In this episode of The Flame, Bob Raynor sits down with his best friend, Dr. Stephen Stunder, a Licensed Professional Counselor, professor, and mental health advocate. Steve shares his insights on how our identities get tied to our jobs, the emotional challenges of losing a job, and why it’s crucial for men to take care of their mental health. They explore strategies for staying resilient during unemployment, the importance of seeking support, and how to navigate the tricky waters of burnout. It’s a heartfelt, candid discussion that offers both practical advice and deep reflections on mental well-being, especially for those in transition.
Listen Now:
Show Notes:
If your phone was on 2 % right now, what would you do? Plug it in, right? I mean, could you imagine if your phone died? What would you do? How could you live, right? But if your brain and your career and your life and your soul and your body is on 2%, what do you do? I would just keep going. Just keep on keeping on, right? Just push through.
Push through is one of the most dangerous statements I’ve ever heard as a mental health professional because I will tell you do not push through. It is not a good idea. When you get to the stage when you have to start thinking about pushing through, especially in your professional life, that might be a time when you wanna reevaluate what your professional priorities are.
~ Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Key Takeaways:
- Job Loss as Identity Crisis: Steve discusses how deeply our identities are tied to our work and what happens when that foundation is shaken.
- The Importance of Grieving Job Loss: Strategies for grieving the loss of a job, similar to grieving any major life change.
- Self-Care and Burnout Prevention: Why “pushing through” can be harmful, and how to pay attention to early signs of burnout.
- Mental Health Awareness for Men: Candid advice on breaking the stigma of seeking help and recognizing when to reach out for support.
Episode Links:
- Connect with Dr. Stephen Stunder on LinkedIn
- Check out Steve’s podcast Pay Attention
Episode 5 Transcript:
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
If your phone was on 2 % right now, what would you do? Plug it in, right? I mean, could you imagine if your phone died? What would you do? How could you live, right? But if your brain and your career and your life and your soul and your body is on 2%, what do you do? I would just keep going. Just keep on keeping on, right? Just push through. Push through is one of the most dangerous statements I’ve ever heard as a mental health professional because I will tell you to do not push through. It is not a good idea. When you get to the stage when you have to start thinking about pushing through, especially in your professional life, that might be a time when you wanna reevaluate what your professional priorities are.
Bob Raynor
Good morning, Steve. How’s it going? I’m doing good. I’m doing good. I can’t believe we actually managed to fit this in today. Like the busiest person I know.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Good morning, Bob. It’s going. How are you?
Bob Raynor
I’m doing good. I’m doing good. I can’t believe we actually managed to fit this in today. You’re like the busiest person I know.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah, I mean, we’re trying to get things done before the holidays, because as we all know, once we hit Thursday, it’s like shutdown mode for the next, six weeks of life? And then all of a sudden, it hits January, and it’s like, whoa, we got to start working again.
Bob Raynor
Yeah. Right. Right. You’re like, I have time tomorrow or I have time in February. That’s it.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Well, you know, life is busy, but it’s good busy.
Bob Raynor
Yeah, it is good. It is good. But I appreciate you taking a few minutes to jump on. I mean, look, I’ve known you my whole life. But for listeners, why don’t you take a minute and tell us a little bit about you.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Sure. So my name is Dr. Steve Stunder. I was a professor at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. Now I run two programs, one for neurodivergent college students seeking degrees. And we are creating another program for adults for vocational life skills and family system supports starting in January of 2026, which is really exciting. We’re really trying to create a destination here at Chestnut Hill College for the neurodiverse community. But I’ve also worked for the last 20 or so years in a variety of spaces. And I’ll talk a little bit about them today because I’ve lived a lot of professional lives. I’ve been a therapist for the last 20 something years, working with a lot of different populations. I’ve worked in human services. I’ve run programs. was a director of counseling for a long time at a high school.
So I’ve done a lot of different types of things and I’ve talked to a lot of people about kind of the roles that they play in life. And that’s a little bit of the conversation that we’re gonna have today. And I think that it’s an important aspect of what it is we’re trying to do because your job is a big part of your identity as a person. So we’re gonna chat a little bit about how to work through a little bit of identity crisis when you don’t have a job or you lose a job or you’re trying to figure out what direction your career is going in because it can be challenging for your mental health and your kind of, I’m gonna call your professional health.
Bob Raynor
Yeah. And it’s great that you say that. because, I mean, this is…
I mean, this is going to be an important episode to me. Not only do I get to interview my best friend on the podcast, but it’s November and we know that November gets a lot of press for being men’s health month. Maybe not so much men’s mental health month, more of the physical. But it’s an important time because we know that a lot of people struggle during the holidays. Right. And I know firsthand about how being out of work can impact a person’s mental health.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah.
Bob Raynor
And like you said, their feeling of self-worth. And I mentioned that in my first episode how I found support through therapy. And it was being out of a job and having those feelings that kind of pushed me towards that. So, I just wanted to know from your experience if you can talk about some of those common themes that you’re seeing when people are looking for a new job and how that has impacted their mental.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
I think one of the struggles is that we identify so much with what we do as a job. And for a lot of people, it’s a source of pride. Not only maybe if you’re doing something you really enjoy, right? I’m a teacher, I’m a plumber, whatever it is that I do, maybe I really enjoy it, and that’s a source of joy for me. But it’s also the kind of innate feeling of being able to provide, right?
And the idea that if you have a family or you have people or loved ones that are depending on you, you wanna be able to provide for them, especially going into holiday time. If you have children, and we all know, life just costs so much, right? And it’s outrageous how much life costs, right, for yourself. And let alone if you have a family of children and they want things and need things and you wanna be able to provide for them. So if you’re in a situation where you’re out of work, it’s a…
Bob Raynor
Crazy.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Number one, it’s stressful because when you tell people you’re out of work, they almost give you this look like, like, what are you doing wrong? And I think that there’s this culture of if you don’t have a job, you’re like messing up in some way or you’ve done something wrong because, you know, there are a lot of people who don’t have jobs right now and they’re looking for jobs. And we don’t know the actual statistics on how many jobs there are and how many people are looking for jobs.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
But the fact that there is something called the unemployment rate leads us to believe that there are less jobs than there are people looking for them. So, you when you’re looking for a job and you can’t find one, it’s stressful. Especially because you keep putting yourself out there, right? And we have a resume, right? And a resume is just like a list of our personal accomplishments. And we hand a resume or we send a resume to a person and they look at it and they’re basically judging the work that you’ve done.
And when they come back to you and they say, I’m sorry, we’re gonna go in a different direction, it hurts. It’s a hit to the ego. It’s a hit to your professional skills and you start to think, well, what’s wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? And as somebody who’s hired people for a really long time, most of the time, it’s not about that person. It’s about what we’re looking for. But the person who didn’t get the job doesn’t wanna hear that.
You know, you get on the phone or you get an email or whatever and you say, you get that really impersonal three line email. And maybe there are good things that you’re doing, but it may not be a fit for that job. But nobody wants to hear that when they’re looking for a job, because that desperation starts to kick in a little bit. Whereas you don’t get a job and then you think, okay, well, it’s going to be another, because if somebody calls me tomorrow and says they want an interview, then that’s not going to be scheduled for another week or another week. And then like in your mind, you are kind of extrapolating out how long that’s going to take. And then that’s four more weeks of no paycheck, for example. And that’s incredible.
