Her Life's Work Started When Her Career Ended
Join Us On This Journey from Job, to Career, to Calling with Michele Molitor
This community of Gifted Professionals and Communicators features storytelling, essays, and profile features of individual members. Until now, most profiles are in the blog on our website. As this Substack has grown in the past three years, you’ve asked us to bring all writing and conversations from many platforms to your one Substack app. Here you go and please continue to share these stories with others who matter to you.
Nobody tells you this when you are 18, so dive into this story about Michele Molitor and see if it speaks to what you know already or may be experiencing now. Nobody tells you that you start with a job. It may be several or different jobs before you enter a career. That may be one profession or several career shifts, but that's not ever enough.
For many of us, somewhere around 30 or later, there is an awakening. It can be subtle and it can be soul-crushing horrible. This is how it feels: Something is not right about everything you know and have accomplished so far. Something is pulling hard on your mind to "find your way home; find your way to the people who need you; find your way to why you were born; find your calling."
That's it. After your career, if you are fortunate enough to pay attention to the universe and those voices in your head and gut, you find your calling. The transformation to get to the calling can feel like a walk through fire. It's not easy or fast. If you are not so fortunate to find your calling, you die without ever knowing the answer to the forever question: Who am I and why am I here?
Michele Has Walked Through the Fire and Now Guides Others
When we share the stories of our lives and professional practices, our stories never start with the giftedness part. People save that for last or don’t emphasize it at all. Our stories in the community of Gifted Professionals and Communicators start with why and how we became passionate about the profession we chose. Sometimes the calling found us. Often, the stories cover multiple professions and more than one college degree—perhaps multiple certifications instead of degrees.
The emphasis of our feature stories about the members of our community is on all three parts, at the same time and with the same intensity: Professional + communicator + gifted adult.
When you look at Michele's website, you notice two things right away. First, there is the ridiculously long list of credentials, and most of that all happened after she ended her career in technology and website development. The other thing you notice is the elegant simplicity and power of the whole website, and realize that may be her former career, but she still has the skill and wow as a first-class web builder.
I met Michele at a Robert Middleton seminar in San Francisco when she was leaving her career and full of questions about what comes next. That means we have stayed in touch for more than 23 years and every answer she gave to our interview questions is true. The formation of the community of gifted professionals and communicators happened in 2021. It was colleagues like Michele that came to mind first when we look at all of the professionals and communicators we've ever worked with and asked the linchpin question, "How many of them are gifted, too, and know it?"
I know Michele is more colorful, more complex, more energized than her website presents. She really does see 1000 dots at the same time and can connect the dots. She can think in seven layers while the others are all talking about focus. Come with me into her genius mind to see the story that makes her believable, even while dazzling.
Q: What have you always done with ease and grace? What comes to you naturally and seems to be magic or more difficult for others to do?
Michele: I discovered in my college years that I could draw, ultimately going back to art school and getting a degree in graphic design. This started my 10-year career as a graphic designer and creative director in web development. It’s when I started painting as well—from pencil drawings to watercolor to oil, pen and ink. I’ve also been “very sensitive” and learned that I’m an HSP – Highly Sensitive Person. In 2001 when I left my career to become a professional coach, I realized that this is my superpower. My high sensitivity and intuition guide my work with clients.
Q: When did you have the awakening that shifted you from career to calling?
Michele: Gifted is how you are born and that's how I was aware of my high sensitivity. I thought it was a weakness, a liability, when my brother teased me for being a ‘crybaby.’ My childhood experiences fueled my curiosity to understand what makes humans tick. Why some folks are super confident, and others are filled with self-doubt. After 10 years as a graphic designer/creative director, I got bullied out of my high-tech job. This led me to a career pivot to become a professional coach, clinical hypnotherapist, and in the coming years, a psychotherapist. I've gone back to graduate school for my master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2027.
I believe being pushed out of my tech career was the universe’s way of helping me discover the real work that my soul had intended for me. It was a lightning bolt intuitive moment of OHHH Yes, this. NOW. I trusted my gut and pivoted my career to becoming a coach just like that.
Q: Is this the walk through fire that you needed to do by yourself before you could own the story?
Michele: Realizing that change IS required, not someday, but right now, is yes, usually a solo undertaking. That said, having someone to guide you along the path of uncertainty to help you become aware of the fear blinders you’re wearing that are preventing you from seeing ALL of what’s available to you in life, all that you deserve and are worthy of receiving, is the role that I play now.
This is high-value guidance to have when you’re moving through tumultuous times in life, such as a career transition, the end of a relationship, or overcoming past traumas that have left scars on your nervous system and have filled you with self-doubt and some form of “I’m not enough” conversations.
