The Underlayer: Fear, Clarity & Personal Growth for Mid-Life Professionals

EP 1: The Cost of Chasing Goals You Don’t Want

• David Young • Episode 1

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Episode 1 – When Your Decisions Don’t Match Your Dreams

Ever follow the “smart” path and end up miles from what you actually want?

In this debut episode of The Underlayer, I unpack the real story behind my zigzag career. From dreaming of broadcasting to majoring in biology, selling pharmaceuticals, and climbing corporate ladders that never felt right.

It’s about what happens when your goals look good on paper but don’t fit your life, and how to start making decisions that actually align with who you are.

You’ll hear:

  • The blunt career coach who told me to quit sales on the spot
  • How sunk costs and “shoulds” quietly drive bad decisions
  • Why thinking doesn’t create change (action does)
  • A simple method to get unstuck

If you’ve been reading, listening, and planning your way toward change but still feel stalled, this episode will help you test, move, and rebuild momentum, one small experiment at a time.

🎧 The Underlayer — Where the Real Story Lives.



The Underlayer YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@the_under_layer

The Underlayer Podcast Website: https://www.theunderlayerpodcast.com/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-young-mba-indy/

SPEAKER_00:

You are listening to episode one, possibly watching, since I will release this video on YouTube, to the my new podcast, The Underlayer, where the real story lives. This is a podcast where we take deep dives on single topics aimed at helping you become smarter, uh, improved personal growth, maybe improved mindset, and ultimately getting you closer to where you want to be and doing what you want to be doing in or with your life. Today's guest had to reschedule. We were going to take a dive, deep dive on goal setting and why high achievers struggle to set goals and even go so far as to set goals that we don't even really want to achieve. And then we repeat that cycle. But uh her schedule uh had changed suddenly, so she had to reschedule, and you are getting me solo for this first episode. I do have several interviews lined up, so you will get me interviewing people, experts on topics going forward. Uh, but I might sprinkle the occasional solo episode in as well. So uh today I thought we would talk about decision making and how I will use my kind of backstory as to how I started to make decisions at a pretty young age that didn't align with what I wanted to do. And then once I started that process, it was very hard to get off and start making different and better decisions. So I'll kind of walk you through that and then some ways that you might be able to think differently about uh decisions you're trying to make in your life. So when I uh when I was growing up, I played a lot of sports, uh, basketball was my favorite, it's what I was the best at. If someone had asked me when I was a kid, 10, 11, 12 years old, what I wanted to do, I would have said play in the MBA. If they had said if that doesn't work out, what would be your backup plan? Then I would have said broadcasting, I wanted to be uh Bob Costas is really popular uh as a broadcaster when I was a kid. He did baseball and basketball, and maybe even some horse racing broadcasting, so I would have said, you know, broadcasting. And with that information, when I graduated from high school and went to college, I naturally then majored in biology. So I don't know about you, but I don't know any broadcasters. There might be one. I should probably do some research on that. Maybe there's one uh broadcaster who majors in biology, but for the most part, they are journalism and communications majors, and it never even occurred to me, like I didn't even think about it. I I was literally telling people, like, I want to talk probably about sports, but I just want to talk on a microphone. I didn't want to be a DJ. But and then I majored in science, and I was good at math, and I was okay at science. Um, a lot of people were majoring in like business and history and um and communications. That was popular. But I just for some reason majored in biology. Um I got halfway through that degree, had no idea what I was gonna do. Uh I played a lot of golf at that time, and we got paired up with a guy who was a drug rep. And when he learned I was majoring in bio, he was like, Oh, finish that out. You get a job selling pharmaceuticals, and they'll pay you to play golf. I was like, Oh, sign me up. Great, what a gig. So I did just that, finished the degree, uh, had a connection, knew somebody, got a rip, got an interview, got the job. This is summer of '99. And I did that job for almost five years. And I'll let you think for a second, how many total rounds of golf that you think I played from 1999 to 2004 that the pharmaceutical company paid for? And the answer is five. I played five, 18 hull rounds in five years. So once a year, that guy that sold me on the dream of getting golf paid for was basically, you