Bob Raynor
Right. Right.
So are there strategies that you’ve learned or even taught over time about how you can deal with the struggles of that self-worth? I know I’ve experienced it. Like you said, you get the emails or you don’t get anything. You don’t hear anything, right? Like you have a conversation, you have a great conversation, you have a great interview, and then you don’t hear, right, you don’t hear anything. So that compounds that feeling of self-worth and you kind of have to separate yourself from that, but what’s the strategy there?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Right. Which is sometimes worse. I think the biggest thing, and this is a hard one because you say this to people, and I’ve said it to people as a therapist, and I get the eye roll, right? Work on yourself. Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear work on yourself when you can’t get a job or you break up with somebody or you’re moving on from any type of loss, right? Because when you lose your job, it’s a loss that you have to grieve. It’s part of your everyday life. Think about if you’re going to the office every day and you’re seeing people and they’re part of your everyday life.
And then all of a sudden they’re not. Like that’s a loss that you have to grieve appropriately. And most people don’t because everybody associates grief with death and that’s it. But we don’t associate grief with any other type of loss in life and losing a job or getting laid off from a job is an absolute loss that you have to grieve. You gotta process it. So strategy number one I think is you gotta grieve that loss. You gotta grieve the loss of not just the income but the experience.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
And the friendships, right? Like maybe there’s people that you’re friends with at your job that you hang out with or you see every single day, and then one day you’re not seeing them every day, and then it’s awkward, because like, do I talk to them? Do I reach out to those people? Is it weird? And these are all the thoughts that people start to have. And the idea of working on yourself is not just, you you work on your mental health obviously, and you talked a lot about in your other episodes about how therapy is a place that you found a little bit of solace in this period, right? And one of the big misnomers I think people have about therapy is that we assume that things have to be at rock bottom before we go to work on ourselves. Sometimes we have to work on ourselves at times when things are like okay, right? So that when something does happen like a catastrophic thing like you lose your job, you’re not dealing with those compounding feelings on top of that. And the other thing is skills.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Right? Like, I’m going to give you credit. I know that in this time, this period of time that you’ve been out of work, you’ve acquired a new skill, which is hosting a podcast. And I think that sometimes people get so fixated on, I do this job, and if I cannot find this job, I cannot find any job. And sometimes it’s that interim step that leads to other things.
I’ve definitely gone through periods of my career where I’ve been out of work here and there and you just pick up something. You keep it going because to go from not working to working, just cold turkey, right? Like let’s say you’re out of work six months and you’re kind of just hanging around not really doing anything and all of a sudden it’s like you get a call, you get a job and you gotta be at the office 9 a.m. the next morning. That’s big jump. So you wanna kind of keep things moving during the period where you’re out of work, because you want to keep yourself sharp.
Bob Raynor
Right, I think a lot of people feel pressure right? I mean, it’s not only are you you’re struggling with the kind of the letdown of being out of work, but then there’s that that pressure that you feel like you have to immediately find your next role or immediately find you know for me it was Immediately thinking that I have to find my next thing. I have to do my next thing I have to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. So, like how do you advise people to deal with that kind of thing>
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Well, I think focusing on the present is so important, you know, because the reality is if you lose a job today, just the logistics of it are you’re not going to find another one. Two weeks, four weeks, like that’s that would be really fast because you just got to think about the natural flow of life, right? You know, you send out resumes, you get emails, you schedule meetings, they got to talk to somebody who’s got to talk to somebody who’s got to talk to somebody. So like minute one, you’re out of work.
That’s like a four-to-six-week lag time. So, what I try to tell people is, think about your life in four to six week chunks. What am I doing for the next four to six weeks? I will not have a job tomorrow. And that is incredibly stressful. But you have to think about life in those chunks. Because that’s gonna help you make a plan. It’s hard to make a plan in the moment, right? You get the meeting, or you get the email, or you get the phone call that you’re no longer with the company.
And that initial shock is, how am I going to buy food tomorrow? Or what am I going to do two weeks from now when my kids need something? All that starts running through your head. And I think you give yourself a couple days to kind of roll with it, because you’re going to go through a series of emotions for that first few days. But once you get past that couple days or a week, really start to think about what your next four to six weeks look like. What am I going to do? What’s my plan?
The other thing is that people, I think, really don’t think about how much of a job it is to find a job. Like, it is, you gotta put in the hours, you gotta crisp up your resume. You gotta, not just, and I think this whole idea of just applying for any job and throwing resumes everywhere may not be the best strategy. You wanna do a little research.
You wanna find things that are a good fit. And it’s interesting because I’ve applied for jobs at all different points in my career. I’ve applied being very under-qualified for something, and I’ve applied being over-qualified. So you go into a field, right, and you don’t have any experience, and you’re applying for jobs, and you’re almost too young to recognize these people aren’t gonna hire me. And you’re kinda just playing a dart game. And then you get to the point where we are, probably, in our lives, where we’re like…
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
20 or so years into this thing and we have lots of experience and all this other kind of stuff and you start sending things out and you’re like, why am I not hearing from anybody? And you start to, so that’s strategy of giving yourself, again, and then reevaluate. How many jobs did I apply for? Like, gather some data. I’m an academic now, gather data. How many jobs did I apply for?
How many responses did I get? What kind of jobs am I applying for? And what kind of traction am I getting? And I might be applying for jobs in one space as opposed to another, and I’m not getting any activity over here, but I got an email or two over here in this space. Maybe I should focus on that. You gotta have a strategy. can’t just, the whole idea of just throwing it all against the wall and seeing what sticks doesn’t really work anymore with jobs. Companies are so focused on specific things anymore it seems. That if you don’t have a specific thing, they’re not going to hire you, and that’s okay. I think that part of the issue is that we get so caught up in, if I don’t get this job, I did something wrong. And a lot of times it’s really not about you.
Bob Raynor
All right, yeah, there’s a lot of planning that goes into it. I’ve hired people before. I’ve been told I can, yes, you’re ready. You can hire this designer. You can hire this person. And then I go through several interviews and then they’re like, we’re not gonna, we’re gonna shut it down until the end of the year or things have changed or just pump the brakes a little bit. That happens all the time. But I think it’s a good advice to take in that data, figure out where it is that you’re applying. And I think it helps you understand, you know, like, all right, if I’m gonna if I’m applying to Google or some big company, chances are it’s going to take a long, longer to hear back from them than, you know, some other some other company, right?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah, and I think too, you know, I’ve worked in a variety of different fields, right? I’ve done education and counseling and human services and sometimes, you know, different things are looking for different things. And maybe I’ve focused all my energy on applying in this space and I got nothing, but then I applied for, you know, three education jobs and I got two phone calls or emails. So maybe I focus over there. And you also got to think about what your goal is. Is your goal just to get a paycheck as soon as possible? Because if it is, then maybe you go in a completely different direction and just find some sort of interim job that will simply give you a paycheck. Are you looking for a career? Because it’s harder to find that. If I was out of work tomorrow and I needed a paycheck, you could apply to a job anywhere.
