When Following Your Passion Means Letting Go feat. Renee Murphy

What happens when the dream career you built turns into the very thing that drains your joy? In this episode, Alyssa talks with Renee Murphy about leaving behind a successful career in fashion to find peace, purpose, and a new passion in science and sustainability.

This is a powerful conversation about knowing when it’s time to let go, how to tell the difference between excitement and peace, and why creativity doesn’t disappear just because you change industries.

Why listen: If you’ve ever wondered what it really means to follow your passion (or struggled with giving up something others see as “success”) this conversation will give you clarity and courage.

Key Takeaways

1. Passion that brings peace is different from passion that only excites—peace is lasting.
2. Success without joy isn’t real success—it’s okay to walk away when it no longer serves you.
3. Creativity follows you into any field—you don’t lose it when you pivot, you just apply it differently.

It's time to say "goodbye" to the Sunday Scaries.

Connect with Alyssa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssanolte/
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Transcript

0:01

Hey everyone. Welcome back to taking back Monday. I'm so excited that you decided to say goodbye to the Sunday Scaries and hello to a brand new future of work. My name is And I am Renee Murphy. and we are going to have a fantastic conversation today. So, Renee, tell us what is your origin story? Oh, uh, my origin story I feel like is very late in life for myself. Uh. Around the age of 40, I started realizing that I was completely in the wrong career and industry, and it had been feelings that I had been. Talking about with my husband and my family and just felt very discontent, very anxious, and really, and I was in the fashion industry. I felt like I was selling all the wrong values, and maybe a part of that was being a mother and having two children who are teenagers and knowing how much they're watching you. And even when we like to think they don't understand or they don't watch, they really start to clone very much of who you are as parents, I believe. Uh, but I started, um, finding it difficult to teach them one way where I felt like I was selling. The complete opposite of that, you know, over consumption. Um, this idea of this perfect image that you have to hold yourself up to in order to be of value, that is really what the fashion industry promotes. And I knew I had to get out. So for me, my origin story was. Accepting that what I've done and wanted to do my entire life was just not what was gonna take me out of this life. That something had to change. And it did. I made quite a substantial change. And when you talk about Sunday scaries, think about career scaries where you have to step out of what you've always believed is you, my identity was, was completely wrapped up around being a designer. And just taking on a new identity, uh, walking into my closet and seeing nothing but black clothing and realizing that my identity that I have lived for decades had to change. And just as simple as trying to wear color was a huge step. Now I know I'm wearing I say we're both wearing black, so. But this is, this is actually really kind of a fluke because I have sort of transitioned out of that, um, fashion image. Uh, so understanding that I knew I couldn't be there. But then the next big question is how do you figure out where you're supposed to be? Yeah, well, and like fashion for so many, and I'm sure for you was like. A dream role, right? You, I grew up wanting to work in trend forecasting. I wanted to be the person that was like, this year it's gonna be Ian to pull out my Devil Wears Prada reference. Um, and like that's what I wanted to be. That's the type of person I wanna be. That trend forecaster, you know, I was voted, um. I didn't even know this when we got this conversation started, but I was voted in like junior high, like most likely to have her own, um, like fashion house someday. So like this was something that I really wanted. Um, and then as I changed, you know, I thought that, that that dream started to slip away and my dream started to change. But you achieved what so many people dream of and I can imagine almost the guilt of like quitting something that is other people's dream. I, I also got, uh, quite a lot of feedback from my, you know, decades in that industry. My friends were all over the country, but very involved in fashion. Many of them with their own companies. And a lot of the feedback I got from them was, what are you doing, Why would you quit something if you've reached the top, if you've made it right? right. And, and I think they were taking their fears. Putting that on me. And for some reason I had no fear. I think I was so convinced that leaving was the right thing, um, that I wasn't fearful. But I did find for a good amount of time, I did need to disconnect myself from their feedback. Uh, and it kind of like something I, I think about, um, once I went to grad school and I had entered my new program. You know, I would still use social media quite