Moonshot Mentor with Laverne McKinnon

Laverne McKinnon
  • 5.0 (16)
  • CAREERS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Stories, tools, and strategies to conquer career setbacks, including grief work, as unresolved loss can lead to diminished resilience—a career challenge faced by everyone at some stage in life. Each podcast is an audio blog post from Laverne McKinnon, a Career Coach and Grief Recovery Specialist, Film and Television Producer, and Northwestern University Professor. Full archive of posts is available for paid subscribers on Substack. moonshotmentor.substack.com

  1. 5D AGO

    Stress vs. Anxiety: Why It’s Important to Know the Difference

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com Mental health is a hot topic these days - as it should be! According to the World Health Organization anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder with approximately 4% of the world’s population affected. And stress is right there on its heels. According to the American Institute of Stress, around 35% of the U.S. population is feeling stressed. I get it!  But what many people don’t get is that stress and anxiety are not the same thing. They are frequently lumped together which impacts your ability to deal with them. It’s like applying a band-aid to every ouch - except some ouches are a skinned knee and some are a broken heart. Instead, they need very different approaches.  In this week’s blog, I take a deep dive into the distinctions between stress and anxiety and share coping mechanisms that have helped me.

    15 min

  2. FEB 16

    The Weird Things You Do When You’re Grieving

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com Career grief is not just an emotional experience. It’s a physiological one. Most of us expect grief to look like tears, sadness, maybe anger. But a lot of the time, grief shows up as: “What is wrong with me lately?” For me, it’s looked like this. I wore my pants inside out and didn’t realize until I was already out in the world. I left the faucet on. I ate an entire pizza by myself, and not because I was celebrating. Because I was trying to feel something other than what I was feeling. In those moments, I wasn’t thinking: “I’m grieving.” I was thinking: “I’m losing it.” What was really happening:. I was experiencing a normal brain and body response to loss. How Grief Shows Up Grief is the natural response to any kind of loss. Not just death. Any loss. A job. A role. A team. A dream. A sense of status. A version of your future you were counting on. When grief goes unnamed and unmourned, your brain often can’t organize the experience. It can’t file it neatly because it keeps trying to treat the loss like a problem you should solve, not something you need to metabolize. So your body starts speaking up. That can look like exhaustion. Headaches. Insomnia. Appetite swings. Stomach issues. Muscles that feel tight, wired, and braced. If the physical stuff is not loud enough, grief can also show up cognitively. Trouble concentrating. Forgetfulness. Confusion. Rumination. Intrusive thoughts. That looping reel you can’t shut off. And then it shows up in behavior. Withdrawing from others, losing interest in things that once brought joy, avoiding certain places or people, or self-medicating just to get through the day. None of this means you’re broken. It means something inside you is trying to adapt to what has changed. The Real Problem Is Not The “Stupid” Moments The problem is that you’re doing “stupid” things and you’re making them mean something about your character. You start narrating it like this. I’m off my game. I’m losing my edge. I’m incapable. And that story adds a second layer of pain. Shame. That’s the part I want to interrupt. Because when you look at those symptoms at face value, they can seem random. But they’re not random. They’re signals. They point to something deeper. Unrecognized grief. Why Career Grief Can Feel Like an Existential Crisis Career grief rocks more than your schedule and bank account. It rattles your psyche. Because work is rarely just work in our culture. It’s identity. It’s belonging. It’s validation. It’s structure. It’s the place we get reflected back to ourselves. So when work breaks, it can feel like you break. That’s why career grief can border on an existential crisis. It disrupts your sense of purpose, belonging, and identity. And when grief goes unacknowledged, the price is steep. You lose resilience. Not because you’re weak, but because your system is carrying a load it was never meant to carry alone. The Solution Is Compassion For The Non Emotional Parts Of Grief Here’s what I’m asking of you. Instead of treating your symptoms like personal failures, treat them like information. Compassion is not letting yourself off the hook. It’s seeing clearly what’s happening so you can respond with wisdom instead of self attack. Here are a few ways to practice that, especially if you’re in a season where you can’t stop everything and “process your feelings”. 1. Name the loss, even if it feels small. Try a simple sentence. Something changed. Something ended. Something didn’t happen. You’re not trying to make it bigger than it is. You’re trying to make it real. 2. Replace the character story with a body story. Instead of “I’m being an idiot,” try: My brain is overloaded. My nervous system is on alert. My body is asking for recovery. That one change can lower shame fast. 3. Build a tiny relief ritual. Not a life overhaul. A small, repeatable cue that tells your system: I’m paying attention. A short walk without your phone. A hot shower with the lights low. Ten minutes lying on the floor with one hand on your chest. A meal that is not eaten standing up. It’s not glamorous. It’s effective. 4. Reduce decisions for a week. Grief burns energy. Decision making burns energy. Stack them together and you start leaving faucets on. Choose two or three defaults for the week. Default breakfast. Default outfit. Default work start and stop time. You’re not becoming predictable. You’re becoming resourced. 5. Tell one safe person the truth. Not the whole story. Just a true sentence. I’ve been more affected than I expected. My focus has been off. I’m dealing with more loss than I’ve named. Grief becomes more workable when it has language and witness. If you lead a team, this matters too. When a team goes through layoffs, reorganizations, leadership changes, or public setbacks, unprocessed loss doesn’t vanish. It goes underground. And underground grief tends to reappear as: More conflict over small things. More risk aversion. More second guessing. Lower trust. Lower energy. Leaders don’t have to turn the workplace into group therapy to address this. But they do need to name what changed and what it cost, at least in human terms. If you’re noticing strange mistakes, low morale, or unusually thin patience on your team, consider this question: What loss are we acting out that we have not acknowledged? Bottom Line If you’ve been making “weird” mistakes, craving comfort food, forgetting simple things, or feeling uncharacteristically foggy, don’t rush to self judgment. Consider the more accurate explanation. Your body might be grieving. Career grief is not only emotional. It’s physiological. It shows up in your focus, your appetite, your sleep, your memory, and your ability to self regulate. The move is not to shame yourself into functioning. The move is to meet the symptoms with compassion, name what’s been lost, and give your system a little more care than you think it deserves. If you want support applying this to your own situation, I have three 1:1 coaching packages available right now. Book a consult to see if we’re a match. 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 * How To Turn Powerful Failures Into Powerful Breakthroughs * The 3 Things To Do After You Lose Your Job * Why Does My Career Setback Still Bother Me? 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 Solid Ground members. Use these to connect the dots between what your body is doing and what your life has been carrying.