I’ll share a quick personal story. I was out of work for a period of time and I applied for a job at the post office just to find something that could start getting me a paycheck.
Bob Raynor
funny one of my one of my other guests talked about you know, maybe I’ll be a post postman just to kind of get out there and do some walking in and buy me time before my next thing. That’s so funny.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah. I literally had the same thought. I was like, maybe it’s just like get outside and do something. And again, my goal in that moment was not I need to find my next career move. My goal was simply I need to start getting a paycheck as soon as possible. And you gotta think about what your goals are because if you don’t know what your goal is, and this goes for anything, right? If you don’t know what your goal is, you’re never gonna reach it.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Which is I think there’s so many people that get trapped in I need a job, I need a job, I need a job tomorrow and don’t think about, like it’s a very short-sighted thought. And again, short-sighted thoughts are what we do when we’ve experienced some sort of traumatic situation. And again, I will say losing your job is a traumatic situation. Or being laid off is, I would argue in some cases being laid off is more traumatic because you didn’t do anything. Like if you are terminated from a job,
One would think that there has been some sort of situation in which led to that, But if you get laid off, like a decision could be made 5,000 miles from here and you lose your job tomorrow and you’re like, what did I do? So there’s that added layer of not only do I now need to find a job, but I’m not even sure what I did to be in this situation and you keep asking yourself that question, which can be frustrating.
Bob Raynor
Yeah. Yeah. It totally is. And I think you described my situation perfectly when that when it happened to me because it was it was blindsiding. You know, you, you talked about, well, I should take the opportunity to plug your podcast because you’ve got one called Pay Attention, which is doing great. You’ve been doing it for how long a year now? Two years?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
It’s, on a little bit of a hiatus right now because I’ve had some other projects that are taking my attention. But yeah, I started it, I’d say maybe actually three years ago now. And I kind of started it as a little bit of a therapeutic release for myself. And I kind of thought to myself, it’s, do people have 12 to 15 minutes a day for, or a week for some sort of reflection?
Bob Raynor
Okay.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
You know, sometimes, you when I’m listening to a podcast, again, it all depends on what I’m looking for. If I’m going for a walk, I might want something that’s an hour, hour and 15 minutes. If I’m just in the car going somewhere, maybe I want something that’s 10 minutes long, kind of give me some thoughts for the day. I thought to myself, people have 10 to 15 minutes a day or a week to listen to something. And it’s really just a variety of topics to get people thinking about stuff. And it’s funny because I actually did an episode called, is your job who you are?
And the idea of job identity and the idea that at the end of the day, you love what you do and of course you’re gonna be good at what you do and you’re gonna put all of your maximum effort into it, but at the end of the day, it is just a job. And you have all these other roles you have to play in your life. You have to be a parent and a sibling and a friend and a mentor and all these different types of things. So if you’re ranking all that stuff, you wanna think about where does your job rank in that?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Is who you are in your professional life up here. And that’s okay if it is. But remember that if your professional identity is number one and that professional identity is gone or changes, what effect does that have on all of these other roles in your life? What is effective to have on you as a parent and as a partner and as a sibling and as a member of a family or community or whatever the case may be. You gotta think about the lasting effects on
Bob Raynor
Right.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
all of those.
Bob Raynor
Right. And we talk, obviously this show is geared towards people that are out of work, but I think when you came out with that episode, I remember it was a time in my life where I was feeling kind of like I didn’t even want to be at that. The people are at different stages. You don’t have to be out of work to be experiencing trauma or burnout. And you’ve mentioned burnout in some of your published work. So how does that affect people’s perceptions of their job? How they should be mindful of taking care of themselves when they’re experiencing that?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
No. I mean, self-care is so incredibly critical, especially as we get older. I think that when we’re young, we almost don’t know what we don’t know, and we just keep, keep going. I I use this example with my students and even my kids all the time. If your phone was on 2 % right now, what would you do? Plug it in, right? I mean, could you imagine if your phone died? What would you do? How could you live, right? But if your brain…
Bob Raynor
plug it in. Yeah.
Right? Right. Existential crisis.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
and your career and your life and your soul and your body is on 2%, what do you do? I would just keep going. Just keep on keeping on, right? Just push through. Push through is one of the most dangerous statements I’ve ever heard as a mental health professional because I will tell you to do not push through. It is not a good idea. When you get to the stage when you have to start thinking about pushing through, especially in your professional life, that might be a time when you wanna reevaluate what your professional priorities are. You wanna start thinking about what is it that you’re doing? Do you like it? If you don’t like it, it’s okay. Sometimes a job is just a job, and we go to a job, and maybe we don’t love being there, but we can do it, and it pays the bills, and it sustains life.
But if you get to a point in your career, and it’s kind of like where again, people roughly our age get to, where we can start thinking about, okay, I’ve been doing this for a while now, I could be a little choosier about what I do. Or I have enough experience that maybe I can start getting some of these jobs that I just thought about when I was in my 20s. And the idea that, again, you said it, you don’t have to be out of work to start experiencing these early signs of burnout. And you mentioned it, you’re like, I don’t wanna be here.
And once you start having the thought of, don’t want to be here, it does affect your work. And if you have a job, I I work in a helping profession. So if I’m burned out, what good am I to other people? You know, like who am I helping if I’m not okay? Right? It’s that whole thing where plane’s going down, you got to put your mask on first before you help somebody else. You have to take care of yourself. And taking care of yourself doesn’t just mean nutrition and sleep. Those are important. But taking care of yourself also means
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
taking some inventory of how am I at this job? And if you start to see a period of time start to compact together where you’re just not okay doing what you’re doing, you wanna start evaluating that. Now, again, that doesn’t mean walking to your job tomorrow that you’re unhappy with and be like, all right, I’m outta here. Because obviously you need to sustain between. But if you have the opportunity to take a look around, because sometimes…
The most professional thing you can do is recognizing I’m not any good at this job right now. And if you find a different position to move on to, it’s almost like you’re doing double work because you’re gonna be in a position that you enjoy and do a good job here, but then you’re also not in this job over here that you’re super burned out at and you’re not doing a good job because ultimately burnout’s gonna create, like you have to think about your brand.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Everything you do represents you. And if you’re doing a job for a year that you’re burned out and tired and you don’t like, that’s a reflection of the work and who you are as a professional. So like people you work with are gonna be like, yeah, you know, I worked with Steve for however long and man, he was just, he didn’t do a great job. You know what I mean? And part of that is what are you exuding? So the sooner you recognize, I don’t know if this is the right fit for me. And then I am burned out doing this.
You have to evaluate maybe making a move and it’s not about leaving your previous job in the lurch. It’s about putting yourself in a better situation and putting your employer in a better situation too because maybe somebody will go into that position who’s not burned out. And then two jobs are getting done well instead of one job not getting
Bob Raynor
And I think it’s, like you said, the name of your podcast is Pay Attention, which I think is, it struck a chord with me when it first came out because it’s like, how often do we actually pay attention to our own needs and have that self-awareness? And for me, it wasn’t until I was forced to go through that where I was like, shit, what’s going on? I haven’t even thought about this because you’re like going through life, right? You’re at your job, you’re trying to keep going.
