just constantly felt very burnt out and misaligned. Um and so in order to solve that, I went on sick leave and I kind of went dug deep and tried to solve my own problems and tried to get that clarity. And through that, because I was already in HR and organizational psychology, I was already in the field, I kind of developed this process that helps, well, that helped me profile myself and figure out what I should do with my life, understand my skill sets, really and dig deep, um, a lot of soul search in um to figure out really what are my real interests, you know, all of us mask, all of us, especially women, we take on opportunities because they're given to us and we just say, yes, yes, yes, I'll take this on. And then we lose sight of who we truly truly are. And so that's what happened to me. And um, so through this exploration, um I got certified um in a bunch of psychometrics and I did them because I wanted to go see psychologists, but unfortunately they were great. They just weren't able to really understand. They don't understand careers, right? They don't, they haven't been in HR and things like that. So I actually got my master's in psychology um later in life to kind of figure all this stuff out. And I found a methodology that worked for me. I started doing it with my friends and uh ended up quitting my job and opening up a business doing this about uh several years ago. And so that's what mindful career was born out of. We essentially helped at the beginning professionals strictly just find your ideal career. So we profile you and we figure out what you're meant to do in your life, and I use the same methodology as uh I found

Helping Students Find Their Element

SPEAKER_02 5:10

and I did on myself. And it's been evolving since then. But every single professional that we spoke to was like, I wish I had this when I was young. Can you do this with my kids? Can you do this with my teenagers? Mostly obviously the sweet spot is like 12, 13 years old to start and then out of high school.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Oh, that's really that's really interesting, especially with the amount of pressure that what we are putting on kids to know what they're doing. And then they've changed some of the like ways, and even in college, where they're where you can't just kind of float along. Like I changed my major seven times. So yeah, me, younger me, I'm thinking younger me, like in my 20s, my 30s, this would have helped. But this would have helped me when I was 15, 16 years old, when I didn't know what I wanted to do. That is that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Yeah, because um teachers, your parents, oftentimes, if they're present um and they they they have the wherewithal to do this, will often see kind of see you and say, Okay, you know, we do this with babies a lot too. Oh, he's taking apart things and putting things together. He's gonna be here. Yeah. And then it's sad, you know, as kids get older, you're kind of like you, you you stop seeing them as much um because they're just in school most of the time and you're not with them as much. And and and it's everything they do isn't, you know, as amazing, you know, when they're like the little babies. But we have to continue doing that with kids and with our students and things like that. It's just see them and see those unique sides of them because that's a window into their strengths and what they're meant to do and what the gifts that they're meant to kind of give the world. And it could be anything from drawing to the way they speak, the way they communicate, the way they smile, how their warmth, um, and it could be windows into who they are. And you could start, you don't need to start profiling them, but you could just start seeing them uh as a kid, you know, even younger than that. But really, the profiling that we do is psychometric and neuroscience based. And I'd say lightly at 13, 14, because you can't start talking about careers with them that young because they don't know the world of work.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

That that's what that's what I how I felt. I felt like, can you someone just give me a book on all the things that that are possible? Because I don't know. I felt that way for so long. Even listening now, I'm like, oh gosh, that might benefit me at this exact moment. And I know my my daughter, she's 26, and she's having a hard time like figuring out exactly what she wants to do with with her life. And I think that I think this is this sounds great. All right, so how does this because there's like several questions I have. Um, how how does this work for the teacher? We when we were speaking off air for a little bit and we were talking about the funding and like people pointing their finger at is this something else that teachers have to do, or is this the is this the school counselor is who's responsible? I think it makes so much sense that the teacher, because you get to see the kids, you you're living with the depending on what grade level you are. I was in my background is elementary, so I'm immediately you're talking and I'm thinking of this second grader that I had who wanted to be a meteorologist. And it wasn't just that she wanted to, she didn't just want to be like a weather person on TV, she loved the science of it. And I was like, all her life, I'm like, she's gonna be a meteorologist, and her mom and I were good friends, and she ended up going into teaching. And I was like, what? She's gonna be a meteorological meteorologist. How is she going into teaching? Well, she didn't stay in teaching, she left in her first year, she she did not like it, and and I'm like, I told you she should have been a meteorologist. So I think you have that experience with them, but how do you add another thing to your plate?