    10 min

  3. FEB 9

    Why Does Money Fear Hit Hard? 😰

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com If your career is shifting, your money story gets a vote in every decision you make. And it’s not because you’re bad at math or you “should have planned better.” It gets a vote because money is not just money. Money touches safety. Options. Identity. What you can say yes to. What you have to say no to. And when work gets uncertain, money stops being background noise. It walks right up to the microphone and says, “Hello, hello? Is this thing on?” I learned this the hard way. The first time my unspoken money story showed up was in my early twenties, when I was transitioning jobs and going through a divorce. At the time, I was (barely) earning more than my husband who was a middle school teacher. When we separated, he asked for financial support. I felt guilty about the state of our marriage, so I agreed. And then guilt met fear, and I made a decision I could not sustain. I racked up a lot of credit card debt trying to keep everything looking fine. It got so bad I had to cut myself off from my credit cards and use the envelope system. Actual cash in actual envelopes. Gas. Food. Utilities. Car repair. There were no envelopes for going out, clothing, or self care. All I could hear in my head was: “There isn’t enough. There will never be enough.” That sentence didn’t come out of nowhere. It was inherited. My dad grew up during the Great Depression. My mom lived in poverty in Japan during World War II. Not having enough was a true, lived experience for them. I’ve been fortunate to have enough, but that generational trauma is in me. This is why I’m writing about money in a post about career strategy. Because during a setback, a pivot, or a dry spell between gigs, your money story is going to cast a vote. It will influence what work you take. How quickly you panic. Whether you avoid looking at your accounts. Whether you undercharge. Whether you overgive. Whether you freeze. You do not have to shame yourself for that. You do have to notice it. Your Money Story Your money story is the relationship you have with money. It’s what money represents to you. What it proves. What it threatens. What it feels like. For some people, money equals safety. For others, it equals freedom. For others, it equals worth. And for a lot of high achieving people, especially in unpredictable industries, money becomes evidence. Evidence that you’re doing it right. Evidence that you’re still viable. Evidence that you can relax. That is a lot to ask of money. When work gets shaky, money anxiety gets loud. And money anxiety tends to do two things at once. First, it triggers your nervous system into threat mode. Second, it distorts perception, so those panicked thoughts start masquerading as reality. So before we “do the numbers,” I want to offer something that sounds simple, but changes everything. Regulate your nervous system first, then look at the truth. Regulate First, Before All Else My client “April” came to see me in full blown panic. It was early 2024. As an actress and writer, she had already been hit hard by the COVID years, then the 2023 strikes happened. Her nervous system was a wreck and she was in constant panic and she couldn’t “see clearly.” Before we opened a spreadsheet, we worked with her body. Not because breathwork pays rent. But because you cannot make a clean career decision when your system is convinced you’re in danger. Here are a few regulation tools we used. They’re practical. You can do them in your car. You can do them before you open your banking app. You can do them when you feel that familiar drop in your stomach. Nervous System Regulation Tools * Extended exhale breathing. How to do it: Inhale for 4. Exhale for 6 or 8. Do 6 to 10 rounds. * Why it works: Longer exhales tend to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps your body settle so your mind can think. * EFT Tapping. How to do it: Tap gently on points like the side of the hand, eyebrow, side of the eye, and collarbone while you say a simple two part sentence. The first part names what you’re feeling or noticing. The second part adds a cue of safety, choice, or self support. You’re not trying to talk yourself out of the feeling. You’re reminding your body you can stay here with it. Example: “Even though my money story is loud right now, I’m the one who gets to choose.” * Why it works: Pairing steady tapping with naming what’s true can lower intensity and help your nervous system shift out of alarm, so you can access clarity and make decisions without rushing. * Deep pressure touch. How to do it: Use a weighted blanket, drape something heavy over your shoulders, or press a firm pillow to your chest for 2 to 5 minutes. * Why it works: Deep pressure can be calming because it gives your body a clear sense of containment. * Wall support. How to do it: