0:00:10 – Ji Kim
Welcome to the Jam Session podcast, where, by tuning in, you tune into your purpose. I am your co-host, Ji Kim.

0:00:18 – Mel Hightower
And I’m your co-host, Mel Hightower. Thank you so much for joining us for our inaugural episode. How Did I Get Here?

0:00:32 – Ji Kim
But before Mel and I get into our “How Did I Get here? Story, our pivot moment, since this is your first time meeting us, we thought it would be beneficial to introduce ourselves, how the podcast came to be and what each of us hopes you get from the Jam Session Podcast. So a little bit about me. I am a former HR executive that oversaw HR at various companies in the Bay Area. A few years ago I was getting an itch to start something new, so I left a comfortable job to start my own HR consulting company called IllumineHR. And then recently, about three months ago, I slowly began focusing on coaching and I started Second Act Coaching, which helps women reimagine and unlock the next chapter. This is for individuals who are 30 and beyond and this is also based on my own journey. But grew up in the Bay Area, originally from Seoul, Korea, moved to the States when I was four years old.

0:01:29 – Mel Hightower
And speaking of journeys, I’ll share my own. I’m a Detroit native, but my family is from the South, so you will see my voice slide between a Midwest and a Southern accent. I am in the Bay Area now, but my career really started in HR, Ji and I share that in common. I became a tax lawyer and then made another career move into finance, where I became a banker, and most recently I decided to leave financial services and found High Tide Content Lab, which is a creative agency that focuses on impactful storytelling, doing everything from strategy to programming and, ultimately, production. So excited to be on that journey and to be here today.

0:02:21 – Ji Kim
And how Mel and I became friends. It was eight years ago, right, Mel? Yeah, can you believe it’s been that long? It’s been long but hasn’t felt long, if that makes sense. But Mel and I were introduced by a mutual friend and I never imagined that that one lunch could turn into many lunches and hundreds of phone calls over the eight years. But what I love about our friendship, Mel, is that I love that we could see all facets of each other, knowing there’s no judgment. We don’t always agree, and you know this.

0:02:59 – Mel Hightower
We do not.

0:03:00 – Ji Kim
And we don’t always see eye to eye on everything we talk about, but the one constant is this unwavering support that we have for each other.

0:03:11 – Mel Hightower
That’s right. What’s been so amazing about our friendship and what I love about you, Ji, is that you always are straight up, no filter, and we even come at it differently, stylistically right, because I’m always going to give you like prim and proper, yes, very much so. I’m always looking for the right way to let someone down gently with a message, but what has always stood the course is, you’ve always wanted me to win and I’ve always wanted you to succeed, and that’s been the backdrop to all of our conversations, through the highs and the lows, through the pivot moments.

0:03:50 – Ji Kim
Is this space to be transparent and vulnerable 100% and just knowing that someone, no matter how bad the F up is, has your back.

0:04:00 – Mel Hightower
Yeah, and some of them have been really bad

0:04:02 – Ji Kim
Really, really bad. There’s been a few doozies in my lifetime that Mel’s been there to support me through.

0:04:08 – Mel Hightower
Same, and it makes life more interesting, and that’s a good segue to the subject of this particular podcast. How Did I Get here? And how did I get here is often a question that we ask ourselves when we are on the precipice of major change in our life, whether we’re ready for it or not.

0:04:27 – Ji Kim
Absolutely, and that is how the Jam Session podcast came to be was the fact that Mel and I were having these conversations over lunch that were deep and profound, lots of laughs, lots of crackups, lots of tears, and what we figured out was all of our friends were also facing a lot of life changes. Mel and I realized that it wasn’t just us going through and navigating this thing called life, and so what we wanted to do was bring those conversations that Mel and I have had over lunch and our private phone conversations to the broader forum.

0:05:08 – Mel Hightower
We hope that by listening in that, you will join a community where, if you are experiencing change or thinking about how your life could be different, you’ll know that you’re not alone and many others are going through that very same thing and don’t have all the answers many others are going through that very same thing and don’t have all the answers.