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Yeah.

Seeing Strengths Without More Work

SPEAKER_02 9:14

So there's a couple of things that teachers can't do at all. Um, so if you do have a curriculum in place for career alignment, that's something else, and that's a completely different subject. But how can you um just be a teacher teaching your your your course and helping your kids on the side align and see themselves is um by just seeing, like, and and and I'm talking to parents too, just seeing your seeing them and seeing them not, you know, really deeply seeing them and recognizing um who they are and when they do something that's really unique. And it could even be something that you would deem as negative, like getting really frustrated because things aren't happening fast enough. That you could identify as impatience, but you could also identify that as um ambition, because impatience and ambition are usually hand in hand. And so there's a yin and yang to every personality trait. There's the dark and then there's the light. And with nobody's gonna be everything good, with even some a helper and a somebody that sometimes they give too much of themselves and then they end up resentful. And so you the the giver often, on the other hand, can suffer with resentment and and because they don't know how to ask, and then they so you need to first understand that and to start recognizing um the traits of the students and just seeing them. You don't have to do even more than that, even at a young age, it's just seeing them and complimenting them because we all remember those teachers who just said, Wow, you signed signed your name so nicely, you have such much good pen. And for some reason, that stayed in your head, right? And just because very few people do that and recognize it.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

No, you're right. They don't recognize those things that we that we hold on to as something special about ourselves, and I think that I think that makes so much sense. And and I and the my the part of me in my brain is like I have become I like fell in love with, I don't know, like 10, 10, 12 years ago, fell in love with the idea of makerspace and STEM. And while you're talking, I'm like, this is just another way that you're gathering that information because you're watching them do those kinds of things. Where you're watching them cultivate soft skills and you're watching how they interact with others, or if they need to work by themselves and what kind of profession that would be a benefit to, or you know, or if you're more of a I need to do it alone, like I need my own space, that matters too, and the job that you eventually choose. So I think that's the perfect like space for that. But at the same time, like the past, like not negative, I don't want to say negative, but person that's like, but how can we? Um, people feel like when they're told they have to use specific curriculums or they're told they have to use scripted programs or horrible technology that kids are just sitting in front of in a regular, you're not gonna see things about your kids if you are forced to do that kind of teaching.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah, yeah.

The Gap Between School And Life

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Um there's a couple of different issues here, is that I think that there's, and we were talking about that as pre-show, but there's a blind spot and a gap, what I would call in the world of I would say human uh like I wouldn't call evolution, but like the workflow of of of life. So you're expected to send your kids to school. And what is the parents' responsibility and what is the school's responsibility? And there's there's a there's a gap there. And just because you're dropping your kids off eight hours a day, it doesn't mean that the teachers and the school is responsible for the alignment of your child's life. It's key the teacher is there to educate your child, yes, 100%. They have curriculums and there's classes, but and I'm gonna say that there's there are guidance counselors in the school, 100%, but there's not enough funding in the school to actually do any guidance.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

No, it's testing for testing.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Exactly. And there's no there's one person.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I've exactly and when it's testing season, you don't see that person at all. So you're absolutely right. There is a massive gap about the expectations that we have from parents and from teachers themselves. Like where if I'm supposed you're not just a knowledge giver, like you you want the child to think, you want them to actually be thinking and wondering and and like critically thinking. And we're yeah, so there's like a there's a hole. There's whole I can see so many holes in so many different parts of the system when we think about this, because I feel like we're so far away. That this is one of my it's interesting because when I read your email, I immediately and I don't I normally don't like say come on or whatever. Um, but I was like immediately drawn to what you were saying, and and I'm like, this is really interesting to me because there's because I care so much about how kids feel about themselves as people and learners, and that part, that piece of like caring how they feel about it is missing, and it's not just missing in the classroom, it's missing even at home. I I got on this big tangent about wanting to help parents help their child love to read, and nobody was interested. Nobody was interested in anything that I was saying about how helping, they're like, Well, how's it gonna impact them in testing? How are they gonna do in testing? And they have to read, you know, these decodable readers, or they have to do this or this or that. And I and I'm like, well, I can tell you right now that kids are gonna hate reading if that's the only reading experience they're getting. But everybody was like, I don't care how they feel about it. This is what they have to do for school, and um, and and so that feels like a gap right there. And and and so making the work that you're talking about doing, oh, it's like, where do you where do you start?