often. In fact, I, you know, when you're in the fashion industry, everything you do is on social media. So I just, that is a part of me and transitioned into my new life. And I would post a picture of myself, you know, in the middle of a cabbage field holding a cabbage. And I would have, I had a friend reach out to me. He is like, girl, I don't know what you're doing, but you look so happy. And finally, after some amount of time, there was like, oh, okay, I get it. Like, that's who you are. That's who you were meant to be. And I think it was very different from maybe the person they were seeing day in day out who didn't, who was wanting to get out of that industry. I mean, you have to be able to feel that right. and I think sometimes. We are not self-aware enough to put a, to put a name to what we're feeling or to truly understand what we're feeling, right? Like I've been in situations where I'm like, I am not happy. I do not wanna do this, but I'm gonna push through.'cause maybe something on the other side, maybe I'll change my mind. You know, I loved it at one point, right? So maybe I'll find my passion and my joy again, or maybe I'll come back to it. It is hard to give it up. So like I'm an entrepreneur by nature, so I've started a bunch of companies. I have too many things going on, to be honest with you. And there's a couple that like, I know in my heart it's time to give up and to move on from, 'cause it, they're successful. I just don't have any joy in it anymore. And like giving up something that's making you money that is successful, that you have quote unquote made it. Doesn't give you joy. Like that has to be okay too. And, and so when you were getting ready to say, okay, this is not giving me joy anymore. In fact, it's the opposite. It's draining my entire soul to be a part of this. How did you figure out what was next? You know, this was the first time in my life that I wasn't going to have a plan and micromanage my way through everything because I had wanted to be, uh, in fashion since, I don't know, I think I was, I had first started sewing my own clothes in the third grade, so that's how long I was making my own clothes and expressing this very creative outlet. Um, and I had, and you know, a lot of people say, I, you're lucky. You knew what you wanted to do at a. Very young age, and so I had a plan for a large portion of my life, and I just felt different and felt like I was being guided. And now this is gonna sound ridiculous, but when I would go out into nature, I felt this sense of calm and peace that I never felt outside of it. And I knew that nature was going to be the focus of what I did. Um, because I felt so at peace and it was making me think about things very deeply and very different than just walking down a nature trail. I was obsessed with the cycles of things and looking at how nature was transitioning from season to season and how it represents this perfect idea of a circular. System where everything was reliant on each other and everyone, everything was intentional and had a reason for being there. And I loved this idea. Um, and so I thought to myself, what, what do I really want to be doing? And I knew that had to be surrounded by plants. So started taking courses at my local, um, college and lucky enough, I had a really great. Horticulture school very close to me, and that's where it started. But where it all came together for me was on a tourist trip to NASA Johnson Space Center. And there was an exhibit that talked about how plants have the, that, well, they're trying to grow plants in space or in Mars. Uh, so how do we grow plants on Mars? Soil is toxic. You know, there's a lifeless soil, this whole di idea. So of course that was fascinating to me. Like, how do we, you know, I loved that movie The Martian, you know, uh, where he, he's growing potatoes in his own, um, excrement as compost, which there's a whole lot of missing things from that movie. But anyway, love It's like how do you get a cycle of, you know, birth and rebirth started when there's no cycle at all. Right. Hundred percent and a hundred percent. And although some things weren't, weren't shown in the movie, it does show a concept of how he had to create an atmosphere. He had to, you know, create soil that would work to grow the plants. But anyway, loved that idea. And ironically, there was an exhibit talking about, uh, how. The soil is toxic on Mars, but on earth, plants have the ability to clean soils because through this microbial relationship that will break down contaminants, these perchlorate salts, they're like a chlorinated compound that plants and trees have the ability to break this down. And you know, I'm thinking to myself, well, if we're gonna do that on Mars, why aren't we doing this on Earth? And it was like a thunderbolt. I had to be a scientist and I had to be working within this field. How do we clean up contamination? So that is what started, um, what I like to say is I really just followed my passion and my curiosity, and shortly after I found myself in graduate school, I didn't know. I would be doing research. I honestly just thought I would be taking complex coursework around plants