Transforming Career Burnout Into a Both-And Life That Actually Works

Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
Nicole Havelka, welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat?

Nicole Havelka [00:00:12]:
I am very excited.

Amy Stone [00:00:14]:
This is so good. All right. I start all of my conversations with my guests by asking them, what part of the world do you call home?

Nicole Havelka [00:00:21]:
Right now I call Urbana, Illinois, which is in central east, eastern east central Illinois. I still can’t say that very well. I’ve lived here for a year, so it’s still relatively new to me. Before that, I lived in Columbus, Ohio for nine years, and I’ve lived in Michigan and other. And Iowa and other places too, in.

Amy Stone [00:00:44]:
The United States, all sort of concentrated around the middle of the United States.

Nicole Havelka [00:00:48]:
Urbana.

Amy Stone [00:00:49]:
Is Urbana the home of the University of Illinois? Is that where that is? University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. That’s what we call it, right?

Nicole Havelka [00:00:56]:
Correct.

Amy Stone [00:00:57]:
I remember my. I can remember the names of the schools. I don’t have any connection to the university, but I do remember that that’s the name. All right, so we’re going to talk about the topic of the day in just a second, but I have one more warm up question I want to ask you. What is a recent compliment or a kind words of kindness that you have given or said to someone recently? It can be something small. It can be earlier today. Whatever comes to mind.

Nicole Havelka [00:01:22]:
Well, what came to mind was earlier, from just probably a few minutes ago. It probably wasn’t even all that long ago. It was a little typed thank you that I put in Slack for with someone who helps me with graphics. I am at the time of this recording, I am like eyeball deep in preparations for a crowdfunding campaign for my upcoming podcast, which I know we’ll talk about later. Someone who helps me make graphics. And they looked fantastic. And we’re finally done with most of those, which is really exciting. And I’m ready to start scheduling social media posts and all of that jazz for the. For the launch that’s on in three days from now again.

Amy Stone [00:02:11]:
Oh, you really. You really, really are id. It’ll be in the past when in the funky world of podcast time juggling, this will be in the past when. When you hear it, when the audience hears it. But I love that I have been asking this question for a couple weeks and I love the answers that I’m getting because there’s a lot of pressure on people to random acts of kindness and get out there and be generous. But I think there’s a flip side, which is to validate ourselves that we are being gracious, that we are Saying kind things and that we’re out there creating good stuff in the world. So thank you for sharing that topic of the day, not actually words of kindness. We’re going to talk about a time when you became very frustrated with your work and you thought about throwing in the towel. These are all my words. It’s not exactly how you described it. Your plan at the time was to pivot and become a yoga instructor, but that’s not actually how it worked out. So I want to talk about the job that you had or have. So tell us about the job at the time that was driving the frustration.

Nicole Havelka [00:03:11]:
The job at the time, excuse me, was I was working in the. At the denominational level of the United Church of Christ. I’m an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ. Most of my work, though, was at like sort of those levels of administration. So I was working for a regional body in Ohio. That, or at least when I was hired, I thought they were farther in the process along of selling their camps. That ended up being really the whole three years that I was in that job ended up being consumed by the sale of one and later became both youth camps. That happened after I left, but there was much debate about which one would be the one to go, as you might imagine. And people had their loyalties one way or the other. I was hired to come in as, at least on paper, as an innovator. And this was often the kind of jobs I got. I got invited or I got invited into were, oh, we really need people to shake things up and change it. Which was fine until there was too much blowback to whatever I was doing that was new. And so that. And I had already done this in other contexts a couple of times in different ways. And by this point I was really done. So when that, when that moment happened that I mentioned off pod, that moment that we’re starting from, I was really, really tired. Not so much of the work. I actually really like it. I really like making new things, which is why I’m now an entrepreneur. Like, I like making new things. I like building new stuff. I didn’t like the resistance and, you know, the, the becoming of becoming a lightning rod for people and their fear, their anxiety, their grief, which again, I understand in my head, I understand intellectually is way is the way that we process that kind of thing, right? People, and, and we’re not always in a place like. And I’ve certainly offloaded, you know, like my feelings on people when they probably didn’t deserve it too. So it’s Happened to me, and it’s gone both ways. But when you’re the person, like, absorbing that all the time, it. It’s really draining and exhausting at some point, because I’m also a personality that really likes to do things and build things and actually finish them. And a lot of these places wouldn’t let you do that because it was the new thing that I wanted to build. I wasn’t interested in propping up the old one. So that’s where the criticism would tend to come in.

Amy Stone [00:05:57]:
All right, so what was going on? So you had a job. You describe it as. I think administrative is the word that you used. I’m not sure I’m using exactly the same word. So you have a job within this church. And what’s causing frustration? Would you. How would you describe the baseline of the frustration that you were hired under a context that turned out to not actually exist, or they weren’t really ready for you to do with what you wanted to do, or they didn’t actually. It was unclear what was expected of you. What would you. Now that you’re on the other side of this, pretty much. If you had to describe what was the root cause of the frustration from your perspective in this last job, what was it?

Nicole Havelka [00:06:37]:
That’s a really good. That’s an excellent question. I think the root. The root cause ends up. And it usually ends up like a later. It’s usually fun for a while. The job that. These new kinds of jobs where they’re like, oh, like, we know we’re in this case. It was like, oh, we know that we’re selling this camp and we want to make way for some new kind of programming that’s more sustainable and more innovative with families and youth. Like, that was what kind of. My charge was, among some other things.

Amy Stone [00:07:10]:
So you were hired to create something new.

Nicole Havelka [00:07:13]:
Yeah.

Amy Stone [00:07:14]:
And then they weren’t actually ready for that.

