Lots to Unpack There
We’re Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our 40s living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership, and everything in between. We’re navigating the “messy middle” of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone who just gets it makes the journey less hard.
Each week, we’ll share something real from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that as we process and reflect, it’ll inspire and help you do the same—wherever you are.
Lots to Unpack There
Lost Kids, Lost Tuesdays & BATNA
Jess and Lisa explore the disorienting experience of losing track of time and unpack the complex interplay between confidence, uncertainty, and knowing what you truly want.
• Lisa shares about losing an entire Tuesday after her daily routines were disrupted from being laid off
• Jess recounts a frustrating Girl Scout meeting mishap when leaders moved locations without informing parents
• Discussion about the crucial but undervalued importance of logistics in every organization and relationship
• Exploring the difference between regulating emotions versus suppressing them
• Lisa unpacks a conversation where a friend suggested various career paths she felt unequipped for
• Distinguishing between confidence in abilities versus confidence in knowing the right next step
• The importance of maintaining non-negotiables in job hunting while remaining flexible on nice-to-haves
• Introduction to BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) as a powerful negotiation concept
• How having alternatives gives us confidence and freedom to be authentic in any situation
• Recognizing that not having confidence about the future is perfectly normal and healthy
Want to support the podcast and help us keep creating content that matters? Here’s how you can get involved:
Join the Conversation: We want to hear from you! What resonates with you from this episode? How are you navigating your own journey? Connect with us on Instagram @lotstounpacktherepodcast or send us a message at unpack@riverdropcoaching.com.
Subscribe & Stay Connected: If you love what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review! Your support helps us reach more women who need a space like this. Let’s build this community together!
📬 Stay Inspired: Sign up for our Substack, where you’ll get fresh insights delivered straight to your inbox. Whether you choose a free or paid subscription, you’ll be the first to know what’s next: Substack
🎧 Bonus Content: Want exclusive access to behind-the-scenes moments and extra episodes? For as little as $3, you can support the show and enjoy bonus content that’s just for you: Support Us
Every bit of support helps us keep bringing real conversations from our hearts to your ears! Thank you for being part of the journey! 🙌
Hey, it's Jess and Lisa. We've got stories to share From our hearts to your ears. Lots to unpack there. Tune in every week you won't want to miss. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa.
Jess:We're Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our forties living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership and everything in between.
Lisa:We're navigating the messy middle of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone along the way who just gets it makes the journey less hard.
Jess:So each week we'll share something from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that, as we process and reflect, it'll inspire you to do the same wherever you are.
Lisa:Happy Friday, hi happy Friday, thanks yeah.
Jess:Can't believe we got here and this week was a. It was like a weird busy week.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Jess:I remember thinking it was going really weird busy week. I remember, yeah, I remember thinking it was going really, really slowly and then it's almost like yesterday didn't happen, like we just skipped from Wednesday and Thursday, both Like I. I remember thinking on Tuesday oh my gosh, it's only Tuesday, and then I blinked and it's Friday.
Lisa:I kind of had the opposite. So I picked back up my journal after so weird thing, I haven't journaled in my journal, like that's where you journal, yeah as one does.
Lisa:Wow, since I got laid off, oh interesting. I got laid off, oh interesting. And it's not as much a matter of not wanting to document this time in my life as much as, like, my routine completely fell apart, and so, because I used to journal between like 5am and 5.45am and I'm not doing that time of the day much anymore, my journaling habit just completely, like, fell off, and so for the last two days I picked it back up again and I've started getting up not at five but at like 5.30 and like was downstairs to journal in my office by like six o'clock and I lost Tuesday. I could not recall a thing that happened on Tuesday besides switching out my winter for summer wardrobe, and I was like there's no chance. That took the entire day. Where did the rest of my day go? I still haven't found it.
Jess:By the way, it is still lost to the edges of parallel universes because I still cannot remember what I did that day. To be fair, I think when you talk about the winter to summer wardrobe, you did that for all three of your children and yourself.
Lisa:Yeah, but the kids I did on Monday.
Jess:I remember that.
Lisa:Oh, I didn't get to mine, so I did mine on Tuesday. But I know that's not the only thing I did, so it's just one of those days that I just put a sticker on it that said I love my cat and I'm just going to leave that for what I did on Tuesday, because I cannot recall.
Jess:Wow, yeah.
Lisa:That feels super disorienting. It is a little bit, because I've now gone back to the question several times and gotten the same answer, which is I'm trying to remember what we talked about on Tuesday because probably we talked on Tuesday Guaranteed we did, yeah, grocery store, I don't know. It's another. It's another aspect of this unemployed lifestyle that I'm just like. It's it comes with the territory. I guess of this like losing time, but I did finish my rewatch of Ted Lasso so I have that to show.
Jess:Excellent For myself. Yes, maybe that's what you did on Tuesday.
