Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast, where we talk all things leadership, business, communication, and trends in organizational life. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

This is the 200th episode of the podcast. 200 episodes, my friends. That is wow. That is just wow. For me, to consistently do something 200 times over means it's pretty special to me.

So I just want you to really, really get the significance of this particular milestone and my deep, deep and undying gratitude for you, my dear listeners, for being along on this journey. In fact, you are the most important part. I mean, the reason I started this podcast was to be an extension of who I am on stage.

So often people would ask me, after I give a keynote or I do a session at a conference, somebody will come up to me and say, this is fantastic. I want to take it back to my coworkers or to my spouse or my best friend. Is this available online anywhere? And, of course, my keynotes largely are not just available online. And I thought, how could I make my content available online so that people could share it? And so that's what this has been about. And, of course, you sharing the podcast with the people who matter the most to you is why I'm doing this.

And so I have to really, really put you, my dear listeners, at the center and the forefront of this episode. I just, again, I have so much gratitude for you for being along on this journey for nearly four years. We're coming up on four years in a couple of weeks. In fact, just not long after this episode launches, it will be four years in. So as I reflect on 200 episodes of the Working Conversations podcast, I realize that the lessons that I share in this podcast. And again, the whole reason I do this podcast, comes back to a personal philosophy that I live by. And today I'm going to be sharing something deeply personal. A manifesto for meaningful work and a fulfilling life.

It is literally my philosophy on life. And it has three parts. The first is know thyself. The second is find meaningful work. And the third is share your work and yourself with others. And so today, I'm going to take a step back from the research and trends that I typically share here on the podcast. And I want to talk more personally about how this philosophy has guided me and how it might resonate with your own journey now.

I've always believed that a path to a meaningful life comes down to these three things. Knowing yourself, finding meaningful work, whether it's in your career or a cherished avocation or hobby, or the way you give back to your community. It does not have to be paid, work or career. And I'll talk more about that as I unpack that piece of it. And then sharing your work, that is your manifestation of yourself in the world, sharing that with others. So today, as I mentioned, I'm going to unpack this philosophy and how it connects to what we're doing here on the podcast and why I do the work that I do. All right. I hope you're as excited about this as I am, because this, again, is deeply personal, that it feels like there's no better time than this 200th episode to kind of pull back the curtain on who I am at heart and share why I do the work that I do and how this work, this podcast and my keynote speaking, my writing, all the things that I do fit into my big why. Again, this is my manifesto, my philosophy on life, if you will.

So let's start with part one, the foundation, and that is knowing yourself. So self awareness is so key, really, in realizing your full potential in life. And it is the starting point for my personal life philosophy. Know thyself, as I believe it was. Socrates said I should know. I used to know. Pretty sure it's Socrates. But explaining why you do the things you do really comes down to knowing yourself and knowing what's important to you, both personally and professionally.

So this has to do with your strengths and how you use them. This has to do with your values, knowing what your core values are. And if you've ever heard me talk about my values, freedom is right up there as my number one core family. I just said core family because family comes right behind it. For me, it is freedom and then family as my two top two core values. And again, it's probably no mistake that I just jumbled those two words there, because a good way to look at what your values are, if you've never done a values exercise, is just look at your calendar, see how you spend your time. Now, some of that is going to be things that get scheduled in your calendar, like work commitments and. And so on.

And for me, if you look at my calendar and I have, I use Google Calendar, so I've got multiple calendars overlaying each other. There's my work calendar, but then I overlay our family calendar on top of that. And then I have a separate private personal calendar for things that don't necessarily go on either one of those two calendars that I overlay on that as well. But if you looked at my calendar, you would absolutely see how my family is One of my core values, because I'm always like running a kid to someplace or going to a child's event or doing something with the extended family, calling my mom, calls my mom, don't necessarily make it into my calendar, but those are things that happen every single week. And so when you look at how you spend your time, you can get a really clear indication of what your values are. Okay, that was a little bit of a tangent. But if you aren't clear on your values and you're not sure that you are really in touch with yourself, that's a great place to start, is to look at how you spend your time, because you're going to see your values embedded in the choices that you make about how you spend your time. So really understanding again, your strengths, your values, your passions, the things that you care a lot, that is going to really give you some insights into knowing yourself more deeply.