Stand with your back against a wall. Feet grounded. One hand on your chest, one on your belly. Stay for 60 to 90 seconds. * Why it works: Your body gets a felt sense of support. That matters when everything feels uncertain. These are not magic tricks. They are proven techniques. A way of telling your body, we are safe enough to look. Because that is the real goal. Safe enough to look. Safe enough to get honest. Safe enough to make a decision that’s not driven by panic. And once you can do that, you can meet your money story directly. How To Find Your Money Story When money feels tense, a lot of people do one of two things. They obsess, spiraling into worst case scenarios. Or they avoid, hoping the problem will magically get quieter. This exercise is a third option. It slows everything down. It gives you distance from the fear. It turns the swirl into language. And when something becomes language, you can work with it. I learned this tool from my first coach, Mona Miller (RIP), and I still use it today because it is highly effective at getting underneath the noise quickly. Here’s the writing prompt with the goal to not edit. Just write what comes up and don’t judge it. Dear Money,When I look at you, I see…When I look at you, I feel…When I look at you, I think…When I look at you, I believe…When I look at you, I act like…Signed, [Your Name] Then reverse it and make the letter from Money to you. Dear [Your Name],When I look at you, I see…When I look at you, I feel…When I look at you, I think…When I look at you, I believe…When I look at you, I act like…Signed, Money What we’re looking for are themes or patterns. For April, money was proof. Proof she was successful. Proof she was making the right choices. Proof she was still allowed to belong. So every dip in income felt like a personal failure. Once she saw that, she had leverage. Because now her money story was not running the meeting in secret. Career Strategy Comes Back When You Name What You Are Protecting This is the part that pulls everything together. When your money story gets loud, it starts pushing you toward choices that can step on your values. So we named April’s values, not as inspiration, but as a decision filter. April told me her values included achievement, freedom, love, and travel. Here’s what we noticed. Achievement turned into a scoreboard. Money became the proof she was doing it right, so she felt pressure to take anything immediately, even if it pulled her away from her dreams. Freedom got replaced with avoidance. She stopped looking at her numbers because she assumed they would trap her, which kept her trapped. Love turned into overgiving. She said yes to commitments she could not afford because disappointing people felt more dangerous than debt. Travel became a symbol of “I’m still okay.” If she couldn’t afford it, she felt like she was failing, so she swung between denial and deprivation. When she could see that pattern, she could interrupt it. First she regulated. Then she returned to her values. Then she looked at the numbers without spiraling. And when she did, she discovered she had more runway than she thought. Not infinite runway. But enough runway to choose with intention so she chose to hold off on travel so she could have more time to find a job that was a match for her. This is what I mean when I say your money story gets a vote. It will show up in the room. But it doesn’t have to run the meeting. Where We Go From Here At this point, if you’re thinking, okay, but I still have a hundred questions, that makes sense. Some of them might be emotional. Some of them might be very practical. What do I cut? How do I plan when income is inconsistent? What do I do first after a layoff? So I invited my friend and money mentor, Katy Chen Mazzara, to join me for a Substack Live conversation. Katy is a certified trauma-informed financial wellness coach who pivoted out of entertainment pre pandemic. She helps creative entrepreneurs and freelancers break free from scarcity, release traumas and fears, and build lasting financial freedom. With deep compassion and bold clarity, Katy empowers clients to align their finances with their truth, purpose, and power. She’s willing to share what helped her make that pivot, and she’ll answer your money questions. Quick note: This conversation is educational and not financial advice. For guidance specific to your situation, talk with a qualified financial professional. Join us Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 1:00 pm PST. Bottom line If your career is shifting, your money story gets a vote in every decision you make. Regulate first, so you can see clearly. Name the story that’s hogging the spotlight. Reconnect to what you’re trying to protect. Because career strategy is not just planning. It’s choosing well, even when your system wants to panic. 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

