Three Questions to unlock your authentic career : Ashley Stahl, Career Near Me

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Early in her career as a national security professional, Ashley Stahl felt stuck. After some serious soul-searching and risk-taking, she created a career she truly loves and is helping others do the same.
She urges people to ask themselves three questions about their career. What am I good at? What do other people think I'm good at? What's holding me back? Answers to these, she says, will unlock a passionate career.

Ashley Stahl is an award-winning advocate for women in security, named in 2013 by the Diplomatic Courier magazine and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy as a "Top 99 Under 33 Foreign Policy Leader." Ashley currently runs her own business as a career coach to college students and fresh graduates seeking to unlock their career goals and land the jobs that they deserve. She also contributes to Forbes on issues of national security and serves as Manager of the Enterprise Risk Management Center at Control Risks, a global political risk consultancy. In this position, Ashley leads a team of intelligence analysts who advise a Fortune 100 client on how to protect its personnel and assets from security threats in hostile environments around the world. Previously, Ashley was the Operations Lead for the Pentagon's Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA) training program, which prepares senior Department of Defense officials for their deployments to Afghanistan, where they would serve as advisors to foreign counterparts in the Afghan Ministries of Defense and Interior.

TRANSCRIPT.

At age 22, I was completely immersed in this world of spying the Pentagon and counter-terrorism. Everything that I did in my adolescent life was to prepare me for my fantasy career.

But I’m here, just a few years later, as a career coach to hundreds of millennials. So how and why does this happen? That’s exactly what people asked me when I quit my job in Washington, DC, and booked a one-way trip home to Los Angeles. And I tell people that my answer is simple: political science is what I love, but career coaching is what I am. This dance that we all do between finding work that we love and finding work that aligns with who we are is what I want to talk about today.

So I remember, four years ago living in DC and going through my quarter life crisis, and I was just chaotic, desperate for answers, lots of pints of ice cream; and I also remember hiring a career coach, and this fundamentally changed my life.

And in the process, I realized that there were three key questions that helped me unlock my authentic career. And I want to share them with you today. The first question is: what am I good at? Second question is: what do people tell me I’m good at? And the final question: ask yourself, “What’s holding me back?” These three questions sit at the foundation of my career coaching practice.

So, let’s start with what am I good at. We’re told early that we need to find our passion. When we get to college, we need to pick a major or a passion, way before we’ve given much thought to who we want to be in our careers and in our lives. As a result, some of you here have majors that fascinate you. But there are others who simply picked the topics so you could get your bachelor’s degree out of the way and move on with your life.

But here’s the problem. Your interest in a subject does not guarantee your success in a career with it. And that’s why I’m here to remind you to do something that you are not just what you love. I remember four years ago getting a phone call from a defense contractor that I was hired to run a program for the Pentagon. I was ecstatic, and then I panicked. I just remember, you know, reading about this program that prepared senior government officials to deploy to Afghanistan where they would then serve as advisers to high-level officials in the Afghan government. As the only woman in the room, and definitely the youngest employee in my firm, I felt like I had the world to prove.

So, like many of you probably understand, my job took over my life I spent ten-to-15-hour days in Washington, DC, and a lot of my weekends ended up on military bases in the Midwest, where I would oversee these training programs and weapons qualifications. And I’ll never forget one particular Sunday: one of the advisers called me over, and in the midst of our discussion, he asked me if I could hold his gun, so he could tie a shoe. I realized without hesitation as I threw my hand out that this was going to be the first time I ever held a gun! This gun just dropped cold in my hand, and I just remember these chills going down my spine. I felt like I was holding death in my hands.

Seventy five percent of the US population, according to Reuters, is hiding some part of their identity at work. I wasn’t the exception, I was the rule. In order for me to succeed in these National Security niche that I cared so much about, I had to hide my feelings, my fears, my insecurities, and probably my identity itself a lot of the time.

I’d say ten pints of ice cream and at least 30 episodes of “Sex in the City” later, I got off the couch, and I realized it’s time to ask for help. And that was when I hired my career coach. And in our work together, I realized how important it is for all of us to tune out the social pressure to find what we love and tune in to something more significant for your career and your life: who you are. It’s never too late, and it’s never too early for you to ask for help.

My second question for you to ask yourself is: what do people tell me I’m good at? So some of you here may be thinking, “OK, Ashley, I don’t really know what I’m good at, I don’t know what my values are,” and that’s OK.

But take an inventory of what people tell you you’re good at. Do friends turn to you for some sort of advice that you seem to have down? Or do your professors and colleagues praise something special about your work? Or how about this? Do people ever ask you to teach them something that you seem to know well? These are the moments that shed light on your natural talents, and the work force needs them. Often, I get clients ages 18 to 30, and they are all so worried about finding their passion that they completely overlooked their natural skills I, for one, was so focused on finding my passion that I completely overlooked my natural talent for the job hunt. In the span of six weeks, I went to 90 events, I had coffee with 200 people, and I got three job offers.

So, other than being completely wired from all that coffee, I got phone calls from all these friends who wanted advice on their careers, and it was amazing what our conversations did for their lives. Shortly after our conversations, I had friends calling me telling me that they figured out what they want to do with their career path and their life. And a lot of them ended up quitting their jobs, which isn’t my fault, I’m just saying. But I was honored, and I was loving the fact that they would call me and tell me that my techniques or our conversations empowered them to get raises at work or get job offers after a stale job hunt. But more than being empowered, I was clear.

I’m a coach. I’m a career coach. I’m often the only person I know in a room who literally cannot get enough of a good job hunt. On the way to finding my passion, or job in my passion, I found something so much more significant: who I am. Don’t be so blinded by your passion that you overlook who you are. Those who pay attention will find it.

My final question for you to ask yourself is, “What’s holding me back?” So this is the one that a lot of clients come to me and go, “Don’t want to talk about that one!” And I’m just like, “You know? Here’s the thing. We have up to 70,000 thoughts each day and up to 98% of your thoughts are repeat offenders, according to UCLA. Looks like we’re all sitting together on a thought carousel just going around and around and around with the exact same thoughts. And so many of these thoughts may be holding you back in your career,” and that’s why I ask a lot of my clients to keep a journal for two weeks, where they share with me their fear-based thoughts.

And guess what? Everyone’s thoughts are the same! “I’m not good enough.” These words keep your career bar low, and they keep you for striving less in your life, and if you simply pay attention to these words, or your fears, you will rise above them. Because it’s one thing for you to hang out with your fears, or hang out with the crazy, it’s a whole another thing to live in it. And you’re not your thoughts. If you open your emotional backpack, and you question yourself, you will unlock your authentic career.

Standing here with you at Berkeley today, I remember that voice in my head at the Pentagon saying, “OK, Ashley, this is not you.” And that’s when these three questions can save you when you’re stuck, and you don’t know where else to go, “What am I good at?”, “What do people tell me I’m good at?,” and “What’s holding me back?” If you ask yourself these three questions, you will be able to do more of what you are not just what you love. Talk to people, talk to your friends, talk to your professors, hire a career coach. But don’t be afraid to ask questions, because when you do, you will be able to embrace a career that waits for you.

Thank you.

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