0:05:32 – Ji Kim
Absolutely, and Mel and I have talked about this, which is we want to share our journey, to offer insight, and we’re going to share our F-ups starting our own business, the fears around that, the successes, the wins, the failures, just so it allows you to be more bold and try new things.

0:05:47 – Mel Hightower
The other thing we want folks to take away is that pivots can come at any age, and there is no age by which you need to have life figured out. In fact, life is a continual evolution, and so you will always be wrestling with some part of your journey always be wrestling with some part of your journey.

0:06:11 – Ji Kim
And with that I’m going to talk about my How did I get here? moment, the pivot moment.

0:06:13 – Mel Hightower
Let’s get to it.

0:06:14 – Ji Kim
All right. So every story I feel like on earth there’s always one about a relationship, and that is mine, everybody, and that is mine everybody. My pivot moment happened when I was 40 years old. I had been in a relationship for 12 years and what I’m going to do is tell you what happened and just unpack the day for you.

0:06:40 – Mel Hightower
Let’s give a name to this other person.

0:06:42 – Ji Kim
Okay, so we’re going to call him Peter because we are going to protect the innocent and all parties involved. I’m going to preface this with Peter. No hard feelings If you’re listening. Thank you for the lessons, but the story-

0:06:57 – Mel Hightower
Girl.So you already know this is about to be wild.

0:07:02 – Ji Kim
The story happens the day we are going away to get engaged. So let me walk you through the day. We had to plan the engagement ahead of time because this would have been our sixth attempt to get engaged.

0:07:18 – Mel Hightower
Now this Ji. This is not the way it typically works.

0:07:22 – Ji Kim
No, of course not, and obviously, thinking back on it now I laugh, but in the moment I mean it was a bit chaotic, but we had had six attempts for various reasons. One time we had decided to go get engaged, he like broke his foot allegedly. And then the other time,

0:07:43 – Mel Hightower
Okay. Okay, so he broke his foot

0:07:46 – Ji Kim
Allegedly

0:07:46 – Mel Hightower
So that’s why he Okay. Yeah, please continue. I’m sorry.

0:07:51 – Ji Kim
And then the other time, the day that we were going to go get engaged, he allegedly passed out in the kitchen and the dog woke him up and he had to go to the emergency room. So this would have been our sixth attempt where we planned it, set the stage, the date, the time it was a Friday. We’re going to go away to Carmel for the weekend. So normal morning driving to work, my phone rings as I’m parking my car, and it’s him. Everyone knows that when you’re getting a call from your soon-to-be fiance at 8 am, the day you’re going to get engaged, your gut tells you this isn’t right.

0:08:34 – Mel Hightower
Right? Were you thinking about what new body part he had injured?

0:08:38 – Ji Kim
I was just thinking what lie is this guy going to tell me? Today I picked up with a real attitude on the phone and first thing I hear is Peter crying and asking me where I was, because he wanted to have a conversation in person. And Mel, at that point, after six attempts, I’m done, we don’t need to have another conversation face to face. What are we doing here? So I just told him you know, say what you want to say over the phone to me. This doesn’t actually need to happen in person.

Like I got meetings, I got to get to, and so he proceeds to tell me that he didn’t know if he wanted this. And my response was like the relationship, the engagement, and he was just crying and wasn’t sure. And for anyone listening out there who’s been in any sort of relationship where the person is unsure of what they want, my takeaway from that is they don’t want the relationship. The only thing I asked of him it was a very short and sweet conversation the only thing I asked was that he not be home when I go and pick up my things. And so I pulled myself together no tears. I went about my day, left at the time that I was supposed to because, hey, I was supposed to get engaged, so I was off early that day.

0:09:56 – Mel Hightower
Wow, and at this point it hadn’t even fully hit you.