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Yeah, because our whole methodology, um, and I'm gonna I'm gonna address a lot of these uh really good points. One, the whole feeling how to read, it's like telling going to the doctor and saying, You I need you to fix the pain in my child's hip or pain in his leg. And you're saying, okay, well, it's the alignment, it's how he's walking, and you're saying, just put it, you know, just here, just give him a pill and figure it out. You have to fix the core issue of things, which is how they feel about it, and then all that is gonna happen naturally.

Masking And The Roots Of Burnout

SPEAKER_02 16:18

They're gonna end up getting so it's a whole philosophy of what we're doing, and it's Carl Young, who's a preeminent personality psychologist, and he talks about individuation. What he talks about is that your passion, your what you're meant to be, your purpose, because he was also very spiritual and like a mystic, and he's very respected, of course, of course, in psychology and clinically. But um, there's all these people talk about all these things and they're like, oh, it's so vague to me. It's the same thing. Your purpose, your strengths, all of it. It's it is your your gift that you are given. Your brain chemistry was given like some sort of recipe that makes you really good at something. And that's what you're meant to do in your life, and that's what will bring you happiness and passion. Why? Clinically, if you're good at something, it comes naturally to you, and you get into flow and you're happy. And then what happens is a snowball effect. You speak about it, you're good at it, you get raises, people want to listen to you, and that's being in flow, it's being in that space. It's not 15 different things, it's just one thing. But people have this blockage and they don't they, which is what happened to me in my burnout and depression, and that's what happens to really young kids. I want to stop this from happening young because I let it go so long, this masking, that it took me almost six months to a year at home on disability to get over it, to be like take mask after mask after mask after mask and say, Who am I? Why do I want this car? Why do I want this house? Why do I want to live here? Am I in the right marriage? Am I do I want kids? Do I not want like all of these things, these preconceived conditions, because you're because I am caring, you do things that you think other people and make other people happy and everything. So it as a kid, you do it, but the the walls aren't as thick.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

So it's easier to kind of like to unlayer. It's easy to get some of those masks off because they haven't been living for yeah 30 or 40 years of life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Experience a massive amount of trauma, which some kids do, and we'll keep that to like the side. But you it that's the core and that's the foundation of the house that you need to build with it so it doesn't fall down and it doesn't crumble, and they don't go into, like you said, education and then decide that's not for them. I started my education in psychology, which was my natural passion. It was very easy for me. I was going through, but because I had such low self-esteem, anything that was easy to me, I thought was bad. Oh, this is fluff, this is bad, this is no good. I I need to live in suffering. So, like I went to finance and it was suffering for me, but I'm like, this is good because that means it doesn't, and so this is some of the mentality that a lot of life is supposed to be hard, but it's not like some people's psychology is hard, and that would have been hard for them, but it's not hard for you because you have a natural affinity to understanding how the world works that way. And so, all to say is that a lot of kids have this, and parents are like, because with AI and and and and I don't know if the kid, my kid is gonna have a good job, and I want to make sure it's coming from a good place. The parents want to secure their child's future, but they're thinking in robotic terms of saying if they go into engineering, how do I get them into these fields? Because this is what's gonna pay them. And when I'm not around anymore, I want to make sure that they have a good life and that they're making money and they have a roof over their head. That's really what's coming from, and so it's coming from a good place. But instead of you're doing it backwards, you're thinking of the outcome.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yes, or instead of the nap, like help helping them acquire those skills so that even if AI something comes along that you never anticipate, you're able to adapt because that's the thing we focused on was those parts of you, which I think that makes total sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah. And these assessments too that they do in school just to say, so let's say this person's doing assessments to all these kids. Assessments don't work on young kids. So you're having them do all these assessments, but they don't know how to answer the questions in the assessment. So what we see with a lot of students is that we have in our student pathways program. So how we do it is that we don't ask them, hey, what do this assessment? And in the assessment, it's like, what happens when you're like like when you're in this situation? They don't have the cognition to like, so we have them do it just to it gives us a little bit of insight. But most of the job is the profiling, most of the job, and this is where teachers and parents come in because you act almost like profilers because you you're you're observing behavior. Um, but this is um sometimes if you you want it from a clinical sense, you need to have training in it. But I'll tell you some tools that you could train yourself for your as a parent and as a teacher. Um, there's a tool, a specific tool that you could uh give to the kids and try to profile them. And it's so much fun and it's really cool and align it to actual jobs.