and environment. I had a business undergrad, so there was no correlation forming. Um, had two and a half of the most magical years of school because I was learning because I wanted to learn and, and I actually kind of. Although it was difficult to go back to school with most of your, um, most of the, your peer group are in their twenties, and here I am in my mid forties. Uh, but I also could detect not, not a sadness per se from them, but just a level of not getting as much out of it as I was. Because I had experienced a life on the other side, and now I was in it because this was where my passion was and could see there was a big lack. I think when you go through undergrad and go straight into grad school, like what are you doing? There's no life experience there to back up why you're becoming an expert in a, in a field and. I think my experience outside of school allowed me to be incredibly successful when I was in school because of the age I was. There's, there's something that, like you said in the beginning of our conversation, and I, I've, I've got a little notebook here and I'm just drawing little like connections as you're talking and one thing I wanna highlight and something that maybe is. I've never really thought about it this way before, but when you described going out in nature, you described it as where you found your calm and your peace, and then you now, now you're talking about finding your passion, and I do think that there is a distinction in passion that brings you calm and peace and passion that brings you entertainment, fun and excitement. So I think a lot of people go work for what they think is their passion, and they think of their passion of the thing that gets them really excited, that they love, that they have fun doing. And then I hear from a lot of people like, oh, I followed my passion and then I monetize my passion. And then I lost my passion for it because it no long 'cause it was a, a, it was a chore now. And I think that that might be the distinction of your passion. If you're gonna monetize your passion, it needs to be the thing that brings you peace. It cannot just be the thing that entertains you. Right, And I think a lot of people miss that when they're thinking about following their passion. Does it bring you peace or does it bring you excitement?'cause excitement fades, but peace can be forever. hundred percent. And, and I, and I do think too, it's, we transition so much as human beings and, and what suited you for one period of your life may just, you're just done with that. But I also do connect with what you just said because, you know, it was sewing for work, but what, um, what disappeared was my sewing for the love of it. I had no time to be creating things for myself or for my family anymore, like I did when I started. Um, and one thing my mom pointed out to me was, you know, now that I'm in a different career, when my daughter graduated from college, I made her her graduation dress actually remotely because we weren't in the same state. And I was with my mom sewing the dress and she said. I haven't seen you this happy since you were a child, like while you're sewing, like the passion came back to the sewing when it was no longer responsible for feeding the family, Yeah. creating your empire. It was sheerly for the love of it. So yeah, I think sometimes monetizing. Something you really like can suck all the life out of it. And, and I do feel like too, with the onset of social media, um, that was one of the big life sucking events because it changed from, I was building a business and building these different steps and I was, uh, training salespeople how to sell. And I was having so much like one-on-one, um, feedback from brides who were. Thrilled to be working with me and or what I was creating for them. And um, but when it turned to social media and so much more was focused on the social media, it took out all of that human connection or a large part of that human connection. And we had to focus so much on this content that we were putting out. And there's so. And the perception of the brand that you're trying to create, right? Like, because people make so many snap decisions about what they see on social media and like with this podcast, I'm trying to keep it as real as possible. Like if I stutter, I leave it in. If I, you know, do all of those things, I leave it in. But there is a lot of pressure on social media and which is why like, I hate posting on TikTok.'cause I feel like you have to be so perfect and, and presented and it's not real, but people expect it to be. Yeah, and it's, it's funny that people still think that way because like, do we not know enough at this point to know what is on social media is staged. Now, I will tell you on my TikTok, I, um, it was one of the ways that I got over the sphere of kind of being seen in my. Real habitat because, you know, coming from the fashion industry, I had to look a certain way and hated the idea of being on camera without makeup on, and these different levels that I was taught from the industry, and that took a lot of work to change that. But TikTok actually helped me with that because I do these morning