Carolyn Birsky
How To Take Care Of Yourself Post-Layoff

If you’ve been reading the news or your LinkedIn feed, you’ve likely seen the layoffs happening across the tech industry. Maybe you yourself have been impacted. Whether this is your first layoff or you’ve been a part of one before, the experience can be quite disheartening.

You go from having a full work day to hours on hours of open time. You had a group of colleagues you worked with daily and suddenly you’re no longer interacting with those folks on a regular basis. There are moments when your new found freedom feels amazing - and others when it’s absolutely brutal.

So how do you support yourself through it?

Below are some ways in which I’ve been taking care of myself throughout my own layoff journey. Hope you find them helpful too!

How To Take Care Of Yourself Post-Layoff
Carolyn Birsky
Start, Stop, Continue, + Support

In business, there is an exercise called Stop, Start, Continue. The purpose of the exercise is to enable teams to give feedback, clarify priorities, and create agreed upon next steps. By putting all of these ideas out in the open, it’s easier to get everyone on the same page about what action needs to be taken. It’s often used at the end of project sprints or the end of a quarter to help teams self-evaluate and improve upon processes for the next project or quarter ahead.

It can also be a helpful exercise for your own self-reflection.

Start, Stop, Continue, + Support
Carolyn Birsky
How To Support Your Grieving Team

We’re all experiencing grief right now. It might look and feel a bit different from what normally comes to mind when we think of “grief”, but ultimately that’s what it is.

We’re grieving the loss of life - both the actual loss of life of those who have died of COVID-19, as well as the sudden loss of our “normal” lives. It feels like overnight the world we knew changed and we’re mourning what we once took for granted like meeting friends for dinner, going to the gym, or even shaking hands with someone we just met. Many of us are grieving the loss of stable income and aren’t sure when we’ll be able to find jobs again.

We’re also grieving the loss of the futures we had in mind for ourselves - whether it’s postponing a wedding or graduation, changes to who is allowed in the delivery room when giving birth, the move we were supposed to make, or the new job we were supposed to start. We had plans and dreams that suddenly seemed to have vanished or have drastically changed on us.

Nothing feels certain - other than the fact that we’re experiencing grief.

As we deal with our own grief, it’s important to remember that in many ways this is a collective grief. Every single one of us is affected by this pandemic in our own way.

This is particularly important to remember when it comes to work.

How To Support Your Grieving Team
Carolyn Birsky
What I'm Loving Lately: Quarantine Edition

How are you holding up, friend?

I hope you’ve been finding ways to have fun and appreciate the good things in life amidst all of this uncertainty. To help you feel inspired and hopefully discover some new things to keep you occupied in quarantine, I’ve pulled together a list of things I’ve been loving lately.

Each item on the list is something I’ve personally been using for inspiration, stress management, or just for fun.

What I'm Loving Lately: Quarantine Edition
Carolyn Birsky
The Do's And Don'ts Of Working From Home

Over the past week, several friends and clients have mentioned the difficulty they’re having adjusting to working from home. Maybe you’re feeling that way too?

As someone who has spent a few years working from home and on distributed teams, I thought it might be helpful to share my best do’s and don’ts of working from home to help make your adjustment easier.

Here’s what I’ve found to work well.

The Do's And Don'ts Of Working From Home

life coaching

One Idea Away Podcast Interview

One Idea Away Podcast Interview

A few weeks ago I had the honor of being a panelist for an episode of the One Idea Away livecast + podcast, a community and podcast created by iPEC (the coaching program I attended). I'd never been part of a panel podcast episode before and it was a super cool experience! 

It was so much fun connecting with a couple of other iPEC coaches and talking all about what happens when you realize that the thing you thought you wanted in life isn't in fact what you want. We share our own stories and experiences, as well as advice for helping you pivot and figure out what you actually want to be doing instead.

Clarity On Fire Podcast Interview

Clarity On Fire Podcast Interview

This past weekend I had some very special visitors: my dear friends Rachel and Kristen from Clarity on Fire! They'd never been to Boston before, so between client meetings I played tour guide, running them all around the city and showing them my favorite spots! We even went on a walking tour with a guide dressed up in Revolutionary era attire - feel free to quiz any one of us on our Boston knowledge as we're now experts!

In honor of their visit, I thought this week's blog post was the perfect time to share my interview on their brand new podcast, the Clarity on Fire Podcast!

My Interview On The Millennial Revolution Podcast

My Interview On The Millennial Revolution Podcast

This week I'm very excited to share my conversation with Kelly Goldhorn of the Millennial Revolution Podcast!

Kelly and I met via Instagram and I loved her idea for the Millennial Revolution Podcast! Kelly was feeling burnt out at her 9-to-5 and wanted to start talking to people who had created a different, more autonomous way of living their lives and making money. So she set out to create a podcast interviewing millennials about their career stories and how they became their own bosses or followed their dreams.