And then you almost don’t confront it until you’re forced with it. And it’s like anything else, it takes practice. So what do you tell people that are just, you know, they don’t have that self-awareness or they feel like, can’t, I don’t know how to do that. Like it seems foreign to me to actually think about myself.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
And I think a lot of times we think that thinking about ourselves is selfish, right? And again, not to shamelessly plug another episode, but why not? I have another one that’s called self-care is not selfish. And again, to an extent, making sure, we wanna be the best version of ourselves for all the people in our lives. And we wanna be the best version of ourselves for our job, but we also wanna be the best version of ourselves for all the people in our lives that are most important.
And if we’re unhappy and burnout and beat up at our job, where do we go after our job? We go home. And then the people that we are around when we are home, they see that version of us. We’ve all experienced that. I think if you say that you’ve never been burnt out at your job and then gone home and not been the best version of yourself, you haven’t been the best partner, you haven’t been the best parent, you’re a liar. We’ve all done it. But
The most important piece of that is the recognition of how do you stop doing that? Or how do you change that behavior? How to break that cycle? And it’s hard because you mentioned it a second ago. We get into routines. We go to work, we come home, we go to work, come home. And then when something gets thrown into that routine, it breaks it up like, okay, now I don’t go to work because I don’t have a job. It really throws a monkey wrench not just into your routine, but into the routine of everyone around you.
So not having the self-awareness to recognize that the way you are has an effect on other people is a really important step. Because I think once we are cognizant of the fact that our behavior affects other people, people seem, for the most part, to be more inclined to adjust their behavior. When it’s like, my god, my behavior is affecting my partner or my kids. I need to go in a different direction with this. Because a of times I think we just think that we’re in a little bubble.
And the way we feel and the way we look and the way we act just affects us. And that is not true. Our how we feel affects everybody around us. So I think that if we take care of ourselves and self care, it comes in many shapes and sizes. And again, we have to be strategic about how we utilize self care. And we can’t just say if we’re doing something, it’s self care. The idea that self care means that there’s some sort of outcome on the other end.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
That’s positive, right? I’m gonna start exercising every day because the outcome is that I’ll be healthier and I’ll live longer and I’ll be in a better mood and it’ll be good for everybody in my life. Like there needs to be some sort of like dotted line to some sort of goal. You know, I’m gonna go hang out with my friends because I need to make some personal connections because I’ve been so busy working that I haven’t had a chance to like be around people and things of that nature. So, you know, make a self-care list. Pick four or five things that you think are gonna be helpful to you and really try to develop some strategies for yourself because self-care comes in all different shapes and
Bob Raynor
Yeah, I love that advice and it worked for me. I think just make a simple list. Doesn’t matter what’s on it. Make a list, start to try to recognize the things that you need to accomplish, even if it’s small goals, and all the way up to the big personal goals, right?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
There’s something about writing stuff down physically that I think works. Human beings, we like to accomplish stuff. And if you literally take a piece of paper and write down five things and cross them out, that is a sense of accomplishment. And I think that if you are able to identify, it also forces you to identify concrete tasks. So it’s like, all right, I need to find a job. And then I think sometimes people just sit down and go online and just aimlessly start looking for jobs. And then they go, I can’t find a job. And while that’s obviously the computer is a tool to be able to find a job someday, you have to know where to go. It’s kind of like if you take an open book test, people are like, my God, I can take a test and it’s open notes. Well, if you don’t know where anything is in your notebook and you don’t know where anything is in the book, the book is useless. So if you don’t know where anything is online, it’s gonna be useless to you. So you gotta sit down for a second and make a list. What kind of job am I looking for? Where am I looking for a job? Like I work in higher education, right? I work at a college. If I’m looking for jobs at a college, I’m not just gonna Google college jobs. You know what I mean? Like I’m gonna identify, like what size college do I wanna work at? What location do I wanna work at? Do I wanna work at a place that’s mission based? Do I wanna work at a place that’s scientific? Whatever the case may be. I gotta find my space.
And I think that one of the biggest mistakes we make is that we just go aimless and we have no real direction. So you gotta set goals for yourself and simply put, make a list of what those goals are.
Bob Raynor
Yeah, I think it’s the reason why we have personal trainers in the gym. A lot of people, they go to the gym and they’re like, I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea how to use this machine. I don’t know how many reps to do and all this. And it’s why you have teachers and physical therapists and trainers and that kind of stuff. And it’s also a reason why we have therapists, right? And so just to kind of get a little real with you right now, we’re both in our early 40s. We’re both fathers, you know, and why is it important for men, not just of our age, but of any age to recognize these things and to maybe seek help or support through therapy. And why is that so hard for us?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
I don’t agree with this notion, but I think that we can agree that society, and I think it’s a little bit less now, but I think society pushes men to be tough. And again, going back to that whole push through aspect. And at the end of the day, we’re all humans who experience emotions and feelings and struggles, whether you’re male or female, or you identify in whatever way you identify.
We’re all human beings with human emotions and human feelings. So to say that a certain group of people should not be open and honest about those feelings is incorrect because we’re experiencing life just like everybody else is and we’re experiencing challenges just like everybody else is. And again, it goes back to something I said a little while ago. I think people believe that they don’t need to go to therapy until things are absolutely terrible.
Now, most people who come to therapy, it’s like rock bottom or like right above rock bottom. Okay, and we’ve gotten to like almost rock bottom and we’re like, okay, like we can see it or you’re at rock bottom. Most people don’t go to therapy when things are going just okay. I used to work at a school and I used to talk to students all the time. I talk to students all the time now. And we talk about grades, right? And most people don’t think they need any kind of academic support until they’re failing a course.
I tell people all the time, you know what kind of student you are. If you’re an A student and you start getting C’s, that’s the point when maybe you should step in and be like, something’s off here. The first, maybe the second sign that things are going a little bit sideways is when you wanna start seeking some help. When you get all the way to rock bottom, anytime you go get help is a good time. I don’t wanna not encourage people to not get help at any point of this journey, but maybe just kind of starting to recognize a little bit sooner. Once routines start to change, once things that you did that brought you joy and excitement just don’t anymore. When you start to hear people in your life give you honest feedback, because it’s so easy for us to say, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever, I’ve done it. Where people are like, hey man, it doesn’t seem like you’re doing okay, I’m like, I’m fine. That’s everybody’s excuse, I’m fine, I’m okay, right?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
But you know when you’re not. You can tell people that you’re okay, but we do all have almost that kind of default setting where we recognize when we’re not okay. And in those moments, those are the moments when we should figure out a way to reach out. And it doesn’t have to be, and the other thing is I think people have a very different view of what therapy actually is than what we see on TV. You see somebody comes into an office, lay down on a couch and they tell you everything about everything that’s happened in their life. Sometimes therapy is just a conversation. We guide. It’s kind like we’re in the car and you’re driving and we’re gonna go back to like the mid 2000s because now we have GPS and we don’t need the person in the passenger seat to tell us where we’re going. You remember when we used to print out MapQuest directions, right? And we’d sitting in the passenger seat, right? And it’s like, have we gone 0.9 miles yet? Right?