Q: Do these big transformations or life quake transformations, as Bruce Feiler named them, take months or years?
Michele: I’ve found that it’s a lifelong pursuit – but then I’m a learning junkie about all things that make us thrive or just survive as humans. A colleague of mine once said to me,”New level – new Devil Michele!” meaning, just when we think we’ve sorted ourselves out and can see the sun shining again, another layer of healing bubbles up to the surface to be addressed and released.
Gifted Awareness
Q: Is this true for you? Because you are a deep thinker, highly intuitive, creative, analytical, and curious, you bring a particularly complex dimension to professional relationships.
Michele: Yes indeed. It’s what makes my Rapid Rewiring approach unique, and the creativity + intuition + curiosity that I bring to each of my clients to help them move beyond their blocks for greater joy and peace of mind. Rapid Rewiring is a mélange of neuroscience, coaching, somatic therapy, and mindfulness that helps clients overcome their deeply held traumas and limiting beliefs from their nervous system. It's about creating space for new empowering ways of seeing themselves, and moving through the world with greater confidence, clarity, and peace of mind.
Professionalism Emphasis
Q: Did you become a professional on purpose or did your career path open a door into the profession you identify with today?
Michele: I studied Psychology at the University of Florida, yet freaked out at the thought of having to get my master's (40 years ago) to get a “real job,” so I changed my major from psychology to advertising my senior year to access this creative rumbling I felt inside of me that needed to be expressed. I enjoyed my career as a graphic designer until I got bullied out of high-tech. This made me realize I didn’t have thick enough skin for corporate America and led to my career pivot in 2001. It’s curious and ironic that 40 years later, I was “instructed” —by my intuition to revisit getting my master’s degree. Right now was the time to enter grad school.
Communication Emphasis
Q: Which of your communication skills do you seem to work on constantly, always learning, always evolving?
Michele: I have spent the last 25 years intensely learning more about human nature, what makes us each unique, and fuels our fears and self-doubt. I love learning and growing, while un-layering myself of old beliefs that no longer serve me so that I can live more and more authentically each day. This gave me the understanding and empathy to help others do the same.
Living Authentically
Q: Living authentically has already lost meaning from overuse and abuse. Can you use your training, your experience with clients, and your stories to describe what that transformation to the authentic you looks like?
Michele: While I might have appeared confident on the outside, I was constantly filled with self-doubt, always trying to prove my value and worth in the world. There was an unconscious “Am I Ok?” “Do you approve?” that was running my actions in the world.
It took me a long time to undo those negative thought loops and behavior patterns, which have brought me to where I am today: Wholeheartedly confident in my abilities, yet always curious to learn more/new/better ways of seeing and thinking about things in life. This has empowered me to do the things I’ve done, become a master coach and clinical hypnotherapist, write the books and articles, and become a national speaker. All of that while working towards my master’s degree and license as a Marriage and Family Therapist.
None of that hi-tech version of myself would have ever dared to do.
Q: Is authentic a destination or condition? How do you know you are authentic?
Michele: Being authentic, I believe, is living in alignment with one’s soul purpose, your higher calling of how to share your unique gifts and talents in the world. As a graphic designer, I was using my talents and passions as an artist, but there was a piece of me that knew there was more to what I was seeking. Something that had deeper meaning and fulfillment for me.
This is what I found in coaching, and then in hypnotherapy and now in moving towards becoming a therapist. Because for me, helping others connect with that part of themselves while also letting go of past traumas so their real heart and purpose can shine through, is the priceless joy that I get to experience every day.
Words to live and laugh by
The power of quotes and rhetoric is part of a gifted person’s thinking. These are words Michele lives by and uses with clients to make clear what she teaches them.
Your greatest source of pain is often your greatest source of passion and purpose.
When you look fear in the face, it turns into the nothingness that it actually is.
Uncomfortable happens. Keep going.
Embrace your own imperfections as the distinctive attributes that make you, uniquely You.
We’re on a mission to feature stories about professionals who are initiating meaningful conversations with other gifted minds and storytellers—and who they serve.
If you’re curious about how sensitive, creative, intense, multi-potential, professional, ethical, expressive, and clear you are about your intentions, wants, and needs, check your GPC score.
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I listened to this piece at the grocery store and loved it. First time I've ever heard the concept of (paraphrasing) "you'll have jobs before you have a career." Absolutely right.
Advice for all ages, all situations:
"Uncomfortable happens. Keep going."
Breathe. Look up. Hold up your hand and call out, "Next!"