34: Matt Anderson, on Leaving the Foster Care System and Leaving Well
“We only learn by doing, we only find out what’s possible by doing. We have to take action.”
Matt Anderson is the founder of Proximity Design Studio, a social innovation start-up whose mission is to imagine, create, and scale new solutions that invest in the well-being of parents to keep families together. Proximity is a media production and strategic consultation company that believes in the power of storytelling to shift the mindsets that hold in place policies and practices that benefit systems over people. Matt has worked in the child and family services sector for over 20 years and brings a unique depth and breadth of experience to the work of Proximity.
Matt’s background includes public policy, business development, program development, multi-media storytelling, and executive leadership. Matt produced the award-winning feature documentary film From Place to Place, two seasons of the podcast Seen Out Loud, and many other multi-media projects. Matt’s career began with youth who were aging out of foster care and those early relationships shaped his philosophy that we should listen to people’s stories, learn from their expertise, and take action with them. Matt is a native of Pittsburgh and is in the process of moving from North Carolina to Washington D.C.
He is a devoted optimist and believes wholeheartedly in the good in people and the world we live in. His favorite way to spend an afternoon is finding unexpected and meaningful ways to connect with people by exploring a new town or city-human connections. Their stories are the things that fuel his purpose and passions in life.
“I had to trust myself. I had to have faith in the fact that once I let go, then everything that I need will be available to me. The fear of letting go is so powerful, but what has surprised me is that I let go into a realm of abundance, a space where all things become possible to me.”
Additional Quotes:
I knew I had to leave. When I felt that again, I was like, Oh, I'm not right with the organization. I'm not right with our clients and I'm not right with myself. I have to leave. I'd be doing everybody - forget myself - I'd be doing everybody around me a disservice.
We only learn by doing, we only find out what's possible by doing. We have to take action.
If you leave with integrity and you leave whole, I think you leave well.
Connect with Matt
Matt is proud to be partnered with Mother’s Outreach Network and the recently produced Standing With Moms documentary.
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Read the full transcript below
But I had to trust myself. I had to, had to have faith in the fact that once I let go, then like everything that I need will be available to me. Right? So like the fear of letting go is so powerful, but what surprises people, what has surprised me is that I let go into a realm of abundance. Right? A space where all things become possible to me.
This is Leaving Well, where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose, and when possible, joy. I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief.
Leadership and career development braided throughout will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving well framework. Expect to be inspired challenged and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice. Of leaving. Well, as you seek to leave your imprint in this world, Matt Anderson is the founder of proximity design studio, a social innovation startup, whose mission is to imagine, create, and scale new solutions that invest in the wellbeing of parents to keep families together.
Proximity is a media production and strategic consultation company that believes in the power of storytelling to shift the mindsets that hold in place policies and practices that benefit systems. Over people. Matt has worked in the child and family services sector for over 20 years and brings a unique depth and breadth of experience to the work of Proximity.
Matt's background includes public policy, business development, program development, multimedia storytelling, and executive leadership. Matt produced the award winning feature documentary film From Place to Place, two seasons of the podcast Seen Out Loud, and many other multimedia projects. Matt's career began with youth who were aging out of foster care, and those early relationships shaped his philosophy that we should listen to people's stories, learn from their expertise, and take action with them.
Matt is a native of Pittsburgh and is in the process of moving from North Carolina to Washington, D. C. Matt, I'm glad to have you on the podcast. We've exchanged some LinkedIn DMs, and I've listened to some episodes of your podcast, and I'm excited to just Let's start with a question that kind of digs deep.
Let's do it. I'm curious to know what the most resonant moment was when you realized that you needed to leave your work in child and family services sector. I don't know why I just got like full body like chills because it's like there's so many there really are. There are a lot of resonant moments, but the first one that came to my mind that I'll share is.
I had the I had the realization in a moment that I wasn't in right relationship with myself for the people that I serve and that literally that moment came to me on zoom like this. And, um, it was, it was all employees at Children's Home Society of North Carolina, where I worked. We were doing a diversity equity inclusion training and the trainer said relational equity.
It's like, Oh, what is that? And so she defined it as being in right relationship with people. And then she went on to say relational equity practice is the acknowledgment, at least the acknowledgment that you participate, benefit from, contribute to systems that harm and oppress people. So like all of that happened in the span of like two minutes.
