The Career Wins You Forgot To Count

What Happened to You at Work Matters (And I Need Your Help)

Hi friend. When I was fired from a job I cared about deeply, I was devastated. At the time, I didn’t have language for what I was experiencing. I thought I needed to get back on the horse, get a thicker skin, and get over it. It took me ten years to realize that I was carrying grief. Career grief. Once I understood that, I got unstuck. I gave myself permission to mourn what had happened and all that had been lost alongside my job title. Today, I’m writing a book with the working title This is Grief, Too, and am fortunate to be represented by awesome agents at Peters Fraser + Dunlop. The book draws not only from my experiences but also from the hundreds of clients, students, and professionals I’ve met over the years who have experienced their own forms of professional heartbreak. Now I’d love to hear from you. I’m looking for stories about career setbacks, disappointments, endings, mistakes, missed opportunities, layoffs, firings, failed projects, dreams that didn’t unfold the way you hoped, or any professional loss that still lingers in your heart and mind. The ones that changed something. The ones that you think about from time to time. Or all the time. The ones that shaped how you see yourself, your work, or your future. If you’re willing, I’d be grateful if you would complete a comprehensive questionnaire and share your story with me. With your permission, portions of your experience may be considered for inclusion in the book and related research. You can participate anonymously if you prefer. After reviewing submissions, I’ll invite up to twenty people to participate in individual 90-minute recorded coaching and research interviews. These one-on-one conversations will help inform the book and may, with your additional consent, be considered for inclusion in future book or audiobook materials. More than anything, my hope is that this work helps us become grief literate. Because what happens to us at work matters. The losses we experience matter. And learning how to acknowledge and mourn professional heartbreak may be one of the most important skills we can develop for a long and meaningful career. Questionnaire Link [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfDF1Sf1IubUYJObECA5eEiuR8u2fUTgdbzIHkTap09Gdgo1A/viewform] Thank you for considering it. I’d be honored to hear your story. The gremlins tend to get loudest when we’re standing at the edge of change. That’s why this month’s Solid Ground lesson is called [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/p/meet-your-gremlins]Meet Your Gremlins [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/p/meet-your-gremlins]. We’ll explore the inner voices that fuel self-doubt, second-guessing, and hesitation, and how to keep them from making decisions for you. Solid Ground Community [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/s/solid-ground] is my monthly practice for people navigating career transitions, setbacks, and stretch seasons. Paid subscribers receive a video lesson, worksheet, and live coaching session each month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com/subscribe [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What is My Purpose

The week I got fired from a job I loved, I kept opening my laptop and staring at a blank screen. I didn’t know what to update. I wasn’t sure who I was updating it for. My job title had been the answer to so many questions, including, it turned out, the question of who I was. That’s the thing nobody warns you about: career disappointment. The professional loss is real. But the identity loss is the one that knocks you sideways. And somewhere in that fog, a question surfaces. Usually in the middle of the night. Usually, when you’re too tired to push it away. What is my purpose? Here’s what I’ve learned — both from living through it and from walking dozens of clients through the same fire: that question isn’t a crisis. It’s an invitation. And career disappointment, as brutal as it is, might be the most direct route to your answer. Why Career Disappointment Hits So Deep Most of us have been quietly, unconsciously answering the purpose question with our job title for years. I’m a producer. I’m an analyst. I’m a director of marketing. When work is going well, that answer feels sufficient. But it was never really the answer. Your job is not your purpose — it’s a manifestation of it. And when the job disappears, what’s left is the real question you should have been sitting with all along. That’s not a failure. That’s a reckoning. And reckonings, handled right, can change everything. The Three Questions That Find Your Purpose I use a three-question framework with my clients, and I’ve come back to it myself more times than I can count. The questions are simple. They’re not easy. There’s a difference. Question 1: What brings you joy or flow? Not what you’re supposed to love. Not what looks impressive on a LinkedIn summary. What actually lights you up — where do you lose track of time? Learning something new? Creating something from scratch? Solving a puzzle no one else could crack? Supporting someone through something hard? Don’t overthink it. Write whatever comes up first. Question 2: What are you good at? Here’s a pro tip: don’t answer this one alone. Ask three people who know you well. We are chronically blind to our own gifts, especially the ones that come naturally. They don’t feel like gifts — they just feel like us. When I did this exercise, I was surprised