Lisa:It certainly was part of what I did on Tuesday. I mean, the episodes are an hour and 20 minutes. It's basically a feature length film. Every time you watch an episode, oh wow.
Jess:I don't think I realized that. Yeah me neither.
Lisa:So yeah, so you lost Wednesday and Thursday, I lost Tuesday, so basically we can only really account for Monday and Friday of our week. And today is Friday, so that seems lopsided.
Jess:Yeah, I mean I can't account for most of Monday, I would say, but I had some notable events on Monday. We had the book fair. We had my daughter's, my middle's Girl Scout meeting, complete with relocation drama, lost children, lost children, in which they moved the meeting between when I dropped her off and when I came back. They moved to the meeting location and did not inform any of the parents.
Lisa:I mean it really speaks to the importance of logistics, which I feel like is a very undervalued thing and really really crucial to most organizations. Crucial to most organizations and by organizations I mean relationships, teams, companies, everything Like I really feel like they're kind of lumped into that, like oh, this is a support group, it's logistics, but like so much depends on logistics.
Jess:Absolutely, and it's all it's like with event planning, or how I imagine event planning to be, where all of those tiny little details, they're almost invisible to the end user. They're supposed to be invisible, right, yeah, they're meant to be, but they are the thing that turns that image into a high-res image. It's like all the extra little pixels. You can still. You can still see what it is without all of those little tiny things, but it just doesn't look as nice, or?
Lisa:as polished, it's like black and white to technicolor. Yeah, I will say when, when I was doing event planning for the couple of years, that that was a primary aspect of my job when I lived in Korea. Aspect of my job when I lived in Korea nobody notices when things go well.
Jess:They only notice the mess ups. Yeah, I tried to keep that perspective in my mind that there was a lot of good that happened, but I was so frustrated by the lack of communication and the test, the logistical, yeah component of that, yeah it. It really kind of undermined the enjoyment of that day, of that right that experience.
Lisa:On the one side it's a pack of volunteers. They're not even being paid for what they do and or compensated in any way other than like tiny girl smiles, and then on your side you're talking about the safety and whereabouts of your child. That is high, that's the highest stakes there is, and so you can kind of see how the situation would unfold the way that it did. We're like got a bunch of people who this is not what they do for a living or what they have even any qualifications or skills on whatsoever, and someone who's entrusting their most precious thing to those completely underqualified people. You can see how these situations would arise.
Jess:I mean, they're not underqualified, they're all parents also. But there isn't a playbook for these things. You know, there isn't somebody who's running logistics, who specializes in these things, and saying we better make sure our strategic communications plan gets done because notes are. It didn't happen. I keep thinking back to arrested development and the guy who has one arm and he keeps pranking the kids and says this is why you always leave a note.
Lisa:Oh yes, the cautionary tale. Yes, the dad hires. Jeffrey Tambor's character hires anytime he wants to like, prove a point or make a lesson to his children. Exactly.
Jess:That's kind of what it felt like of like could have been the most perfect thing, but if you don't leave a note, did it?
Lisa:happen, and such an easy thing to yet. Yet another side of this that is like this could have been so easily handled by a half sheet of paper and a crayon. Yes, yeah, that is frustrating. Or I completely empathize or a text message.
Jess:So yeah, that that I think that event kind of overshadowed. And again, this is not to throw the leaders under the bus, because I, I, I know they are doing so much and they did so much to make this event special and I was not in a place where I could appreciate it because I was dragging my three-year-old and my nine-year-old through the school for 20 minutes looking for my seven-year-old yeah, there's no way that they were not at the school at all.
Lisa:There's literally nobody on the planet who could withstand that and not be frustrated at the end of it. I challenge you to find somebody I would have been like over the top. You are much more measured and even keeled.
Jess:It did not. I was trying really hard. It was really really testing my self-management. It was really really testing my self-management.
Lisa:Yeah, I don't know what I could have done differently, aside from maybe dropping and giving 20 and just exerting my body in a way that to make like a lesson out of this or whatever but like I think in those moments where we're really tested on a couple of different fronts like on the frustration front and the fear front and on the I don't know angry front, whatever all of those things it can show us how far we've come.
Lisa:Because if you're in those moments of like extreme emotional dysregulation, we'll say, and you're looking back over how you would have handled them earlier in your life, I think, especially if you're somebody who's done a lot of work on yourself and on your ability to get through hard moments, it can be a really validating moment too to look at yourself and say, like I was frustrated, I didn't yell at anyone, I didn't trip old ladies in the hallway, I didn't tear down artwork that was around the school, like I, I kept my stuff together. I found my kid and I, with kindness and empathy, confronted the affronting party and said that wasn't cool, let's do it different next time. Cool, let's do it different next time. And like I don't think I could have done that in that way. I mean, I didn't do it at all, you did. But like, compared to who we are earlier in our lives, there's potentially massive shifts and growth that happen.