And I was just sitting there in my office thinking about, am I in right relationship with people? And I answered that with, well, which people, myself and the people I serve, who do I serve? I serve kids in foster care and their parents. And so then I started thinking, am I, am I in right relationship with parents?
I just, I started there and where that took me was, well, I know that the system is harmful to people. And I know that it harms kids. I know it harms their parents. And so if I am, and I was at the time, very focused on how do we prevent foster care in the first place. So I had made this big shift in my career from trying to make the system better for kids in it to preventing it in the first place, keeping families together.
So I'd already made that like mental shift and I was starting to make that practice shift in my work. But at the time I was still responsible for North Carolina's largest foster care program. I was responsible for 1200 kids in foster care. And so as I was sitting there thinking through this, I was like, well, if all these kids are in my foster care program and I sat across from all of their parents and said, I care about you.
I care about the integrity of your family, the well being of your family. Could I say that with a straight face at the end of the day, where are my priorities, you know, and I just, I just felt like in that moment, I wasn't right with parents. In the work that I was doing of their kids being in my foster care system.
And if I wasn't right with the people I was serving, I wasn't right with myself. That was, um, I think maybe July ish of 2022. And that, that's just, that was it, you know. And, uh, there were a lot of other things that happened, but that was a big one. You know, just not being right with myself. Thank you for sharing that.
And, and I, I have a couple of questions that I think of when I hear you say that. So one path would be around. How do we know if we're in impact based social impact human serving human centered work? How do we know when it's time to go? And then the other 1, I think, is. Maybe harder to answer. Yeah. Is do you have any fear or worry then about not being there for the system change that you were starting to prioritize?
Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, how do you know? You just know . I mean, you do. I mean, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know the, the real issue is are we gonna do something about it? That's the, that's the harder part. So I knew I had to leave. When I had this moment of self awareness where I was just like, you know what I show up to work every day one foot in One foot out and I'd had that experience once before in my career and I was working as a therapist But I was also working on the film that you mentioned in the bio from place to place.
I liked being a therapist I loved working on this film and what it what it meant like what the potential of that project was And so I was one foot in one foot out as a therapist I was like, well, that's not good for me. It's not good for the, the community health center I was working for, and it's definitely not good for my clients.
So I knew I had to leave. And when I felt that again, in the job that I had, I was like, oof, like that's, I'm not right with the organization. I'm not right with our clients and I'm not right with myself. I have to leave. I'd be doing everybody, forget myself, I'd be doing everybody around me a disservice. It was like an integrity issue on that.
Like I had to be whole. I think that's when I was like, okay, I know, but I'll say this and you might want to jump in before we pivot to the other question. But journaling is a huge part of my practice and I see journaling as. Reflection, obviously, right? Like it's where you go to be reflective. It's like going to the gym.
You go there to do pushups. Well, you go to the journal to do a self reflection and the muscle you're building a self awareness. So I think that's like a practice that people can can use is like be reflective every day in the morning. I write a page in my journal and it's how I build the muscle of self awareness.
And that's where you start to know, like, all right, yeah. Do I need to make a big decision here? Well, I love that too, because I think so often we go to our community or our network or our close people to ask or to get feedback from when you're right. We know. And if you're doing those reflective exercises and for, for you who are listening and you're thinking, I don't journal, it literally is a piece of paper and a pen and some time for yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. 15, 15 minutes every morning. I write, I write, I mean, I have your typical journal book. I write one page every morning and it takes 15 minutes and it's, it's a really, really helpful practice. And so another resonant moment. I was sitting on the porch with my sister and my grandmother on August 7th of 2022.
And I said to both of them, I think I have to leave my job. And that was a Sunday. And I told them all the reasons why and what I was dealing with, and they listened, and they, they were like, yeah, that makes sense. I think you probably do. Like, that seems like the right thing for you and for everybody. And then, Monday morning, the next day, I wrote in my journal, I've made the decision to leave my job, and that was that.
Like, so it's, yeah, it's like, it's, it's both, but this is internal work at the end of the day. You know, we can only rely on external so much, you know, we have to, we have to be inward focused too. And that's where the real answers are. Because what was your second question was like fears and insecurities.