    16 min

  4. FEB 2

    What Are You Not Seeing At Work? 🕵🏽‍♀️

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com My birthday is this Wednesday. I usually like to fly under the radar but this year I’m trying something new. Instead of hiding out feeling self-conscious about my warped relationship with age and time, I’m choosing to go on a mission to spread joy along with cool things I’ve been learning. Take a full watch of this YouTube video that made me laugh so hard I cried. And then I watched it a second time and laughed so hard I cried. Then I shared it with my youngest daughter and we laughed and (happy) cried together. Consider it a gift from me to you! It’s a cover of the Bee Gees’ song “How Deep Is Your Love” by a South African musical sibling trio called Biko’s Manna: Biko is the eldest sister and lead singer, Manna is the guitar playing brother, and Mfundo is the youngest brother who at the time the video was made was still figuring out his musical north star. Their musicianship is locked in. Biko’s voice is unreal, Manna’s finger work is magic, and their harmonies are gorgeous. They started out as street performers in Johannesburg and have performed on shows like America’s Got Talent. As you’re watching, I imagine you being swept away with the joy of Biko and Manna’s interpretation of the song, just like me. And then, in the background, Mfundo glides into frame. I won’t spoil it. Just watch. But I will tell you that there are flippers, a helmet, backbends and more. What got me was the contrast. Biko and Manna are fully in the song. And then this tiny chaos comet is doing his own one man show behind them. And this is where the joy turns into a fabulous lesson about strategy. It’s great to be in flow, but not at the expense of completely ignoring your surroundings. For years, I was so uber focused on supporting clients one to one, and doing it well, that I didn’t fully clock what was happening in my background. Messages asking if I had any in person retreats coming up. Whether there was a group where people could take the lessons of the blog into real life. Whether there was a monthly call where we could workshop what folx were navigating in real time. Whether there was a place that made the lessons feel less theoretical. People were asking me for more community. Ask Me Anything (AMA) Live 🗓️ Thursday, Feb 12 at 1:00pm PST here on Substack. Bring questions from this week’s post, your current career strategy puzzle, or whatever you’re navigating right now. I’ll help you sort signal from noise and find your next right step. How I Course Corrected Last year, when I finally noticed what was happening in the background, I piloted a career grief group. It was terrific, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the request to keep going. People wanted to stay connected and not just let it be a one and done experience. That’s what inspired me to create an ongoing group I’m calling Solid Ground. Think of it like your favorite farmers market. Come as you are. Drop in when you need, run into familiar faces, pick up something useful, and leave feeling lighter and clearer. Solid Ground is a monthly space for anyone navigating career change that hits harder than expected. The heart of the group is simple. When work changes, you need more than a plan. You need support that’s emotional and practical, because real change asks for both. Each month, I send a short video lesson on career grief and a worksheet on the third Wednesday. Then we come together for live coaching, typically on the fourth Thursday, so you can bring what’s coming up for you and get traction in real time. (You don’t have to remember all these deets - I send reminders!) Solid Ground is included with your paid Moonshot Mentor membership. You can show up live to the coaching calls, catch the replay, or use the lesson and the worksheet whenever you need them. How To Look Up Without Losing Your Flow Whether you join Solid Ground or not, the point here is that when you’re laser focused, you miss cues that could change what you’re doing in the moment. The trick is not to stop focusing. Focus is a superpower. The trick is to add a wide angle check in that’s brief, scheduled, and non dramatic. It gives you a moment to look up, notice what’s happening in the background, and make small course corrections that align with your greater goals. Once every three months, set a 30 minute appointment with yourself and answer these questions. * What is my current “song”? Name the thing you are most focused on right now. A role. A project. A revenue goal. A skill you’re building. A version of your life you’re trying to create. * What’s happening in the background? List the signals you’ve been glanced at, but haven’t paid close attention to. Invitations. Patterns in your energy. A recurring idea. Feedback that keeps popping up. * Where has my focus tipped into rigidity? This is often where we keep pushing even though the data is changing. If you lead a team, add one more question. What are people not saying out loud, but acting out in the background? Think less initiative, more caution, quieter meetings, slower decisions. That’s usually where culture is speaking. This is the part I missed in my own work for a long time. I was heads down in one to one client success and not noticing that the wider signal was pointing toward greater community along with all the great practical wisdom. People want a place to stay connected through change, not just power through it alone. Bottom Line That Biko’s Manna video delights me because it is so human. Two people are fully in the song and life is still happening behind them. That’s career strategy too. You need the ability to lock in. You also need the ability to look around you. Because sometimes the thing that changes your strategy is not another idea. It’s what’s been trying to get your attention. If you’re in a season where work has changed and you can feel yourself getting tunnel vision, Solid Ground is a place to process what’s real and figure out what’s next with support that’s both emotional and practical. You can find the details here. Birthday request. Watch the video. Have the laugh. Then take ten minutes to look up and see what you’ve been missing. 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 * How Do You Rewrite Your Career Story? ✍️ * Is Your Career Where You Want It? 🚀 * How to use Deadlines to Get to Excellence 🌟 Perks for Paid Members Moonshot Mentor is for people and teams moving through professional change that hits harder than expected. Get short monthly video lessons on career grief, plus a simple guide that helps you turn insight into your next right step, live monthly coaching to work through what’s happening in real time, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to steady yourself and move forward with clarity. Journal Prompts Here are 3 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members. Use them to spot what you’re missing in the background.