Jess:You look like you do not buy into that assessment at all. So I think what I'm missing in this piece is the external portion of the self-awareness. Like I'm aware of how I felt in that moment with great granularity. I feel pretty confident that I was not unkind, and I don't know how truly, how that message was received and I also don't know that I care to revisit it at this point. And so I yeah, I don't, I'm, I'm feeling mixed on that because I think you're right, I'm sure there has been growth. I, I, I'm feeling like I can't. I can't measure it because I don't have that external piece.
Lisa:Well, it's not necessary to do so, it's fine, but but I appreciate you saying it. I think at least your response compared to who I would have been, say, 15 or 20 years ago, who I would have been say 15 or 20 years ago Not that I had kids 15 or 20 years ago, but I think I would have had a hard time letting it go. That was probably a reaction that I had in my younger years when something bothered me. It was that anti-goldfish mentality, right. So goldfish is all about having a short memory and like moving on from stuff that happens.
Lisa:That's maybe not ideal and I had like whatever the, whatever the. I had an elephant memory for stuff that bothered me and it would just continue to reopen wounds because I couldn't let it go. And that's part partially because I couldn't go to the person who hurt me or upset me or whatever and say this wasn't cool. I couldn't trust myself to do that when I was younger because I would be so worried about my emotions, so concerned about how they were going to display themselves, was I?
Lisa:going to yell at the person? Was I going to cry in front of the person? Was I going to lose all functionality of my speaking, like what was going to happen? And I didn't trust myself to have those frank conversations with people, so I would just carry them around for ages and I don't think I do that anymore, and so that's the kind of growth that I'm talking about. I'm not saying like not being upset, but like how you deal with a situation, how you work through it. I think that's the growth.
Jess:Yeah, I'll get on board with that, something that's coming to me. Glad I could pull you aboard eventually. Something that's coming to mind for me is this idea of being regulated, and I can't remember if we've talked about it on the pod before, but I used to think about staying regulated as being synonymous with staying calm all the time. And I can't. I took a class and it it, she, it reshaped.
Jess:That thinking into regulation is responding appropriately to the stimulus and not getting not overreacting based on what it was, and I think part of what is banging around in my head on this is like think. Part of what is banging around in my head on this is like I don't know that I have a good gauge for what is appropriate, like an appropriate response. I mean, I was not in full-blown panic. I felt fairly confident that she was around, that she was safe.
Lisa:Right, she hadn't been, like, loaded onto a bus and shipped somewhere.
Jess:Yeah, but it was that I did not know where she was and I also had to manage the other two children, and, and so you were, you're right in the feelings that you named. It was frustration, there was some anger, certainly a lot of annoyance.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Jess:And and disappointment that the plan that I had laid was getting totally derailed by this extra time that we spent walking around the school looking for them. So I've bounced it off a couple different people and most of them are like, yeah, I'd be real hot about that too. And some part of me is like, was it a big deal? I don't know. I'm not trusting the level of emotional response I had. Yeah, because it's not just tied to the event, it's like tied to all of the ancillary things on the side.
Lisa:Yeah, that's. The thing is there is no one-to-one for something like that.
Lisa:I can say for myself, like trying to put myself in that position, me doing that exact same exercise unburdened and me doing the exact same thing with two kids with me would have felt very different. I completely agree. The frustration level would have been 10x having those two other kids with me, even if they were just following behind me and being fine. I don't know why, and maybe this is something to explore differently, but I would have been so much more ramped up by that. I guess it's the like X factor that you don't know how your kids, especially when you've got a three-year-old right. Like a nine-year-old is probably going to be somewhat good to go, but like a three-year-old is a ticking time bomb in a lot of respects and sometimes they will light your world on fire in a good way and sometimes they will light your world on fire in a really arsonistic way, absolutely, and I think in this mess of feelings that I was having, all of them were running together.
Jess:But the people who didn't send the text message or let me know ahead of time, they are not responsible for me bringing my other two children. There's no way they could have known and I do think I was pretty clear like I'm not reading malice into this, right Totally. And it wasn't cool, right, so let's do better next time Stuff can be two things. Yeah, yeah, for sure, let's do bad. That can be two things.
Jess:Yeah, yeah, for sure. I agree with you that if the other two children had not been there, it would have been fine, because I'm so much more nimble on my feet when I'm not holding the hand slash wrist of a three-year-old who is also, you know, sort of trying to run around and get really excited about.
Lisa:Of course he is. It's a new environment with lots of him sized things and pretty colors and closets with brooms in them and stuff, I assume.
Jess:And you know how, how routine we are in the evening. So the novelty factor was up there. It was high up there and and we were already kind of pushing the bounds of, if book fair ends at 730, are we going to be able to get these kids in bed on time?