walks every morning, rain or shine, I do the walks. But I started recording myself talking on those walks. And I forced myself to do it, but by after I would say 30 days of doing this, no longer had fear of people seeing me without makeup on or first thing in the morning without my hair done. So it it, it did gimme the opportunity for sort of challenge the beliefs that I have Yeah, I'm a big believer in practicing in public, so like this podcast started. Because I was super nervous in these kinds of environments, and I had worked for someone who really just made me feel like I wasn't good enough to do this kind of a thing. And so I started this podcast to force myself to practice having conversations with strangers in a remote environment. Talking into a camera and not being awkward about it and, and thinking on my feet to get back and get better at that. And that was the whole reason I started the podcast. I never intended to do more than maybe 15, 20 episodes of like forcing myself to practice. I'm over a hundred now simply because I found a joy and a love and I have no intention of monetizing this podcast.'cause I know the minute I do, I will hate it. So, so anyway, so just so you all know, there will be no ads on this podcast. Uh. Promise. Um, but I do wanna ask you a question. If someone is hearing this conversation and they're saying to themselves, you know what? I am genuinely unhappy in this thing that I thought I wanted and this thing that I thought I was going to love and, and you know, I've quote unquote made it, but I genuinely feel a connection to what you guys are saying and I'm ready to explore. Moving on, what is the one thing you would have them do first? You know, I don't know if completely blowing up your career and life and moving on to something completely different is for everyone. Um, like I said, I literally walked away. Uh, and I don't know if that is for everybody. And after time has passed, I've like tried, you know, I look back and reevaluate. What I went through and thought, could there have been something I could have done that didn't require me to have to leave it all? And so I have this, uh, conversation with myself all the time. Um, I, I, I think you gotta try and identify what it is that's making you so unhappy, because I think with most people, it's not just one thing. It's a lot of things. Right. And maybe that's the easiest one to pinpoint. Oh, it's my career, is it. Uh, and through my journey of leaving my career, uh, I realized that I was not gonna be able to, um. Save the world environmentally, um, until I really just looked at myself and looked at my own patterns and looked at what I was doing to be destructive to the environment. So I started through kind of an evolution of myself and trying to make my life more sustainable. I was flying back and forth from LA to New York, LA to New York like 10 times a year and then add in lots of other metropolitan cities. Um, and then I wonder why am I so burnt out and feel like I don't have time with my children? Not that that wasn't exciting 'cause that was incredibly exciting for several years. I loved that my identity was wrapped around that. But how sustainable is that, uh, of a mom with two children who wants. To be, spend more time with them and now wants to be in nature. But I had to fly back and forth between metropolitan cities. Like that was just a big no for me anymore. But could I have transitioned, maybe found a different way to get to my client base that didn't require me to fly across country or like. I think if I wasn't so stressed and so burnt out, maybe I could see things differently or different ways to change the parts that were really unsustainable. Um, I think that ultimately because I didn't want to be in the industry, it was just a, I'm leaving, but the beauty of that and, and. There was this fear that I'm not gonna be doing anything creative. I don't think that's true 'cause that creativity came with me. And in my new career I find myself being able to be creative all the time, uh, and build the business that I'm working for now. And um, and although what I do is in one small segment, I'm able to like, 'cause I specifically work in remediation, um. Cleaning up of soils and groundwater. But I find myself being fascinated in so many different levels of nature, um, and sustainability. And there is no, I guess I, I'm not going to stop being fascinated about this 'cause I can just transition kind of to another area of nature. So, um, I don't think you have to start over. May. Maybe it's. Mentoring people in your industry that would give you this feedback that would make you happier in your career? Like maybe there were things I could have done to get more joy from the industry. Moving into a, A coaching role. A mentorship role. A teaching role, something like that. If you still wanted to stay adjacent. But I do wanna comment on something you mentioned about the creativity. And again, we didn't do a pre-call. We did, you know, a very short little like onboarding conversation to do this. But I transitioned out of wanting to be a trend forecaster into. Buyer behavior research and how people decide to buy