Bob Raynor
Yep. Right. Dude, you missed that exit….
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
So the person’s driving the car. Right, yeah. The person’s driving the car, and I’m telling you where to go. And you can listen to the directions I have in my hands or not. But you’re driving the car. You have your hands on the wheel. Like, I can’t stop you from going in a certain direction. But I can tell you the way that you could go that would be the path of least resistance. And just to have another person who isn’t
Because we go to our friends, right? We go to our friends all the time for stuff. Deal with something, you you run it by your friend, but innately, your friend’s kind of on your side, right? Like we try to be casual observers in our friends’ lives, but like if somebody says, somebody did you wrong, right? Your friend is gonna be like, yo man, that’s not okay, right? Because there’s an emotional connection. Going to an objective person who has no skin in the game, really, right? Like who is not somebody that has any sort of personal investment in your journey, right? To guide you in a direction I think is important because what other motivation would they have other than for you to accomplish a goal that you’re looking to accomplish? So, you I think sometimes you just need that objective third party to be able to point out things. It’s kind of like when you write a paper and you think it’s brilliant because you wrote it.
And then you hand it to somebody else and they see things you didn’t see because those thoughts came out of your head. Right? And it’s not about, I’m not trying to criticize your punctuation because I’m upset with you. I want this to be the best version of your work. So when I meet with somebody, and again, I’m very direct when I do therapy because I don’t think it benefits anybody to not tell them the truth in a therapeutic situation because what are we doing if that’s not the case?
And sometimes that is not a pleasant experience for people. I think that’s a lot of the reason too why people don’t go to therapy. I mean, think about it. It’s uncomfortable, right? Like you go to a place and you tell somebody things that maybe you don’t tell other people that are very uncomfortable to you. And then that person is going to, not in a negative way, pass some sort of judgment on it, right? And when we say the word judgment, we always think it’s right?
Bob Raynor
They don’t want to hear the truth. Yeah.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
If you run a situation by me and I tell you what I think, that’s judgment of some kind. It doesn’t have to be negative, it’s just you’re sharing something with me and I’m processing it, I’m giving it back to you from my purview, and people view that as judgment. And I think that’s a lot of the reason too why people, especially males, avoid therapy. Because we don’t want to be told what we might be doing. I don’t want to say wrong.
Bob Raynor
I mean, I can tell you from my experience, probably, I’d thought about going long before I actually made the leap. But my rationale was always, what the hell do I have to worry about? Are my problems really that bad? You watch the news for 10 seconds and you’re like, dude, my life’s pretty good. Why am I upset about this? I don’t have problems, right? Is it a real problem?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Right. People say that all the time. Right. People say all the time that they think, they think, why am I here? Somebody whose life is worse should be sitting here and what I’m talking about is not that big a deal. Well, if everybody thought that, nobody would go to therapy ever. Right? Let me just tell the audience, whatever your problems are, somebody’s problems are worse. And it’s how we define problems.
Everybody’s problems are different. And if your problem is you’re out of work and you are gonna go to a therapist to talk to them about being out of work, that’s gonna help you. Don’t worry about everybody else’s problems because worrying about everybody else’s problems is gonna keep you from getting help. Because of course, there’s always gonna be somebody whose problem is bigger or worse than you. I mean, as a therapist who’s worked with, know, when I would see clients, I’d see
I don’t know, in my heyday, six, seven, eight clients a day. Think about the variety and differences in the issues that all of those people were dealing with. Some of them are up here, some of them are down here, but that’s also how I’m defining it. Everybody defines problem, crisis, issue differently. And you have to approach every single one of them like this is the biggest thing that’s going on in this person’s life right now. Because as a client, what you don’t realize is that 45 minutes from now, I’m dealing with a different person with a different issue that is bigger or smaller or more medium than the issue that you were dealing with. And I have to give them the same amount of attention I gave you.
Bob Raynor
You’re not keeping score. I think people don’t… I think people fail to realize that like when you go to see your therapist, they’re not keeping score. They’re not saying, you know what, this guy’s problems aren’t that big. I’m not gonna, you know, whatever help in it, you know, all my attention into it.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
No. Right. Right. And again, whether you’re, I even hesitate to use the term big problem, small problem, because again, it’s not up to me, to the therapist to determine if a problem is big or small. You share an issue and we utilize strategies to work through that issue, whatever it is. And if the person who I saw right before you is a gabillionaire, and you come in and you say, well, I lost my job and I’m trying to find a different one. mean, the billionaires problems. And you might look at that person and be like, well, what problems does that person have? You know, I’m out of work and I can’t support my family and this person has all the money in the world. What are their issues? The real secret is all of our issues are the same. They really are. Regardless of who you are, working, not working, rich, poor, we all have the same problem.
And I think the issue is that we’re not very open about it. Like if we were all wearing a sign that said what our problem was, I could look over there and be like, my God, that person’s unemployed too. It’s not just me. If you see a person walking down the street with two broken legs in a wheelchair, you’re, that whatever happened to that person must have been so traumatic. Look how strong they are. They got out of bed, they’re wheeling their wheelchair down the road, they’re out in the world, they’re so strong. And then you see a person walking down the other side of the street who has severe mental health issues and you’re like, why can’t that person get it together? What’s the matter with that person? They look fine. I’m gonna share a secret with us also. Everybody looks fine. All of us.
Think about it. Walk around, walk around Earth today. Go get a coffee, drop your kids off at school, go to an event, look around and tell me the people that don’t look fine. We all look fine. But it’s how we feel. And especially, you know, to kind of take it back to the theme of the conversation we’re having, right? Like, we look fine until we’re not.
Bob Raynor
I think the other thing people don’t realize about therapy is that it can be very uplifting as well. I think the biggest thing that surprised me about going and having a conversation with somebody that I don’t really know is how they are learning, basically learning you, and then not only do they help guide you in some of the questions or issues that you may have, but they reflect all of the good things.
Remind you of all of the good things that you’re doing in ways and it’s almost that’s almost more empowering I got more motivation out of that then them being like, you know, here’s how you fix solve, whatever. Here’s some advice on how to solve this thing, right? It’s not always about solving the problem. It’s about recognizing the good in your life that you’re
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Well, I think too, you know, if somebody, lot of times people come to therapy and they want us to solve their problems for them, and that’s not really what therapists do. Like if you came, you know, again, going back to what we’re talking about, you came into therapy and you’re talking about how you lost a job or whatever the case may be, I’m not gonna sit with you and apply for jobs with you, but I’m gonna push, right? Like, all right, bust out the laptop and let’s fire up the resume, right? No, I’m gonna provide you with ways to feel better about yourself and your journey so that you’re in a position and a head space for you to be able to apply for jobs and go to interviews and be able to reflect the best version of yourself. Like that’s what therapy’s for. It’s not about the actual task of finding a job. It’s about putting you in the best position to represent yourself in the best possible way. I think that part of what we end up doing is we also forget all the good things.
You if I asked you to make a list of the 20 most negative things about yourself, I mean, you’d keep going. But then you ask somebody to say something good about it. I do this in therapy all the time. Tell me two things about yourself that you like. And people look at me like I’m crazy. Because finding those things is hard. And also too, because I think a lot of times we’re taught not to talk about good things about ourselves for reasons that are unclear. That’s okay. I’m gonna go back to the list thing. We all have a phone with a notes tab in it.