0:10:00 – Ji Kim
No, and you know me, Mel, what I’m really good about is detaching from emotions so I can execute on what needs to happen. I was not really feeling any other emotion than anger, but it wasn’t until I got in my car, Mel, when I’m driving home and it’s about a 45 minute drive to my house where I’m completely alone, no music, and that is when you start sinking into the feelings and the emotions. And for me, it was more about the narrative that kept playing in my mind, which is I’m 40 years old, a relationship that had lasted for 12 years ended. There’s going to be no engagement, there’s no marriage, no kids. There’s nothing showing for all the time and effort I’d put into this relationship.

0:11:00 – Mel Hightower
What a soundtrack to be evaluating that significant of an investment and to say this is a lost investment.

0:11:09 – Ji Kim
Completely lost investment and you know, if you’re in your 20s or even early 30s, I think it wouldn’t have hit me as hard than being in my 40s. Because we all know by your 40s you have to have your shit figured out like lock down your career, your husband or wife, the kids, the house, the dog, right? Like it’s all locked down and for me it was starting all over again. It’s harder.

0:11:47 – Mel Hightower
The older you get, the scarier it is to do that because you become more conscious of time.

0:11:54 – Ji Kim
Time and you realize that things are bigger, or they seem bigger, right, every decision seems bigger, every situation seems bigger, and so this was a narrative for 45 minutes going in my head, and all this along with, just as a woman, feeling as if I wasn’t chosen right, like somehow I wasn’t good enough to be chosen. And so I’m grappling with all these thoughts and I pull up to the house and his truck is there and Mel when I say there was a rage inside of me.

0:12:43 – Mel Hightower
Oh, I’m sure I would have gone zero to 60.

0:12:47 – Ji Kim
It was like zero to 120. Because not only did I feel like the way it happened was disrespectful, but the one thing I ask of you is like not to be home so I could gather my things in peace. And you’re there, so I pull myself together because I really wanted to F him up.

0:13:11 – Mel Hightower
It was such a volatile situation. And it is, in many ways, it’s the end of an era, right? And it’s a complete 180 to how you thought the day was going to go.

0:13:24 – Ji Kim
Yeah.

0:13:24 – Mel Hightower
And then the one thing that you needed, which was to be able to get your stuff and leave you weren’t afforded the grace and space to do that.

0:13:36 – Ji Kim
No, and it was about what he wanted, which was to stay and talk to me about it, what he wanted, which was to stay and talk to me about it. And so I walk in and the first thing I see is him sitting on the couch crying, and this infuriates me. It’s not that he’s crying that infuriated me, it’s the audacity. I felt, like him showing the emotions that I should be showing when he made the decision.

0:14:03 – Mel Hightower
As if you were the one who had put this all in motion.

0:14:06 – Ji Kim
Correct.

0:14:07 – Mel Hightower
As opposed to him.

0:14:09 – Ji Kim
Correct, and so I really didn’t have much to say to him. I wanted to gather my expensive bags and shoes because, listen, I had like four closets of clothing, but my main priority was getting the high value items out of there first, which was my handbags and my shoes, because I worked my ass off in my career to earn those things, and so I was very highly focused on that or those items we shared a dog, highly focused on that or those items we shared a dog, and so getting that situation worked out that best supported the dog was super important for me, and the last piece of it was my skincare.

0:14:56 – Mel Hightower
This is where I have the inappropriate thought: Tell me you’re Korean without telling me you’re Korean.

0:14:59 – Ji Kim
Right! Now that was my skincare regimen. Like I am, I can be blackout drunk but still get my skincare done, and that was a priority. Like I was thinking, no man is going to mess up my skincare regimen, so I was hyper-focused on getting my 20 step products to go.

0:15:20 – Mel Hightower
And what I see from that is you are going to retain your sense of self and your routines and your regimen, no matter what is happening.