Lisa:Yeah, all of that plays into it. All of it does. That's why there's no isolationist way to look at it. Yeah, but that's what makes it hard to say like Was my response appropriate or was it completely outsized for the?
Jess:situation. Yeah, yeah, and I think my goal in processing the emotions is like get them out of my body so that they're not wreaking havoc in there anymore. And I just don't think I was. Maybe that's what I'm, that's what my face was when you were describing the growth is kind of like oh, there was still banging around in there for a long time, I don't know.
Lisa:Lots of collateral damage, totally what you said, though, it's not about not having emotions. Emotions are not the enemy Right. It's how you work through them and see them for what they are and not fight against them, and not demonize them and not pretend that they're not there. All of those are worse options than just being like, hey, I'm really pissed right now.
Jess:I have good reason to be. I am so glad that you said that, because I think that is where the growth was for me is that I was. I fully felt those emotions. I was very uncomfortable by them and wanted to process them, but I did not. It did not come out in other ways like super passive, aggressive or holding onto the grudge for a long time, right, so Hallelujah.
Lisa:Thank you. Thank you so much, Gosh that was trips around the block, but we got there, folks. You know, sometimes we need another little trip around the block often, plus we get more steps in that way, so it's all good.
Jess:Oh gosh, oh, that happened one day this week, I think I, I, yeah.
Lisa:I think it was my first this week.
Jess:Is that your steps in? Yeah, I think it was my first. You know over 10,000 step day.
Lisa:Yay, I can't remember what day that was, maybe that was Tuesday. I care way too much what the number on my watch says, way too much. It is a validation with an inanimate object that cares not for any aspect of me or my life, and yet I really, really wanted to tell me nice things like 8,000, 10,000, 12,000.
Lisa:In fact, case in point, last night I got home from a date night with my husband and I had already gone on a couple of big walks earlier in the day. So I came home and I had just shy this is almost this is borderline embarrassing, to admit I had just shy of 12,000 steps. Did you go up and down the stairs? No, I paced in my bathroom until I got exactly 12,000 and then I hit the hay. Wow, wow, yes, and do you know who cares? Like it's not being charted anywhere. I'm not in some kind of competition Like this is just one of those things that it is inexplicably competitive in me to get nice round big numbers for my steps. I cannot, I cannot explain this.
Jess:I admire that so much for you in you.
Lisa:Do you? I think it is kind of uncool in a lot of ways.
Jess:Well, I don't, I don't know. I find myself wanting to be a little bit more motivated to achieve steps and it's I don't know that the number itself is motivating to me, but I just love that you, you have enough activity in your day to get 12,000 steps, like that's that you, you're really prioritizing it and that's really cool.
Lisa:Yeah Well, I don't want my bum to go to sleep. That's what happens if I sit for too long fair.
Jess:So I I have, I mean thanks for a little little unpack snack, a bit of a snack there yeah, what are we unpacking with you this week?
Lisa:um, much like you. I don't feel like I have like a big, like lightning strike of inspiration to unpack this week. I'm doing well. I was noodling around something and then I realized I didn't want to get pigeonholed as like.
Lisa:I don't know whether this is true and whether our audience would buy into this concept or not, but, like you, kind of getting pigeonholed as like the time person and me getting pigeonholed as like the confidence person and what I had to say was like confidence sort of related, because we had a friend over on Monday night which is why, again, monday is so punctuated in my week for dinner and he was asking me okay, like, what's next? What are you doing? This is a colleague of mine from a previous job and then a colleague of my husband's in mind from even before that. So we've known this person for a long time and a lot of what has been from a work context. And he was like, okay, so what's next with you? And I was like, oh, you know, I'm not sure.
Lisa:And every time he asked me a question I kind of I don't know, I guess downplayed my abilities. He was like, well, how about consulting for you? You should open up your own consulting firm. And I was like I don't have the business acumen to do that. That takes a lot of work. And he was like what? And he kind of like looked at me like what, why would you say that?
Lisa:And then he said something, some other job that I was like, oh geez, that's, that's, that's a really big job. Like I don't, I don't know that, I have the experience to to pull that off and he kept like. It just was this very odd back and forth of him being like not understanding the idea and like not understanding the idea, the concept of not feeling prepared to do any job in my field, my lack of, I guess, total, unabashed belief in myself and what I'm capable of, I guess. So it's a little thing. I don't know that it's even really about confidence. It's more about perception of ability and things like that. But I'm interested to hear your take on that.
Jess:Oh yeah. So a couple of things come to mind for me. One is you said your ability to do any job in your field. You gave two examples. Is it really any job, or is it those specific things that require different skills than what you feel really strong in?
Lisa:Yeah, I mean, every single example he gave was something that I felt like I don't have what it takes to do that job. It just so happened to be that he didn't say program manager for insider threat and counterintelligence for a midsize technology firm, because I would have said I can do that. In fact I have done that. You know, like right, I would have been totally on board with that idea.