know, about 75 or$100 a year bonus free golf. So that didn't quite work out. Um now, so I had this degree in biology and I've been selling pharmaceuticals for about five years, uh, and the job was fine. Um the first year was pretty good. I was wearing a suit every day, I was driving forty, fifty thousand miles a year, started to get old. And so I quit. And I had this grand plan. This is spring of 04. I was gonna find myself, I was gonna figure it out. And I didn't. I didn't really do anything. I played a lot of poker. Poker was popular at the time. And then I started bartending. I don't know why. Always thought I wanted to be a bartender. I didn't even like cocktail. Um, but apparently it it sunk in. And then a year went by and I had done nothing. I'd played cards and bartended. So I started looking for jobs. I got another sales job. And uh this time was in home sales. I was going into people's homes and selling security systems. I have some incredible stories about my time there. I will not share them now, um, but I have some good ones. And at some point in that time, I went to my first career coach. I took a career test, an aptitude test, and the wonder lick, which I used to give to NFL quarterbacks. And then I had a three-hour meeting with him where we reviewed the results of those tests. The first thing he said to me, I don't even think he said hi or welcome. I sat down and he said, You should quit sales immediately. I was like, Okay, we're we're starting strong. He said, You have a 2% match to the sales profile. You are not a salesperson, you should immediately leave sales. I want you to leave my office, call your boss and say you quit. I don't care if you don't have a backup plan. I was and I didn't. So anyway, I went through that and uh, you know, I came out, you know, it was organized and detailed and um an introvert, not that introverts can't sell, but anyway, it was a struggle. So I I did sell for a few more months. And then eventually I got a quote on a normal job in an office in customer service. And so, you know, now here I am several years after graduating from college. I haven't done anything that I want to do, certainly nothing close to broadcasting. Um, and now I'm I'm in customer service for a manufacturing company. Like I never thought I would be there. No, I like that job. I was good at it. Did it for a few years, I went back to school, I got my MBA thinking that would open doors. Kind of did, certainly not like I thought it would. That got me into finance. I thought, okay, well, this makes sense. I I like numbers and data, and I understand finance, so surely I'm moving in the right direction. Did that for a few years, and like I just I was very unsatisfied. I I did the jobs and some I was good at, some I wasn't, but I was good enough to get by with it for the most part. Um and that's when I really, this is probably like 2013, 2014, maybe. Um, I really started to get into like self-help, personal help, personal development books, uh, self-help books, growth type books, money, finance, psychology. Um if a Navy SEAL has written a book, I have probably read it. I'm a sucker for anything written by Navy SEALs. Hopefully, in my next life, I come back as a dog or a Navy SEAL. Um and I started to collect motivational quotes. So I had this Word document of all these motivational quotes. Uh hundreds, hundreds. I had them highlighted, I had them top ten favorites. Like I was really into the quotes. Uh and then found podcasts. I listened to the Rich Roll podcast a lot. I read his book, Finding Ultra, and uh then moved to his podcast. Spent a lot of time in a cubicle listening to that and books on on Audible. And I kept having this feeling, so now you know I'm I'm close to 40 years old, and it's like, all right, well, this is not really going to script. I've yet to really do anything that I want to do, but a few things that I'm good at. So how do I figure what how do I get out of this? Like I just kind of felt like I was on this train. I'd gotten on a train that I didn't intend to get on, and I couldn't get off. And even when I did get off, it I I just got right back on. Like I didn't even look for another train. Or if I did, I didn't look very hard. I had no plan or purpose. And I quit. Uh no, I'm sorry, I uh left. It was summer of eighteen. I was no longer in finance and I was not working. And I thought this now's my chance, right? Like I had now I have some depth and and some perspective, and I'm a little bit older and I know what I don't want. And I've read all these books, and I kinda had the I can't I had this vision of doing something. I didn't it wasn't super clear, but it was it's it was like helping people, and I didn't want people to feel the way I felt. I didn't want them to feel so stuck. I wanted to help. And I didn't know what that was. I couldn't really tell you. It wasn't like life coaching or career coaching, but it was something. There was something there that I like felt inside. But I didn't know what that I didn't know what that was. And then uh we were living in an apartment at a time, we had we had