104. Financial and Career Decisions During Uncertain Times: From Overwhelm to Clarity

Life can throw us into chaos without warning, and when it does, decision-making feels impossible. In this candid episode, I share how I’m navigating a whirlwind of uncertainty—from wildfires threatening my community to an unexpected school closure for my kids.

In moments like these, it’s easy to feel paralyzed, but there’s hope. I’ll walk you through five powerful steps to move forward with clarity, even when everything feels out of control. These are the same strategies I’ve shared with clients facing financial and career chaos, helping them make intentional choices and take their next right steps.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why it’s okay (and necessary) to grieve in times of chaos.
• The importance of focusing on temporary solutions while avoiding hasty permanent decisions.
• How to stay vigilant against financial scams when you’re feeling vulnerable.
• Ways to regain control by focusing on what you can change.
• Real-life examples of how others have navigated chaos and emerged stronger.

Take Action:
Feeling stuck? Remember, if you’ve built a box around yourself, you’re also the lid. You hold the power to step out and redefine your path.

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

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Transcript

Laura: 0:02

hello and welcome to money and career mastery from overwhelmed to ownership. I'm Laura Sexton, your abundance and legacy coach here to help you navigate the world of money, debt payoff, and career growth with confidence and clarity. In this podcast, we'll tackle the financial and career challenges, holding you back, optimize your income and build the freedom that comes with true ownership. If you're ready to break free from overwhelm, create a budget that aligns with your values and design a legacy that empowers future generations. You're in the right place. Hey, Accelerators, I had another podcast ready for you and we will get back to our regularly scheduled programming shortly, but I wanted to talk to you about how to make decisions in the middle of chaos. You see, I'm currently. The smack dab in the midst of chaos there this morning, I got notifications from my family outside of the state that our town was on the local news being right smack dab in the middle of multiple fires. I knew that a new one had popped up to our Northeast, but was not as concerned because it hadn't grown yet. And of course the Palisade fire is right below us. And we are getting close to the evacuation warning zone. And by we're getting close, I mean, it's getting close to us. And so we are monitoring this. We have some crazy winds last night. They were up to 75 miles an hour, just insane. You could hear them howling outside and when it wakes you up and it's terrifying, your kids come in your room cause they're also scared. The winds are crazy. And when the winds are blowing all this fire around, it is it's no good. It's no good, friends, and it feels like chaos. But on top of that, on Friday, this is currently Tuesday, on Friday, we got notification that our kids school was closing. And not just, okay, we're closing But there was a situation with emerging with a different school and they're trying to help two schools turn into one school and they're doing it for, logistical reasons and city regulations and the parents are enraged and there's a lot of Name calling and full on vitriol against people that may or may not have had anything to do with this decision. The people in charge should have been more forthcoming. They've known about this for a while. They should have given us more time and yet we're here and there's nothing we can do about the school closing. There's nothing I can do about the fire and yet I have to make some very important decisions. As far as the fires are concerned, what do I put in a suitcase? I had a very difficult time. My husband was like, the important things. And I was like, all of it's important. How do I pick? How do I decide what goes in a suitcase? And if everything's important, then nothing's important. And I just got really overwhelmed. I was like, I can't, I can't do it. I can't figure it out. I have no idea. It's a terrible place to be. Eventually I got the backpack and we're ready. If something should occur, we can leave and we will be fine. When it comes to school, you know, what do we do? Where do we go? What is the right thing for our children? What are the long term implications of moving? There's so many questions and I feel like we are just in the middle of chaos. So when things are chaotic and they are uncertain, I want to give you permission to do two things first and foremost. Go ahead and cry. Feel all of the feelings. Everything that you're feeling, the overwhelm, the despair, the confusion. Give yourself 30 minutes and just cry. And be upset about it. And feel. Which is not easy in today's culture. Like you're not supposed to have feelings or something. You're supposed to have it all together and hold it together for the people around us. And I just don't think that that's, I don't think it's wise. And I don't think it's actually possible for us to hold everything in without exploding at some point to go ahead and cry and then grieve because the thing that you thought was is no longer. The safety we had in this home, that we felt in this home, we no longer feel. The security of our kids going to this school and going again next year and knowing who our teachers were going to be, that's all gone. Go ahead and grieve the loss of what could have been, the loss of what was, because you have to get through those emotions. But, when you are done. There are steps to take. And what we're going to be talking about today are steps to take in your money and in your career. And I've got some really great examples because it looks like I am not the only one in the middle of chaos and uncertainty. In fact, I have three people that I'm going to be talking about today who are also in the middle of chaos. So the three things to do after you cry and you grieve, and then we have to move on. Then we have to do the next right thing. Then we have to get up and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going because we don't get to stop. We don't get to stop. So the first thing you should do is you should focus on temporary solutions. Sometimes we just have to get through for now. So I've got this one client. I'm going to call our AB for today. A B is in a situation of her own making her and her husband have been working jobs that do not pay as well as they would like. And they have a mortgage that takes up most of their money and they've decided that an au pair is necessary for their family. And trust me, I am all for you having whatever it is that