Jess:But he didn't say that, he said all of these other things that are related, but not directly. It was I just I saw them as like whoa, slow your roll, have a lot of skills that could be applied in very different ways. He's seeing something in you that maybe you are not giving yourself credit for or maybe can't see in yourself.
Lisa:Yes, I think that was one of the options that I was kind of taking away from it too, but we were so like on different levels where it was like we couldn't even find any middle ground. It was just like a stop in the conversation, because he was like what about this? And I was like no, I don't have this thing and I would point to something related to that that I don't have. That is, in my opinion, necessary to be successful, and he'd be like huh.
Jess:Well, I think that is another angle that I was kind of thinking about is, like, are those blockers real, or are they just things that you're telling yourself you need, that you may not actually need?
Lisa:I don't know if it's. I mean, yes, that's very possible. But I think it also, in his opinion, was like well then, just learn it, just add it to your bucket, just make it something that you now know how to do. I guess.
Jess:Right, which is yet another question, which is is it that you're doubting that you have the skill, or you're doubting your ability to acquire the skill, or is it that it's just a skill you're not really interested in acquiring, which is totally valid?
Lisa:And I think maybe each of those in its own way for each of the things. Again, I wish I could remember all of the ideas that he threw out at me, but yeah, it was just like the one about opening my own consulting firm. I remember specifically and I was just like that is a whole other thing.
Jess:That's a whole thing, that's a whole thing.
Lisa:I'm not doubting my ability to be an expert in the thing that people would ask me to consult in, but there's a lot more that goes underneath that you know as a business owner, there's so much that goes into this that you have learned on the fly that you're just like okay, now I need to be an expert in this thing. I mean, you literally are proving his point, actually not mine, but whatever, I'm just going to sidestep that one.
Jess:I just walked my ass right into it. Yeah, I mean like there are a lot of things that I mean that's part of wearing the entrepreneurial hat is like you're going to come across a lot of things and your options are going to be to do them or to pay somebody to do them, and my threshold for paying somebody to do them is very high. So I am learning a lot of things that are there people who could do it better? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm paying in those things?
Jess:Yeah, but I'm paying in my time and getting a better feel for what I need. But, yeah, all of those things like errors and omission insurance and you probably would want to form an LLC in order to do that Right, all of the other things that go into launching and sustaining a business yeah, it's not for the faint of heart. It's not a small endeavor. No, it is a big thing.
Lisa:And I recognize that and I also think that's not where my heart is Like. I have a lot of things that I want to learn, a lot of credentials I want to add to my name, want to learn a lot of credentials I want to add to my name. And that isn't necessarily one of them for me in this moment Totally open to changing my mind in the next, however long from now, but at this moment, being a business owner in that respect is not interesting.
Lisa:It's not the next step for you, and maybe that's what I just should have said and maybe that was part of it too is just like maybe I didn't want to tell him, like no, that doesn't interest me, because it felt a bit, um, dismissive maybe, of his idea this is maybe illustrating the problem with closed-ended questions.
Jess:Continue, because he's offering these choices. It's like, no, it's not that thing. No it's not this other thing Instead of, which is a totally normal thing. I mean, he did say what's next for you? That's a great open ended question. But instead of offering suggestions, if he had asked what sorts of things do you like to do, what sorts of skills do you want to learn, right, and then maybe kind of narrowing it from there, it might've felt more productive in that way.
Jess:Not that it needed to be productive, but like yeah, so I think I'm coming back to is this a confidence issue or is this?
Lisa:I think I read it.
Lisa:I think I read it as a confidence issue because it maybe is like a default state for me to question my confidence in something because it's been true for so long and I don't even know that it's true today, but it's been true for so long and I don't even know that it's true today, but it's been true for so much of my life that it kind of does feel like a default state to say, oh, this must be a confidence issue. But I had two interviews today, no three, sorry, and there was no confidence issue.
Jess:Right, it did not come up so maybe it's not a confidence issue in yourself. It's a confidence issue in what the right next step is, because that's still loading yeah, that that's a good point.
Lisa:Ooh, it is a confidence issue in the next right thing, In the right thing, Because I've really really put it on faith to the universe that the right thing will, in time, reveal itself, drawing back the curtain and there it will be shining in all of its glory and I'll be able to just pluck it out of obscurity and bring it into my life.
Lisa:That's a lot of faith to put in the situation and I think it seems kind of reasonable actually that I would have some doubt about that being what happens next. So that really resonates with me as the potential of where the confidence issue really is. And maybe, you know, going back to that conversation, I can read it through again and what maybe would not have been a very good conversation but would have gone something like this what about this? Nope, not for me. What about this? Don't like that either. You know, maybe that would have been the confident in quotes way to handle it, in my confidence in that the right thing once I find it will be clear, Not a confidence issue with my skills and abilities.