to learn that people experienced me as a strategic organizer and planner. Those things came so easily to me I’d never counted them as skills. I thought everyone did that. They don’t. Question 3: What breaks your heart? This is the one people rush past. Don’t. What feels intolerable to you in the world? What injustice makes you angry? What gap keeps pulling your attention? What do you find yourself saying someone should do something about this — because, yes, that someone might be you. Purpose lives in the overlap of these three things. And career disappointment has a way of stripping away the noise so you can finally hear them. Gigi’s Story When Gigi came to me, she had just been laid off after 18 years as an analyst at Boeing — a job she’d landed right out of college. She was devastated. Her career had been a source of real pride, and her goals had always centered on stability: building a family, saving for retirement. But when we started working through the three questions, something shifted. What brought her joy was solving unsolvable problems. What she was good at was long-term data analysis and pattern recognition. And what broke her heart? The idea of leaving the world worse than she found it for her kids. Those three things pointed somewhere she hadn’t been looking: sustainability. Helping companies reduce their carbon footprint. Using her skills to address something that mattered to her at a gut level. Job security, she realized, had never been her purpose. It had been her strategy. Once she could see that, she stopped grieving the job and started building toward something real. Last I heard, she was interviewing for sustainability analyst roles and interviewing like someone who knew exactly why she was in the room. The disappointment didn’t take her purpose. It introduced her to it. How to Write Your Purpose Statement Once you’ve sat with the three questions, the next step is to put it into words. This is where a lot of people stall, so I want to make it as simple as possible. A purpose statement has three parts: what you love, what you’re good at, and what you’re called to change or contribute. You’re looking for the thread that ties all three together. One essential instruction: write it in the present tense. Not I want to, or I hope to. Declare it as if it’s already happening — because at the level of purpose, it is. The difference matters more than it sounds. “I want to help people tell their stories” keeps you in aspiration. “I help people tell their stories” puts you in motion. Here’s one of my favorite examples from a client: I am a warrior of freedom, nourishing and protecting my community through my talent as a chef and futurist, emboldening people to trust their gut. Read that, and you can feel the person behind it. That’s the goal. Not a job description — a declaration. Your first draft will be imperfect. Mine has been rewritten more times than I can count. The essence stays constant. The words get sharper over time. What matters is that you start. The Hardest Part The real barrier to writing a purpose statement isn’t the framework. It’s the fear of owning what you find. Owning your gifts means being responsible for them. Claiming your purpose means you can’t keep playing small and pretending you don’t know what you’re here for. That’s terrifying. It’s also the whole point. Bottom Line Career disappointment is not the end of your purpose story. For a lot of people, it’s the beginning of it. When the job goes away, so does the easy answer. What’s left, if you’re willing to look, is something more durable and more yours: the overlap of what you love, what you’re good at, and what you can’t stop caring about. That’s your purpose. It was there the whole time. The disruption just made it visible. Thanks for reading Career Strategy with Laverne McKinnon! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com/subscribe [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Starting Over at the Top 😳

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] Robert got the call on a Friday afternoon. After trying to find a job in his industry for eighteen months, he faced the hard truth that for someone at his level, there were no viable openings. So he pivoted to Pharma doing sales. A far cry from Vice-President of Marketing at a film studio. He would start the new gig in two weeks. Robert was elated to have a gig, but he was dejected because his degree, his experience, and his wins didn’t translate to the new role. He would be starting in a sales training program with a “bunch of 20 year olds.” He confessed he was embarrassed and anxious to be a newbie. If you’re mid-career or later, and you’re stepping into something unfamiliar, you may feel horribly destabilized. Because knowing your stuff has always been your anchor. And now it’s not enough. Here’s what I want you to know: your credentials are not meaningless. But they’re not the whole story either. In new territory, something else takes the wheel. And most high achievers are the last to figure out what that something else actually is. The Default Move That Backfires When accomplished people step into unfamiliar terrain, they almost always do the same thing: they double down on what got them here. More preparation. More credentials. More proof that they belong. It’s the only playbook they know, and it’s worked for a long time. But in new territory, that strategy can work against you. The pressure to perform expertise you don’t yet have when you’re someone who typically hits it out of the ballpark can be