0:15:28 – Ji Kim
Because that’s the only thing I can control right, the only thing I can control. And I left obviously a lot of things behind, but I was going to go pick that up at a later date. But him wanting to talk about it later date, but him wanting to talk about it, I just didn’t think we were going to have a healthy conversation where I wasn’t going to verbally annihilate him and that wasn’t going to do me any good. I wasn’t really thinking about him, it was more of. I needed mental space to take care of me in that moment. So I drove to my mom and dad’s and my dad opened the door. He saw my bags and the only thing he said to me was- “your heart hurts, doesn’t it? And it was in that moment. I had not cried all day, but it was in that moment where I was able to see his vulnerability and see the pain that he was in, to see my pain, where I completely had a emotional breakdown.

0:16:30 – Mel Hightower
Well, you were finally in safe space.

0:16:32 – Ji Kim
Yeah, finally my siblings arrived and we talked into the evening. We bashed Peter and I told myself I was only giving myself the weekend to cry and come Monday I will be back to normal. But you know me long enough where. That is how I’ve operated for a very long time. And come Monday I had my shit together, I was back to normal. But that was a start of the journey of healing.

The first year after the breakup, Mel, everything I focused on wasn’t internal. Everything I focused on was external. So I lost a ton of weight. I went down to 98 pounds. I got Botox for the first time. There was this in some way. I felt like he destroyed my self-esteem and so I hyper-focused on the external, as if putting that pressure on me becoming more attractive was going to somehow. More attractive was going to somehow, one I don’t know, feel that void in me but also feel as if I was worthy of being chosen. So that was a year of just not dealing with the breakup, not dealing with what I needed to deal with emotionally, internally, doing the work. It was more all superficial outwardly.

0:18:02 – Mel Hightower
What prompted you to then look within?

0:18:07 – Ji Kim
So what slowly started happening was I got down to 98 pounds, which, by the way, super unhealthy. I was skin and bones and yet I was getting a lot of compliments, so that says something.

0:18:24 – Mel Hightower
Isn’t that just the straight up toxicity that says something? Beauty standards.

0:18:31 – Ji Kim
It’s like crazy, horrible and I had a great career, highly educated, all these things, but I still felt like shit. And what really started prompting the healing journey internally, which turned into sort of a five-year journey, is I didn’t want this story playing in my head of just not feeling good enough or worthy, or having all these outward accolades that society deems worthy and good, but still internally feeling like crap. And so I had my first therapy session at 41, Mel.

0:19:29 – Mel Hightower
Your very first one ever?

0:19:30 – Ji Kim
Yeah. I mean, if I had many therapy sessions before, but I quit it and it was in my late 20s. But actually going and talking about everything openly, it didn’t really happen until I was 41. An amazing, hard, rewarding five years, and I look back on what I’ve done in those five years and what that healing has allowed me to do. I wouldn’t have started my own HR consulting company. I wouldn’t have done this podcast. I wouldn’t have been brave enough to start coaching or even open a business with my sister as well. And I had to really deconstruct and rebuild my life, including friends and boundaries, and get to know me, because I feel like your 20s and 30s are the most formative years where you get to know yourself. But because I was living so much in my trauma, I didn’t have the opportunity to really get to know myself until my 40s, right?

0:20:42 – Mel Hightower
And Ji. I’d love to hear, because your journey, that five-year journey, therapy was definitely a foundational step, but I remember you trying a lot of different things,

0:20:53 – Ji Kim
Everything! I love that you asked that. Sometimes I would call Mel and be like I tried this and she’s like all right, boo, not my thing, but go girl.

0:21:03 – Mel Hightower
I was like okay, but sometimes that experimentation is what you need, because you have to figure out what works for you.

0:21:09 – Ji Kim
Yeah, and I think it was just sort of this process of living my life one way for 41 years and then just all of a sudden, as you’re healing, being open to everything that maybe you weren’t open to before.

So, outside of therapy, I’ve done Akashic readings, I’ve done psychics and everything you can imagine outside of therapy to allow me to figure out what fits me, what doesn’t, what gets me closer to myself and what allows me to heal, and so I’ve done it all and I’m happy that I’ve done it all and I’ve had the privilege financially to do it all. I always am very grateful for that, because a lot of people don’t have the opportunity. But that’s been my five-year journey of getting more in tune with myself and just trying all different modalities to see what happens and along the way, what comes with that is not only do you get to know yourself a lot better and you start loving yourself more. Then from that you feel braver to make decisions and things become less scary and you realize you’re always going to be okay. And then what trickles even more from that is you build really great friendships.