Jess:Related, I think, the things that you were saying, like no, I don't have this piece that I consider to be really essential to that thing, and now, as we've talked about, and I don't really want to acquire that piece right now, yeah. Is thinking about those options that he presented you or that you could think about as possible next steps.
Lisa:Anyway, just like brainstorming. I've done a lot of this work also just on my own, sure, yeah.
Jess:What is it about those things that is making you be like, ooh, I don't know if that's the right thing for me. Is it that it's not values aligned? Is it that the expectations of the role are not? It's not what you want to be doing every day.
Lisa:Part of it is that I have this really strong rubric of non-negotiables that I'm able to bounce things off of, and if it doesn't look like it could potentially like, I don't need it on paper to be an identical fit, I just need it to look like it could potentially give me all of those non-negotiables and hopefully, most of my nice to haves. So that's one thing, but then I'm also kind of just going on gut, and if I read something and it does not feel like me and it does not excite me, if it does not light even the tiniest fire inside of me, I'm just passing, I'm just moving on to the next thing. And that can happen at any stage of the process, but hopefully I catch most of those at the pre-application stage, as I don't want to add additional administration work to my life right now. I'd rather spend it, you know, doing nothing than doing that. So, yeah, so there's a, there's a cup, there's like a, there's a quantitative methodology, but there's also a qualitative methodology that I'm employing. Yeah, which is kind of nice, because I did not I didn't do this before, right, so I only applied to.
Lisa:The agency that I worked at was the only agency that I applied to. It was the only job I applied to and I got it, okay, great. And then when I left there and I went somewhere else is because I was told to go to that place, that somebody wanted me to go to that place. And then when I left that place and went to the next place, it was because I wanted to go to that place. I've never had this like open field.
Lisa:No, no, I really haven't, not even when most people do, which is after college. I didn't even have it then because I just I knew somebody at that agency and I just went yep, I'm going to use my network and I'm going to go that direction. And so this is really the first time in my adult life and probably ever in my life, because I can't imagine a time before college where this would have been the case where I can just say, like the field is open and I'm the picker and I have to be picked back. Obviously it's gotta be mutual, but like I'm, I'm the gatekeeper.
Jess:Yeah, I think anytime there's a job search, some part of my brain worries about hitting a desperation point or like going into the frantic. I just need a job, Like now. Now I can't make ends meet and I see this a lot in my clients and it's, it's really hard.
Lisa:Desperate is a scary place to be.
Jess:Yeah.
Lisa:And so just in job stuff, stuff in any aspect of your life, no one wants to get to the point of being like I have to get something, someone, some, whatever, I have to put something on the books yeah, it's.
Jess:it's that feeling of being backed into a corner. Yes, and I never want somebody to feel that way, because I think everyone is creative and has resources that they haven't tapped into yet and can apply those things to their job search. But I'm wondering where so like right now, you're in this faith space, yes, when does it start to shift for you where you start to open up that list of non-negotiables, or do you, or are those truly like hard fast?
Lisa:firm? I don't think I do. I think my non-negotiables always stay my non-negotiables and my nice to haves maybe shrink a bit or get more flexible. Maybe they don't go away, maybe I just change their definition, but I also leave room for my non-negotiables to change. If my non-negotiables change because my circumstances change, well, that's kind of my question.
Lisa:Yeah, but like I mean something like that might be if I move to a different country or state my non-negotiables are going to change necessarily, or if the job that I'm looking for completely changes, that will change my non-negotiables, you know, respective to that job. But I don't think for the jobs that I'm looking for, I don't think my non-negotiables change. And that is because I am a very privileged person in that someone else in my family can foot the bill for my house and my food and my kids and things like that, and that's my husband in this case, and I'm not. I will never be at a point of desperation. That will never be the case for me, unless something catastrophic occurs and say he loses his job. Well, sure, that's another situation where the non-negotiables are definitely going to change. Yeah, let's not speak that into existence. Exactly, exactly.
Lisa:But, as a, for instance, that would shift those non-negotiables are definitely going to change. Yeah, let's not speak that into existence. Exactly exactly, but as a, for instance, that would shift those non-negotiables again, yeah. So, yeah, I think I'm not saying they're etched into stone in such a way that they cannot be changed, that the circumstances change, but I think non-negotiables should be non-negotiables, truly, period, full stop, whatever you want to call it.
Lisa:I was trying to look up a couple of minutes ago I was trying to look up this term and I'll end up thinking of it and it will really bug me. There's a. There's a, I guess, a concept in deal-making, any kind of dealmaking, that is, you always have an alternative, a, plan B, and I forget the term right now, and it's one of those terms that never stays stuck in my head. I always have to look it up every single time, even though I've done it now half a dozen times. But that is the number one rule of being in a negotiation or being in any kind of situation where you want something and someone else wants something, which is most situations in life is that you always have an alternative that is acceptable to you, and if you don't have that, you've lost, and that is that point of desperation, that is that point of having no options Interesting and so I don't know the term.