debilitating. Instead of projecting competence, you end up projecting effort, which reads very differently in a room. Why This Happens Your identity has been wrapped up in being the expert for a long time. It’s what happens when you’re good at something and build a career around it. You’re rightly proud of those achievements. But when you’re no longer the expert, your nervous system reads that as danger. So you over-prepare. You over-explain. You puff up with overcompensation. Or you go the other direction and withdraw, waiting until you feel ready enough to show up. Observing the situation, taking notes, plotting and planning. None of these responses is what the new territory actually needs from you. The expert identity that protected you in your old lane becomes a kind of armor that keeps you from learning what you need to learn in order to succeed again. What Actually Moves the Needle When Robert completed his sales training, he told me he almost blew it. He was irritated with the pace of the program, he already knew what he was being told, and he was being trained by someone 15 years younger than him. After the second day, he went home and vented over dinner. Now, Robert’s a terrific dad, and his parental wisdom came back to him at the right moment. His 16-year-old son said to him in mid-vent, “Dad, I thought you said attitude is the best strategy.” Those words stopped Robert in his tracks. He knew he was impatient and didn’t “suffer fools.” But he also knew that attitude was the difference between a door opening or closing, a brief stint or a place to grow, and his own mental well-being. Robert thanked his son, told his family to throw marshmallows at him if he started complaining again, and course corrected his attitude. He started the third day of training with a beginner’s mind and brought cookies. What Attitude as Strategy Actually Looks Like Let me make this concrete, because “show up with a good attitude” is advice that sounds nice and means nothing without specifics. * Ask more questions than you answer. A friend of mine struggled with this early in her career. She had so many thoughts she wanted to share in every meeting that she started keeping a notebook just to get them out of her head. What she discovered was that writing things down calmed her nervous system. It freed her to actually listen. She stopped needing to show she knew everything and started learning more by asking. The relationships she built that way turned out to be some of the most valuable of her career. * Name what you don’t know before someone else does. Early in my time as an executive overseeing primetime programming at CBS, I was given a role that was a significant stretch. On my first set visit to a show that had already been on the air for two years, I said to the production team: you know more than I do. I’m here to learn and be a fan. The room shifted immediately. People who had been braced for a network executive to come in and assert authority instead opened doors they typically kept the suits out of. Naming a gap honestly is a form of leadership. * Let your enthusiasm be visible, and be specific about it. This one is genuinely underrated. Enthusiasm that is vague feels performative. Enthusiasm that is specific feels real. Show up on time or early. When something impresses you, say exactly what impressed you. Look people in the eye. Say hello. Say thank you in a way that names the thing you are grateful for. None of this is complicated, but it lands differently than people expect. * Protect your energy from the things that spiral you. Robert deleted social media during a stretch when he noticed he was using it when he felt bored. That was an important strategic decision because boredom for Robert meant he believed he knew everything he needed to know. Your attitude is an asset. Anything that drains it is worth taking seriously. The Nuance Worth Naming Focusing on attitude is not an argument against skill. You need a baseline. You need to be able to do the work at a competent level before any of this matters. But past that threshold, what differentiates you in new territory is relational and energetic, not just technical. The people who are deciding whether to bring you along, collaborate with you, or invest in you are asking a very human question: Do I want this person in the room when things get hard? That question is answered by how it feels to be around you. Bottom Line Robert finished his sales training. Turns out he didn’t know everything. But with his son’s reminder, he showed up curious, asked questions, and let people teach him. And that attitude shift made the training a pleasant experience. Your expertise is real. Your accomplishments are real. But in new territory, the thing that earns trust is how you show up with grace and interest. Ask more than you answer. Name the gap before someone else does. Let your enthusiasm be specific and visible. Those aren’t soft skills. They’re the strategy. If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have. This Week One of the many things I respect about Courtney Romano is that she is not asking for permission in her career. She wears many hats: writer, director, producer, strategist, consultant and is a champion for Non-Dependent Filmmaking. Let’s find out how she does it. Journal Prompts Here are four journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor subscribers. These questions are designed to help you examine the role attitude has played in your career and what it might look like to lean into it more deliberately in a pivot.