Career Fit Before School Decisions

SPEAKER_02 20:55

But what we say is say, so even me, I'm like, oh, I really like the subject of psychology, so I'm gonna go in that as a as a as a course. But you you can't focus on that. You need to focus on what are your skill sets and what is the career or vocation that you're meant to do. And then what's the schooling that'll get you there? Because you're in school, unless you're a lifelong learner, which I have a friend like that, she's been two masters and a bachelor's, and she's doing some more school. She's a lifelong learner, and that's something that's different, but she still has her job. Um, there's you're in your your career for most of your life, and you're in school for what, four years, if you're a physician, maybe eight years, but it's the the career. So I'll give you an example. We have um people go into law. A litigator, who's the person uh sitting there litigating and arguing, is not gonna do very well in school because the schooling of elite law is very conventional. It's a conventional type of learner, and it's the opposite of a litigator. Litigators are enterprising and so they're gonna hustle and they're gonna have to hustle and suffer through school, but they're gonna be probably the highest. Highest paid and best lawyers, as opposed to a traditional person who's conventional who does really well in school will be a great notary. So you're talking about the end goal of the goal, the education of law with two complete polar opposite personality types that are going to go in two completely different directions. So choosing law is not the right thing because it could you could hustle through school, but you have to do it the right way, which is what's my brain chemistry, what's my specialization, what are my skills, what's my values, what religion am I? Because sometimes, you know, if you're a religious, Jewish or Muslim, or do you want to go to do you do you have to go to mass? Do you do you are you praying? Or do you have some sort of obligations to your family? Do you want to stay what what is also your values and your culture and all of that? You have to put all that together and say, okay, what's the what's the the career that suits me best? And that's what we do. And then then the education becomes no no-brainer.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Like a clear because that's a means to an end. It actually makes it relevant. Now my learning feels relevant to me.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Yeah. And I'm not gonna go and do a bachelor's degree. I'm gonna go a skilled trade because that's gonna get me to where I'm going. And then that becomes uh like a plum, a plumber, what some a plumber who ends up being a plumber who wasted four years in a bachelor's for some reason. Um, and uh he didn't waste it, and I don't like wasting because he has he probably would be able to run his own business because he learned maybe business skills and all that, but you need it's a means to an end, which is exactly that. And so um these kids who come in and do all these testing, they don't believe in the test because it told them to be what, a bartender and a clown. Mine told me to be like um a flight attendant and flight, nothing against it, wouldn't be right for me. I wouldn't want to be around the like people that close. I'm extroverted, but definitely not in a way, like it takes a very specific type of individual to be a flight attendant, and it wasn't right for me because I wasn't answering the questions properly. I was just kind of going through the motions, and it just gave me a random response to my random, how I randomly answer the questions. The