Nicole Havelka [00:07:16]:
They were not. They weren’t quite ready for that, partially because they. They ended up delaying the sale of one of the properties for a couple of more years, which was most of the time that I was there. So part of it was just. There was like. That really didn’t have anything to do with me. There was resistance to the sale of either camp. And then when even they said, well, we have to sell one, but not both. Like, then there was. There was infighting about which one. So again, that wasn’t necessarily directed. That kind of stuff wasn’t directed right at me because I didn’t have much to do with or any control over that. But what they really wanted my position. Certain people really wanted my position to be, oh, you’re here to really improve and market the. At that time, the one camp that was running. Okay, it was still running for stuff, they wanted me to do that. And so I was getting tons of pressure from certain people to be that person, which I told them in the interview. I said, if you want someone to run your camp, you should hire someone else. I literally said those words out loud. So I said, if you want that, that’s fine, but there’s plenty of people for that. I’m not it. And then. But I think some of the. My immediate supervisor and some other people in a smaller circle did want the innovative thing, and they are willing to. So they were willing to support it to a point. And then either they got worn out, which is totally understandable, or, you know, just the resistance is too much. And so there’s less and less of that support for what needs to be done over time.

Amy Stone [00:08:49]:
Yeah, so. So in almost every situation where there’s frustration, resentment, anxiety, apprehension, you know, there’s more than one thing going on that snowballs into it. And one of the things that can very frequently true is that in the moment, like, in the moment when you’re living through it, it’s not actually clear what the causes or the things that are driving the situation are. And then one of the things that can happen sometimes is like, you come and you mentioned this, that it wasn’t up to you. You can find yourself in a spot that is unpleasant, unfamiliar, unlivable, unworkable, but it’s not really up to you and out of your control. And that doesn’t. In my experience, that doesn’t feel great either. All right, so if it’s okay with you, I want to back up a little tiny bit and talk about. Came to have this particular job at that church, like, and talk about, like. So it sounds like this is something. This is a type of job that you searched out intentionally. So how did it come to be that you were hired? What was the job description? Sort of like. Like, how did you come to be in this position in a church?

Nicole Havelka [00:09:50]:
Oh, my gosh. So.

Amy Stone [00:09:52]:
And one of the reasons.

Nicole Havelka [00:09:53]:
I’ll stop.

Amy Stone [00:09:53]:
One of the reasons I want to give a chance is I think that there are people out there listening that have probably never stopped to think about the fact that an organization like a church hires people and posts jobs. So that’s one of the reasons that, like, that, you know, that I. That I’ve thought of this question. So tell us about that process.

Nicole Havelka [00:10:12]:
Well, I mean, if you want to get super church nerdy, you can say it depends on the denomination you’re in. So in some like that are more hierarchical, like United Methodists or Episcopals, there is a bishop that appoints people. If you’re clergy in particular in our denomination, it’s very top down, like. So each, like each setting of the church, including local churches. And then these denominate, like these wider church bodies, they’re usually. In this case, it was sort of. Well, it was mostly Ohio, but part of West Virginia and Kentucky as well. We had a little chunk of that. So they hire on their own. So our stuff is all. And they. We have a place where within the church they post those jobs. That is legitimately a thing. So if you rewind maybe 10 years before this, I actually my. One of my first jobs out of seminary was at. As a. As a chaplain at a residential treatment facility for children with children and youth with mental illness and behavioral disorders. I had done that for a few years and loved it. And also burned out on the, on the institution, not the work itself. So it was a similar pattern, but not quite. No one knew at that institution, no one knew quite what to do with the chaplain because that was a relatively new position. It was similar dynamic, it was in a very different setting. But I had done youth work. I had done a lot of stuff around youth and young adults and found myself becoming a really big advocate. I would still say this is true, even though it’s not forward in my work anymore, that I still care very deeply about young people being included in organizations and institutions. So I did that for a few years and then I was like, okay, I’m kind of done here. And then I started looking at just what was out there. Like, I really didn’t have a really clear vision of what that might be.

Amy Stone [00:12:05]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:12:06]:
But I do remember at the time, so at the time I was under 40 and I had hung out with some other young clergy groups. And I really had a vivid memory of one, one of my kind of now friends and colleagues, both of us have aged out of being under 40 now. But he had said in one of the groups we were in, he’s like, don’t count yourself out for those, like those jobs that are in the denominational, like in the wider church, in the larger denominational body. Because even if I say on paper the kind of experience they want, they may still be interested in, in you. Like, okay, you know, don’t, don’t sell yourself out. And he’s like, so what does it hurt to apply? Well, I happen to be looking just generically at what might be open, and I saw that in the. At the time, the Iowa Conference of the United Church of Christ had just created a new. They called it an associate conference minister for youth and young adult ministries. So it was a position specifically for working with youth and young adults. And I was, by the standard of working for that kind of. Most of the people were definitely white males in there at the time, in their 50s and 60s, wouldn’t. Were the only ones, for the most part, in their job. There were a handful of women here and there, but mostly older white men. And. And I applied for this youth and young adult position, and I was like the ripe age of 34 or something like that, maybe 35, I can’t remember. But I was sort of in my early to mid-30s, and. And I. But I was like. I was sort of hearing what my friend Mike had said, and I was like, okay, I guess I’ll. I’ll give it a shot. I applied for the job, and I. And it went like crazy. And I got that job, and I actually loved it. Loved it, loved it. I won’t even tell some of it was resistance. That position, after five years, was eliminated, at least on the surface for financial reasons.

Amy Stone [00:14:08]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:14:09]:
I would argue that wasn’t the only reason, but that position was eliminated.

Amy Stone [00:14:13]:
I’m still. I’m still. I’m still over here enjoying that. There’s a group for young clergy which, like, you know, there is. I like it still.

Nicole Havelka [00:14:20]:
I should say one. It still exists. I’m just too old for it now.

Amy Stone [00:14:24]:
It makes total sense. I just had never thought about it, you know, I just had never thought about it as being a thing. All right, so you do. So you do that job, and then. So you, again, are looking intentionally within the church community for jobs that are open to you. That’s how you. So it was intentional looking for that.