    8 min

  5. JAN 26

    Why Can’t I Start Job Tasks? 😩

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com Most of us think the problem is energy. If we could just get a little more, we’d update the résumé, write the cover letter, follow up with a former colleague, get the certification. But when you keep making promises you don’t keep, the real cost isn’t momentum. It’s self trust. And once self trust takes a hit, your brain and body get conservative with energy. Not to punish you. To protect you. The problem is, that protection can keep you stuck. Here’s what I mean. If you’ve made a lot of plans and you didn’t follow through on them, your brain starts to treat these plans as make-believe. They aren’t real so you don’t have to pay attention to them. It’s your brain trying to stop you from not feeling bad about breaking a promise to yourself. You may not realize this, but disappointment takes energy. Shame takes energy. That internal argument you have with yourself after you don’t do the thing takes energy. Your system tries a different strategy. It reduces the fuel you need to do the thing you know you need to do. So you literally don’t have the energy to fulfill the promise (or the plan) that you made. The reduction of fuel makes starting feel like mud. It’s a way for your system to say: let’s not risk another broken promise and the shame spiral that follows. So here’s how to get your energy back. Stop trying to force motivation. Start rebuilding self trust. The 80 Percent Promise Method Only make a promise to yourself that you’re 80 percent confident you can keep. Not 90 percent. Certainly not 100 percent. 80 percent is the sweet spot because it’s doable. And it creates evidence that you can keep a promise which helps your brain realize those promises are real. Here’s how it works. * Make the promise small enough to finish in under ten minutes.Make it a single step. Not a project. Example: “Find the most recent version of my resume in my files.” Not: “Update my resume.” * Identify what might stop you from keeping the promise. Don’t judge. Just be honest. Maybe it’s technology issues. Maybe your kid gets a cold. Maybe you run out of time. Maybe you hit an emotional wall. The point isn’t to fix your personality. The point is to name the friction that might pop up. * Choose an antidote for that obstacle. If the obstacle is time, the antidote might be reprioritizing with the help of an objective friend. If the obstacle is tech, the antidote might be to know exactly who you can call whether it’s a hired hand or your teenager. If the obstacle is interruptions, the antidote might be setting a ten minute boundary and locking the door to your room. * Take the antidote! Then write a permission slip to readjust because life happens. This matters more than it sounds. You’re not failing. You’re adapting to real time issues. Your permission slip can be one sentence: “If my kid gets the flu, I will reset without shaming myself.” * Hard stop after you deliver on your promise. This is where self trust gets rebuilt. You said one thing. You did one thing. Then you stop. You’re proving reliability, not trying to squeeze out productivity. * Reward yourself. Make it simple and real. Give yourself a sticker. Share the win with someone you love. Take a moment to look in the mirror and say thank you. You’re teaching your brain and body that keeping promises to yourself counts. Over time, this does something sneaky and powerful. You start believing in yourself again. And when you believe in yourself, energy shows up. It’s amazing. Paid Member Live Coaching Reminder 😃 🗓️ Thursday, Jan 29 at 11:30am PST here on Substack. Bring questions from the January career grief video lesson and worksheet, or show up with whatever you’re navigating right now. Come get unstuck. A quick case study: Richie and the ten minute promise When I met Richie, he kept telling me the same thing: “I know I need to update my resume. I just can’t seem to get myself to do it.” He wasn’t confused about the steps. He was stuck in the loop. The old approach sounded like this: “Tonight I’m going to update my resume.”And then life would happen. The dishwasher imploded, his kid got detention and needed extra attention, his laptop battery died. When these things happened, the next morning, he didn’t just feel behind. He felt angry with himself. Which made updating his resume feel like more proof that he was “lazy.” So he avoided it. And the self trust took another hit. So we tried something different. Not bigger effort. Smaller promises. Here was Richie’s 80 percent promise: “Tomorrow at 10:00 am, I will find the most recent version of my resume in my files.” That’s it. Not update it. Not rewrite it. Just locate it. Then we did the honesty step. What might stop him? For Richie, it was three things. He’d open his laptop and immediately get hijacked by email. He’d start searching for the file, get irritated that he couldn’t find it, and then bail. Or he’d get interrupted and tell himself he’d come back later. So we chose antidotes that matched the real obstacles. Notifications off for ten minutes. A simple search plan: search his email for “resume,” then check downloads, then search his files. And a quick boundary: a ten minute timer, plus a heads up to the people around him that he was unavailable until it went off. Then the permission slip: “If something derails this, I will reset later today without making it mean something bad about me.” When 10:00 am came, he did the one thing. He searched with clarity on what success meant. If he found the resume within ten minutes, great. Hard stop. Reward. If he didn’t find it within ten minutes, he still got to count the win. Because the promise wasn’t “find the resume.” The promise was “search for ten minutes.” At minute ten, he stopped, took a breath, and faced a hard truth: The resume wasn’t findable. Richie needed to start from scratch. That moment could have turned into shame. Instead, we treated it as clarity and made the next 80 percent promise: “Tomorrow at 10:00 am, I will open a blank document and write my last two job titles.” Not build the whole thing. Not format it. Just lay the first brick. Small? Yes. But that’s the point. Richie wasn’t building a resume in one sitting. He was rebuilding trust. And once he started collecting proof that he could keep promises to himself, his energy shifted. Not because his life got easier overnight. Because he stopped treating his own commitments like optional suggestions. That’s what restores momentum. Energy isn’t just physical. It’s trust in motion. Bottom Line If you’re waiting for energy to show up before you take action, you may be waiting a while. In career transitions, energy comes second. Self trust comes first. When you make big promises and break them, your brain starts treating your plans like make believe. It’s trying to protect you from the emotional cost of another letdown. The problem is that protection shows up as low energy. So don’t push harder. Become believable to yourself again. Try this once in the next 24 hours: make one 80% promise that takes ten minutes, do it, stop, reward the win. That’s the practice. And if you lead a team, zoom out for a second. The same dynamic shows up at work. When commitments keep getting made and broken, trust erodes. Energy drops. Pressure makes it worse. If you’re a senior leader and this feels familiar, I’d love to hear what you’re seeing. I have a few 1:1 coaching spots open right now, and I also work with leaders and teams who want to rebuild trust and follow through after disruption without turning the workplace into a therapy session. If you want to explore what this could look like in your organization, DM me and we’ll set up a time to talk. 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 Uncertainty Blocking Your Career Growth? * How To Bounce Back From Blunders * What’s Really Driving You? Perks for Paid Members Moonshot Mentor is for people and teams moving through professional change that hits harder than expected. Get short monthly video lessons on career grief, plus a simple guide that helps you turn insight into your next right step, live monthly coaching to work through what’s happening in real time, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to steady yourself and move forward with clarity. Journal Prompts Here are 3 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members. You can use these to start to rebuild self trust. Remember, we start with small micro steps.