Holland Codes Explained For Real Life

SPEAKER_02 24:03

actual thing to do as teachers is to understand, I would say, the Hollands code, um, H-O-L-L-A-N-D-S code. It's like um scientific, um proven, valid scientific um personality psychology framework that aligns your interests in your brain chemistry to six different brain types. Um, so what does that mean? Um if you were to scan your brain, and I would have you do, like, you know, you see this in a lot of maybe FBI shows about psychology, they'll put brain scans and they'll have you see pictures and they'll see what uh what uh part of your brain lights up, like when they tell you if you use Chat GPT or um your brain is off, like there's only one part of your brain on, and that's why it's not great for us and all this stuff. But if you were to do that and you were to look at a teacher's brain and a business owner's brain, or a mathematician's brain, which are all opposite, or a firefighter hitter's brain, it would be different parts of their brain that would light up and you would notice that in those tasks, that part of the brain is very active, meaning they have that strength. Now, without having to do brain scans, you could um profile people because uh profiling mean um these different brain.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Almost had like a set of criteria.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah. So we'll start with realistic. Um, this which is one. Realistic are people who work with their hands, okay? They're people who are police work, um like computer technicians, uh, gardeners, um, anybody in landscaping, policemen, firemen, athletics, anybody in athletics, uh, any anybody who's like gone to the Olympics is definitely like pure very realistic. You're not one-dimensional, but in order to learn this, you need to categorize somebody under like what is your dominant type. If we start three letters to each person, because which makes us unique and different, but if we just start with one, because then it tells you a realistic person that is usually dominated by um individuals with you know medically born as as men, as as sex is male, um, because it's just hormonal. Um, they're it's dominated by males. And uh they're usually a bit introverted, very logical. And if something breaks, they'll want to fix it. Like you could even identify this, like if your kid is like this, they go into a lot of skilled trades, also woodworking. My husband's like this, he's a huge woodworker. He he he finds value in his life by working with his hands, and there's a big creativity component here, which is different, but anything that they could fix and then they could work with their hands or with their bodies, and so they they have to be up, they have to be an about. So if you are dominant realistic, there are roles, which I mentioned before, um, which are, and I'll send you the mind map if you want to give you that gives you um all of the uh all of the jobs, but mechanic and construction, computer hardware, and electronics. So not like on the computer, literally going to a computer and fixing going to electronics fixing it, military, protective services, which is like firemen, policemen, nature and agriculture, and athletics. These people cannot sit down if they're dominant realistic. This is my son, yes, and he's logical, yeah, he doesn't talk too much. He's like, and this is just the dominant, he doesn't need to fit all of these, but he's like, What are you talking about? Like, stop with all the drama. Like the they're very, very, very like that. And so those are the subcategories of the jobs that he should go into. Not all of them will suit him, but at least it minimizes some jobs. And instead of having the slew of jobs that are out there that are, you know, endless, these are the jobs. So realistic is one you could probably identify some of your students that are realistic. And so instead of having them do the Hollands code and do the assessment, which is called, I think it's personality profiler, that they use this in the background to uh to profile, you could do it yourself because they're probably a realistic your son would probably not even come out as realistic because who knows how he'd answer these questions because he's new.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

You're absolutely right. The thing that made me think about the most was that he just likes to do things with his hands and he likes to move around, like he's constantly, but he is a talker, so that part isn't true. But um, I'm gonna tell you something else.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

I'll go through all of them, and you're gonna probably be able to identify. So it'll be really great because you could do this, and we could do this exercise on on the call, um, on the podcast, and you could identify his maybe three types because you know him so well, because if you'll see which one's dominant for him, because it really just takes over he could identify his persona more. So the the second was investigative, these are scientific people. This is my sister. She likes if you want to buy something, she'll be like, she'll look at every review, she'll do all the research, and she likes it. Okay. Like, I'll just buy anything and just test it, and it'll come and I'll see if it's good because I have no patience for that. But these are the problem solvers. These are scientists, researchers, medical scientists, and mathematicians. These are people who get obsessed with subjects, um, want to know everything about the subject, um, and want to know data. They're thinkers, they want to know details, they don't believe things that you tell them. They want to understand why and where it's coming from. Um, like if you you you tell them that uh, you know, whatever's going on that you saw it on TikTok, they'll roll their eyes and be like, Oh, I want to know the actual source of where you found this information. So that's an investigative person. And like I said, that's sciences, research, medical science, and math. How many people are pushed into um being a doctor when they're not dominant investigative? So many, because it's only a sixth of the population, basically, that is. Then there's artistic. This is a huge part for me. Um, this is people who love creating. They find um they find value. So the investigative find value solving problems. They love solving a problem. Um, the artistic love to create anything. It could be um a piece of literature, a poem, um cooking, um, performing, um, visual arts. They love interior design, they love my kids like changing your room around.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Like you constantly want to move that too around.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