0:22:29 – Mel Hightower
When we talk about relationships, you didn’t share whether you were dating during this time.

0:22:34 – Ji Kim
So I actually did not date during my healing process, because I do believe you attract where you’re at. And so I attracted Peter because that is where I was at mentally, emotionally, and I wanted to make sure that I made choices that were a better fit for me as I healed and for me. Dating while I was healing wasn’t going to be the right fit for me because it was going to take away from focusing on myself and I wanted to make sure I was fully healed so I bring the right people into my life, and that was so important to me.

0:23:19 – Mel Hightower
What I’m hearing is that Peter was, in many ways, reflection of your trauma.

0:23:27 – Ji Kim
There are reasons. Looking back, going through this process, you know, distance offers clarity, time offers clarity about yourself and taking accountability for your decisions in your life. And I picked Peter for reasons and it was very much directly related to my childhood trauma. And Peter is a great guy and I have nothing against him. But we were never really a fit and the relationship was never going to last. And I am very thankful that he was brave enough to be the first to pull the plug because without that I wouldn’t have been on this journey for the last six years and I’m so grateful for all of it, the good, the bad, the ups and downs. I’m so grateful for it.

0:24:22 – Mel Hightower
You know, Ji, I am struck by some of the similarities in our pivot moments, even though they’re on different areas of our lives. Yours was on the relationship side and my pivot moment happened at work, and when I think back on it, that really is the only place it could have happened, because I was a workaholic.

0:24:40 – Ji Kim
I’d like to interject and say workaholic is an understatement for Mel. This is let me just sort of paint a picture. This is somebody listen, I loved my career and I was dedicated to it and I worked a lot. Mel’s definition of workaholic is you can sort of imagine, like mine times 100. This is a woman who and I love her dedication and I love the fact that she gives 120% this is the person who, at some point, I mean it’s funny and it’s really not. But this is the person who, at some point, I mean it’s funny and it’s really not. But this is the person at some point who was so stressed out she literally lost her eyesight.

0:25:27 – Mel Hightower
Yes, and my voice at other points in time.

0:25:30 – Ji Kim
This is how dedicated and how much she worked, where she would actually run her body down to get the job done.

0:25:45 – Mel Hightower
And when you describe that I’m like horrified. But in that moment I was always justifying why I had to do it and telling myself that, oh, it’ll just be for the next few weeks or until this big project is done. So, with that as the framing, my pivot moment. It took place during performance season bonus season and I was already nervous because the organization that I was working for had been through a lot of change in a short period of time change in leadership, reorganizations, with more to come. So there was a lot of uncertainty, and the way that I deal with uncertainty is to scenario plan.

0:26:24 – Ji Kim
It’s catastrophic planning, like assuming she’s going to be destitute on the streets of San Francisco planning.

0:26:32 – Mel Hightower
Yes.

0:26:32 – Ji Kim
She’s in the banking world everybody.

0:26:36 – Mel Hightower
Yes, and so, even though that’s not likely, I take myself there, which is not the right way to deal with uncertainty. But that’s how I was coping with it. And then management calls me in to have the conversation about my bonus. I get the number, and I am thrilled with the number. And unbeknownst to me, I was in the beginning of a crappy sandwich. That’s when you have crappy news sandwiched in between two pieces of good news.

0:27:08 – Ji Kim
I feel like this is like management 101 that someone taught a long time ago that people still stick with now.

0:27:15 – Mel Hightower
Oh, and it’s the most horrible way to deliver news, right, because there’s the elation. Then the bottom falls out of your stomach and then you’re left going what?

0:27:23 – Ji Kim
And they’re like okay, great, thank you.