Nicole Havelka [00:14:41]:
Yeah. And so then after that, it was really what I. When that position was eliminated for again, I didn’t feel like I was done with that work at the time it was eliminated sort of before. I really felt like it had gotten all the traction it could have gotten with the. The now the vision that was starting to spring up for me. So I started seeking out ways to continue living that vision out.

Amy Stone [00:15:06]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:15:06]:
Like, over time, the. The piece. The piece around youth and young adult ministry kind of fell away for me over time, not because I didn’t care about young people, but because, like, I just got interested in other Things like this because of how much resistance I faced in these things like the, the ide. You know, ideas about organizational change. I read everything I could for a while on organizational change, organizational psychology. You know, people make, you know, just ideas about change and theories about change and how groups make it. And so like for. And I love thinking about systems and how. And how they work or they don’t or the cultures of places. And so I got really. I got really into that. So it was just that I got really into those kinds of questions. And so I think that’s part of why I even so when this. And I honestly wasn’t sure what I would be doing. I. I took a job. It was just a part time job in. In Michigan for about a year and a half. It was the more traditional job which I quickly get bored with. Like that is just not what I’m again, maintaining things as they are is just not my. My, my jam. And I started looking after only about a year and a half because I was sort of promised that we might move in a different direction and that was clearly not happening. I didn’t live on bad terms. Like I really liked the people I worked with but it was just not a fit for me anymore. And then this job came up in. In Ohio where. Which was a short term position which I. So I knew it was going to be. Ended up being three years but it was originally contracted as two. And it was. The title was something like Minister for Innovation and Creativity. I don’t remember the whole title. I have it on my resume somewhere but. And I kind of helped make up the title actually because we were like what do we put on a resume? What do we say I’m about in order to signal that this is something new. And so I had. That was really exciting. There were people involved in that that I was really excited to work with. People who are really. I thought that I knew of. I didn’t know them personally but people I knew that were kind of had reputations for being innovators. So I was really excited to go there and work. And then I met the same kinds of resistance there that I did in other places. Some of which wasn’t surprising to me. But then it gets support. I think what really gets if kind of going back to your first. First question which is I think part of what gets frustrating is not so much that there are people resisting you, but that the people who hired you to do the innovation start backing off of it and quit supporting you. That’s probably the part that’s the most frustrating because the resistance, especially once I started doing, reading and understanding organizational change or change in general, like resistance is just normal. It just is what it is, and it is exhausting. But if you have the right kind of supports, it’s not nearly as bad as it could be.

Amy Stone [00:18:12]:
I hear that a lot from people who are coming from academia that it comes down to whether or not there is enough structural support to support you in that role. So I want to recap this because there’s a lot of interesting things that you laid out in your process to get this job. And one of the things that I heard you say that I think is relevant outside of your own experience and helpful for people listening, is that there was a time where you were not clear on what you were doing, and you talked to the people around you. You had some friends who encouraged you to think bigger, and you tried something new. And that part of the process led to clarity and a vision that you are working towards finding things that match that vision. And you found your way to this job with a title that you helped create that really felt like it matched what you were trying to do. But in three years, it became very frustrating. Okay, so now I’m going to zig a little bit in the conversation and bring. We’ve actually been doing this already, but I’m going to bring it right to the front of this. So religion can be a very hot button topic a lot of people solve. Not in this conversation, but sometimes. And one of the things that can happen is that people solve the problem of the fact that it’s a hot topic by just not talking about it at all and just having a super vague, super vagary, vigoritious conversation where we hint and innuendo and all of those things. And I get it. I totally understand that. But in this case, I don’t want to do it, and I don’t think we have to. I find it confusing if you’re listening and you’re like, trying to figure out, like, what are they actually talking about? And so you are an ordained minister. You’ve told us the name of your congregation and the denomination and those kind of things. And I want to give you a chance to talk about, like, your faith and the faith community and how important it is to you. Was is all of those things pass for past and present?

Nicole Havelka [00:20:07]:
Oh, my goodness. That’s a great and broad question. I love.

Amy Stone [00:20:11]:
I can narrow it down if you want.

Nicole Havelka [00:20:12]:
It’s okay. It’s okay. I mean, here’s the thing. For those of you who are listening to this, who are like, the church. I don’t want to hear anymore. Like really hit, like, just listen for another couple of seconds. Like, I probably have all of the same feelings you do about the institution church having been in it, because I have the same misgivings. So the, the short version of my faith history is that I was raised Roman Catholic. My family was very, was very religious. I went to Catholic schools from 1st to 12th grade, where I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. And when in high school, I had sort of a. A falling out of faith in, in large part because the diocese closed my first high school after my sophomore year. Like as a, you know, as an institutional choice, you know, and now as an adult, looking back on that, I get why they needed to do that. Like, there were like 200 students in a building built for 2,000.

Amy Stone [00:21:18]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:21:19]:
Like, it was not sustainable. Like what this is what was happening there was not sustainable. And honestly, if someone had actually bothered to have a conversation with me, I probably could understand that. Understood it at least to some extent as a 15 year old. You know, maybe not all of the big picture stuff because, you know, I was a teenager and I was just sad that my high school was going to go away.

Amy Stone [00:21:38]:
Right? How dare they?

Nicole Havelka [00:21:40]:
How dare they. And that’s how we all felt 100%. And so I had to find dead to me school to go, you’re dead. Exactly. And honestly, like, that experience, I think I’m actually super grateful for that experience now because I don’t think I would have, if I’d stayed in the same high school if I had not had that disruption like I would have been, I think, less likely to have gone away to college, which I did just because I had that sort of. And then I had the experience of going to another high school where we weren’t like, not just me, but a lot of the people who transferred in from my school were, were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Amy Stone [00:22:21]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:22:21]:
Some were in, some weren’t. It was sort of a mixed bag.