I see that like it's very artistic and very aesthetic. And I I love the decoration. And you probably like to be around very no, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

And I actually built those shelves. So I I love it.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Yeah, so that that this where we're kind of where we want to kind of build personas. So I could see you're realistic and you're artistic, especially if you're building the shelves, and that's something that you're naturally drawn to now because you were forced to build them. Um, because you're there's people who have to do things because they have to, and then there's some things that you really enjoy and because you want to. So we have to differentiate those two things. Then there's social, these are the helpers. This is probably most of your audience. These are helpers, teachers, counselors, HR. People who are very big social end up in HR are not the happiest because they're working for the company, they're not really working for the benefit of people. So I would say be very careful if you're social and you end up in HR and you don't burn out.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

But training I kind of feel that way for for for me, for teachers. Like I feel that it the burned burnout part is was the problem because I wanted to help you want to do different things and it was constantly stopped. I was it was or I had to work around it. I had to had to be the investigator, I had to figure out a way of solving it because I wasn't allowed to do it this way.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

So it yeah, because it was a corporate, it was it was um so social people want to do the best thing for the person. They get really stifled and burnt out when um they have to prioritize the c accompany or profits over the benefits of individuals. And that's why a lot of people go into nonprofit or even private practice counseling, which has its own problems because then you have to hustle for your clients and the whole thing. But like that's where if you find a good culture, even nurses, we have healthcare nurses in here too, uh have a problem because the hospital has its own, is its own business and its own profit entity. And so they they get burnt out a lot too because they can't do what's best for the patient. And they have they're constantly fighting with that. But social people are usually in counseling, helping, teaching education, HR and training, social science, religion. How do you identify this? Your child is probably constantly wanting to help, very sensitive to vegetab being a vegetarian, helping it sees animals, wants to help them, um, sees the elderly, feels really bad, cries easily at movies. Um, you know, yeah. Well, all of that, and and very dominated by by women. And so often we'll see a lot of boys who are social because in our practice, because um, they weren't they shun that. And we see a lot of women who are realistic because they shun that, because there's more of the dominance, and then they they don't realize that there's a space for them in there. Um, but it is social, is dominated by um by females. So we have all of these jobs that you could, if you identify that as your child's number one core skill, you could minimize the jobs to those are the best thing for them. And then the last two are enterprising and conventional. Enterprising is business, people love to persuade, make money. I did this when I was younger. I gave out flyers because I wanted to start up a babysitting business. I wanted to do any, like I was trying, I take cans from my mom's um kit uh kitchen and and bring them outside and make a lemonade stand. I was really wanted very enterprising.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Um like an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur, yes. Okay. But they don't oh go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

They don't mind the corporate side, like they don't mind making money, and it doesn't mean over people's well-being, but these people don't burn out if they're if they're enterprising and social. Enterprising first, then social, they make great HR people because they like people and they like helping, but they don't mind and they understand that businesses have to run and they need to make a profit, and they're naturally naturally okay with that. They that won't burn them out, and so they go into like marketing and advertising, sales, management, entrepreneurship, and I'll send you the sheet. But public uh politicians um and law are often in here, and these are you have to be these are very outgoing, uh extroverted, persuasive, talking, strategic, but in an opportunistic way. And that's not a bad word, opportunistic.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

No, no, no, yes, I'm not taking it that way because I uh this is my son again. So yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Yeah, that's and and often you'll see the artist going into marketing and advertising. Do they burn out? Of course they do, because their core role is an enterprising and it's non-artistic, and this is where a lot of burnout happens, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Like my daughter, this is totally my daughter, she's artistic, but I but she's thinking about marketing.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