0:27:25 – Mel Hightower
Yeah, thanks for playing. So the one end of the sandwich bonuses is good. Then they drop the crappy news which is there’s going to be another restructuring. I’m going to be impacted and my role is going away. Then the other side of the sandwich, or the other end of the sandwich, which is there’s a new opportunity they think I would be really good for and they would like for me to consider.

And I listened to the new opportunity and I was deep in inclusion work and doing a lot of work on how do we make finance work better for more clients and consumers. The new role would not have that as an explicit focus. It couldn’t be further away. So I sit there and I’m stunned. This was not on my scenario planning board.

I immediately make my way off the phone because I knew that if I had stayed on the phone for any minute longer, I was going to say something out of character. So I get off the phone and it becomes clear that there’s a decision that I need to make. Do I take the new role or do I leave? And I can’t even get to the decision because I’m filled with anger, because the role, the way that I understood it, was not up to my skills or abilities and it didn’t include inclusion, which was a deal breaker. So that overarching anger that I had at the disconnect that a new opportunity could be. So you know. So left field was the first thing, and then the second feeling that I was working through is a sense of relief, a sense of relief I was exhausted. I’d been spending years burning the candle at both ends. We know that inclusion work ebbs and flows, so my goal was to get as much as I could get done, because the tides always change and it was taking its toll on me physically and it was also taking its toll on me emotionally, because with each org change, I felt like I was starting over again, explaining the work that I did and explaining why it mattered, and I was just happy that that cycle was over.

0:30:06 – Ji Kim
And we had talked about this, which was you had wanted to sort of transition out and start your own thing. But you always said later.

0:30:13 – Mel Hightower
yeah, you know, I try to not have many regrets, but I became consumed with trying to understand why I didn’t leave before this happened.

Because, again, I knew. Yeah this wasn’t a forever role and I had hired an agency to do the work for me, spinning out, and I could not bring myself to pull the trigger and to exit. And I think there was deep-seated fear that I wasn’t good enough to succeed on my own, that most of my success had been not because of me but because of the brands that I was associated with. So it was almost as if I was gaslighting myself, that I wasn’t going to be successful if I left. And then there was the fear of I had always had a steady W2 gig, and so there was the fear that came with being an entrepreneur. I was like I’m in my forties, how can I start over and take this leap, entrepreneurship? And even though the opportunity was ripe and I had independent confirmation that it was, I couldn’t make the move. And that was something that really troubled me. Why I couldn’t do that? Because, as I sat there in the post bonus conversation world, it seemed as if the decision was being made for me and that gutted me.

0:31:45 – Ji Kim
No, and I think in a lot of ways, when a decision is made for you, it’s just so much easier, right, and I just don’t want you to be so hard on yourself.

0:31:59 – Mel Hightower
And I know you say don’t be hard on myself, and I try not to, but I definitely don’t want to have the feeling that my life is happening to me. I want to have main character energy as it relates to my life. At its core. The reason that I couldn’t make the call to go out on my own is low self-esteem, which was really crazy to think about. You know, when you think about on the surface, I was successful and all of this, but I was using that success to really hide my low sense of self-worth and the way that I was building my worth is through these accomplishments. And I think that was the first tie that I had to break that link of thinking that accomplishments equal worth, because they don’t.

0:32:51 – Ji Kim
Money equals success, but sometimes that drive and ambition can come from a negative place. And why we’re trying to obtain financially, get the accolades, go on to the next bonus, go on to the next job, the next title.

0:33:06 – Mel Hightower
Yeah, I think the other thing that I learned is that, while I had my dream job, doing the work that I loved, somewhere along the way I had lost my why. It became more about being resilient and surviving. And when you said you were feeling so horrible even as people were complimenting you, I can empathize with that, because even as I was racking up accolades, I felt like I was struggling to start. Each day I was stuck in this sort of survival mode and I was so tired of being resilient.

0:33:50 – Ji Kim
Yeah, because it feels so lonely. The assumption that from the outside everything looks great and you have to pretend and put on that front, but on the inside it’s so lonely to have to always put on the front. It’s really tiring and exhausting.