It was fear and worry about what happens when you had, you had, I think, just, or maybe it had been months or maybe a year or so when you had said, I'm going to do the upriver work instead of the downstream work. So then is there a worry after you had the decision confidence to say, I need to quit my job?
What about the space that you're leaving? Yeah. And that system change? Yeah, it's a really good question. It's, it's, it's tough because. Yeah. I think as human beings, we're really good at either or, like, either you focus on the upstream work or you focus on, you know, systems transformation. I, I think at the end of the day, it is a both and.
It's not for me anymore. I tried to embody the both and of how do I make the system better while I work on trying to keep people out of it. That was I call that values fatigue, is what my experience of that was. It was sort of tearing me apart in some ways. I couldn't do it. But, and so I chose, I made my choice.
I said, you know what? I'm one person. I've got, I don't know, another 40 years of working ahead of me. I'm going to, for now at least, I'm putting all of my efforts and what I see as a more just cause, which is to invest in parents and keep families together. And we need a whole lot of people. Still doing work that is about making the experience of kids and families in the system a better more just experience and solving problems within the system to and solving problems within the system that is about preventing systems involvement.
Like, you know, we need all of it. But I think that what I, what I was seeing for myself and sort of a, a bigger need than just me as one person, we need a whole lot more people working outside of the system on, you know, ways in which we invest in this more just cause, in my opinion, which is, you know, investing in family.
So, yeah, I think it's, it's attention for sure, but I think there's a lot of great people doing a lot of great work within the system and that's just not where I need to be. I also think a lot about roles and projects that I've left. And I think I've, I've been so quick to raise my hand for certain things that when I lower my hand or sit on my hand, it gives the space for someone else who is likely going to do a better job or a more equitable job or what have you than I had done.
Or if it's not that. It will continue the work that I've done when I step aside. Yeah. So, so you went from August 7th, having the conversation with your sister and grandmother. The next morning, you wrote it in your journal that you were going to leave. Is there a particular or a powerful process that you found helpful?
Or that you wish you had done as you planned, implemented, communicated that you were leaving. It was really this, this idea of integrity or this value of integrity is important to me. So, like one way to think about integrity is just like being whole. So I wanted to leave and walk away from that, that. Job, but like I put 11 years of myself into that work and, you know, built relationships and you know, it was, there was a lot that I was walking away from.
So I wanted to leave whole, you know, um, not just for myself, but for other people too. And so that was, that was kind of like the most important thing for me. I mean, so that was August 8th that I wrote in the journal. My last day was, uh, was September 29th. So however many weeks that is, seven weeks or something.
That was the process and I worked very closely with, with my boss at the time who was the, is the CEO of the organization and you know, we put together the absolute best plan we could, that everybody could, could be whole, you know, 'cause I was, I was, you know, on the executive team and I had a lot of different responsibilities and, you know, a lot of amazing people were gonna.
carry the work forward, that wasn't a concern. But, you know, when somebody steps out, like, it leaves gaps and it leaves challenges for people in a variety of ways. So he and I had a lot of, like, just heart to heart conversations about my decision and why and all of that. You can just imagine, like, without sharing details, you can just imagine what You know, those conversations are like he and I worked together very, very closely for a very, very long time, did a lot of amazing work together and had a ton of respect for each other and tears were shed.
And it was, it was tough. Um, it was right. It was definitely the right decision for me, but yeah. So anyway, I'm rambling a little bit to say that I really said, let's, let's. Maybe the best way to say it is that I really wanted the organization and my boss to design the process that was going to be best.
And that way, you know, it was really the organization's needs being met as, as I left to make sure that we could, we could all feel good about what happened, what happens next. And, um, I, I have, I have one regret though, in that process that I'll share that I don't really talk about a lot. But I think in the context of this show and conversation, it makes sense.
The deeper reasons of why I was leaving weren't really communicated and shared. Because it, it just, you know, there was some concern that it might be just a little bit more disruptive than was going to be helpful of like crisis of conscience and sort of this values fatigue and like just the, the way I was seeing our work and the things I was grappling with that wasn't communicated.