Amy Stone [00:22:24]:
But like, did you transfer to another Catholic high school?

Nicole Havelka [00:22:27]:
I did.

Amy Stone [00:22:28]:
Okay?

Nicole Havelka [00:22:28]:
I did. I and my parents actually let me have the choice. I could have gone to a public school at that point, which I had wanted to when I started. Like, when I started high school, I wanted to. They would have let me go. And I was just having a particular experience at, at the other school that made me wanted to continue with a smaller school, smaller Catholic school, not necessarily because of the religion piece, but because of the opportunities I thought I would have there.

Amy Stone [00:22:52]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:22:53]:
To Do. I was a theater kid and a speech team kid and that kind of thing. And so I thought I would have. I. I was excited about the opportunities at that other school, which ended up being true to. For the most part, I did have the opportunities to do things there that I probably wouldn’t have at, like, a bigger school with more competition. On the other hand, it was a socially a pretty miserable experience because you weren’t welcomed. It was hard to. To fit in and make friends when everyone else had been friends or knew each other, in a lot of cases, since elementary school, because that particular school had an elementary school that fed into it. So those of us who were outsiders were really outsiders. Like, sometimes that disrupted my faith life in a big. In a big way. And I said, screw the church. I want no part of it. And didn’t do it for a very long time.

Amy Stone [00:23:45]:
So, I mean, that is such a classic teenage reaction. It’s like, you didn’t carry my soda. I’m never coming to your store again.

Nicole Havelka [00:23:52]:
Exactly. It’s so true. So at 16, I was like, written off the church as a whole. Like, it, you know, as a wholesale thing, which of course there are many. Like, the church is a very broad thing and a very large thing. So I did that in my early 20s. I went to a college that intentionally went to a college that had no religious affiliation.

Amy Stone [00:24:14]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:24:16]:
And went to a small liberal arts college that I absolutely adored. I’ll give a shout out to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, because there you go, middle school. And I’m still a big supporter and I do a lot of volunteering with them today. And it was such a tremendous growing experience for me there. And again, they weren’t overtly. There actually was some religious affiliation to their founding.

Amy Stone [00:24:40]:
Right.

Nicole Havelka [00:24:41]:
But which is no longer affiliate, which is true for most of those small schools.

Amy Stone [00:24:45]:
But a lot of schools are. They’re either founded by land grants, like state schools, or, you know, who else is going to start a university has to either be like a gazillionaire or a faith group. You know, that’s the. You know, even if. And then they can grow out of it, you know, but they might have roots. That’s like, these are the people who started it. And now we’ve moved, we’ve been able to separate, but yeah, somebody has to give the land and the buildings and.

Nicole Havelka [00:25:09]:
Right, right. Somebody’s got to bankroll all of that. At the time, like, I learned. I actually didn’t learn this until I went to seminary, but, like, that many of these smaller Schools were started as a way to educate clergy.

Amy Stone [00:25:22]:
That makes sense.

Nicole Havelka [00:25:24]:
They were like including what we know as Ivy League schools now were started for that reason.

Amy Stone [00:25:28]:
So, yeah, well, and when I’ve got four kids, I’ve gone through the school process four times. I’ve done more school, I’ve done more college tours than probably anybody needs to, to do. But yeah, you’ll walk through the small liberal arts schools and they’re centered around. Even if they’re non affiliated, they’re often centered around a chapel or a temple. And so then you learn that the story of the first people and the first donation and so on and so forth. And sometimes it holds true forever and ever and other times, you know, there’s later a separation or an inclusion or all of those things. That school that’s coming to mind some in Florida and Eckerd, which is on the west coast of Florida, small liberal arts school. And right in the center they have a chapel that is. I don’t even think it’s used as a chapel anymore. But it was. So when you were talking about that, I was like, oh yeah, that strikes with my 927,000 college tours that I’ve done. So you did a college degree and then you later went back to seminary. These are two separate educational experiences. So faith is. So your personal faith is definitely an important part of you that is held through your life and has gone through some evolution. And then the second part of that is about community and being a part of the faith community. You talk about leaving that in high school, which is one of my favorite stories today. I love that. Did you come back to seeking a community based around faith for yourself?

Nicole Havelka [00:27:00]:
You know, when I was in my mid-20s, I. Well, I jokingly refer to this as like my midlife crisis. When I was like mid-20s, I.

Amy Stone [00:27:07]:
Well, now we call it the quarter life crisis.

Nicole Havelka [00:27:09]:
Yeah, the quarter life crisis, whatever that is. Like, it’s really just young adulthood. I don’t know that it’s a crisis. And now I would be like, oh, that’s just what young adults do.

Amy Stone [00:27:20]:
Don’t do that with your win. With a young adult, it really helps them if you take their challenge seriously, you know.

Nicole Havelka [00:27:27]:
But when you’re older, you’re like, oh, that’s just how it is.

Amy Stone [00:27:30]:
When you got it, you gotta, you.

Nicole Havelka [00:27:31]:
Gotta figure it out. You’re practicing, you’re figuring out, you’re learning what fits and what doesn’t and that’s normal. So, yeah, so I actually started my career as a journalist. So I was working at newspapers in the Chicago suburbs. When I first graduated from college in the mid to late 90s, I did that for about five years. I, I also became disillusioned with doing that work again, not because I hated it, because I actually did like a lot of parts of being a journalist and still do. I. I don’t feel like I’ve ever completely gone away from those, from doing the kinds of things that a journalist does. I don’t think I’ve ever lost that entirely. But. But I was just growing disillusioned with it in part, or at least the part that I remember as being the most uncomfortable was that as a journalist, your job is to observe and, and write stories. You know, you’re, you’re always an outsider.

Amy Stone [00:28:38]:
You’re supposed to be outsider. Right.