Bob Raynor
And I did, yep.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
So write down things in your phone that you like about yourself and you think are good about yourself and how you identify and figure out what you feel about those different roles that you play in your life. That’s also gonna help you in your therapeutic journey too because it’s gonna help you see where your priorities are. And you can’t just say things like, I wanna find a job. That’s terribly vague. I wanna be a better parent. Okay, but what’s the definition of that? I wanna find a job. All right, doing what?
Where, how, making how much, right? I wanna be a better parent. In what way? know, you have to, therapy’s about defining things and being specific. I drive clients crazy because I say all the time, define that for me. What does that mean? Because I don’t know what kind of parent you are.
Bob Raynor
Right.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
And then we can get this interplay of trying to figure out, because a lot of therapy too is about kind of substituting reactions to things. A lot of times people come in and be like, you know, I was at work, my boss said this, and I got upset and I said this, and then it led to this whole problem and it’s like, okay, pause. Let’s substitute reactions. How could you have reacted to that situation different?
Right? And then people start to see that there’s more than one way to react to something. And then you start to point out, okay, there’s more than one way to react to this. So there’s more than one way to react to the traumatic event, which is, I lost my job, for example. And then it gives us an opportunity to figure out, again, from that objective third party way, like you said, pointing out things that people did not think of. And oftentimes I’ll hear people say in therapy, I never thought about it.
If as a therapist you hear, never thought about it that way, you accomplish something. And the goal is not to do it for the person. Okay, so once a person says that, then you say, so now take that and do that and then come back to me and let’s talk about how that went. The other thing is that, and what I just described is like a two-week process.
Bob Raynor
You’re onto something, yep. It’s not a 30-minute episode on Netflix.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
And again, that’s the trouble is that we are so programmed now that if we, I how many times do you go to a website and if it takes more than three seconds to load, you’re like whatever. I’m out, right? Or like my favorite one is like you gotta go somewhere and you gotta click to like three or four different pages. I’m like whatever, I’ll do this later. It’s like 80 tabs.
Bob Raynor
What do you think applying to jobs is like? It’s maddening. That’s exactly what it is. Like here, upload your resume. Now fill out your resume into this form. And I’m like, dude, I just gave you my resume.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Can I, is there, I’m gonna take 15 seconds right now for a PSA. Can we please stop doing that? Clearly, clearly there is a program that exists that can take the PDF version of my resume and load it. Can we please just make that like a universal thing? Because I have literally had this experience where I’m doing the thing, right? I upload my resume and it’s all there.
Bob Raynor
Ugh, the worst.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
and it says it’s uploaded and then it takes me to the next screen and it wants me to fill out literally like the, we’re getting to the point in our lives too, in our careers where like I don’t remember where
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
You know, like I might have to consult the tape. You know what I mean? Well, that’s what I’m saying. So like if, but this is irrelevant, there is a psychology to this, right? I do think sometimes they’re just trying to see like, are they gonna stick with this application? Because if you get all the way to the end of that thing, it’s like, wow, this person really did put like an hour into this. That’s what I mean. you know, it’s funny. And you mentioned you’ve hired people before.
Bob Raynor
I’m not going back further than 10 years. It’s not relevant anymore. They’re thorough, we want them on our team.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Let’s talk about the other side of that coin, right? Like we are the people that are applying for the jobs, but I’m sure you’ve also been a person that reads resumes and interviews people. And I’ve done the same thing. I’ve been hiring people and accepting students into graduate programs for 20 years. And I tell people all the time, because a lot of times it doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes you get a reach out of some kind and asks for feedback, right?
And I think that’s important. I don’t try to get too into the weeds with that stuff, but I really do believe 75 to 80 % of the time, it’s less about the person applying for the job and more about the needs of a program or a company. You don’t know. They could be hiring one person. They could be hiring 15. Maybe they have 14 people that are literally just like you, and they need one person that’s different, right? And sometimes you just… fall into situations where it’s the right time, at the right place, and you got the right person reading your resume, it really is a gamble. And I think that it’s so important to share that because what I don’t want people to walk away from the application experience or the looking for work experience is that whenever you don’t get a job, you really just think it’s you. And you’re doing something wrong and you’re not good enough and your resume is not good enough and the work you’ve done isn’t good enough because just like
There’s always gonna be someone with a bigger problem than you. There’s always gonna be somebody that’s better than you, or has more experience, went to a better school, or whatever, right? And that’s what we’re up against. But here’s the thing, like when you’re applying for jobs, you have no idea who your opponent is, right? Unless of course you go to an interview and that person is right before you, and then they walk out of the room, and then you walk in and you’re like, man, right? I had that experience one time.
Bob Raynor
Yeah. I’m happy I don’t have to do that anymore.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
where I went and I interviewed for a job and the person who ultimately got the job interviewed right before me and I just knew looking at the person on
Bob Raynor
It’s over. I’ma follow you out.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
I just, just by, and then it was so funny, like a couple weeks later, cause you know, and I don’t know if other people do this, but I’ll share this, right? If I apply for a job that I really want, and I end up not getting it, I always check and see who got the job. Right, like I’ll go to the website, right, or I’ll like ask around people, I’ll be like, yo, yo, do you know who got that job? And then you find out and you’re like, all right. You know, I remember this one time, years and years ago, I applied for a job.
And I think the person who got the job led humanitarian efforts in Haiti after this major earthquake. I was like, I got nothing. I got nothing. I got nothing. And you know what? Good on you. If you’re going to lose, lose to that person.
Bob Raynor
Right. No shot. Yeah, right. I hope that’s the hope that we’re all losing to the humanitarian, right? The person that’s just so perfect for the job.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Well, it’s kind of like you losing the playoffs, right? But you ultimately lose the team that wins the title. You’re kind of like, all right, I gave it my best shot, and that team went on and they won, right? And I think that, well, I just think that one of the strategies that we have to employ is not always assuming we did something wrong. Because I think so much of the continued stress.
Bob Raynor
Yeah, that’s Philly sports right there.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
of the job search process and the psychology of it is that we think we have to change something. And sometimes you do, sometimes you have to tweak your resume or, and again, if you’re interviewing for jobs in a certain industry, at a certain point, the questions do kind of all become the same. So here’s a tip. If you’re interviewing for a bunch of jobs, right, and you’re not getting them, but you’re hearing a lot of the same questions, maybe tweak your answers a
Think about, I answered this question three different times, or four different times the same way, and I didn’t get hired. Maybe I kinda answer a little bit differently, or try something a little bit differently. You have to adapt sometimes in the job search, because again, it may not necessarily be about you, but it might be about what the company’s looking for. another thing too, it’s all about making connections with people. We have so many ways to make connections now. One tip that I share with people a lot is if you’re applying for a job somewhere, go on LinkedIn and look for people from that company. Look for people that you know that work for that company or look for people that you know that work with somebody. Like kind of start to work the network a little bit because I think that getting a job anymore is not a singular process. It’s about building relationships.