And I'm like, I don't, yeah, I don't think she'll be happy because visual arts and design is much more for her designing, like industrial designing, where she could stay with the core field of design, and everybody's gonna work in a business, everybody's gonna have to do enterprising stuff, everybody's gonna have to make money to make a living. Be marketing is the goal of getting people to buy your product, not to make art. It's not to make things pretty, it's it's opportunistic, it's to make the prop more profits for the business. And we see a lot of that. A lot of artists, a lot of communication students who go into communication, art and design, who end up in the big machine of marketing and advertising who are very, very miserable. But those can be equally enterprising and artistic, but you have to make sure that you have an enterprising side to your personality and that you actually genuinely like that, or you're not going to be happy. And then there's conventional, these are the rule followers, buttoned up office management, uh, accounting, programming, and information systems always surprise me here, but it's it is. It's like everything's in a box, everything's organized in finance and accounting. So these are like conventional people that think in a very they're very organized. Every they spend their time like organizing their pantry, like Monica from Friends is conventional. Do you know what I mean? Um that's the that's the profile there. And then they would do conventional enterprising people. It's not that they have a hard time in the in in the world of work, but there's a lot of jobs for them.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Conventional is like there's no lack of office and men and tax jobs. You're happy in that, you you're good. The problem usually is culture, it's pressure, it's not knowing your limits, it's overworking, it's you know, conflict with a peer. Um, enterprising, um, often if you're an entrepreneur, just putting too much pressure on yourself. So it's more of that and less of a career alignment issue. It's just like an environment issue. So those are the six.

Using Codes To Avoid Misalignment

SPEAKER_02 37:12

So if you could identify your son, you mentioned that he was realistic and enterprising.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Realistic and enterprising, yes. Those are the two that stuck out the most to me. Obviously, the whole time I'm like writing our initials. I I found three for Emily, but um that's just my daughter. Uh excuse me.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Hers are artistic, social artistic, where is it?

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Artistic, social, and I actually think she has some conventional because she loves to create systems, she she's loves to be organized, she loves to like have things that if I do this, this will happen. So, but she all at the same time is very like creative and visual, like visual things and art that she loves, and so that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

But at least you've minimized it to some things, and so yeah, uh and if you could say, well, she loves conventional, but thinking about jobs in tax or in office management, it could be a support. The conventional could be supporting her artistry, or is it leading? And she's an office manager who does it in an artistic way. So I'll give you an example of myself. I run a business, I'm mainly enterprising because I I run a business and I developed a program that helps people. So I am enterprising, social, and artistic. Um, now I'm E A S because my like I love helping people, but I I love creating things and I created a pro program. So you know how it doesn't need to be yes, ended up working that way, but my main thing was enterprising, and that I felt ashamed about because women are a little bit they strange.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

You're right. The money mindset is a is a real thing, it's a real thing that you have to, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

I was like opportunistic or like money, like status. I'm like, oh that doesn't I'm like you have to come to terms with yeah, you know, yeah, and it it's what burns me out, and that's why when I was in KPMG, a large company, it was only enterprising my job, had no social, no artistic. So it doesn't mean I was in the wrong job. It was meant that I was not feeding these two wolves inside of me that I had to feed these two passions. And so if as a kid and as a teacher to younger students, you don't need to figure all of this out, but giving them the tools so they could fish, like giving your kid this and saying, hey, let's do a little exercise together. Where do you feel like you fit in? Here are the subcategories of jobs, like start thinking about these jobs. Like here are for your son, there's um six uh categories in realistic and about six in enterprising. Here's here are 12 potential avenues.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

One of them is going to focus a lot on this, the other one's gonna focus on this, and you could start seeing some of the jobs that you it will at least narrow it down because he'll yes, because he's kind of all he's in college right now and he doesn't know he doesn't know the direction, he doesn't know what which way to go. And it was it was a lot to get into that in the first place for himself, and um, so yes, whoo, this is that's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

