Notes From the Middle: Career Truths with Michelle Chase

What do two bankers and a mailman have in common? More than you think.In this episode I’m talking about the question that most of us avoid until something forces us to sit down with it, what do I actually want? Not what looks good. Not what my LinkedIn network would applaud. What I actually need.After everything fell apart and I spent sixty days building like a mad scientist, I had a lunch that stopped me cold. And what came out of it sent me straight to three people in my life who had already answered the question I was still running from.One has been at the same bank for twenty years. One is my husband of thirty years. And one is my future son-in-law, who we lovingly call JBOD, which stands for Joey Baga Donuts. He is not Italian. He is not in the mafia.This episode isn’t about whether you should stay or go. It’s about whether you actually know what you need before you decide either one. Because these three people did. And I didn’t.If you’re figuring out what’s next, or avoiding figuring it out , this one’s for you.

Are you driving blind right now?Not literally. But in your career, do you know where you’re going, or are you just moving because stopping feels worse?This episode is for the woman who is somewhere between not ready to quit and not okay with staying. I’ve been her. I know what that parking lot feels like.Let’s figure out the route together.Gut Check Prompts:free, private, five minutes. Stan.store/michellechase

The grief of losing the identity you built inside a job , not just the job itself. The self-punishment spiral that follows. The reframe that stops it. And the permission to stop running long enough to understand what actually happened.

When something hard happens, high-performing women don’t fall apart, they get busy. New job search. New plan. New move. From the outside it looks like resilience. From the inside, it’s survival mode dressed up as strategy.In this episode, I’m talking about what I call “the doing as the coping” the very human pattern of using momentum to avoid feeling what actually needs to be felt. And why the decisions you make from that place rarely take you where you actually want to go.We cover:— Why moving fast after a crisis often means carrying the unprocessed weight of it right into the next chapter— What it actually looks like to pause, and why it’s not weakness— The question that changes everything: what are you doing right now that’s really just a way of not feeling something?This one is personal. And if you’ve ever been praised for how well you hold it together, this episode is for you.

This is the job I thought I'd retire from. Senior leadership. A seat at the table. Everything I had worked toward. In this episode I get into what it actually felt like on the inside, the moment I knew something was wrong, why I stayed anyway, and what finally pushed me out the door. If you've ever held onto something long past the point you should have let go ,this one is for you.

This is where it starts, in the middle. Not at the beginning, not at the end. In the messy, uncomfortable, clarifying middle of rebuilding a life that actually fits. In this first episode, I share why every time I rebuilt before, I was searching in the wrong direction, and what finally made me stop and look inward. If you're stuck in a pattern you can't quite name yet, this one's for you.