And I do have regret about that because integrity is important to me and I didn't leave completely whole, um, because some of, some of that wasn't shared. And I have some regret about that, but otherwise I, I left, I left well, I think. That's really great on so many different levels. I was thinking as we were talking, I was going to ask that question is what was your spectrum of how loudly you laughed, meaning what was the communication?
Because I think that is the thing that often falls by the wayside intentionally almost to make sure that there's a protection, a lack of disruption. And I think from the folks that I work with, there's always residual. It doesn't matter how well you've planned and often the residual comes in of why did you really leave people wondering, guessing that.
So I'm glad you shared that. I also think it was really important when you shared that you wanted to have your boss and the organization design the process because. You wanted it to be something that worked for them. And I think that's a really powerful thing for if you're listening and you are in a decision making role, it is an organization responsibility to have folks leave well from your organization.
Individuals, of course, can learn all sorts of things about doing it better, but it's an organizational responsibility. So I'm glad you touched on that. What three words would you use to describe your relationship to change or transition? And it could be, you know, your emotional response to those things.
It could be a phrase of just how you feel about it, generally. So where, I don't think this is where, where you're going. So let's, let's, let's kind of play around with this one if you want, because the first thing that comes to mind is, is four words. Which is, it starts with me, and the context for that is, is, is change more like, kind of the kind of change oriented work I've done my whole career.
So I say often that systems don't change until people change. So systems are, are just made up of a group of people, and the structures of those systems, the policies, the practices, and the money, are just a reflection of the individual people's beliefs, their values. And so, for me You know, change starts with me.
I don't, I don't want to be in a position of, and I have to be really careful about this, I think, in my work, but like, I don't want to be in a position where I'm just pointing fingers at others or at the system as a whole without, you know, sort of pointing the finger back at me and like looking and examining, uh, you know, this is, this is also another An answer, another answer to your question, which is just two words, which is right relationship, right?
You know, I have to, I have to do some really deep self assessment of kind of where I am and what I'm contributing to. So anyway, let me stop there. Those are, those are two, two ways that I think about change on a more macro scale. I love it. And it's, it's so fitting. The reason I asked that question is because there's so many different ways to address it.
It's been really fascinating to have guests respond. And I also love that you said that about not pointing fingers. It's actually the outro for the podcast is a, is a quote for myself about like, we have to stop pointing outwards and saying that it's up to them to fix the problem when we also have some control.
So I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, it's a big, um, and this has been a, you know, a friend and sort of a mentor of mine that's been on the, on my podcast, Corey Best, you know, he and I often talk about accountability as just a framework of this conversation. And so I think that's, you know, that's what that is, right?
Like, yes, the system has all kinds of flaws. But what, what, how am I going to become somebody that is a better version of myself that's working towards, you know, a better future for everybody, you know, that starts with me. I have to be accountable. You know, I've told myself accountable. I think that goes into The concept of leaving well as a concept was originally, I first learned it in the expat space.
I know a lot of missionaries and a lot of military families also use it. It's also used in hospice care. And the idea behind all of it is that we are continually making something better as we go on to the next thing. And it's either ourselves, the place that we're leaving, the place we're going. So I love that you said that.
What are you walking towards? and or hoping for as you continue to process and navigate your transition. Maybe I'll, I'll say it this way because we've already been touching on values a bit and I, I talked about integrity, but I think, you know, my journal practice, right? So, so a note from a page from my journal today, like literally what I was journaling about today were about my values going forward.
So like who I am, it doesn't ever change, right? Like I am who I am. Why I left my job in a large part was the, just the time, the space, the freedom. To explore discover, but really what it was was that the freedom to return back to who I am that I became a one dimensional professional who was about, you know, transforming America's child welfare system and sure a noble cause, but I lost.
a lot of who I am in that process, and I think I was solving the wrong problem, ultimately. But yeah, I mean, so, so I was giving myself the freedom to return back to who I am, and so that's, that's like I'm finding myself again, really. So what I was journaling about today is my values around liberation, freedom, creativity and justice.
And so I think that like, what am I walking towards? Where am I going? You know, I really think that my, my life and then my work as a reflection of who I am, I think right now is evolving to be grounded in liberation. Like, I have to liberate myself from constraints, those constraints are within me and outside of me, and I have to acknowledge what those are, and I have to let go of those constraints to be free, to really be who I am, to return to who I am, to be connected to who I am, and in that freedom to be me, and let go of all of these constraints, And these roles and these identities, that's where I actually return to the access point of my own creativity, my own imagination.