This is what we do in profile. This is what fascinating though. This is what guidance counselors should do if they have there was 10 in a school, 12 in a school, and they could sit there and talk this out, and it's not one session that it's like, hey, here we did your blood test and you were realistic. It's hey, let's sit down and let's talk about oftentimes what gives a huge picture is talking to your parents, if you're lucky enough to have them around, um, is to ask how you were as a child, because um that's our most raw self, and that's why even in high school, you're still very raw, so you're able to like access that. But I had a client who um described herself as a child as saying hi to everybody, much a lot like my son, saying hi, like the mayor, like just going just so friendly, smiling at everybody. But she was her mom was from China, and culturally, they don't look people in the eye and they don't smile, and they don't, they're not, they don't impose their being on somebody else. So they just nod and they and so she shunned that offer, not from a bad place, again, just because that's what she was trying to child. Yeah, and so she became extra, she she identified as extreme and extremely introverted when she it wasn't really, and so it's just funny what happens when you sometimes dig back and say, Okay, this is my real authentic self, was like this, and I've grown to mask into a different personality, and then I chose a job that aligns with this mass personality. No wonder I'm sad and I've dug my grave so deep now, I have to just pull myself out and align back to my my real my real self. But that's why I'm so passionate about doing this with younger kids, is so you don't get to a point where you're 40, 45, or you're 50, and you're like, okay, now my kids are a little grown, I could focus on me and I have a huge, which is fine, a huge mountain to climb, and I just want to figure out who I am again. And we he see that a lot of um individuals at that stage of their life, but first they finally feel like they have a moment to do that, they have a moment, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

To focus on themselves. Oh, so okay. So

Tools, O Net, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 42:20

where beside like so if I put your link, your website link in my show notes, people will be able to find you that way. Is there any is there any other way that they can find you?

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Um, so what I would say is um I we have a US entity and a Canadian entity. So I'll send you my US version of the website. Where are you located?

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Where are most of your I most they're all over? And they are also in Canada and Australia, they're yeah, they're all over. But um, but mainly, I mean mainly in America. I'm in Florida, but okay, that's kind of irrelevant. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Yeah, that's it's like when you do a podcast, it doesn't matter where you are. So um we have I'll send you um I'll send you a link where you could clients could just have a free intro call and just talk to our career consultants to see it's almost like it's not an application process to go through our program, but we really do make sure that the right that it's a good fit. And some people come to us thinking they need career counseling when they need counseling, psychological counseling. They're not ready for the career counseling yet. So we come and we do and we explain everything, we explain the process for Canadians. We cover on insurance also because and it's tax-free because we're psychologists. So it's just like we don't compete with we are like uh guidance counselors in schools because it's just it's like you know, uh apples and bananas, just completely different. We're not talking about the same thing. What I would love to do is empower um teachers to have just at least one tool to know it to be really and so that they can start. go they could help guide the kids by knowing this in the back of the brain this framework and say why not have you thought of the have you thought of mechanics and construction before because they they're seeing that profile and I think you would be really good at that and I you know you know here are some jobs or here are some some some um some pathways that look like they align with to explore yes here's something to see them yes and bring them to the assessment where they're probably not going to know how to answer it but it's the Hollands code that's the best one for career finding an actual job description in a career in the States there's um one T online um and uh I'm gonna see one T online dot dot org so it's O N E T online dot org and it's basically like what the gut your government uses to like do you know to get you know um government funding that it there's a code for every job. If you go in there you could literally search and you're gonna like this by job code. So let's say you think that your son is a realistic and I'll send you the link in our chat um let's say you think that your son is um realistic enterprising you could literally go in here and put R and then E and then go and then you'll find every RE job um wow so it's and it's right on the top you could probably see it. So there this is the step two I don't want to overwhelm people but like there is a way to say okay once I find like maybe an option of like my my son or my daughter or my my my my my student might be this there's a whole the the one T online uses the Hollands code at the at back of it and then if you click on the jobs it tells you what education you would need for it. It tells you the salaries that you would need for it and the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

So if you can awesome with the psychology I think also a teacher I think there's a lot of teachers that want to leave teaching they feel trapped they don't know what how their skills can translate.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

I think their skills can translate 100% so I think that would yeah I I love this what they should do is if they find their job so you could put in the top right there's literally a search and you could just put um teachers and instructors then if you go all the way to the bottom it says um uh similar similar jobs and it'll give you all the jobs that are similar that require the same type of education and background so this helps people transferable skills knowing what other jobs they can go into. But not only that if a student or a child is interested in a job they can see what other options they have that is similar to that but not exactly the same.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah no I love this this was so great.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Thank you thank you so much if you get questions and you want to have a part two and we could dive deep into something else just let me know and I'd love to do that too.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Absolutely I yeah I could talk all day but I'm gonna let you go for this and then I want you to stay for just a second. So thank you Miriam thank you for for all this information and for like really getting us thinking I love it. Thank you