moved out of the first house that we bought, and that part was not a great setup for us, and uh since I wasn't working, it was gonna be hard for us to buy another house on one salary, so I ended up going back uh to a finance role accounts receivable, got a job, we were able to get out of the apartment, bought the house that we currently live in, and did that for four years. And again, and that job was fine. I liked that job, I liked the people. Um, but I was bored and I just I needed more, but still having these thoughts, and I ended up hiring two more career coaches in that time. Uh, the first one was not much, uh, the second one was better, we were making some progress. Um and then that job I uh ended up there were just gonna be some layoffs, and then I had one more uh connection, and they were working in data, and I I'd always thought, well, data analysis makes sense. So I tried a data job, that didn't work. And then summer of 23 I found LinkedIn. Now finding LinkedIn kind of changed my life, certainly changed the trajectory of it in that you know, I found an outlet in content creation that I really enjoyed and still enjoy. I liked it and I was good at it. I like telling stories, and I was able to use that relatively short form content to tell stories, and a lot of it started with like motivation and but then a lot of racing and race stories and sports and then some of the books I had read. Um and as I started to do it, it was like, oh, well, I feel this is pretty aligned, and that job, the data job wasn't going that well. So, you know, I ended up leaving that in February of 24 and then started my kind of LinkedIn, you know, content and consulting business, coaching business in April of 24. Now, here's what's interesting. So as I was creating content and thinking about doing it full-time and leaving the corporate world, I still had this vision of helping people get unstuck or or figure something out. Like I feel like so many of us have things inside that we really want to try, we want to do. Maybe it's for work, maybe it's a hobby, uh, travel, writing a book, uh, Iron Man, music, uh, anything. Um, but we don't, for whatever reason, life situation, money, or lack thereof, time, uh, wait till your kids get older, whatever. We we we can find a lot of excuses. But we don't go after it. We think about it and we don't do anything about it. Uh and I knew that because I had thought, I had spent so much time thinking about changing that I thought if I I think I thought, I'm gonna say thought and think a lot, if I thought about it enough that like somehow it would happen. Like I like, I could think it think my way there. Someone at some point someone's gonna tap me on the shoulder, and we like, you know, you have spent you know 27,242 hours thinking about doing this. We are now going to open this door for you, and you are now going to do this, right? Yeah, that'll never happen. You can think until you die. Uh if you don't take action, it's you're stuck. You will stay stuck. I learned that the hard way. So when you see all those posts and people talking about taking action, yeah, it's true. Uh action will lead you somewhere. Might be the wrong place, but at least you'll know it. But thinking about it won't do it. Um so back to kind of February, March, April of 24. I was thinking about I had quit and I said I was going to launch this business on LinkedIn using content as my main driver. And in my mind, I still had to start. Like, I want to help people. And again, I just never knew what to call it. Like, it wasn't mindset, it wasn't life, it wasn't career. It was like this hybrid of those three things with my ability to like see things and you know, I observe things and see things that others can't or don't, especially in other people. Um, so I just wanted to I wanted to kind of mix all that together, and I didn't know what to call it. The best name I ever came up with was like a clarity coach or a clarity consultant. That sounded not great, but I don't know. And so what did I do? So in in going back to the beginning of wanting to be a broadcaster and majoring in bio, I wanted to start a business. I wanted to help people that were like a few years behind me, that were stuck, that they were probably, you know, mid-30s, maybe early 40s, and had just kind of gone through life doing what I had done, which is you think you're making good decisions and you're trying and you're trying different things, but it's not really working, but you don't really know what to do. And maybe you've tried coaches or therapists, which I'd seen therapists for a while, and and read the books and listened to the shows, and you have all this information, you have all this data, and you've taken notes, but you haven't applied a lot of it, you've thought about it. I was like, there's got to be more people like me that are that are either in a cubicle or you know, then at that point working from home or both, and I thought I could just come in and like really help them and give them a boost and really maybe see something that they hadn't seen or an idea. I could spark