And in that space of imagination and creativity, then why can't I put that to work to imagine and create a more just world for all people? And that's, I think, you know, where I am today of like, what am I walking towards? I want to be walking towards justice. and imagining and creating a more just world. I want to invite more people into that process, you know, so I want to, I want to be inviting people that are dealing with the same challenges in their work that I was dealing with and invite them into a community that says, you can liberate yourself from the constraints that hold you back.
You can be free to who you, to be who you really are. You can imagine and create a more just world. And I think that's like, that's where. That's where I'm walking towards where that will take me. I don't know yet. It's the only way, though, if, if we don't, if we don't reimagine what we are the role that we want to be in, we'll still be having the same conversation.
I'm curious what you think about. Burnout and misalignment. Do you think that for those folks that are in human serving organizations, systems work, justice system, whatever the thing is, is burnout real? Is it a misalignment? Is it both and nuance? I think it is real, definitely. I never sat in the role of like a 23, 25, 26 year old child protective services investigator that's dealing with the weight of all of what comes along with that.
That will burn you out. So I just put out a podcast episode last week with Keith Howard and he reflected back on his experience as a CPS investigator of like sending them to the doctor's office and people being medicated. And like that experience is not The, I don't know how to describe this, but like to be in that role of a CPS investigator is to be put into a dehumanized role that dehumanizes other people.
We can't, we can't survive in that, in that reality, I think, and I do think that definitely burns people out. And we see it, right? Turnover rates of, like, I remember being in grad school and, and, uh, the professor had done some research on burnout and turnover as, like, the indicator, and worked with a, an agent, a county in, I think, New York State.
They had a 110 percent turnover rate in one year. So just think about that, like, that's, that's burning. So anyway, so it's real. I did not burn out. I didn't I didn't experience burnout. I didn't experience compassion fatigue. I never got jaded. I heard somebody describe it as like a hard egg. Like you see so much and experience so much that you're in the fire so much that you you hard boil and you're hard on the inside like you've lost your compassion and that happens to people too.
Um, what I had was values fatigue and that just means that who I am and what I believe in and what I value. I was misaligned with the work that I was doing. And so the, the, the values of the work was not allow, aligned with the values of me. And that's what I was dealing with. Like the weight, the tension of that became too much to, to where I had to, I had to, I had to choose, I had to make a choice of, you know, which, which set of priorities and values am I gonna align myself with.
And so I, I made, I made my choice. Yeah, I think about. Some of the frontline staff folks that I know and, you know, compassion fatigue is something that is talked about quite a bit. And the folks I know, it's not even compassion fatigue. It's that they are so beholden to the work and the humans that they are working with that they don't see there being any other way for them to have impact.
And so they show up every day and just continue the onslaught of the work. Um, yeah. So there is so much nuance. Yeah, definitely. And it, you know, I think I was talking to somebody earlier today about a particular sort of aspect of the system that she was dealing with at a very high sort of like systems level.
And the point of it is that, like, yeah, we just get in the ruts and the routines of just show up and just, like, literally keep plugging holes and putting out fires. And we, we, we, I think you're right. I think we do fall. We lose again. We lose our imagination that there's a different way. Yeah. And so it's just like, we just keep playing the same records over and over again.
We lose our imagination. And I think there's also, this is one place where I will point fingers. We lose our imagination and we also. Get weary of being told no from a funding perspective, from a decision making perspective of folks that are so far disconnected from front line that I think it gets exhausting to ask again and ask again and ask again.
So I'm curious if there's anything about this process, whether it's. deciding to leave, having values fatigue, that you haven't already said that someone might be shocked or surprised to hear. I don't, I don't know if this would shock or surprise anybody, but I think the thing that, that we haven't talked about, about leaving, which is very, very real.
And I have this conversation all the time because I've decided on LinkedIn first and then on my podcast second to just share my process. So I have this conversation a lot. I have a job. My values are misaligned. I, I can't be imaginative and creative. I can't do what I really believe. And if I leave, I have a mortgage and I have health insurance and my kids are in college and right.