Nicole Havelka [00:28:40]:
And, and, and, and that’s. You’re supposed to be an outsider. That’s breaking down a little bit now that, that was also, like, more than 20 years ago, well, 30 years ago now. So that, and that was, that wasn’t breaking down quite so much as it is now. I think you’re supposed to be this outsider. You’re supposed to be. You’re, generally speaking, not involved in the things that are happening. And that’s okay for some things. And then I was just frustrated that, like, there’s all this suffering that I observe and I can’t do anything about it.

Amy Stone [00:29:13]:
Yeah.

Nicole Havelka [00:29:14]:
Like, it’s not my role to do something about it, even though. And I’ll just do this as an, A caveat that I really believe strongly that bearing witness to those things, and this is really, really true in the world we find ourselves in right now. Right. Being a journalist, someone who bears witness to those things and, and tells its story, is really, really important, I think. But it didn’t feel. And so for those of you who are journalists out there who are doing it, please keep doing that. Good work. It didn’t fit me. Like, I wanted to be someone who was taking action around things, and I didn’t even have a specific thing even necessarily that I wanted to be acting about. I just knew that this wasn’t fitting me anymore. So initially I was pivoting to. This was very common for journalists to pivot to doing, like, public relations work. And so I started applying for jobs, and this was in the late 90s, for jobs at nonprofits doing sort of priorities, marketing kind of jobs. And there was two or three times when I was the final, like, one of the two finalists for a job, and I didn’t get any of them.

Amy Stone [00:30:23]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:30:23]:
And that was super frustrating. And again, this was in a pretty booming time in terms of the economy, so there were quite a few. There wasn’t a lack of jobs to apply for that would have fit my sort of level of experience. Especially then I had like 5 years professional experience and a bachelor’s degree, so that was decent. And I wasn’t getting. And I got really frustrated. I should also mention that at, like, kind of overlapping that I had this weird inkling to go back to church that really came out of nowhere. You’ll sort of notice that I have a lot of intuitive moments that sort of guide me. I’m far more planned and strategic now. But, like, at the. I’m less so now, but I still do listen to those energetic pings, if you will. Those sort of things that are drawing me. Whatever. Whatever you want to call it, the universe, energy, God, whatever you want to call that, like, those sorts of drawing things. For me, that’s still really important to me. But I’m. I wouldn’t say skeptical about it, but I’m also more strategic about it than I used to be. Sure. So when I was younger, I. So at that point I had this urge to go back, and it just so happened that a co worker of mine in the newsroom I worked in went to his church, which was a United Church of Christ Church. I didn’t know that from Adam. I had been raised Catholic, and when you’re raised Catholic, especially when you’re so immersed in it, like, I was like, it’s like Catholics and then everybody else, like, all the Protestants are like some big generic blob to you. Now. I have an understanding that’s far more nuanced. But at the time, that’s all I understood. And I really. He talked and he. He was not like, in your face about it at all. But it’s just what he did, you know, because he’s like, oh, well, I’m going. And I’m. He was like, in their handbell choir. Like, I have rehearsal tonight or I’m doing this for my church, or I’m going on this youth retreat because he did chaperone stuff and things like that. And we made fun of him, actually, in the newsroom. I’ll have to. We’re still friends, so I’m going to send him this podcast since I’m mentioning him. We talk about this all the time and we still mention this every once in a while. And so he talked about it. And so then when I had the inkling to go back to church, I literally sat myself in his office or maybe. Maybe send an email. But I’m pretty sure I just went to his office, and I’m like, so, Brett, I’m thinking, going to church, like, would you mind if I went with you sometime? And he looked like, fortunately was deadpan enough, even though I’m sure he was, like, ready to fall out of his chair. And he was really receptive. He’s like, oh, sure. Like, I’m not here this week, but I am here, like, on this week, if you want to come with me. And then he. And then he also said, oh, you know, but, you know, there’s kind of a church light. We’re having a service in the park, like, once a summer. So it’s probably around this. We’re recording in early August.

Amy Stone [00:33:09]:
In early August.

Nicole Havelka [00:33:09]:
So, like, it was probably around that sort of late summer time that he said that. And he’s like, if you’re comfortable going by yourself, like, that’s a really chill sort of way to go hang out. And. And I felt really drawn and led back. And so eventually that became the congregation where I was ordained five years later.

Amy Stone [00:33:28]:
All right, all right. So this may seem like a, you know, a pretty big veer off of the topic, but I think that it’s helpful to understand and to give a platform for people to explain their own personal experiences about. I mean, this is a conversation that not a lot of people are having, and I don’t have a. You know, it’s just. It’s like a place to let that be. So you are working in the church, so on and so forth. You’ve shared a lot about your life, your experience. I know you a lot better. I want to ask you one very pragmatic question when it comes to working for the church, because I think this will be really fun when you. You choose, you go to seminary and you’re working for the church. What are the salaries like when you’re looking to be an employer of a church? Like, was when you were working for the church as an administrator? Is this enough of a job that you did not have any economic pressure in your budget? Were you able to just, like, live and have a nice life in your last job? Like, I think of the most famous jobs that go along with churches are known for their respect for either abject poverty or extreme wealth. Those are the two stories we see, right?

Nicole Havelka [00:34:43]:
Yeah. And both of those stories exist within my denomination because we don’t have a ton of really, really large churches, but we do have a few of those where their senior pastors would make pretty like six figures anyway. None of them probably making like go to seven. Like that’s not a thing that happens in, in our denomination. That happens with other places, but not for us. I would say that I was like, I didn’t now, this is me now kind of understanding money better than I did at the time. Like, like I would say for the most part, these positions are really underpaid. And that was true, though, when I was a journalist as well, like a starting journalist. I had to have extra jobs.