It’s about building connections with people. I mean, I will tell you, almost every job that I have gotten in my career is because I had a relationship with someone, knew somebody that knew somebody and kind of pointed me in a direction, knew my work, right? These programs that I’m building now, so much of the work I’m doing is because of personal relationships that I have with organizations and foundations and things of that nature. And just like a quiver that I’ve built over the last.
20 years in this industry, right? So if I did need to find a job anytime soon, I would start reaching out to those folks. And I’d be like, hey, you know my work, can you talk to somebody for me or can you connect somebody to somebody? Another big piece of this, another strategy that I tell people in therapy all the time, especially around this topic is use your relationships, use your personal connections. So many people think they lose their job and they’re alone. I lost my job.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
and I need to figure this out by myself. You absolutely don’t. You don’t have to figure out anything by yourself. Actually, most of the time, being like, yo, I got this and I’m gonna do this on my own, that’s usually the worst way to do it. You gotta, especially when you’re in a feeling of trauma, where you’ve been beat up a little bit, or you maybe aren’t in your best state of mind, because you just took a hit, right, from losing your job. You gotta use people.
You know, you gotta look to your support system and your support circle because they’re gonna put you back on track in a way that’s gonna, because they know you. They know what you need and they’re gonna help you try to find it.
Bob Raynor
Yeah, it’s like that saying if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together, right?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah, accomplishing any goal, know, if you, the worst thing that can happen to you is you try to do something huge in your life, you do it by yourself and you succeed. Because then you think that’s the way to do it. And I think that if you get to a position where you lost a job and you rely on your network and you rely on your relationships and things of that nature and then you ultimately accomplish your goal, it’s gonna teach you that you need other people to accomplish the things in your life that you really want to. But that comes with experience too. Think about it. You mentioned earlier, look at us, we both got gray in our beards at this point in time. both of us. Yeah, I know it’s there. I think that, nah, nah, I’m sorry man, I got you. I think that one of the things that you learn with experience is you can’t do it by yourself. And when you’re young,
Bob Raynor
I’m hiding it strategically. Can’t get nothing past you.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
You think you have to. You think that you gotta get that job by yourself. You gotta accomplish that goal by yourself or that big project that your boss gave you. You gotta do it by yourself, because if you don’t, then they’re gonna think you don’t know what you’re doing. And what I’ve come to learn as an old person is that you’re actually more valuable if you can work with other people. The lone wolf is not somebody that people look to rely on. And it’s just, you gotta be a collaborator. And if you’re not, people don’t want to work with you.
Bob Raynor
Especially in the creative field, I think it’s funny how that transitions where, you know, as you get into more senior level roles, you’re only as good, your work is only as good as the people that are on your team, right? And so as a young creative or designer coming in, it’s like, you’re the designer, you’re the one, you know, drawing the pictures or, you know, putting the photos in or all that stuff. And then as you move up, you almost have like less and less to do physically.
And you’re just kind of in a role where you’re managing and teaching and trying to get the best out of out of a group of people and you’re not the person responsible for doing a lot of stuff
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah. Well, that’s a trap, I think, when you’re a young professional. Because all you do is grind and work and work and work and work. And it’s like ingrained in you that you have to be a hard worker and you have to do these things. I mean, even the concept of a resume, right? Like how many times have we said, you got to do these things so they can go on your resume? That’s a resume builder. And anymore, I almost don’t.
I think knowing what someone’s accomplished is important, right? Because again, like we’ve looked at a million resumes, right? But I like, when I interview somebody, I want to know like, how do you work on a team? Because if you’re going to be on my team, I want to know that I can rely on you, right? But that’s not the mentality you come up with in your profession most of the time. You know, you’re kind of working singularly, you know, and everybody’s trying to get that accomplishment that they can stick on a resume. I’m going to tell you right now, the greatest accomplishment that I achieved in my entire professional life was working with a group of eight or nine people. And I wouldn’t be in the position I am now. The programs that we’ve created here at Chestnut Hill now would not be here if it wasn’t for the work of that six, seven, eight people that I was on that committee with. And many of those people have moved on into different positions and different locations, but this wouldn’t exist without their
And if I tried to do what I’m doing now by myself, I would not accomplish it. But if you would ask me when I was 25 years old, you know, to look into the crystal ball and be like, okay, 20 years from now, you’re gonna be doing this job and you’re gonna be, you know, doing this thing. And I’d have been like, okay, well, I bet I’m gonna have to do a lot of individual work between now and then to get to that point, you know?
I’m gonna share a quick personal thing that has something to do with you real quick. So to the audience, Bob and I used to coach together years and years ago in another life.
Bob Raynor
Maybe two lives.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Bob and I were hockey coaches together. Yeah, right, feels like it. And I think that there was, we would coach together sometimes, but we were coaching individually also. And I’m gonna just venture to say that the success that we had as coaches individually wasn’t bad, right? Like we had a couple of good teams, you you were head coach of one, I was head coach of another. But when did we win a title? Bob and I won a championship as coaches together and when was the only time we won a championship was when we were working together?
Bob Raynor
Yeah. Ice hockey. It’s hockey we’re talking. Yeah, the best teams we had either going to a national tournament or winning a championship happened together.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah, and I think there was probably, and again, we were young, right? We were in our mid to late 20s. And of course, we probably thought that the only way to accomplish our, the only way to accomplish our goals was to singularly accomplish it. And I’ll be like, okay, I am the head coach of this team and I am accomplishing this and you are the head coach of this team and you are accomplishing this. But we didn’t reach our ultimate goal until we put our experience and our skills together. And what a lesson.
Bob Raynor
early 20s, early 20s.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
to kind of springboard you into like the next phase of our lives because both of us had young kids at the time. Both of us were kind of kickstarting our careers at the time. Right around that time, I think I got my first like director job. And what a lesson to learn that two people that are good at what they do can achieve a certain ceiling of success, right? Like we achieved a little bit of success. But the ultimate goal wasn’t accomplished until we put our collective genius together. And that really taught me a lesson, I think, because I’ve really tried in my career to surround myself with people that know stuff that I don’t. This program that I put together, there was a guy I used to work with who was really, really good with budgets and details and things of that nature. And I’m like an idea guy, right? But sometimes execution, need people around me to kind of put me, you know, where things are gonna be executed. And if I didn’t have that person to put that stuff together, like that was his expertise, my expertise was something else. But then when you put those things together, so as you’re looking for jobs, you wanna think about being part of a team. Because again, if you’re not part of a team, you’re not gonna succeed. And this is people who’ve done this for however many years telling you this. And we’re not even into like the next phase of our careers yet, right?
But we’re kind of at the point where we’ve been around, we’ve seen a couple things, we’ve accomplished some stuff, we’ve failed at some things, and we kind of know that like, yo, we need people. So if you need help or you’re feeling lost or you lost your job or you’re looking for work and you can’t find it and you’re feeling a little like you’re in that bubble, reach out to people because they’ll get you on the right path.