something inside of them, like get them to take a chance and try it. And who knows where that would lead, right? So what did I do? I launched a content coaching business, LinkedIn content. And I was good at content and I was good at storytelling. And so I was like, oh, well, I guess I'll coach that. But it's not really what I wanted to do, but I did it. And then I started signing clients. I started working with clients, so then I was like, oh, well, I can't switch, I'm you know, making money. This is kind of working. So I did it for a while. And then I think as I got a few months, maybe several months into it, and then I wasn't doing as well, I wasn't signing as many clients. I th honestly, I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I just was not aligned with how I wanted to be spending my time. My energy and thoughts were about what I really wanted to be doing, and then outwardly it was, you know, content and LinkedIn form formatting of posts and LinkedIn tips and tricks. And I knew about that stuff and I could help, but that's not that wasn't that wasn't the plan. Like that wasn't that's not why I started this. So, you know, a year, 14 months goes by, and it just wasn't going that well. I hadn't signed clients in a while and felt really unmotivated and and burned out. And so, you know, in August of this year, I you know, I closed that business down, started looking for jobs, and I hadn't looked for I hadn't looked for a job like as an outsider since that summer of 2018 where I didn't know someone and just was applying you know online as as a as a stranger. So several years since I you know tried that, and so I started doing that in kind of mid-August, and um obviously that's changed a lot with AI and a post-COVID world and all the layoffs, and you know, it's just a different looking for work now is just different. And I'm not that good at it, to be honest. Um I'm trying to figure that part out. And so the whole but this whole time, especially the last few months, you know, I had I had the other podcast that was called The Real You. I did 41 episodes from uh March of 24 to April of tw of this year, and I really loved it. Um but I'd gotten away from it and and decided to c to shut that down too. But I had this idea, like I wanted to do another show. But I wanted it to be more purposeful, I wanted it to be tied in to like what was closer to my vision of what I want to do, which is again helping people find this clarity, get unstuck, whatever you want to call it. Um and that's where that's where this came from. So I thought I can have people on in these areas like goal setting and relationships, emotional regulation, um leadership, strengths, uh, fear, why it holds us back. And I can have these experts on and we can really go deep into it. So that for me, you know, learner is one of my top five Clifton strengths, and you know, I'm fascinated by the expertise of others and how that can help me, which then can how that how can that help you? So I could have them on and we can take these deep dives on again, like why do like why do we set goals that we don't want to do? I've done that a bunch. Uh why do we do that? And how can we stop doing that or do less of it? So if you're listening to this and any of this resonates, you know, I would challenge you don't beat yourself up like I did. I would just be really hard on myself, like why did you do that, or why did you do this, and you should have done that, and then you know, should, which is like the worst word ever. Um I'm trying to not say it as much, but I used to say it a lot. You know, that's that's sunk cost, right? That's in the past. You can't change it. But you can learn from it. And going forward, you can take that experience and you can channel it for good, uh, not negativity for what you didn't do, and now it's positivity for what you can do. And it doesn't have to be this, you know. I always thought too that it had to be this huge leap. You had to figure it out all at once. So, like if you wanted to be an author, like you had to write a book, full book in two months and be an author, right? Doesn't necessarily have to be that. Like, write a short story, write two pages of a script, start writing poetry, anything, right? You just start writing and you see where it goes. Um, it's no different than if you want to train for a race. If you want to run a marathon and you've never run, like you're not gonna go out and run 20 miles, right? You're gonna run like half a mile or run a half mile, walk a half mile, then one mile, then two miles. You're gonna build up over several, several months, maybe even a year before you get to that race. Well, you have to take that same approach with whatever you're thinking. Um and then you slowly start to figure it out and you talk to people that have done it, and you figure out maybe some shortcuts or things they wish they had known. Um, but you're talking you start taking these little steps and action towards it, and that makes you feel better, and it feels like you're making progress. You don't have to quit your job, you don't have to