0:34:11 – Mel Hightower
It is, and I felt like I didn’t have the right to complain because I had reached this pinnacle of success. How dare I not be happy or fulfilled or content? How dare I? I was also scared to show vulnerability, because vulnerability meant weakness, and I couldn’t show weakness because the dam would break. But the dam was already breaking. Like I was, my body was shutting down.

0:34:39 – Ji Kim
Girl, we were falling apart. The dam was for dear life, I mean. And there is this thing about vulnerability. I mean you and I have a really hard time I’m. We’re so much more vulnerable now because look at our conversation but until we started that healing process, it was very hard for us to be vulnerable. I mean, I had moments of vulnerability with you, but it wasn’t until the last five years, six years, where you and I became super real and vulnerable with each other.

0:35:10 – Mel Hightower
That’s because trust gets built with time and, in realizing that we were more alike than we were different. We seemed at times to be traveling the same journey just at different points in time. Because with your journey with Peter, I had a similar journey with the end of a long-term relationship, but it had happened 10 years prior. It really resonated with me what you were going through and I could relate 100%.

0:35:37 – Ji Kim
And your journey of going out on your own and making that decision and being afraid, I could relate a hundred percent. And your journey of going out on your own and making that decision and being afraid, I could relate because I did that four years ago. And so when you were hesitant and we were having conversations about it, I could understand, even though you weren’t saying it, what was really stopping you. Because I had gone through that and I had to grapple with it and work through it on my own, with my therapist and every other coach that I worked with.

0:36:05 – Mel Hightower
Well, we both relied on therapy. During that time where I was wrestling with my transition, I started doing meditation and that and getting in touch with what I want and connecting with my faith. All of those things I mean now. When I look at my life now, which is chock full of journaling and affirmations and meditations, you know I would probably have laughed at that 10 years ago, but I really stand here today a much happier person and a much more you know, a person able to see, a person able to speak. So I think that that in and of itself is proof positive that anchoring on you, as opposed to anchoring on what other people say or think, is what’s most important in your journey.

0:36:57 – Ji Kim
Yeah, and I would say our journey still continues. It’s never going to end. I’m learning about myself every day and I’m always going to try new modalities, but I’m more at peace. I don’t have this angst, this constant chasing something, always feeling like something’s missing. I don’t have that in my life anymore.

0:37:19 – Mel Hightower
The desire to prove something?

0:37:20 – Ji Kim
Yeah, I just don’t have it Like if you had asked me 10 years ago what’s your ideal day, I would have been like you know meetings and lunches and traveling with friends and all these things. And now it’s like I love dogs, I want to foster and save as much as possible and slow meals. It’s just what drives me today. What brings me joy and peace is so different than 10 years ago. But I think that’s the whole point, right. We’re supposed to evolve and change and life experiences that we have, like this pivot moment with Peter, you, with your career all of that shifts and we just continually just evolve around that.

0:38:06 – Mel Hightower
We do and I think that’s a good spot to conclude our discussion today and so we hope that by hearing about our pivot journeys, you realize that you don’t need to have it all figured out.

0:38:22 – Ji Kim
No matter what age.

0:38:24 – Mel Hightower
That is right, no matter what age. And that you feel a little less alone because you are not the only one going through something with a relationship, with work, with family, trying to figure out what comes next, that pain you feel doesn’t last forever, and Mel and I can attest to that.

So our call to action is this we hope that you feel a part of the Jam Session podcast community, and we also want you to send us your questions and topics, or even share your own pivot story. You can email us at info at jam session dash podcast dot com. Don’t forget to stay tuned for our next episode, and you can connect with us on social media. Connect with us on social media and, most importantly, we want to encourage you to lean into this moment and start thinking about your why and finding your authentic self.

0:39:26 – Ji Kim
And thank you, and we’re so privileged to have you listen to our first podcast.

0:39:32 – Mel Hightower
Thanks and we hope by tuning in to us we help you tune into your purpose.

Transcribed by https://podium.page