Amy Stone [00:35:29]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:35:30]:
In order to survive. And that was a little less true when I graduated from seminary, although I would say that it was. But then when I graduated from seminary, I had more student debt than okay before. Even though I had really again, I had been out of school long enough. I’d been out for five years. I knew what it was like to repay loans. So I was really like, did as much as I could to minimize the amount of debt I took out. And I have very had, have and had very little compared to a lot of people. But I still had extra now I had a bigger payment to make on student debt. And during seminary, again, partially because I was trying to work and go to graduate school. That was a huge financial struggle. And then I ended up with a lot of credit card debt coming out of graduate school and so. And then spent time being really poor and paying that down as best I could with my first job, which was paid okay, I guess, but not enough to like, deal with the mountain of debt that I had. Like, it would probably have been fine if I didn’t have the debt, but it, it wasn’t. And that has basically remained true my entire life. So the positions I had at the denominat donational level, we’re sort of adequate to live on, I would say, for the most part. But they’re not making you wealthy.

Amy Stone [00:36:52]:
Okay. All right. So the part of this story like, so you become frustrated with this denominational level job. The frustration and one of the reasons that I started talking about the, the money involved is that at some point in here, you are, I guess, are you going to a local yoga studio that offers teacher training. But something comes in your mind that what I’m going to do is I’m going to become a yoga teacher nature. And I wondered whether or not this was partially like it was. The initial idea was I’m gonna. It’ll be a side hustle, it’ll be something else. And so that’s what I was thinking was like, you know, was this kind of thing. So how did the yoga part, enter this discussion.

Nicole Havelka [00:37:34]:
Well, that happened like parallel to everything that happened like post graduate school. So I, there was a lot of conversation when I was in, in seminary, which is a graduate degree, like that’s getting.

Amy Stone [00:37:45]:
I did not realize that until you started.

Nicole Havelka [00:37:47]:
Those are the same things. Yeah, at least with us that’s true. You’re, you’re getting a master’s degree. The denomination has its own process for ordination and this is less true now because they’ve changed the rules a little bit. But for the most part, for a long time, getting a master’s of divinity was one of the one big requirement toward ordination. But they actually make you do other things as well. Well, it’s not the only thing, but it’s the biggest and most expensive thing as you might imagine. It took me four years, okay, to do that degree. I did it part time for two years and then I was full time for a couple of years. But there’s a lot of field work involved which makes it very, very time consuming. Three years is minimum and most people take four or five at least to finish it or longer if they’re working other jobs, you know, like full time or very nearly full time jobs. So. So it’s not an easy, it’s not an easy path to take whether you’re straight out of college or mid career. So.

Amy Stone [00:38:55]:
I’m sorry, how did you get to yoga?

Nicole Havelka [00:38:57]:
Mind me back to the question.

Amy Stone [00:38:58]:
I’m sorry, how did yoga come into the story?

Nicole Havelka [00:39:00]:
Yoga, of course. So part of, in, in seminary, we were talking a lot about how do you take care of yourself in order to be present in the way that you need to be for people as, as you’re serving a congregation or people in the community or whatever you feel like your call is. And so we talked a lot about that and I had a number of friends who were sort of daily, or at least regular meditators or pray, you know, had prayer practice, contemplative practices of one sort or another. And at the time that did not fit me at all.

Amy Stone [00:39:36]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:39:37]:
I had done a little bit of yoga, like prior to that, like when I was younger. I had actually been exposed to it when I was in high school at a theater camp. And then later I sort of sought it out when I was still a journalist. That was a time when it seems crazy now, but at the time you couldn’t. Studios weren’t all over the place like they are now. That was in the late 90s. There you would find one or two yoga teachers in your area. And that was about it. Yeah, so I’d taken a few classes, which I enjoyed. And then. So. But then I didn’t do it during graduate school. And then I went to. And then after I graduated, I’m like, well, I have to find something. Well, yoga is like, this was literally what I thought. Like, well, yoga is a moving meditation. Right, I’ll do that. All right. That’ll be my thing. And it became my thing. About three or so years in, when I was still working with young at risk youth at the treatment facility, I did my first teacher training. So I had already done that.

Amy Stone [00:40:37]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:40:38]:
I had finished that first one at the end of. I finished that in 2008, I think it was. And that was right at. I finished that right at the time when I switched to doing this denominational work.

Amy Stone [00:40:49]:
So when you’re doing the denominational work, you’re a, you’re qualified as a yoga teacher. Are you doing yoga classes on a semi regular or occasional basis and. Or not really occasional.

Nicole Havelka [00:40:59]:
You know, I really had gone into that. I mean I had. Well, I should preface that. When I was still doing the teacher training, I did teach regularly with the young people in residential treatment. Like that was. So there were a few cottages is what they called them. They had like, they were residential, so they had kids living on campus with. I went to some of the therapists who were really like open to what I was doing and I said, hey, do you want to try this? And so there were a couple places I was teaching there. That was when I was still doing my teacher training. And then I had. Did it, used it a little bit with young people that I had like one on one convert. You know, I had some that I met with regularly. The one on one I would do that. And then I. Then when I got the denominational job, it just became hard to have a regular class even. Okay, even as just a fun side thing because I traveled a ton, so I was constantly on the road. It was very difficult to do anything consistently. But then people would find out that was I. I could teach yoga. And so if I was like going to a conference, let’s say like some sort of training conference or something like that, people, it’s like, oh, you can teach yoga. Do you want to teach a class? And they would ask you to teach the 7am class that like three people at best show up to. So I just, FYI, I don’t teach that 7am class at a conference anymore because it’s just too much for people at those conferences. They’ve generally been on Too late hanging out with their friends to get up for a yoga class. So which is, which is totally fine. I’ll do it more integrated into a bigger pro program. So. Or I would integrate it into. I was doing a lot of teaching and training by this point, so I would integrate it into what I was teaching and training. Like we might do a breath meditation and part of it. Or I might do some stretching as a break partway through a thing. And I still do that because I still think it’s really important. So that’s how that was happening. And then I was a. Probably the most important use of yoga though for me was that it was my, it was sort of my way of holding myself together in all of that stress I already described.