Like these are real constraints that people are struggling with. And so I don't have. Some of those, I have, I have some, I don't, I don't have kids, for example, um, that's a big deal, you know, in terms of my privilege to be able to make a choice to just leave. But, you know, those are real things, so the fears, right, like the fears, the insecurities, you know, mine were, if I don't have a job and a title and an organization and all this stature, you know, whatever, then I lose my relevance.
Like, without the title, there is no relevance. Without relevance, there is no opportunities. Without any opportunities, there is no income. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna destroy my career and my livelihood and opportunity to have impact. So if I leave, that's what's coming, and I'm afraid of that, so I'd rather stay.
So, I had to just take the leap. I know that I had enough, you know, sort of privilege to be able to make things work and, but I had to trust myself. I had to, I had to have faith in the fact that once I let go, then like everything that I need will be available to me. Right. So like the fear of letting go is so powerful, but what surprises people, what has surprised me is that I let go into a realm of abundance.
Right? A space where all things become possible to me, and if I have good intent, and I show up with behaviors that align with my intent, you know, then what I need is gonna, is gonna show up to support me in ways that I never would have expected, never would have known, but they're there, right? And, and this is like, I think people don't know that, right, because we're not taught that in school, you know, we're not taught that in our, in our jobs, we're actually taught and trained away from that, we're taught to think scarcity, and not the truth of abundance.
And so I think what surprises people when they do let go and leave that. The opportunities are, are there, you know, I had to learn that lesson just by doing it, but, you know, it's been beautiful. Like, I've not had a regret. I've not had a second thought. I've not had a doubt about was this the right thing to do?
Not once. Have I had fears and like freak outs? Yes. Yeah, you said two things that I think are really powerful that I wanted to just kind of. Elevate talking about we're not taught this. I think we're also taught that we need to deserve abundance. And so some of us deserve abundance, and some of us do not.
And so if we, for whatever internal reasons, think that we don't deserve it, it makes it that much harder to then let go to say, I welcome in abundance. And I just think that is relevant for a lot of folks. The other thing is. You, you said this and I thought, of course, that makes sense. You said you had to learn it yourself.
And I think that's the point of it. No matter how many times someone listens to your story or any of the other guests on my podcast, it's a little bit of like, maybe permission slips, like adding into a jar of like, okay, Matt did it. If Matt didn't, maybe I can do it, but we still have to do it ourselves.
You're still going to have to make that decision yourself. Right. Like back to the, the, the gym and the pushup analogy, like you can't build muscle by reading about pushups, right? You actually have to go do the pushups. And I think it's interesting because I've been going to this gym in Greensboro called AWOL started by Lynch Hunt for years.
And he talks about action all the time. So yeah, he's a, he's a fitness guy, but he's like, so he's a transformational specialist is what he calls himself. Amazing. Um, he had to transform his own life. 10 years in federal prison was his training grounds. And then, you know, he, he helps people change their lives too.
And he talks about action changes things all the time. So, yeah, I mean, we only. We only learn by doing, we only find out what's possible by doing, we have to take action. Oh, what I was going to say about that, because this was interesting, one of, I've made a lot of decisions over the last year that got me to where I am today.
Some were easy, some were very difficult. One of the difficult decisions I made was to leave Greensboro, a community that I'd been in for 12 years that was comfort and like, you know, it was easier to be there, but I knew that what was next for me wasn't there. I had to let go again, like I had to let go of that constraint that was going to hold me back.
to find out what, what was available to me. So one of the things that I did in the gym, cause we, there was a group of us that worked out every morning and Lynch would run that, that group. And we do Metcons, you know, which are really intense, high intensity workouts for once, once a week we were doing that.
And I said to the group, I was like, I was like, Hey, we need to do two Metcons a week. Like one's not enough. Like I'm about to make this big leap and I need the training ground every morning in this gym to show me what I'm capable of, what I can endure. Like, like Lynch would always say that if your why is strong enough, you can endure any how I needed the, I needed the push.
Like I needed these two intense workouts a week. One wasn't enough. And so of course everybody's mad at me. Like. What are you doing, man? Like, once a week is killing us. Like, why do we need to do this twice? But like, but we rallied as a community. And like, the cool thing was that they saw what I was like, they knew exactly what I was doing and exactly.