    11 min

  6. JAN 19

    Are You Stuck at Work? 😬

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com Your career isn’t broken. Your heart is. And if you’ve been feeling this heartbreak for a while, you may also be feeling stuck and not sure what to do to get your mojo back. I’ve been there. And I want to talk about the kind of stuckness that doesn’t respond to a new resume, a new routine, or a new burst of motivation. It’s the kind of stuckness where you’re doing your best, but something in you feels like the weight of the world is burrowed in the pit of your stomach. Here’s what it might look like: * You can get things done, but you cannot get traction. * You keep circling the same decision. * You second guess yourself more than you used to. * The idea of making a move feels exhausting, even when it is a good move. * You are functioning, but something feels flat. When people describe this, they usually assume it means one of two things. They’re a failure. Or they’re lazy. I don’t think either of those is the most useful explanation. And honestly, it’s often not accurate. I think a lot of ongoing career stuckness is unresolved career grief. How do I know this? Because I know career grief personally. Like the time I was fired from a company I worked at for ten years. Or the conscious uncoupling of my company a few years ago. Or the movie I was producing that lost its financing after the actor and writer strikes of 2023. Career grief is what shows up when something you were attached to in your work life ends, changes, or never becomes what you hoped it would be. A role. A team. A leader. A project. A promotion. A future you were counting on. Career grief is real, and it can break your heart. In the way that makes you more cautious than you want to be. In the way that makes you feel guarded in rooms where you used to feel confident. In the way that makes you wonder if you even have it in you anymore. Hard truth about the entertainment industry: Talent is not the bottleneck. Access is. If you want the strategy and best practices to get your movie across the finish line, join the Moonshot Lab. Learn more here. Here’s the part most of us miss. Naming the heartbreak helps, but naming it is not the actual work of getting back your mojo. Because when grief doesn’t get space, it hardens into self protection. It shows up as cynicism, silence, risk aversion, burnout, disengagement. It shows up as stuck. This is why I keep returning to one idea. If your career broke your heart, you do not just need a strategy. You need a way to mourn what happened, so you can move again. That’s what I’m building inside Moonshot Mentor for paid subscribers. Solid Ground: An ongoing community for navigating career grief with clarity and courage. It’s a monthly practice for people who are tired of white knuckling their way through change and ready to make space for what was lost, without getting swallowed by it. RISE is the structure I use to help you name what was lost, make sense of what happened, create compassionate closure, and take a real next step. Here’s what happens each month. * First, you get a short video from me, under five minutes, with one insight from the RISE framework. * Next, you get a worksheet that helps you reflect and take one practical step forward. * Then, on the fourth Thursday of every month at 12 pm PST, we meet live for coaching. Bring your questions. Bring the situation you cannot stop replaying. Bring the decision you keep postponing. I will coach you in real time. The coaching sessions will be recorded and available on replay for paid members only. Throughout the year, I’ll also bring in guest speakers to help us go deeper on grief, change, identity, and rebuilding after a setback. A few brass tacks, because I believe in transparency. * Paid membership is $5 per month or $50 for the year. * Paid members also receive weekly Moonshot Meditation drops on Sunday mornings, plus exclusive journal prompts that accompany my weekly career strategy blogs. If you’re not a paid member yet, you still get the weekly blogs and a monthly live Ask Me Anything. This month’s AMA theme is Re Entry. If you’ve been feeling stuck, I want to leave you with this. Stuckness is not a character flaw. It’s information. And it may be telling you that you have unresolved grief from a professional setback or loss. If your career broke your heart, and you’re ready for a monthly structure to mourn and move forward, I would love to have you as a paid member. Come join us in Solid Ground: An ongoing community for navigating career grief with clarity and courage. 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 * A Touch Of Grief With Your Moonshot * Is Grief Holding Me Back? * Got The Rug Pulled Out From Underneath You? Perks for Paid Members Moonshot Mentor is for people and teams moving through professional change that hits harder than expected. Get short monthly video lessons on career grief, plus a simple guide that helps you turn insight into your next right step, live monthly coaching to work through what’s happening in real time, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to steady yourself and move forward with clarity. Journal Prompts Here are 3 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members. Use these to name what’s been sitting heavy, make sense of what it’s been costing you, and take one small step toward movement again.