Lisa:I don't know the term either.
Lisa:It would take me a couple seconds to look it up, but it is.
Lisa:I think it's a really good concept to just have in the back of your head, not in a way that it's malicious, like oh, I always have an exit strategy, or something like that.
Lisa:I don't know, I think you could really weaponize it, and I don't mean it in a weaponized way, yeah, but when you're in a situation like mine, where you are looking for someone to give you something and they want something from you, it's a really good thing to have just floating there, just hanging out in the back of your head, and I think about what that is. Every time I go into an interview I have it in my mind and it might be different for every interview, so for one it might be the other, like if I did three interviews today, so for every interview it might have been the other one. That was in the back of my head constantly as I'm going through this process, and I think that has an ability to give me confidence, but not overconfidence, because then I can just let myself speak and be authentic without worrying what somebody might think or whether or not they might like what I'm saying.
Jess:It takes away that edge. Yeah, it gives you that freedom for it to be not a good fit for either one of you.
Lisa:Totally, it's like you don't have to make it work, it's the ability to walk away.
Jess:Yeah.
Lisa:And have no issue. But if you're to a point of desperation, there is no walk away point. Let's say, for example, that you want to go buy a car and you have a perfectly working car. That's your plan B. I just won't get a car today and I'll just keep using the car that I have. I want a new car, but I don't need one. Your car breaks down on the side of the road and they say it needs a new engine and you are completely without a vehicle. You are walking into that situation at a car dealership already having lost, because you know there is no plan B for you other than taking Ubers and begging rides from friends, and that is not a good option.
Jess:Which is so interesting for you to use that example.
Speaker 1:Because I need a new car.
Jess:Well, no, because there was that time when you were on the side of the road and the check engine light came on and they had just finished fixed your engine, and then they told you you needed a new engine and you were like, uh-uh, I don't think so you're pulling some deep tracks from Lisa's personal history. I'm just saying that was such a badass move I don't.
Lisa:I read that email and I was like damn yeah, I really hit him between the eyes with, with all the things on that.
Jess:Yeah, I think that the words were something like so either your mechanic has failed to maintain my engine in a way that is safe, or you sold me a lemon. So what's it going to be? Which is it? Yeah?
Lisa:Yeah, oh, man, I feel like I'm going to have to dig that email up at some point and actually reread it. Man, that thing is nine years old at this point Almost.
Jess:Almost yeah. Yeah, probably would have been October ish.
Lisa:Wow, the fact that you can pull out a month.
Jess:Well, I remember your son was a baby. Yes, yes, he was, and so he he was in his baby seat. He was, and that was part of it.
Lisa:He's almost almost nine all right, I'm looking up this term now because I need. It's gonna kill me if I don't know it. Of course, I made the mistake of using plan b, which is, in fact, a magic medication. What?
Jess:oh, I was like you think. I'm so confused.
Lisa:BATNA, what BATNA? That's the term. Is that an acronym? Yes, okay, it stands for Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, provides you leverage and helps you determine your reservation points. Batna and yes, I will forget it in another week and have to look it back up again, because that is what happens.
Jess:So it makes sense why you can't remember it, because it's not a word. It's not a word, it's an acronym, right yeah?
Lisa:Okay, yep, batna, batna. There you go, and I know nothing else about negotiation, but I do know that I know very little about negotiation.
Jess:Well, now you know, batna.
Lisa:It shows you can add that one to your list. Yeah, I think it's probably like day one course one of your business administration program in college day one course one of your business administration program in college. But it might even be more basic than that. Nowadays, kids in high school are learning all sorts of economics and like tons of stuff that we didn't have access to when I was in high school. Probably there's high school kids. Of course it's BATNA.
Speaker 1:Duh.
Jess:Yeah, why someone in high school would be listening to our podcast. I hope they are and I hope they learned something. Probably not BATNA, though Probably not. It reminds me that really the the only experience I have with formal negotiation is it's not even my experience, but I taught a class on conflict resolution, nice, and the cohort that was in the class spent the first four days of that week doing advanced negotiation tactics at Harvard, and it felt like probably my class left a lot to be desired I don't know.
Lisa:They both sound good. Conflict resolution is very important, it sure is. It sure is? I mean, who has not had conflict?
Jess:nobody yeah, Conflict and change are those things that people are like, oh, I'm so bad at or I'm so inexperienced with, and it's like, really, Because we experience conflict every day Maybe not every day, but it is. It just takes recognizing something as conflict, which is where my issue was Like it didn't. I didn't feel like we were in conflict, we were just disagreeing about something.
Lisa:So just the very definition of conflict.