Amy Stone [00:43:05]:
Yeah.

Nicole Havelka [00:43:06]:
So like I, my yoga studio was my, was my, you know, oasis away from that. And I kept for a decade, kept those worlds extremely separated.

Amy Stone [00:43:17]:
And so there’s a time where your thought is, I need to quit this denominational job and I’m going to be a full time yoga teacher. Was that a singular moment in time where you were sitting on your couch and you’re like, hey, this is the answer, or was it something that bubbled up over time slowly?

Nicole Havelka [00:43:38]:
You know, it, it probably was bubbling up a little bit, but I remember it as sort of a thing that kind of happened suddenly. So I went to my, my, well, my day off at the time was Friday. You work weekends when you work for the church, so you have days off that aren’t normal. So I had a. Friday was my day off. And one of the things I did, I was living in Columbus, Ohio at that point and I had a yoga studio that I just loved. And there were two classes on Friday morning that I would go to back to back. One was a meditation class and the other was a movement class. And I went in with that attitude one morning and I just said, I am done. I don’t even remember what happened that.

Amy Stone [00:44:18]:
Precipitated that set your intention. And you were like, my intention was.

Nicole Havelka [00:44:21]:
That I am freaking done with this, with what I’m doing. I’m so done with these people. And then that’s sort of my intention. Like, you know, I don’t know, that’s not a great intention really, but like, whatever. It worked actually. So I went in with this frustration and I don’t even know what happened in those classes. I couldn’t tell you anymore. But like what came came up for me as I was walking out was this was like a really clear voice in my head was what if it’s not either or, but both and.

Amy Stone [00:44:50]:
Okay. And that’s. And that’s the shift that happens, right?

Nicole Havelka [00:44:54]:
That’s the massive shift that happened.

Amy Stone [00:44:56]:
Yeah.

Nicole Havelka [00:44:56]:
And so I started. This was sort of it be then that was sort of magical in a way. Like then I started offering to do, to teach and offer these, like this thing I’d sort of done here and there. I started offering intentionally, like we were facing the final votes for that camp controversy I was talking about. Yeah, right. At the time I had this thought and I, I sent an email to our board chair who was going to have to chair the next two meetings, which were going to be hard meetings. And I said to her, I said, hey, you know, I had this thought, you know, basically, don’t worry if it’s not something you don’t want, because I really thought they’d say no. I sent them an email saying, hey, I had this idea, what if I led some, some grounding, you know, some breath work, grounding practices and some community building before these meetings. Meetings that are going to be really hard. I mean, she emailed me back probably within the hour saying, yes, that’s a great idea. Which I was like, okay, yeah, right. Then I was like, all right, I guess this is what we’re doing. And so that sort of began the experiment of integrating, bringing in that stuff that had been very, very separate for me from my church world and bringing that in. And it made that the. That absolutely made the ending of that so much better. And not because the end result was a. At all different. They sold the camp because they were going to need to sell the camp. But I feel like people had more productive conversations. People had better relationships coming out from it. And people. The tone was gen was better in terms of the. The conversation than it had been prior to that.

Amy Stone [00:46:38]:
So I’m going to take you back to high school. You, who had a negative experience with them closing your school and made just a knee jerk, absolute black and white decision about how you were going to feel about that to many, many years in the future. You think you have a black and white decision in your head. You walk into a room and you’re like, this is over, I’m not doing it. But you walk out of the room with the awareness that the two things might be able to coexist and work together. If there’s somebody in the audience who’s listening, who feels like they have a very black and white decision in front of of them, they feel like they’re in a spot where they have to make an either or choice based on your experience in moving through this, do you have any guidance or tips to say, you know, if I was to try and do this on purpose, how do you open yourself up to seeing, can these things work together.

Nicole Havelka [00:47:26]:
Have a spiritual practice, whatever that looks for, like, for you? Because I think, yeah, even more so after that moment, like I have now, I now go to my practices to help me make those kinds of decisions.

Amy Stone [00:47:44]:
Fair enough.

Nicole Havelka [00:47:45]:
Sort of happened, like I would say those sorts of things happened in heightened emotional moments or whatever. I would turn to those things. And now also my, like yoga and meditation practice is just a daily thing now, you know, and that has been true for a long time, but it has maybe a different intention. And then I, I did that with the formation of what is now my business, which was, is birthed out of that moment, out of that both and moment, which was probably seven or eight years ago, at least, maybe longer. I’m losing track of time. It was probably longer than that, a long time before that. So I had that inkling, that idea of what this next thing. So I did after that moment, I did pretty quickly after that. Sign up, up for a 300 hour and advanced yoga teacher training.

Amy Stone [00:48:33]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:48:34]:
I got attuned to do Reiki, which is an energy healing practice, which I’m attuned to do now, and did a bunch of, a bunch of stuff, a bunch of advanced training at the yoga studio I was at at the time, as a way, especially as a way to explore what I was going to do next because I didn’t know what it looked like.

Amy Stone [00:48:55]:
If I had 100 bazillion dollars, which I do not, and endless time, I would want to do a survey of all the humans in the world and find out how many ordained pastors have gone on to get a Reiki certification. Because I think that would be a.

Nicole Havelka [00:49:10]:
Really, really, at least in our progressive circles, a lot is the answer.

Amy Stone [00:49:13]:
I just think it would be a really interesting data field. Like, I don’t know if anybody’s like researched it. And I think it would be a lot of fun. I’m not sure it has any practical application, but it is, it does. You know, you’re a person who represents that these things come together in perhaps unexpected ways. It would be really interesting. I could expand it. Like, how many rabbis and priests and all of these things? I would super, like, how many? Like, I think it would be a fabulous, fabulous question. So what does your life look like today? Because you are like, I don’t like, so what do you do and, and I know you’ve talked about it a couple times. We’re going to wrap up in a minute with my final fun questions. But tell us what you do today. Tell us about the upcoming podcast and how people can find you.