    7 min
  7. Why Do I Feel Stuck in My Career? 🔍

    JAN 12

    Why Do I Feel Stuck in My Career? 🔍

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com Before you decide what to do next in your career, it helps to understand why you’re doing it at all. Career strategy gets a lot of attention. Especially from me. I love vision boards. Five year plans. Action steps. And all of that has its place. But strategy on its own is not going to hold up for the long run. When things get hard, fuzzy, or take longer than you expected, your strategic plan is not going to hold you up unless you have clarity on the meaning underneath it. The way I think about career momentum is pretty simple. There are three layers that need to work together: a spiritual foundation, a strategic plan, and clear tactics. When the foundation is missing, even the most thorough approach can start to crumble. It reminds me of the time I said yes to going to Disneyland. I’d never been. I was mildly curious, but I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted from the experience. Once we got there, the parking was wildly expensive, the lines were endless, and none of the food appealed to me. I wanted to bolt. Not because Disneyland was bad, but because I hadn’t chosen it for myself. I’d said yes out of people pleasing, not purpose. Careers work the same way. In your career, the foundation comes first. That’s where your values and purpose live. Strategy comes next. It’s the roadmap. And tactics come last. The small, concrete steps that move you forward once the direction is clear. Let’s break it down. Your Spiritual Foundation You can have a clear vision for your career and still feel wobbly if that vision isn’t rooted in your own values and purpose. When the foundation is borrowed or assumed rather than examined, it’s hard to stay committed once the path gets complicated. Which it always does. That’s what happened with Molly. Molly grew up in a family of journalists. Her parents and grandparents worked in newsrooms, and family dinners often revolved around media, politics, and what was happening in the world. Continuing the legacy felt natural … and expected. So she built a strategic plan: earn a journalism degree from a prestigious university. Land a regional reporting job with the intention of working her way up. Take the best promotion regardless of where it was geographically. On paper, everything made sense. But after graduation, she struggled to find her footing. Not because she wasn’t talented, but because her career direction was built on parents’ values, not her own. She had never really paused to ask what mattered to her or what kind of work gave her energy. When she hit the inevitable bumps along the way, she had nothing to anchor her. Without a spiritual foundation, there was no reason to push through discomfort. No internal compass. Just the pressure to meet family expectations. This is why the spiritual foundation matters. It gives you a why that belongs to you. Not one you inherited. When you understand your values and purpose, you’re better equipped to weather uncertainty, make cleaner decisions, and course correct without spiraling. Your spiritual foundation won’t prevent setbacks, but it will help you stay rooted in what’s most important to you when they show up. Once Molly slowed down enough to look honestly at her values, something became clear. She didn’t dislike writing. She disliked the version of writing she had inherited. What actually lit her up was storytelling. Imagination. Building worlds. Working independently and on her own terms. Her purpose wasn’t about preserving a family legacy. It was about creating a body of work that created a community of like minded people who loved fantasy storytelling. That clarity changed everything. Not overnight, but pretty quickly. Instead of forcing herself to fit into a career that looked good on paper, she began shaping one that aligned with how she wanted to live and work. That’s when it became time to re-conceive her strategy plan. Your Strategic Plan Strategy is what you build once your foundation is clear. It’s the bridge between what matters to you and how you move forward in the real world. Without the foundation, strategy feels rigid or depleting. With it, strategy becomes supportive and energizing. For Molly, that meant designing a plan around writing fiction. Not someday. Now. So her strategy focused on finding steady work that paid the bills without draining her creative energy. She didn’t need her day job to be the dream. She needed it to support the dream. But the plan didn’t stop there. Strategically, Molly decided that her primary job outside of paid work was to write. Consistently. She set out to finish a full draft and once she had something complete, she would share it with a small, trusted group of readers and revise based on their feedback. From there, the strategy expanded. If the manuscript felt strong, she would begin researching publishing agents. If that route didn’t open up, she would explore self publishing as a viable next step. The point wasn’t to force one outcome. It was to keep moving forward in a way that aligned with her values and long term vision. This is what strategy does at its best. It helps you use your resources wisely. Your time. Your energy. Your money. Your relationships. It clarifies what deserves your focus and what doesn’t. It also gives you permission to make choices that might not impress anyone else, but make sense for you. Once Molly had that roadmap, the next step was obvious. Tactics. Tactical Steps Tactics are where things get concrete. This is where you break the bigger plan into small, manageable actions. One of the most common mistakes I see is people jumping straight into tactics without understanding the bigger picture. When there’s no foundation, tactics turn into busywork. You move, but you don’t feel grounded. It’s why so many people bounce from role to role without ever feeling settled. There’s no anchor. Once Molly course corrected, she could finally get specific. She knew her best writing time was in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. So she looked for jobs close to home to avoid long commutes. She wanted work that started in the early to mid afternoon and wrapped by early evening so she could protect her creative time. She also got clear on the numbers. She figured out what she needed to earn each month and set a minimum hourly rate for a manageable work week. That clarity shaped every decision she made. Her next steps were simple and focused. She reached out to people she knew. She set up alerts on job boards. She asked around locally. Within a few weeks, she found a job that met her criteria. Not because she hustled harder, but because her choices were aligned. Bottom Line The question isn’t what your next move should be. It’s why that move matters to you. When you start there, strategy stops feeling like pressure and tactics stop feeling like busywork. You’re no longer saying yes out of habit or people pleasing. You’re choosing a direction you can actually stay with, even when the path gets hard or unclear. That’s what gives a career plan staying power. 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 It Time For A New Career? * How To Move Ahead In Your Career * Got Career Progress? Perks for Paid Members Moonshot Mentor is for people and teams moving through professional change that hits harder than expected. Get short monthly video lessons on career grief, plus a simple guide that helps you turn insight into your next right step, live monthly coaching to work through what’s happening in real time, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to steady yourself and move forward with clarity. Journal Prompts Here are 5 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members to help you reflect on how meaning, strategy, and action are showing up in your own career right now.

