All of the corporate world’s a stage. You learn how to arrange your face for group viewing, you create slides to impress and persuade, and you keep your eyes bright because you and your colleagues are competing for the same applause. You probably learned the corporate jargon that only people in your company understand. So you’re good at the performance mode. But that mode will work against you as you figure out what comes after you leave. So let’s dig into performance versus rehearsal mode.
What Rehearsal Actually Felt Like
Back when I was doing theater, I always loved rehearsals more than performances. Rehearsal was a collaborative environment where we could all experiment and fail together. It never felt like a slog toward something shiny, but little explosions of wonder and admiration on the way to something that holds together.
Before performances, we were all wigged out and fidgety, hoping everything would go perfectly. The energy of rehearsal was loose, and the theme was belonging.
We all know now that life is rehearsal and that we’re making it up as we go. But the corporate world trains that instinct out of you. Managers insist that your work is handed in error-free. You are constantly reminded that the parent company or the CEO needs you all to do more with less, and that layoffs are coming. The stakes are high, and that easy experimentation mode is gone.
The Performance Trap in What Comes Next
The trouble comes when you start to believe that the next thing you do has to be equally performance ready. A new business, a website, your entire new identity outside of the corporate world all has to be perfect before it launches. So a lot of people wait, fiddle with the website just a little more, and stall in a variety of ways before starting.
I was doing the same thing before I published the first version of my coaching website six years ago. When I mentioned all the tweaking to a friend, she said, “just publish it. You’ll update it a hundred times after you launch anyway.” She was right, and it wasn’t just about the website. My entire business pivoted several times, from a focus on grief, to work and life upheavals, to midlife career transitions, before arriving where it is today.
The idea here isn’t as simple as “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” – it’s a different posture entirely. You start, and then you keep starting.
You Can Only Learn in Motion
If you’re thinking of switching to contracting, or starting a solo business, it’s easy to get lost in planning documents and vision boards. You might have a long conversation going with ChatGPT or Claude where you work together on an ideal workshop or resume. But the learning that matters happens when you try things with and in front of people so you get the feedback about what works and what doesn’t.
People have a high tolerance for pivots. If you try something and it stops working after a while, that is valuable information. You wouldn’t advise anyone to keep banging their head against the wall after this point, so you don’t have to either.
Taking on a rehearsal frame of mind makes pivoting feel natural. You try, shift, try again.
The Exhaustion Problem
All of this trying and experimenting on your way to the next thing can take a toll. Even if you don’t exactly know what you’ll do next, you take on a lot of work after you leave the job. In addition to detoxing from the corporate world (for more on this phase, check out episode 10), you have to rebuild structure and community. You’re deciding which aspects of your personality to keep and which ones to let go (like maybe the hard charging person who demands that everyone prove their opinions with data). All of this while you’re poking around for a new project.
Together, that creates both a cognitive and emotional load, so you’ll need to take care of yourself. Especially in the first few months after you leave the job.
One specific antidote for this exhaustion: retain something you’re already good at. A skill, hobby, or activity where you feel highly competent already. Doing something you know how to do will feel like rest when the other parts of your life are under a cognitive load.
The early phases of my coaching practice involved a lot of training, meeting people, and digging into highly emotional topics. I was also creating programs and trying to find clients. I felt totally incompetent at everything. There was joy in this rehearsal process, especially when I was with classmates, but I was still unwinding from my performance-based corporate past.
So when I was feeling overloaded, I turned to something else: sewing. During those stressful years of learning and failing, I made placemats, tote bags, denim aprons, and toiletry bags. Dozens of them. It was so satisfying to create and finish something, and I was good at it. It felt like rest, and scratched the performance itch just a little.
You don’t have to be a beginner at everything simultaneously.