products or whatever. And so it's very, um, traditional academic style research. Right. Very uncreative. And I was the kind of salesperson for that. So I would come up with the, the methodology we were gonna use and how we were gonna make this happen. And our clients, I loved like. The thrill of the solve is what I always called it. Like clients would gimme a budget and say, here's what I wanna achieve. And then I would say, oh, here's how we're gonna get here. And I would always get in trouble with the actual researchers who had to do the work because they'd be like, well, that's not how it's supposed to be done. That's not the right way to do it, quote unquote, from an academic perspective. And I would be like, but we're gonna get the same results and we can hit the budget and it'll be faster and it'll be so, I, I always joke with people like. Because I was creative. I was really good at coming up with these research protocols because I wasn't trained on how to do it the right way, but I was like clever and interested and creative enough to say, well, I know it's supposed to be like this, but what if we did it this way and kind of rearranging. So a very technical field, very quote unquote, boring to most people, very uncreative to most people. And yet. Bringing the creative skills made us better Clients hired us because we acted this way and were nontraditional, and eventually those research types came around. Yeah, no, I, you know, I can connect with that so much because I moved into a very technical academia style field and the way we presented ourselves, you know, in my opinion, was connecting to the wrong audience. We were connecting with other academia, and academia isn't, wasn't who our client was. Right. And how do you distinguish yourself? Um, okay. You know, pushing how important social media is. Because if we want to ignore the fact that our new generations are connecting in different ways and not the same channels, and that we weren't gonna be able to only connect with people through, um, scientific conferences, that was a big Peer reviewed papers are not the way that Gen Z is making decisions. yeah, and, and, and exact, and that whole idea that, okay, if I just show them another paper that that is going to sell them. And so. I had to transition more of that creativity into, look, we need to like, connect with people's emotions on wanting to do something more sustainable versus all of these other, uh, remedial technologies that, that are not sustainable in my opinion. Um, I had to kind of change the thinking of my team and show them that this experience I have from this industry. It's important and integrated from what we were doing. And it was very different from what many companies were doing. And I think because other companies weren't doing that, the thought was, well, we shouldn't be doing it because our competitors aren't doing it. But I'm like, no, we are doing this to look different from our competitors.'cause if we do what our competitors are doing, you know, there's the an attention you're trying to capture. Right. And if you look like everybody else. Kind of just, I mean, I scroll on by, right? And, and so if we look at what captures our attention, we need to be doing that in science as well, and in all these different areas that we perceive as boring. Science is incredibly exciting. I mean, everybody loves science. If you make it accessible. Accessible was the exact word that I was thinking as you were talking because, so I sit on the research foundation for my local university, and so professors come and present their research and then the university decides whether or not it has commercial viability and how the intellectual property and patents and all that good stuff is gonna work. And so my role as a non-academic on that is to speak to. Will this capture the imagination of the market will? How are we telling the story? Because I'm a firm believer that everything is sales, everything is branding, everything is storytelling. No matter what you're doing, whether you're pitching yourself for a new job, angling for a promotion, trying to meet someone at a bar that you are interested in, you know, dating. Like everything that we do as humans is about how do we connect as human beings and until the AI start buying from each other. We're going to have to find ways to be human beings. And that means telling stories, opening emotions, and helping people feel connected and like what you're doing is accessible to them.'cause nobody wants to feel stupid, and so if you're just talking over their heads, they are going to tune out simply because they don not feel like they are allowed to join the conversation. Right, and, and also now that AI has been actively involved in, in many of our lives, I also see this trend now again, in just paying attention to what I pay attention to. Like if you wanna know how a customer behaves, just pay attention to your own behavior. I go through LinkedIn and I find myself swiping, swiping, swiping,'cause I am seeing the same templates, the same ways of presenting information in my, in my industry. I'm just speaking about my industry specifically. So I'm