Jess:Right. So when somebody would say conflict, I'd be like oh, I can't really think of a time when I had a conflict. I must be really conflict diverse.
Lisa:Tell me that's how you started your conversation with your class. I can't think of a time when I've had a conflict, anyone else.
Jess:No, I think, yeah, I think my definition of conflict has has changed over the years. But yeah, I think the time when I was like I'm having a tough time remembering the conflict was before my expanded definition of conflict and really like, yeah, understanding the different types of conflict and what I mean, all that of that stuff.
Lisa:Yeah, I think that's definitions of things is definitely something that comes with age, because I think you enter the world with this very narrow view of what something is, what something is, and then, as you get older, you see all of the different variations of what a thing is and it just like it just explodes, that initial definition. You know where it's like oh, that's, that's one option. Sure, yeah, it's one of 800,000. It's not wrong. It's just not inclusive of what you see. Every single year you learn more and more and more and more and it just it's such, a, such a freaking gift to get old.
Jess:It is. It is Very lucky, okay, so coming bringing this back, we have BATNAna now we know what that word is.
Lisa:Now we have batna, and you'll never forget it.
Jess:So at least, I can always just ask you I am, I feel. Now that I've heard it, I feel pretty confident that I've been exposed to that term before and did not remember it maybe it's just a really slippery concept that like nobody can hold on to.
Lisa:Yeah, I knew it at one point.
Jess:And it sounds like you have some badness. I do For each of those options that you have. We started talking about confidence yeah, and I'm wondering where we are. Complements where we started yeah, and I'm wondering where we are.
Lisa:Compliments where we started. We were able to parse out that this was not a confidence in me question mark. This was a confidence in what's next question mark and that's not even a bad thing. It's not even a negative, I think. Lack of confidence you could make a case that it fits in the negative category if it's about yourself, if you have a lack of confidence in yourself, but a lack of confidence in knowing something in the future. I don't see how that could be a negative. I don't know anybody that has the ability to see into the future. If you do hit me up, we can talk. But also, I don't need that. I don't need to see into the future. I just need to hold fast to what I want and be ready when the thing that feels right, that seems like it fits in my life, and all those non-negotiables and as many of those nice-to-haves as possible comes into my life and it clicks together. Yeah, and I feel as confident as anybody can be that that will be the case.
Jess:If you were to have that conversation over again, what would you do differently? Maybe a way to say it is the next time that conversation or that type of conversation comes up. How do you want to handle it?
Lisa:I would love to say almost exactly what I just said. Instead of no cause, no cause, well, about this, and hemming and hawing and backing and forthing about what I have or don't have, related to those random things that a person might bring up that I could do, I would rather say this is what I'm looking for, but I'm open to other experiences if they feel right and if they fit into what I have in my list. And then they might say oh, what are your non-negotiables? I'd be like oh, I'm happy to tell you, here they are, yeah, yeah.
Jess:Just thinking about the strengths angle of it and how this person is probably just seeing things in you, but are those the things that you want to be using?
Lisa:Well, and you know, taken purely on that angle, like that's so great that that person that my friend is like, well, of course you could do this. Why couldn't you Like, of course, that disbelief on their part to say like, yeah, anything's possible. You know, maybe it's misguided, but it is confidence in my direction, about my abilities, you know. So, at a minimum it's a compliment. Absolutely yeah, and I'll never turn down a compliment I love that our time went by really fast.
Lisa:I think we started a little bit late, but it did go by really fast, though I feel like that was speedy. It was, it was two half packs.
Jess:Two half packs yes I was? It was two half packs. Two half packs. Yes, I was not expecting to unpack that at all.
Lisa:But then we talked about Monday and that's what came up in that brain and I love that we talked about it because it was illuminating to me in a different way than it was the last time we talked about it. So obviously there was still more to unpack.
Jess:Oh, hopefully our listeners would agree.
Lisa:Yeah, hopefully, or will agree, and if not, they probably didn't make it to this part of the podcast, so they probably won't know the difference.
Jess:Yeah, there's that, yeah, there's that.
Lisa:That's okay too. We love all. Whether you listen to us to the end or not, we love you anyway.
Jess:Sure, do All right. Well, thanks for unpacking with me today. Likewise, I love you, love you.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye, back there. Tune in every week. You won't want to miss. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa. Tune in every week. You won't want to miss. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa.
Lisa:I stand up and I feel like I'm like 70, 100 years old 70, 100. Well, I decided that giving a number in the 70s was probably not very nice.
Jess:Oh.
Lisa:And then I was like, let me just add a couple hundred, let me add a couple zeros, yeah, I'll make it really big. So 7100 is what I'm gonna go with there. Yeah, we can, that could be.
Jess:That could probably be a blooper instead of an actual thing. I'll leave a note to the producer.
Lisa:Please do tell her. I really respect her work, thanks.