What Do You Owe a Difficult Boss?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] I was having lunch on the patio at Kiwami with a long-time colleague — we'd served together on the board of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment [https://www.capeusa.org/mission-history] — and we were debating whether to order the Kiwami tray or go à la carte.  And then, I felt the energy around me shift. I didn’t turn my head, but I could see her outline in my peripheral vision. The boss who fired me. OMG, she was seated close enough to hear us order, and I was close enough I could smell her perfume.  My first instinct: pretend she doesn't exist. Keep smiling. Keep chatting. Keep still. But the light-hearted parley about omakase was now nausea inducing and there was a buzzing in my ears. My boss, no, my ex-boss flagged a waiter and asked to move inside. I can't remember anything that happened after that.  Here's what I know now that I didn't know then: what happened in my body had a name. My nervous system registered a perceived threat and responded accordingly — heart rate, shallow breath, the works. I was in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn moment [https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-happens-to-your-body-during-the-fight-or-flight-response] — and caught between freezing and fawning. Why not do both when I’m under threat?  What's interesting is that the threat wasn't real. I wasn't in danger. But my nervous system treated my ex-boss’ arrival as if something horrible was about to happen and I would be blind-sided all over again.  Reader Question: Should I Reach Out to a Former (Not Awesome) Boss for a Job? I was reminded of this Kiwami experience recently when a reader sent me a question I suspect a lot of other people have too. He'd just learned that a former boss had landed a senior role at a new company. This was someone who had been skilled at managing up and promoting himself, but less focused on developing and advocating for his team. Now that this person was back in a leadership position, my reader found himself wondering: does it make sense to reach out? And if they ran into each other at some random place, what exactly should he do? We all know how important it is to maintain business relationships, but what do you do with the professional relationships that were genuinely complicated and triggered you into fight / flight / freeze / fawn mode? Thank you reader for such a powerful, timely question.  The Tool: Friendly, Not Friends Earlier in my career, when I was a “baby” network executive, some of the senior executives I worked with were … well, I just have to say it. They were mean girls. When I would walk on set, they literally turned their backs and formed a circle. It was the kind of thing that makes you feel like you're back in junior high. My first response was to shrink, you know a kind of freezing. I started showing up at the last minute so I wouldn't have to stand on the periphery. I avoided the spaces where they gathered. I got smaller and smaller until one day I realized: their behavior was changing mine. And I hated it. I love having authentic conversations with people. I love collaborating and solving problems together. I love being nice because I know you never know what’s going on behind the scenes with someone. So I made a different choice: treat the mean girls the way I'd treat any stranger. Friendly, but not friends.  A few months later, the ringleader pulled me aside and said: I don't know how you did it, but you did it. Everyone likes you now. It was a little crazy to hear that because my goal wasn't to make everyone like me. I just didn't want other people changing my behavior or my values. I didn't like who I was becoming..  Should You Reach Out? My Honest Answer  So back to my reader's question: should you reach out to the former boss who wasn't great to you, now that they've landed somewhere new? My honest answer: only you know. What I'd encourage you to do is get clear on which value you're honoring with your choice — whichever way you go.  I'll be transparent though: if it were me today, I would not reach out because I now prioritize a flat hierarchy and working with people who are willing to have hard conversations in a grounded manner. But I also don't know what's happening behind the scenes in the reader’s life. Financial pressure, health insurance, a shrinking market — these are real considerations that can make pursuing every opportunity not just reasonable but necessary. There's no shame in that math.

The Career Wins You Forgot To Count

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_7] You know what you’ve lost. But can you name your wins? Most people in a career transition can recite their losses on demand. The VP title. The 401K contribution. The Friday happy hours with the work family. The satisfaction of knowing what the job is and how to do it. Ask them to name their wins? Awkward silence then a short, apologetic list they immediately start walking back. “I mean, it wasn’t that big a deal.” “Anyone could have done that.” This isn’t humility. It’s your brain doing exactly what it was designed to do. Your Brain Thinks It’s Helping - It’s Not Your brain tracks threats and losses with far more energy than it tracks wins. It’s called negativity bias [https://positivepsychology.com/3-steps-negativity-bias/] and a lot has been written about it. Essentially, as humans we’re wired to look for what’s not working as a way to protect ourselves. During a career transition, exactly when you need a clear and accurate picture of your professional story, your brain is actively over-indexing on the negative. The losses stay top of mind while the wins get tucked into a bankers box and put into the back of a storage container. Over time, negative bias feels like the truth. And once it does, it starts calling the shots on every decision you make — what you apply for, how you talk about yourself, what you believe you’re capable of next. I learned this the hard way. And what made it worse is that my brain wasn’t the only thing working against me. I was also using the wrong measuring stick. Another Reason Your Wins Go Missing Several years ago, when I was pivoting out of independent film and TV producing, I went after three corporate opportunities, hard. Made it to the final round for all three. Got none of them. When I dug into why, the feedback was consistent: the candidates who were hired had more recent, measurable wins. Box office numbers. Emmy nominations. Projects