So it was like, cool. Like, we got you. Like, we're going to do this. We're all going to do this. Like, we're going to do it together. And you know, my last day there before I left, I went in to work out and, you know, I got my, my Metcon mat t shirt that Lynch's wife made for me. And like, It was like, that's what happens, right?
Like when you engage with your community around like, I need you guys right now. There's something beautiful about the intersection of your own decision confidence that we've been talking about. And then also leaning into your community to support your decision. And I think, you know, from people. Whether it's gym or whether it's noting, I, I tell folks to track their worthy work and track the things, the little things that add up to their impact.
Um, that's a way of getting your reps in again of just that awareness and that noticing. So yeah, find your, find your way to be plugged in to your community and your way to be aware. And just real quick to build on that, that might help people too. Cause this was, there was a guy at the gym, Ken Canyon, and he was a coach.
And he told me about your brag file. Yes. He was like, you should have a brag file. I'm like, what is a brag file? He's like, it's just all the things that you did that you thought you'd never be able to do. Like actually like in your brain, have a filing cabinet of all those things so that when the hard things show up, you're like, I don't think I can do this.
You just go back into your Rolodex and you remind yourself of like, but I did this and I did this and I did this. And here I am, like I survived all of that and I thrived or whatever, or maybe you didn't and maybe you failed and you had to. Pivot. And like, it's all good because here you are. And that was like, that was really helpful.
He told me that probably six years ago. And I've used that of like, okay, when hard things come, let me find myself. Well, and they can be small things too. It doesn't have to be these grandiose things. I keep a warm fuzzies note in my notes app. And it's clips of when someone says, you know, I just really appreciated that you did this thing for me.
I clip it and I put it in my notes app. And it is so, so great. So incredible. Is there anything about your own story, about lessons learned, about what's in the future for you that we haven't talked about that you'd like to share before my last question? There's probably a million things, but I think the thing that maybe because of this, this show and maybe your audience, that one of the things I've discovered in this last year that I didn't know I was really passionate about.
Which is helping other people like me that are dealing with this values fatigue, this struggle of being misaligned in their work, not just engaging with people in the DMs on LinkedIn and having calls. I do that probably at least once a week, um, have calls with people, but building community. Like I found this passion and desire to build a community of people that not only they don't want to come and like have the complain fest that's not the community I'm building.
I'm building the community of people that want to free themselves to go imagine and create a more just world. Like I want to build that community. So, you know, that's part of what, what I'm working on. And, you know, I don't know exactly how that's going to take shape, but it's already, well, I do cause it's already taken shape, but if people want to engage on that level.
You know, and, and the, the proximity process podcast that we've referenced here, you know, I'm having these conversations too, on that, on that show, if you go to there in that community or guests on that show, and that's part of the community building. Yeah. I love it. Well, you've done something really beautiful where you have calls following the podcast episodes so that you can dive deeper.
And I really love that. Yeah. Yeah. That was, um. Yeah, I've now officially called that the Proximity Podcast Club. So every Monday morning at 9am Eastern, it's now, just now we've started making it recurring. So it's like experiment, prototype, do people want this? Like, yeah, like a lot of people have been coming on to those calls and yeah, it turns a podcast into actual community and community building and it's been really cool and it just grew organically, right?
Like I didn't know that that was. Can happen, but episode one came out. My friend Kim called and was like, holy shit. Like, we need to bring people together. I'm freaking out. Like, I'm losing my mind. Like, we build community around this. And that was that sparked it. And, you know, My last question for you, Matt is what is leaving well mean to you?
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think what we already talked about the integrity. Right? Leaving whole. That's me personally. I wanted to leave feeling whole, feeling that I left doing what I came there to do, leaving relationships in a good place, leaving the organization in a good place, leaving my coworkers in a good place, not to diminish the fact that there will be some gaps and struggles and what have you.
to leave whole for me, the organization, my coworkers, the people that we serve. I think if, if you leave with integrity and you leave whole, I think you leave well. And that's, I think that's, I think that's it for me really. Matt, thank you for coming on the podcast and thank you for living and, and leading by example around knowing when it's time to go.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. This was fun. Appreciate it. Thanks, Matt. To learn more about Leaving Well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit NaomiHattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system.
We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide, to shift culture, and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.