Now, I wanted to share a pivotal moment where my own self awareness led me to a breakthrough and in a sense, essentially a change in direction. So if you've listened to the podcast for a while, and especially if you've listened to episode one where I tell my career story, you know that I spent nearly five years, just short of five years, working at Thomson Reuters as a user experience engineering director and I led a team that did global work. I got to travel to China and London and I was in New York City so often I had my favorite restaurants there. And anyway, it was very, very fulfilling and fun work. It was meaningful work. It was definitely meaningful work for me at the time. But I knew when I went into that role that I wanted to be there for about two years. I thought of it as my on the job MBA.

I really wanted to get savvy about organizational life outside of academia because prior to that I'd worked in some small companies and then had a career in academia. But I knew I wanted to start this business where I was going to be working with people and organizations, boots on the ground, doing the work that they do and assisting in them doing the work that they do. You in fact, my dear listeners, doing the work that you do and sharing the research and the best practices and so forth to be able make that work more effective, more meaningful, make the communication more fluid and straightforward and so on. So I knew that this was the work that I wanted to do. Now Thomson Reuters was absolutely the right place for me to land coming out of academia for so many reasons. It was, and that work was meaningful for a time. But again, I knew I wanted to be there for about two years. So every year after two years, when my employment anniversary came around, I had this, you know, calling to move on, to do the next thing.

And this, it finally came to a head just shy of five years there. But I knew that this was the work that I was meant to do and that I was meant to do it now or next at the time. So. But if I hadn't been clear with myself, if I hadn't been straight with myself, if I hadn't been tapped into knowing myself, I could have deluded myself and stayed in that corporate role and climbed the corporate ladder and, you know, done all the things, but that's not what I was up to. So I knew myself well enough to know when it was time to move on to what I really wanted to do next. And quite frankly, this is what I'm going to do for the long haul. There is no next after this. It's just going to be one iteration of this after the next, one new reinvention of myself as a keynote speaker, author and podcaster.

That this is, this is where it ends, folks. And I don't see it ending for a good long time now. I have seen personally firsthand with the leaders that I do executive coaching with the leaders who know themselves. They foster authenticity, they foster trust amongst their teams, and these are key traits that they need, not only right now, but as we journey into the future of work. Because, friends, if you haven't guessed this already, work is just going to change faster and faster and get messier and messier as the months and years go by. So it is key for leaders to know themselves. It is also key for individual contributors to know themselves, because knowing yourself helps adapt when we are experiencing these rapid changes in the workplace and rapid changes in technology and so forth.

Because if you're feeling, like, unmoored or unsettled or frustrated by something, the more you know yourself and how you adapt to change and all the things, the easier it is for you to understand what's going on right now and make sense of it quickly so that you can move through it and be the best contribution in your role that you. That you can be again, whether you're a leader or an individual contributor or some, you know, somewhere in between, a supervisor, a lead worker, and that sort of thing. So I want you, my dear listeners, to consider what is one thing that you have really learned about yourself that shaped your career or your personal life? I mean, I knew from a very early age. I knew from an undergrad, probably even before I was an undergrad that I wanted to be a speaker. I was on the speech team in high school. I took all the, all the speech classes I could take, not only in high school, which was pretty limited because I was at a very, very small school in rural Minnesota, but once I got to college in Boston, at Boston University, I took all the public speaking classes that I could take. So I knew that early about myself.

And so, you know, what's one thing that you have either learned recently about yourself or something that you just know in your being about yourself that shapes your career and the things that matter most to you? All right, so that is know thyself. Now we move on to finding meaningful work. So again, my philosophy is find meaningful work. But that meaningful work does not have to be tied to a paycheck. It can be a career, of course, it can be a side hustle. It can be an avocation or a hobby or a contribution to your community that brings you joy and purpose and feels fulfilling to you. So I often use the example of, you know, the person who plays in a garage band who is passionate about their music and, you know, plays in local bars and weddings and things like that, but they don't make enough money doing that to provide for their family or put the roof over their head, the, you know, the proverbial roof over their head, so to speak. But maybe they work on an assembly line in an automotive factory, and that work maybe doesn't necessarily bring them joy, but they do that work with purpose because that work pays for the roof over their head and pays their family's expenses and puts money aside for their college funds for their kids and all of those things so that they have the freedom to play in that garage band and to bring people joy with their music.