uproot your family, you don't have to move to another country. You can do all that if you want, but you probably don't have to. Um but you start to get clarity when you start taking those steps. Like you the other thing too, and it took me a while to really learn this, is really paying attention to your energy. So when you're doing these things, like is it draining you? Like it might seem like a great idea and that you really like it, but when you do it, you find yourself drained, or you find yourself putting it off, or when you do it, you're like, I didn't feel great. Well, those are signs, right? Then you're probably not on the right track. So, like for me, when I started, once I committed to starting the second podcast, like my energy levels just went through the roof. Like I was just so excited and figuring it out and booking guests and recording these episodes, and like honestly, I almost want to do it every day. So then that's my that's my signal, right? Like I'm on the right track. I'm this is part of what I'm supposed to be doing. And it goes all the way back to the beginning of like I always wanted to talk and broadcast, and podcasting is a form of broadcasting, right? Like, so it just took me forever to figure to figure all this out. So I want to shorten that time frame for people and whatever they want to do. Um so what I would say to do is you know, write down ten things that you've been thinking about. And if you don't have ten, write as man write as many as you can think of. And then narrow that down, cut it in half. Like so if you get to eight, uh cut four. Not forever, but just for right now, and narrow it down to four, and from that four, just pick two that you've been thinking about. Floating around the back of your head, a maybe, a someday, a some year, um whatever why and however you've put that off. Um put two, two things. And then two small steps for each one. So whether it's reaching out to people, reading a book about it. Now I will say if you are gonna read a book or listen to a podcast about it, that is great. I did a lot of that, and you can take notes like I did, but then you actually have to do something. So if you you read something in a book that that resonates, then take the action. If you just take the notes or you put it in your phone, that's not enough. Um I had I don't even know how many word documents of notes on books that I'd read on Audible. Uh maybe I still have them. But I didn't do a lot with it, so that nothing nothing happened. So I encourage you to do it, to learn, but you have to take action. Um talking to people, uh volunteering, experimenting, and you know, maybe you want to start a podcast. Um just you don't even have to you don't just get a microphone and I use Riverside, but there's a ton out there, and just record yourself for five minutes, just talking about anything. Just see how you like it, see how you feel. Does it feel good? Do you look forward to it? Were you thrilled when it was over? Did you want to keep talking? Try it again the next day. Try it again the next week. If it feels good, then you can do it. If not, scrap it. At least you tried. So there's always there's all these things, and I always felt like you had to take these huge steps. Like if you're gonna launch a podcast, you could do a whole thing, right? Name and record and guess and release it. You don't have to do that. It might not be it. And give yourself some grace with that. So two things, two steps. And um, you know, the tagline for this podcast is you know, where the real story lives. And for me, the real story is not aligning decisions with what I really wanted to do and what what felt energetically aligned. I ignored that and just did things either because I thought they were a good idea without a ton of thought, or because other people either talked me out of what I wanted to do, or talked me into something that they thought was a good idea. And it's not necessarily that they were wrong, but a lot of it just didn't align with me and how I felt and what I wanted to actually be doing. And once you get off track, it is hard to get back on. That's that's I talked about that in my post today. It can take years, and in my case, maybe decades, to finally start to feel some type of alignment. And I don't want it to take that long for you. So uh if you've made it this far, thank you. Uh I would really appreciate it if you like the show uh wherever you're listening to it, probably Spotify or Apple. Um, if you do find it on YouTube, if you could uh subscribe to that channel, that is helpful. I never understood why YouTubers were always like, you know, smash that like button and subscribe. Now I do. Uh so more people can find it and uh hopefully the message resonates and people can take something from it and start taking action in their lives. Uh so uh this concludes the first episode, the underlayer, where the real story lives. Uh, and the real story is again, think about your decisions in terms of how they align with what you want to do and where your energy flows. Uh, and until next time, thanks for listening.