A Letter Of Self-Love

A Letter Of Self-Love

Happy Galentine's Day, ladies!

Given that this day is all about female friendship (and since I just wrote a blog post on making friends the other week), I thought I'd focus on a different female friendship in your life: the one you have with yourself.

Knowing I wanted to focus on self-love today, I'd been struggling to find a way to talk about it that felt different from my self-love blog post from last year. Then all of a sudden, a good friend emailed me a piece written by Tama Kieves for Oprah.com about how she talks to herself when fear creeps in. I opened the link and a lightbulb went off! This piece contained the exact message I needed to hear in that moment and it gave me inspiration for a fresh take on a self-love blog post.

8 Books To Help You Crush It In 2018

8 Books To Help You Crush It In 2018

I love books. Better yet, I love books about self-improvement. Hazard of the job I guess.

I frequently have about 3-5 books at going at once. I write in them and bend the corners - marking pages to come back to when I need guidance, inspiration or insight. They're a major source of conversation in my life, as I'm always curious to hear what other people are reading and love recommending books that I've fallen head over heels for. 

During a recent coaching session, a client told me I should really write a book roundup since I’m always talking about new books to read. I’d been toying with the idea, but her suggestion convinced me to actually do it.

Forget New Year's Resolutions... Let's Focus On Goals

Forget New Year's Resolutions... Let's Focus On Goals

For most of my life I was very focused on New Year's resolutions. Or at least I tried to be... 

Around this time of year, I would think about all of the things I wanted to change about myself or be better at and I’d write a list.

Past items on my resolution lists include things like:

  1. Floss every day
  2. Go to the gym 5x per week
  3. Lose 5-10 pounds
  4. Drink more water
  5. Eat healthier

 

I’d write them down neatly in a journal, attempt to maintain them for a few days and then, within a week, I’d fall off track or completely forget about them.

Open Up: Mindset Shifts & "Ah Ha" Moments

Open Up: Mindset Shifts & "Ah Ha" Moments

You know those times when you’re so set in one way of doing something that you’re almost blind to alternative ways of looking at it? And yet, the way you’re going about something just isn’t working for you?

In these cases, you’re so fixated on the way things are that it's as if you don’t have access to changing your perspective. The more you focus on the problem, the more it seems to stay and the less you're able to see alternatives. It often takes something or someone outside of yourself to access a new mindset or perspective that, when you look back at it, often seems pretty logical or even obvious. Sometimes it comes from a comment made by a friend. Sometimes it comes from reading a page in a book. Sometimes the Universe smacks you upside the head.

How did I not see it that way before?!

What Attending INBOUND Reminded Me About Inspiration And Growth

What Attending INBOUND Reminded Me About Inspiration And Growth

Last week I had the privilege of attending Hubspot’s INBOUND conference - an annual marketing conference that the tech company hosts here in Boston. I’d never been to the conference before, but thought it would be a good opportunity to network and hear what’s new in the marketing world, since as an entrepreneur both of those things are super important. Thankfully, I managed to snag a free ticket from an incredible organization called She Geeks Out (if you’re a woman in tech, you should absolutely check them out!) and avoid the $500+ price tag for the opportunity to attend.

I went into the conference expecting it to be like many conferences I’d attended as a sales rep: full of vendor booths, swag, and plenty of opportunities to network, but not a ton of inspiration. Sure, there was a lot of the former. It’s a tech conference after all.

But what I wasn’t expecting was how inspired I would leave.

September Is The New January

September Is The New January

Well, it's that time of year again, when we say so long to summer Fridays and trade in our bikinis and flip flops for toasty scarves and pumpkin spice lattes. We may get a few more warm days, but the weather is very noticeably changing. Have you seen how quickly it's getting dark in the evenings now?!

Beyond the obvious shift in weather, the changing of seasons brings a shift in energy as well.

Summer's energy is very carefree - all about doing things that bring us pleasure, whether that be travel, lying on the beach or impromptu outdoor dinner parties with friends. Fall's energy, however, is much more focused. Now that our summer plans have come to an end, our focus shifts to getting back to our normal lives and routines. That "back to school" vibe is in the air, and even if we're no longer in school ourselves, the energy is still around us.

For some of us, this transition can make us feel a bit sad - like we're saying goodbye to an old friend. However, I happen see it as an opportunity.

3 Ways To Avoid The Summer Slump At Work

3 Ways To Avoid The Summer Slump At Work

Work and summer. Two words we really wish we didn’t have to say in the same sentence.

I mean, what happened to the days of actual summer? Like when we were growing up and summer felt like a break from our normal daily lives. None of this being a working adult all year round business. Just thinking about it sounds relaxing, doesn't it?