Bob Raynor
Yeah, the person I interviewed before in my previous episode talked about reaching out to people and not even for like talking to recruiters and not even to find a job but just to get feedback, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be through therapy. Like you can have honest conversations reach out to your network reach out to people have them give you recommendations on on what they feel you bring to the table the good qualities that you have. It’s a good reminder
And it’s also good to know the value of your worth that you’re going to bring. What values are you going to bring to your next role, your next career? And being able to identify those, right? Because I think you mentioned people kind of putting themselves down or being afraid to talk about their accomplishments. And I try to tell this to my kids all the time is that there’s enough people in the world that are going to put you down. Don’t do it to yourself, right? Find the good things in yourself. And remind yourself that, yes, you can accomplish these things. Yes, you do have value. You do have these skills and these talents that you can bring. So, I want to put a nice bow on this conversation, because I think people are going to get a lot of value out of this. And what are some of the takeaways that people in struggling, whether they’re in a job and they’re struggling or they’re out of work and struggling, like, what are the takeaways from this conversation you want people to have?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
I think the biggest one is be honest with yourself. Be honest with yourself about what you’re looking for. Because I think so much of our careers sometimes get wasted on things that maybe we don’t want to be doing, but we get stuck in something or whatever the case may be. And then that kind of leads to maybe we’re not doing as great a job and then it kind of like, you your job fizzles out. Know yourself, know what you’re looking for.
And don’t try to do these things by yourself. know, Bob just mentioned getting feedback. Sometimes feedback can be scary because maybe there’s things about ourselves we don’t want to know, but if you don’t know those things, you’re never going to be able to correct them. And like he said too, you don’t have to go to therapy to learn that. I mean, if you have relationships with people you’ve used to work with, ask them. I’m in a job search right now.
And I’m trying to figure out what my next step’s gonna be. What was it like working with me? What skills did I have? Or what are some things that maybe I could work on? And somebody might tell you in a very honest way something you’ve never thought of. I wanna believe, I have a couple of previous supervisors that I used to work for in my life that I’ve maintained pretty good relationships with. And I will say, there was a point in my career when I was trying to take a next step in my career and I just wasn’t getting there.
And I didn’t understand why. And I remember reaching out to two people in particular and asking them, like, what is it about me that’s keeping me from getting to that next step? And they gave me very honest feedback and it was kind of hard to hear a little bit, but if they didn’t say that to me, I’d never know. And I would just keep making the same mistakes. And I would keep interviewing for those upper management positions and not getting them because no one would have ever told me that I needed to correct, and it doesn’t have to be anything massive, but sometimes it’s just little tweaks. That’s the other thing. Another big takeaway that I want people to take from this, especially in the job search, but life also. It doesn’t have to be anything huge. Sometimes we just gotta make little tweaks to the way we do things, to the way we interact with people, and that can be enough. Sometimes we’re always just looking for the massive overhaul, right?
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
I lost my job and I gotta change everything about my approach and what I do. Not always, but sometimes there’s little things that you can tweak along the way and you’ll learn that from experience. You you go to some interviews or maybe you get somebody in an interview situation that gives you some really good feedback and you can incorporate that into your next one. Look for the little stuff. Don’t feel the need to massively overhaul every single thing about your professional demeanor and life.
Sometimes it’s the small things. Because if you’re always looking for the big thing, you miss the small things. And then you go into an interview with the big thing and they’re like, well we just kinda needed you to tone it down right here. So I want people to also think about the idea of reaching out for help earlier. Identifying when things start to go a little bit sideways as opposed to when it’s really, really bad.
Same thing with burnout. know, if something’s going on at your job and you start to see that things are really not in a good place or you feel different, like check in with yourself on that. Don’t let it get worse. Don’t just push through. Again, eliminate the push through phrase from your vocabulary, because it doesn’t work. It just makes you tired and frustrated and angry. I’ll go back to the whole cell phone thing.
Phone’s on 1%, what are you doing with it? You’re plugging it in. If your energy level, professional purview, if your life is on 1%, plug it in and get that energy back because you’re gonna need it. You’re gonna need it and the people around you are gonna need it too.
Bob Raynor
Amazing, great stuff. I can’t believe I actually had a full hour conversation with you. Normally it’s just 15 second text messages throughout the day. You’re busy.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Hahaha!
Not that busy. Look man, is one of those things, it’s funny, I was walking in today and I was telling somebody that I was gonna be doing this.
You know, we get in these positions in life where we learn things or we have knowledge or whatever the case may be. And somebody told me once, and this is the best piece of advice I think I’ve ever gotten, is if what you know is no good if you can’t use it to help the people you care about. So, you know, and I’ve really, and I’ve taken that with me because I think that there were periods in my life where I could have been better at so many things with the people in my circle, right? And we don’t realize this until we get older, that we could have done a better job at certain things, right? But if you know something, or if you have a certain skill set, utilize it to the people that you care about, and use it to make those things better. So, look, you know that talking is a skill that I have no problem utilizing. So,
Bob Raynor
I’m surprised it took me five episodes to get you in here.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
So if I can come in here and I can, let me end book two. Here’s the other thing. We’ve all had these experiences. We gotta talk about them more. We gotta talk about this stuff more. Males, females, however you identify, everybody. We have to talk about this more. I mean, again, we made a little bit of this about like, know, male health because it’s male health month, but people health.
Bob Raynor
Yes. People Health.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
people gotta talk about this stuff more. And we have to be more open and honest about this because it’s gonna give people the feeling that they’re not alone. you hear, I mean think about conversations you and I have had about just life. And you share something with me or I share something with you and you’re like, well he feels that too, okay. Right? That’s why group situations work so well. Because you hear somebody else say something, because we’re not all great at sharing.
Bob Raynor
and not just for one month.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
But sometimes someone else shares something and you’re like, my God, like that person that I thought had everything together just said they feel exactly like I do. my God, I feel so much better, right? So we gotta talk about this stuff more, not we, me and you. Like we as people, people, people, people. I think every month should be People Health Month because literally, and again, look, I’m all for like different things, like focusing on different things on a specific month.
Bob Raynor
Right? Yeah.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
And, but like, I was telling you, you know, I went to the Flyers game last night and was like hockey fights cancer night. Like we should be fighting cancer every night, not just last night at the hockey game, right? Like, and again, we bring awareness to these things, but we have to talk about these things all the time because people feel alone. People are out of work right now that feel like they’re never going to get a job again. And they think they did something wrong and it’s just like, that’s the end of it. And that’s a terrible feeling.
And to those people, it may take a little bit, okay? And it’s a process. But there is light at the end of that tunnel. Like, I lost a job, Bob’s lost a job, we’ve all lost a job. And we’ve figured it out. And everybody’s journey is different. But you just gotta rely on the folks in your life to kind of put you in the right direction. Because if you try to do it by yourself, you’re not going to accomplish that goal.
Bob Raynor
Exactly, Well, I’m let you get back to what it is that you do best, talking to people, but I appreciate you coming on and we’ll do it again soon.
Stephen Stunder, Ed.D
Yeah. This is awesome, anytime. All right, thank you.
Bob Raynor
Thanks, man.
Thanks to Dr. Steve Stunder for being a guest on today’s show and thank you for joining me on The Flame Podcast. There’s definitely more to come. Please take a minute to follow, subscribe or hit the like button if you haven’t done so already. And if you have any feedback, or I’d like to be a guest on my show, send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.