swiping and board swiping and board and swiping and board. And now I'm also reading people are getting more active and writing on LinkedIn, which I love because it gives. People in academia, the opportunity to talk about what they're passionate about, if they approach it in that direction. Unfortunately, I think people are still have that disconnect, but there are some people that are doing a really great job at putting themselves out there, and I love that. I think that's doing things different. I think we're very attracted to that, but when you start seeing people writing with ai. What does your mind start to do? And now I find myself swiping away from things that I know are written by ai. Like, are we really gonna use all those emojis, Oh my God, yes, the emojis. And I'm sad because the M dash is one of my favorite forms of punctuation, and now I can't use it because I'm like, well, they're gonna people to think it's chat, jt. Yeah. And, and. At, at first. Writing with more white space is, is really important. You know, you should, because it's easier to read when now you can tell when it's like line, line, line, line, line, line. and, and now when you use all those emojis. At first they were very attractive, but now that we know that, that's ai, I think you have to go back to what, what can, what can AI do or not do that humans can do? And that is. That emotion and being real and some of my most successful, um, posts or by giving me opportunities that I wouldn't have had were because of posts that I wrote that were vulnerable and not typical of someone in the science field because we don't lead with those things in science. But for me, how do I compete? In an industry where everybody has been working in the, in industry for 15 to 20 years and they have multiple degrees and certifications behind their name. Um, and the way I competed with that was stepping right into who I was, and that's, I'm new and this is my perspective. So hear that from me and I would get very, um, I, I would get messages and still continue to get them, um, because of those vulnerable posts or because of the way I presented the information they connected to that. Generally it's something that they just connected to feeling that way at some point in their life. So that has been really exciting for me to try and like just put a little bit more personality in my industry. But it's been norm enormously successful in me getting invited to speak in places that a new person wouldn't necessarily get that opportunity because I led with that. You know, on that note, thinking about all of the people that you know or that you aspire to know, who is leading the charge, who is taking back Monday? Oh gosh. You know, I have to say, um, I. I've been really impressed with different people in my industry, and a large portion of them are women, which is just exciting for me to see women just taking charge of their careers and putting it out there, like on LinkedIn and putting it out on social media that. It, it, you know, if you, it, from my perspective, growing up in, you know, in the seventies, in the eighties, like we weren't told as women that these were the types of careers we could have and why was it that I had to go into fashion? Why are there certain careers that are always promoted? Uh, for women to be in. And I just love seeing all of these women just take control of their careers and putting out there on social media what they're doing and what their successes are and what their challenges have been. And that is a big step. That's a big step for women, and I'm so excited to see everybody that they might inspire. And look at things like, you know what, maybe I can be a scientist. I mean, look, they're outside all day playing in the dirt. That looks like fun. You know? I mean, this is kind of how we correct, uh, connect with careers, right? We don't think about ourselves at an office in front of the computer, but we're like, yeah, I love rocks. Let me look into geology like. When I get down to it, that is what attracts people in science and engineering, and we need so many engineers and chemists to understand how, how are we gonna get ourselves out of these environmental messes? Like we need to have these creative thinkers thinking about circularity and how we can stop wasting so much, and how we can create things correctly from the very beginning in the ultimate design. And I'm just. So excited to see more and more women come into the industry. You know, at our conferences you see all these young 20 something ladies that have been hired for all these firms, and that's just exciting to me. And if someone is really connecting with you and they want to learn more, where can they find you online? Uh, they can find me at Renee Murphy on LinkedIn. And then if you wanna see my spicier side, you can go to Midlife Farm girl on TikTok or Instagram. Um, but you will see more gardening than you might want. Um, but, but that's kind of the behind the scenes to what's going on. And LinkedIn is my very professional version of myself. Well, thank you Renee for coming on, taking back Monday. Thank you for taking back Monday with me. Yeah. Thank you, Alyssa.