So again, your particular focus and lens on what meaningful work is to you does not have to be your career. But for those of you who are in a role where you are collecting a paycheck and maybe you have excellent benefits and you love that about your work, but you don't have the joy. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to change jobs. You don't have to make a big career change. You could find that meaningful work outside of your paid work. Again, it could be a side hustle. It could be contribution to your community. It could be playing in a garage band or a community band or singing in the church choir.

So again, find that place for you. And for me, it's pretty obvious. Like this work that I do, keynote speaking, podcasting about the topics that I keynote speak about and then writing, this is my meaningful work. This is what I was meant to do. This is what I was put on the planet to do. And so I need to look no further, as I think, though, about how workplace trends like hybrid work and the gig economy and the rise of generative AI allow for more flexible ways to do work. It just keeps me on my toes and it keeps me learning and it keeps me engaged and exciting. And in fact, if you want to know my third top value, it is lifetime learning.

So that just plays so nicely into the work that I do. Now, there are, of course, some challenges because I need to balance my passion for the work that I do with my family, because I do have a family. I do have two teenagers who are still very active in school events and sports and all of their activities. And that requires me to be, you know, home with them as well. So there is a certain balance there. You can't just go all in on your work. And especially when you know that my, you know, second value is family. You can see how there is that balance between this meaningful work that I find so dear and making sure I am, you know, spending evenings with my family and not a road warrior, because it's also very easy to be a road warrior in this business that I'm in.

But I have made some intentional choices about until my kids, my youngest has graduated high school to be home as not necessarily all the time, but to find that balance where I'm not a road warrior traveling as the job needs me to, but not gone, you know, 300 nights out of the year gone. More like 30 nights out of the year. All right, so, my dear listeners, my takeaway for you is for you to find that one thing in your life. And maybe it's not one thing. It might be a handful of things that feels meaningful. And ask yourself, how can I give this meaningful thing more space and priority, even if it's not tied to your day job or for those of you who are maybe going a little overboard on that meaningful work. Workaholics, I'm talking to you.

Then how can you find more balance between the work that you do that you find such meaning in and the rest of your life? Now, part three is find people to share it with. So this is all about the power of connection. Now, I used to say, know thyself, find meaningful work and find someone to share it with. But it's bigger than someone. I have expanded this to be find people to share it with. You need to Connect with a community of people who appreciate you and with whom you can share your full self, with whom you can share that meaningful work with, and with whom you can share yourself, so that they know you, maybe not as well as you know you, but that they get a glimpse of the real, authentic you. So it's not just one spouse or partner or best friend. You need community.

You need that broader group of people to share yourself with. So when you are sharing yourself authentically, it builds trust. It fosters the kind of culture where innovation and ideas can thrive, especially when you're in leadership roles, especially in your organizational life. Again, whether you're a leader or not, and whether you're a leader with the lowercase l leading from the side or you're a leader who manages the work of others. So when you share yourself authentically and you can really bring yourself to work, to that work that you do, again, whether it's at your paid job or whether it's to the church choir or the community food bank where you volunteer, you really need to bring that full self and that full freedom of self expression and everything that comes along with it to that community for them to know you and see the importance of the work that you're doing and the contribution that you are.

Now, I want to just share a quick moment where my community has expanded as a result of this philosophy. So again, if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that I'm a member of the National Speakers association, both my local chapter here in Minnesota, as well as the national chapter, and I'm active in both. And that is a great place for me to find that community.

As far as the meaningful work goes, they get my work, they understand what I do in like right out of the gate. And if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you probably heard me talk not too long ago in episode 195 about finding community. I'll give that episode a plug again here just in a couple moments. If you didn't listen to that one, it's a great one for really the importance of community and finding your community. So I have that speaker community and you know, again, this is a unicorn kind of profession. There's not a lot of people who do this and it doesn't necessarily make sense to those who don't do it. And so finding my people in that community of speakers is so important. But then the other side of the coin is that I'm running a small business.