you want out of life. If an au pair is important to you and that's a necessity for your family, you go for it. A private school is a necessity for me and my family, and we're having to figure out how to deal with an increased tuition next year as we have to switch schools. The things that are important to you are important to you, but that doesn't mean that math doesn't work. If you have made decisions to have all of these wonderful things in your life. Then you've also made the decision of needing to bring in more income. And if your job that lights you up isn't bringing in the money, then it's time to make a change. Just because we want to live in a world where we work the job where we are lit up and excited does not mean that we can actually live the life where we work that job. If we haven't set ourselves up financially, that's not going to work. And so for AB and her husband, I have told them, Hey, you guys. You're not actually stuck. She came to me and she told me she was feeling trapped. And she used the word over and over again. She was confused and scared and trapped. And I said, you have put the parameters on here. You have decided that these are the things that you want to spend your money on. And so you're the one that's made the box that you feel trapped in. And the really cool thing is that you're the lid. So when you're ready to get out of the box, you just take off the lid. Yes, right now for their family, what that means is working extra jobs. It means for her, she's an artist. She's going to have to do some extra gig side work for him. He's going to have to pick up an extra job that makes 20 an hour, until they can get caught up and under control. I'm all for you having everything you want out of life. But we have to make financial decisions that are based on reality. It can't be based on what feels good today. What feels good today is not going to help you in the long run. So what is the temporary solution? For AB and her husband, it was temporary sidekicks. That's going to bring in enough money for them to get caught up and then have more margin in their life. And in about three months, they'll be able to go back to where they were before and not have to work all of the extra because they will have set themselves up financially to make better choices. So we talked about focusing on temporary solutions, temporary, think one to three months out, what, what can we do that's going to affect us in the next week? With the fires and the people around me that are having to stay at hotels or stay with friends, they're thinking one to two days out. And that's okay. My friends that are near me that have no power, guess what? You are welcome to come here. Going from house to house, friend to friend is okay for a temporary solution. On the flip side of focusing on temporary solutions is of course avoiding permanent decisions. There are very few things in life that are permanent. Not even tattoos are permanent these days because you can get them removed. Having a baby, it's permanent. You will always have had a baby, but pretty much anything else can be undone. Still, you want to be very cautious. If you are somebody who is dealing with the fires or natural disasters, floods over in the East Coast, you know, Florida and North Carolina got hit really hard. There's still people living in tents over there, and unfortunately, they don't have celebrities or walking around and screaming about this and helping them get relief that they need as well over there. And I'm sorry for that North Carolina, I still see you. But I've got this other client that I'm working with. He's absolutely fabulous, really on the ball ready to get things done. But he has been having a hard time making a decision because he currently lives in a city that he Loves the city has been his home almost his entire life. He loves everything about it. He loves the sports teams. He loves the people. He has loved his job until he lost it. And the city, unfortunately, does not love him back. His housing prices and costs are going up dramatically. He lives in a home, but insurance and property taxes are just going up and he's having a hard time because of that. Partly because he lost his job and that affects obviously the income and the money that you have to spend on these things, but also because cost of living on everyday items is going up in that area. And he's like, I don't know what to do. So to avoid making a permanent decision, When he and I were working on his career and deciding what would be best, he came up with a list of things that would make staying possible. And it was a pretty impressive list. He thought about a lot of things, including salary, benefits, packages hours of work depth of work, skill, things that were asked of him because he wants to be somebody that contributes. So he came up with this list and he said, well, if I get a job that fits within these parameters, I will stay. So he gave himself the potential of staying, but he also said, if I don't and I get another job somewhere else, then I will go. And it was not very long at all before he landed a job making more money. in a different location. And he called me, he's like, what do I do? Now we had decided what looking, what staying would look like. And this is not what staying would look like. This is what going would look like. I said, well, have you had a job offer that's been within the parameters of the, if I get it, I will stay. He said, no. I said, okay, then what are we going to do? And he said, well, I don't know. I just can't, I'm having a hard time imagining leaving. I looked at him, I said, it's not a permanent decision. There's nothing permanent about moving. You can always move back. In fact, what we ended up deciding was that he was going to go ahead and take this other job opportunity that's in a totally different location in a totally different state, on a six month trial basis, instead of saying, okay, this is the rest of my life and I'm moving, this is what it's going to be, no, we're going to go for six months and try it out. So instead of going from the city that he's in and moving across the country and buying something, selling his house and buying something new, he's going to rent for six months. We're going to feel it out and see how things go, because there are very few permanent decisions, but moving across the country feels pretty permanent. Thankfully, here in America, you can always move back. Still, a lot of times those feelings are, Oh, this is permanent, I can't do anything to change it. I have to take money out of the stock market, otherwise there's nothing else I can do. Things that are going to hurt you in the long term. can feel like permanent decisions. And so right now, if you are in the chaos, I want you to avoid those. And instead think of things that you