Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. This episode is part of our Squiggly Career Stage series where we're talking about five different career stages where we think having some extra and maybe specific insights, support and advice can just be really useful. So we're covering career starters,

career returners, changes, continuous. And today our focus is on a difficult topic,

those moments where we have setbacks and really naughty moments in our squiggly careers.

And as well as Sarah and I sharing our sort of squiggly perspective on setbacks,

we also wanted you to hear from a couple of sort of experts and people who've experienced

this directly just to make it as sort of real, relevant and relatable as possible.

So in this episode, you are going to hear my conversation with Amy Schoenthal, who is the author of a book called

The Setback Cycle, and Amy talks through four phases that you can go through when you

are experiencing a setback. And the idea of that really is it gives you a greater sense of

control when you're experiencing, I'll feel hard. And Sarah and I'll come back to that

bit in a minute. And so you'll hear that conversation first.

And then you're going to hear Sarah's conversation with two people who have experienced a setback.

Ken and Mary Okorafor who talked to Sarah about their experience and what they learned from it

and their advice for other people who might be experiencing a setback at the moment.

And with every episode, we've got a guide which has got

coach yourself questions in, tool to try out. And this guide has an interview with Eleanor Tweddle,

who is the author of Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You. So it's worth

looking at that for extra ideas, extra resources, and you can share that with anyone who you think might find it

helpful. The link for that is in the show notes. You can also find it on our website, amazingif.com,

or if you follow Amazingif on LinkedIn, we'll be posting about that there, so you'll be able to find it.

So what makes a setback, a setback? Helen and I were reflecting on our own experiences,

and we felt that every difficult moment that

...