    11 min
  8. Why Is Rest So Tricky? 😴

    12/29/2025

    Why Is Rest So Tricky? 😴

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit moonshotmentor.substack.com If you’re anything like me, downtime doesn’t come naturally. I get the value of stepping away from work and yet I still find myself filling open space with something productive. Over the weekend I found myself filling downtime with re-organizing the pantry. And when I say downtime, I mean the kind of pause that has nothing to do with goals, perfectionism or making things better. Years ago, after I’d started a new gig, I headed into winter break with a plan to “catch up.” My big idea was to read and evaluate more than twenty books to decide whether any might make good film or television projects. That meant more than a book a day. I convinced myself it was reasonable. Predictably, it wasn’t. I didn’t hit the goal, and the pressure I put on myself wiped out any chance at rest. I came back to work depleted and annoyed with myself for what I called “wasted time.” Over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with real breaks. A winter break. A summer break. A solid two to four weeks of nothing to do with work. Some days I get bored. Some days I get ideas I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t slowed down. It’s truly a practice, not something I’ve mastered. In fact I would say I’m a lowly apprentice. The reminder to keep practicing landed again recently. Our youngest daughter was diagnosed with a chronic medical condition, and my husband and I met with her care team. Two things came up that stopped me in my tracks. One: stress and anxiety make her symptoms worse. There’s nothing surprising about that on the surface, but the next part mattered. To release the stress and anxiety, she needs fun. She needs play. It works better than pain meds for her. And two: my stress and anxiety affect her too. That one hit harder. I’ve always known kids absorb what’s in the air, but hearing it framed as part of her treatment plan made me rethink how I’m living. If rest and play help her body stay steadier and reduce the pain, then rest and play can’t be optional for me either. So here’s where I am as we close out the year. I’m stepping into my winter break and will be back January 12. There won’t be a post on January 5, and that’s intentional. I’m giving myself room to breathe, to reset, and to model the things I want for my daughter and for myself. If this topic speaks to you and you’d like to sit with it a bit more, I’m sharing a great article from @Alli Kushner about Why Doing Nothing Is A Hidden Driver of Career Growth. It’s a smart, thoughtful look at how stepping back can move your work forward in ways constant effort never does. So here’s to closing out the year with a little less hustle and a little more breathing room. I’m calling it progress if I don’t re-organize another drawer or closet … until January 12. 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 * Rest Is Not A To-Do Item * Why Is Rest An Ethical Responsibility? * Are You A Workaholic? Perks for Paid Subscribers Moonshot Mentor paid subscribers get weekly journal prompts to spark personal and professional growth, guided meditations to help them center, reflect, and reset, plus exclusive career development and career grief workshops that build clarity, resilience, and momentum. Journal Prompts Here are three journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor subscribers. These questions invite you to look at your relationship with rest, play, and the pressure to stay productive, especially as the year winds down.

    6 min
See All (129)

5
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

Stories, tools, and strategies to conquer career setbacks, including grief work, as unresolved loss can lead to diminished resilience—a career challenge faced by everyone at some stage in life. Each podcast is an audio blog post from Laverne McKinnon, a Career Coach and Grief Recovery Specialist, Film and Television Producer, and Northwestern University Professor. Full archive of posts is available for paid subscribers on Substack. moonshotmentor.substack.com

Information