can do on a temporary basis to fix. The problem, or at least to shore up the problem, just stave off some of the upset, some of the hard, take your time. And also when you're in the middle of chaos, actively work to avoid scams. They are coming, especially there, there've already been things posted Facebook groups in our local area. People have been creating fake GoFundMe accounts pretending to be somebody that's in need and they don't even live in the state or fake organizations that say that they're going to take your money and do good with them and then they don't. They just put money in their pocket instead. This is how older people get taken advantage of when they feel like they don't have any options and they do things like a reverse mortgage, which is not technically a scam. But if you look at the numbers, it's totally a scam. They get into situations where somebody calls and says you forgot to pay the IRS and you owe this money and you have to fax it over to me right now, or we're coming to put you in jail, or we're taking your kids to jail because they didn't pay the IRS. So you have to like, they're scams all the time. And when we get desperate, when we're in chaos, We get really dumb about these things, and even people that are skeptical people by nature can get taken advantage of if you're not paying attention. So while you're in the middle of chaos, you have to be extra cautious and extra thoughtful before you make any decisions, especially financially or career wise. You want to make sure that you are in the right frame of mind before you do anything that's going to affect your financial or career future. The one thing I keep reminding myself and my friends as we go through this, we can only control what we can control. And I wish I could control everybody else around me. I wish I could control the leaders and the decisions that they have made. And I can't. I can control my emotions. I can control my thoughts. I can control my actions. I can control how I choose to teach my children how to behave. You see, when you're in the middle of chaos, you have to control what you can control. The third person that I wanted to tell you about today is a fellow coach who is really struggling with his business. In fact, he's not only struggling with his business, he's struggling with his family life. Everything feels uncertain to him right now. He has had a family member move into his home that they are having to take care of because she can't take care of herself right now due to medical issues. And so he's essentially taken on a whole nother family because this person and their childhood moved into their house. And so he has a wife and a child, and then he has a sister in law and her child, and they're in his house and he now has to support twice the number of people. On top of that, he hates his job. Which is never fun for anybody. And he wants to make his financial coaching career take off. So I said, well, what are you willing to do? What are you willing to change? He just kept saying, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The one piece of advice that I gave him is that he has to take the next right step. So we've been through it, right? We've cried, we've grieved, we've focused on temporary solutions. We've avoided permanent decisions. We're watching out for scams and we're trying to control what we can control. So we have to take the next right step. And maybe that means talking with a spouse and making a really tough decision. In AB's case, that meant having to take on a second job and going from, okay, I finished one job and now I'm leaving work and going straight to my second job. That is terrible. And it sucks, but it's temporary. Sometimes it may mean having to ask the person that has moved into your home to find somewhere else to go. And sometimes it could possibly mean. Letting go of a dream of a second career for now. It's hard. None of these things are fun. When you're in chaos, it feels like there's only a rock in a hard place and there's no other options, but there's always another option. If you feel trapped, you were in a box and you, probably, nine times out of ten, you made that box. And you are the lid because you have decided it's a black or white issue. There's only left or right and I can't go anywhere else, but I'm telling you there's forward, backward, up and down. You can't avoid reality. Reality will always bat last and it's coming. You can put your head in the sand for a while. Trust me, I tried. And when I popped my head out to look around and I saw 372, 347 breathing down my neck and deciding what my life was going to look like, I decided to take control. There are things that I can control. And so I decided to. Chaos is part of life. Uncertainty is part of life. Control what you can control. Take the next right step and face it head on. My friends, you have the ability to take control of your life. Even in the midst of uncertainty, there are ways that you can control it so that you feel good. I want you to feel good about your money. I want you to feel good about your career. I want you to feel good about your life decisions in general. It means taking control, making some hard decisions. Very few decisions are permanent. Remember that. I hope that this finds you well. I hope that it finds you safe. And if you feel like you can't get through the uncertainty without finding somebody to talk to, walking through your budget together, figuring out your financial situation and what's best for you in the longterm, figuring out your career and how you can adjust that so you can live the life that you want to live. Let's jump on a call and have a conversation. I am always going to be here for you. I've been very blessed. I have not lost power. I have not lost internet. Of course, me saying that out loud is probably going to change, but I still have the ability to communicate with you and I would absolutely love the opportunity. So reach out. All you have to do is scroll down into the show notes, connect with me, go to my website, accelerateyourlegacy. com and book a clarity call where we will get you clear on the next right steps. Alright Accelerators, I'll talk to you soon. Go out and make a difference. thank you for spending time with us today on Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership. Remember, your legacy isn't just about financial freedom. It's about living with purpose, taking action, and building a foundation that lasts for generations. Don't just listen, implement what you've learned and share it with someone who could use a financial or career breakthrough. If you found value in today's episode, help us grow by rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you master your money and career. Until then take ownership of your future and build your legacy with intention.