It happens to be that I'm a keynote speaker and podcaster, but it is a small business. And so there's two other communities of people that have been tremendously valuable over the last couple of years. The first that I'll mention, and this goes back a couple of years, is a few years back, I did the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses program, which is almost like a mini MBA. And the small business owners that I met through that program from around the country were in all different types of business, from a sign company to a landscape company in Alaska to a specialty grocery store in upstate New York. I mean, these are some of the people who get me, on a small business level, the owners of those businesses, because of the time that we spent together in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program. So that just being with small business owners really is a place where I find home, I find community. And then a more recent place where I have been finding that community is in my local Chamber of Commerce. That's the Wayzata West Metro Chamber of Commerce here in the western suburbs of the Minneapolis St. Paul region.

And the people that I have met there in just the short, maybe, I don't know, six months I've been a member, have just been tremendously giving of their time. And again, small business owners or people who are just interested in creating community amongst the business community. So those places is where I have found my community and where I am able to share my meaningful work. Now, of course, I also have another avenue for sharing my meaningful work, and that is with you. It is with you here on the podcast, and it is with your organization when you bring me in to speak or train. It is in your professional associations when I speak at your conferences. So I get to share my meaningful work and create community with you then as well.

And that is just like, that's what lights me up the most. I mean, if you've ever seen me on stage, you know that there is no place I'd rather be. It is my natural habitat. And I would say the podcast here is maybe a close second. All right, so when you think about collaboration and community and how essential they are in this increasingly remote and hybrid work environment that we're in, where connection can feel more fragmented than ever, you understand how important that community is. And when our roles and our industries get more and more siloed, it is so important, more important than ever to be connecting with the people who get us the most, as well as the people that we can learn from and the people who can learn from us. So there are so many good reasons to be part of community. So, so my challenge for you then is who is one person or group that you could share your work or your passions with this week? How might that connection enrich your life and enrich their, their lives?

All right, so let me just pull this all together and recap it for you again. I am just, just touched beyond belief that here we are, 200 episodes into this podcast and I get to share this personal manifesto with you. So, just to recap that philosophy, know yourself, to uncover what drives you and what is meaningful to you, and then find work, whether it is a career or a passion or volunteer work or whatever it is that brings purpose that, that, that demonstrates the meaning that you have for yourself in some tangible way in the world. And then share that work with, with your and yourself with others. And that's where you're going to connect, create more connection and create more impact and really find that whole fulfillment. Again, this philosophy, know thyself, find meaningful work and share it with others has shaped my career, my podcast, my speaking on stage, my daily life, and it continues to guide me. So again, it is really, really a special moment that I get to share this with you today. So thank you so much for listening and for keeping me in the podcast host seat, bringing you 200 episodes of insights and inspiration to help us make the most of this, this thing we call work.

So I will leave you with one final call to action. Which of these three areas, knowing yourself, finding meaningful work, or sharing your work and yourself with others, needs the most attention in your life right now? And how can you take one small step today? Maybe where do you need some retooling and refining? Perhaps you're at an inflection point where you realize that your work is out of alignment with your knowledge of yourself, say, your values, your strengths, and so on. Maybe again, it's that values misalignment, or maybe it's just simply that the day to day activities are no longer fulfilling. They maybe once were, but maybe you've changed and you've outgrown them. Or maybe you know yourself quite well and this discussion reminds you that your current work does not hold the meaning that you would like it to have for you. Or maybe you realize that your community is lacking and you need to double down on finding your people. If that's the case, as I mentioned, I was going to give a shout out to this episode. Make sure to go back and listen to episode 195, finding your why Community Matters in work and life.

And if you're up for bonus points because I used to be a college professor and students were always looking for bonus points, consider writing your own personal manifesto. Whether it be about meaningful work or how you live your life. Ask yourself, what does work that matters look like for you and who do you want to share it with? Okay, again my friends, thank you so much for listening and for keeping me in this podcast Hot Seat host seat bringing you these 200 episodes of insights and inspiration. Here is to meaningful work, meaningful lives and meaningful connections. Thank you for being part of my journey and here's to the next 200 episodes and beyond. Oh again, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Working Conversations. If you have ideas for future episodes, I would love to hear from you. As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve.

Tune in next week for another insightful exploration of the trends shaping our professional world. And if you learned something on this podcast or you simply enjoy the content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice, and follow me on social media. These are all excellent and no cost ways for you to support me and my work. You'll find links to my social media over on the show Notes page which is janelanderson.com/200 for episode 200 until next time my friends, keep thriving and keep working towards a future that fully embodies meaning for you. Take good care, friends.