Ashley Stahl: Being Held Hostage by Your Experience
Align Podcast
Aaron Alexander
4.8 • 900 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2021
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We often feel that the career choice we made years ago is permanent, that we are hostages of a degree we earned or a couple of decades of experience that we accumulated. But that isn’t true.
In this episode of the Align podcast, Ashley Stahl and I discuss the 9 core skill sets that you should develop if you are contemplating switching careers. Plus, Ashley explains how the skills that you naturally have are more important than the interests you have.
Lastly, we get to hear all about how Ashley’s impressive background in counterterrorism helped her develop soft skills that are essential for the career choice she made after leaving the Pentagon.
Ashley is an angel investor, writer, career coach, podcast host, and an ex-counterterrorism professional for the Pentagon. Her leadership firm, Ashley International Inc., offers private coaching and unparalleled online programs to empower Millennials to find their purpose, land more job offers, and increase their income.
What we discuss:
04:26: Ashley's creative process for writing her new book
08:36: Expanding options vs going unidirectionally in a career
12:56: Making core skill sets relevant
16:22: Ashley's background in counter-terrorism
22:39: How Ashley incurred a loss in her business
24:41: What brought Ashley to her current formula?
29:25: Why did the Senate get raided?
32:22: Ashley's day to day working in counter-terrorism and international development
35:57: How are skill sets becoming obsolete in the workforce
40:01: What was Ashley's relation to Al-Qaeda in her professional role?
41:51: Ashley's experience as a female in her previous field
44:42: Developing self-awareness to determine our own hardness
47:00: Making career choices based on past wounds
48:46: What are the required skills of a good spy?
52:37: The power of being good with words
55:16: How did Ashley's perception of death evolve throughout time
01:03:05: The value and disadvantages of the current educational system
01:05:42: Changing careers at a mature age
To learn more about Ashley:
Website: ashleystahl.com
Instagram: @ashleystahl
Podcast: Your Turn Podcast
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the line podcast. My name is Aaron Alexander. This is a place that we bring together the world's leading experts in all things, health and wellness to help you optimize your mind, body, and movement. |
| 0:12.0 | This conversation was a very valuable one, especially in regards to the time. |
| 0:17.4 | It's very germane to the times. |
| 0:19.2 | I just learned that word, germane, very excited about using it here. Today's conversation was with my friend Ashley Stahl. |
| 0:26.5 | Ashley has a background in counter-terrorism. She worked with the Pentagon for several years, preventing bad guys from doing bad things, |
| 0:36.0 | and we got to get into some of that in this conversation. |
| 0:40.0 | She had a pretty major pivot or transition in her career where now she is a career coach. |
| 0:45.9 | She is a regular columnist for Forbes. |
| 0:48.6 | She's been featured all over the place including Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Time, Newsweek, Fast Company, Fox. |
| 0:55.4 | She's great. |
| 0:56.4 | Check out her TED Talk as well. |
| 0:58.2 | She is an inspirational figure, and I'm so grateful to get to have shared some time with her. |
| 1:04.3 | This conversation is just so especially relevant for now. |
| 1:08.3 | So maybe we're going through such transitions in their lives and their careers and I think it is incredibly valuable to enjoy, appreciate, find purpose in the work that we do in the world. |
| 1:19.5 | We spend most of our time sleeping and working ultimately so if we're not sleeping well |
| 1:24.1 | if we're not working well then what the heck are we doing here so this conversation |
| 1:28.1 | gets into really defining what it is that lights you up and how we can start to pivot or transition our lives into that |
| 1:36.1 | space with more regularity. |
| 1:38.7 | Thank you so much for reviews on the iTunes or Spotify or if you listen to this. |
| 1:42.3 | Thanks for grabbing the Lime Method book if you listen to this. Thanks for grabbing the Lie Method book. |
| 1:44.0 | If you have such a cool thing to get to be a part of y'all's growth |
| 1:49.0 | in your physical experiences. |
... |
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