Why There’s No Opening Night
As you prepare to leave your corporate job, you don’t have to feel ready for the next venture, or even know what it is. The destination is not visible from where you’re sitting right now. Besides, you can only really know what will feel right once you start doing it in proximity to other people. Only the visceral feelings in your body will tell you what to move toward and away from.
Rehearsal mode will give you that information; you can’t rehearse forever alone in your house. We’re all making it up every day, so find some people to bounce ideas off of. That will let you make small tweaks and pivot until what you’re doing feels right. Then you’ll probably pivot again.
Rehearsal implies that eventually you’ll have a performance in front of others that marks the end of the rehearsal process. For most people in the transition out of corporate, that doesn’t happen. You aren’t headed for a splashy launch or big reveal that lets you stop experimenting. That could feel unsettling, until your reframe includes the idea that there is no performance. Rehearsal isn’t the preparation, it’s the thing itself.
So if you find yourself dithering with ideas or polishing something until it’s perfect, ask yourself: what are you waiting to be ready for?
Burn the map. Build what fits.you’re thinking of switching to contracting, or starting a solo business, it’s easy to get lost in planning documents and vision boards. You might have a long conversation going with ChatGPT or Claude where you work together on an ideal workshop or resume. But the learning that matters happens when you try things with and in front of people so you get the feedback about what works and what doesn’t.
People have a high tolerance for pivots. If you try something and it stops working after a while, that is valuable information. You wouldn’t advise anyone to keep banging their head against the wall after this point, so you don’t have to either.
Taking on a rehearsal frame of mind makes pivoting feel natural. You try, shift, try again.
The Exhaustion Problem
All of this trying and experimenting on your way to the next thing can take a toll. Even if you don’t exactly know what you’ll do next, you take on a lot of work after you leave the job. In addition to detoxing from the corporate world (for more on this phase, check out episode 10), you have to rebuild structure and community. You’re deciding which aspects of your personality to keep and which ones to let go (like maybe the hard-charging person who demands that everyone prove their opinions with data). All of this while you’re poking around for the next thing.
Together, that creates both a cognitive and emotional load, so you’ll need to take care of yourself. Especially in the first few months after you leave the job.
One specific antidote for this exhaustion: retain something you’re already good at. A skill, hobby, or activity where you feel highly competent already. Doing something you know how to do will feel like rest when the other parts of your life are under a cognitive load.
The early phases of my coaching practice involved a lot of training, meeting people, and digging into highly emotional topics. I was also creating programs and trying to find clients. I felt totally incompetent at everything. There was joy in this rehearsal process, especially when I was with classmates, but I was still unwinding from my performance-based corporate past.
So when I felt overloaded, I turned to something else: sewing. During those stressful years of learning and failing, I made placemats, tote bags, denim aprons, and toiletry bags. Dozens of them. It was so satisfying to create and finish something, and I was good at it. It felt like rest, like the bit of performance I still needed to satisfy that itch.
You don’t have to be a beginner at everything simultaneously.
Why There’s No Opening Night
As you prepare to leave your corporate job, you don’t have to feel ready for the next venture, or even know what it is. The destination is not visible from where you’re sitting right now. Besides, you can only really know what will feel right once you start doing it in proximity to other people. You’ll need the visceral feelings in your body to tell you what to move toward and away from.
Rehearsal mode will give you that information; you can’t rehearse forever alone in your house. We’re all making it up every day, so find some people to bounce ideas off of. That will let you make small tweaks and pivot until what you’re doing feels right. Then you’ll probably pivot again.
Rehearsal implies that eventually you’ll have a performance in front of others that marks the end of the rehearsal process. For most people in the transition out of corporate, that doesn’t happen. You aren’t headed for a splashy launch or big reveal that lets you stop experimenting. That could feel unsettling, until your reframe includes the idea that there is no performance. Rehearsal isn’t the preparation; it’s the thing itself.
So if you find yourself dithering with ideas or polishing something until it’s perfect, ask yourself: what are you waiting to be ready for?
Burn the map. Build what fits.