Nicole Havelka [00:49:54]:
I’m. That’s so exciting. So what I do now, like what? Like we’re of course running out of time. So there’s been an evolution since that both and moment. And I’ve been exploring what that means ever since. The way that looks right now is that I have my own business which I’ve been running for about six years. It’s called Defy the Trend. And I now call myself a burnout recovery coach.

Amy Stone [00:50:16]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:50:16]:
So I help people like the people like me who are change makers, artists, healers, you know, faith based, you know, faith based organizers or leaders of some capacity or just people who, who quite frankly, just care about the world and want it to be better for, for all people. So I want to work with those, those folks I help. I do that by coaching. I can also help do that with like visioning and strategy with organizations who want to be sustainable and who wanted to make the change they want to make in the world without burning people out their teams. And they want to do that in a compassionate, humane way with their team. So that’s the work that I’m, I’m doing now. And like you, you’ve, you’ve helped me tell my story so beautifully. I think people will understand why I’m doing what I’m doing very, very well as they’re sitting hopefully still listening to this probably too long podcast because I like to talk. So, so that’s what I’m doing. You can find me at defy the trend.com as my main website. You can the most you can find me at Nicole Havelka on LinkedIn is my most active place. Blue sky is another place to find me. I’m not on there quite as often, but that’s under Just hyphen. Rest is what you’ll find me at there. And I’ll tell you more about why that word in a minute. And then I also have a newsletter called Just Rest on Substack as well, and that’s Defy the Trend Substack. And that’s the precursor to my podcast you just referred to as of this taping. I am crowdfunding to help pay for some professional support for the launch of that podcast, which I’m calling Just Rest Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals for the people that I just described. And it’s Going to be cool conversations like these in the messy middle of like people who want to make change and who want to take. Take naps. You know, how do we make both of those things? And, and I it’s a both and sort of conversation because it’s rest is resistance to grind culture, to toxic capitalism, to all of those things. So resting is in fact, in and of itself a form of resistance. And so that’s what I’m looking to explore with my new podcast, which by the time this airs, hopefully will be a thing. And the place on my website that I hope it will exist will be defy the trend.com podcast is where I hopefully that stuff will all live by early October would be my guess.

Amy Stone [00:52:48]:
So we’ll put all. And we’ll get all the information about that. One of the things that people who are listening to this may or may not know is that because when we talk about organizational systems management, I think that a lot of people think of companies and the structures and maybe government organizations. But a huge amount of research about organizational systems comes from academic systems and also congregations, like many of the people who do research on that do their research on people who are running big congregations because it is a complicated set of circumstances and one that has all kinds of things going on to it. So that definitely surprised me when somebody handed me a book that was like, this is about organizational management. And the person who wrote it was out of a faith group. And I was like, that is unexpected. So that’s the reason I lend that there. Are you ready for the fun questions?

Nicole Havelka [00:53:41]:
Yes, I’m always ready for fun.

Amy Stone [00:53:43]:
All right, I have to admit this question is inspired by my own experience with youth and Sundays and after church. Okay, if you have a choice between a donut and something like coffee cake, which is your preference?

Nicole Havelka [00:53:59]:
Coffee cake.

Amy Stone [00:54:01]:
That’s totally like every Sunday of my childhood. Go to church, go to the basement, get a cookie.

Nicole Havelka [00:54:05]:
Coffee cake or donuts. Right. That’s very church basement kind of fair.

Amy Stone [00:54:10]:
I mean, I. Right, exactly. That’s what. That’s where my mind was. I totally. That’s exactly what inspired that. Okay, so on a hot summer day when you want a cool and refreshing drink, what is your favorite cold summer beverage?

Nicole Havelka [00:54:21]:
Oh, my gosh. This is going to be a little weird. It’s something I’m currently obsessed with because it’s really hot right now. As we’re recording, Trader Joe’s has this juice that is cucumber watermelon.

Amy Stone [00:54:33]:
Okay.

Nicole Havelka [00:54:33]:
And it is so cool and refreshing. It’s wonderful. If I Don’t live in a place that has a Trader Joe’s anymore. So that can run out during the. I get there maybe once a month to a city that has one. The other thing I like is the Simply Limeade with Seltzer water mix. So you mix seltzer. This is a pro tip, friends. Like, so like Simply Limeade. Or you could do lemonade, but I found the lime tastes better. And then get just plain old seltzer water and mix that together with ice is another really good one.

Amy Stone [00:55:02]:
That does sound delicious. We went through a phase in my house that was like 10 years where it was like the Simply Pink Lemonade. So I. That’s like, I’m a fan and the kids were young, so I tried limeade once with them, and they were like, no, now they’d probably like it. But okay. So when you have a tough problem in your life and you want to talk it through with somebody, who is the person in your life that you are most likely to call or tell text for support these days.

Nicole Havelka [00:55:30]:
You know, I am blessed enough to have lots of people in this category, but the first piece person that I thought of is my dear friend Ellis, who is another fellow church nerd who’s been with me for a long time through all of this nonsense. And my. My friend Ellis is similarly frustrated now with the church and is getting there is near. Is this close to being done with their. Their masters in counseling and. And is becoming a. A therapist. So we’ll be doing a different kind of. Of work and doing work and change in the community. But they. The reason I always tell them that I call them a lot is because call or text is because, like, I know, like, someone who is both really supportive and who does not bullshit me, like, will tell me, like, I love people who will just get in my face and tell me when I’m being an idiot. So. And Ellis is one of those people and I can think of that’s like making me think of other people in my lives too. But Ellis was the first one that popped to mind.

Amy Stone [00:56:38]:
That’s fantastic. That’s it. Nicole Havelka, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the show.

Nicole Havelka [00:56:44]:
Oh, thank you, Amy, for even having me. This was a delight.