that crossed the finish line in ways the industry recognized. Ouch. I knew how hard I’d been working. And I knew that a lot of the gap wasn’t about effort — it was about circumstance. COVID. The lockdowns. The writers’ and actors’ strikes. An industry that had slowed down so much, we could count the number of greenlit productions on one hand. Turns out my wins weren’t missing. They just didn’t fit the industry’s scoreboard. I’d spent years making sure the people on my projects felt respected. I knew this because they kept wanting to work together on new projects. I took great pride in responding to submissions when most people didn’t bother. Timely passes built relationships with agents, managers and other producers who understood that most of the time, the answer is no. Nobody was measuring those things that fell under the emotional intelligence category. They weren’t measurable in the same way the industry looks at ROI or KPIs. They were about humanity. I wasn’t winless. In fact, I was quite victorious. But me and the industry were using different measuring sticks so I felt less than. Finding The Wins Hiding In Your Story If your career story feels heavier on losses right now, here’s an exercise worth sitting with that includes the parts that haven’t made it onto your résumé yet. Start with the most obvious place: external recognition. Awards, nominations, acknowledgments — any moment where someone outside your own head said yes, this. Write them down without editing or qualifying. Then go a little deeper. What do people thank you for, come to you for, refer others to you for? This one matters more than it might seem. When something comes naturally to you, it stops feeling like a win — it just feels like any other day. But the fact that people consistently seek you out for it says a lot about you. Then ask yourself about the goals you hit without fireworks going off. The ones you set, achieved, and moved on from without a big victory dance. Those count too. Now here’s where it gets more interesting. We tend to define victory as coming in first, getting the public recognition, beating the competition. But that’s only one definition — and for many people, it’s not even the one that matters most. Think about a time you made a decision that honored your values, even when it went against what others expected. Or a time you went so far outside your comfort zone to make something happen that it surprised even you — even if the outcome wasn’t perfect, even if it wasn’t work-related at all. The stretch itself is a win. The integrity itself is a win. These moments are the most accurate picture of who you actually are. And then the really big question: what measuring stick have you been using? Did you choose it? Or did someone hand it to you a long time ago and you just never put it down? When you sit with that question — really sit with it — does your current definition of a win feel energizing? Or does it feel like a bar you can never quite clear? Where did it come from? A parent, an industry, a company culture, a moment early in your career when you decided what success had to look like? You get to choose whether to keep it. Mine shifted when I stopped measuring my career solely against greenlights and started asking: did the people around me feel respected? Did I show up with integrity? Did I make something better because I was there? Those wins were real because process matters to me. Why This Matters Right Now If you’re in a hard career moment, your brain is going to keep handing you the losses. That’s what it does. You have to actively go looking for the other side of the story — not to paper over what’s hard, but because your professional story is the foundation you build from. And if it’s missing its best chapters, you’re building on incomplete ground. This is the work we do inside Solid Ground, my paid membership community. During the month of April we’re mapping the highs and lows of your career to see the full picture, not just the parts your brain defaulted to. Every month I send a short lesson and worksheet to work through before we get on a live coaching call together. It’s one of my favorite things I do. If that sounds like what you need right now, becoming a paid subscriber gets you in. Bottom Line Your brain was built to remember the losses. It’s doing its job. But that means your career story has probably been edited — wins minimized, qualified, or left out entirely. Start with what people thank you for. Move toward the decisions you’re proud of, the stretches that surprised you, the moments you showed up with integrity even when no one was watching. Then ask the harder question: whose measuring stick have you been using, and is it actually yours? The answers might change what you think is true about yourself. If someone came to mind while you were reading this—please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have. Related Content * Is There Something Wrong With Me? [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/p/is-there-something-wrong-with-me?r=250wd6] * How Perfectionism Leads To Imposter Syndrome [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/p/perfectionism-imposter-syndrome?r=250wd6] * Is Expertise Really All It’s Cracked Up To Be? [https://moonshotmentor.substack.com/p/how-to-loosen-imposter-syndromes?r=250wd6] Longing To Feel Lighter? Professional heartbreak can leave you spinning. You replay what happened, question your judgment, get stuck in indecision, and worry you’ll never get your mojo back. Solid Ground is the paid member program inside the Moonshot Mentor Substack community that helps you move from spinning to forward motion. Paid members tell me they feel less weighed down. Empowered. Relaxed for the first time in a long time. Here’s the thing. It’s not because they got a pep talk. It’s because they finally got an accurate explanation for what’s happening and a way through it. You’ll get monthly video lessons with a guided companion to help you apply the work, live coaching for real time support, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to rebuild confidence and make decisions without panic. Become a paid member to access Solid Ground, stop misdiagnosing yourself as broken, and start moving again. Journal Prompts Here are 5 journal prompts for paid Solid Ground members. Studies have shown how spending time with your thoughts and feelings through journaling increases your ability to problem solve and calms your nervous system. These prompts will help you identify your wins.