Isil – Overcoming Fear and Finding Her Creative Self

Career Crossroads

#70 - Isil Uysal Cavelli grew up in Izmir, Turkey, and didn't have a lot of role models. Consequently, if you told her that she couldn't have a specific career she would believe you without giving it much thought. Dancing? No, she was a chubby kid and it was unlikely she would become a professional. Doctor? No, it was too stressful and required too much studying to become a professional. Artist? No, it was not a stable career and art is more of a hobby anyway.
Influenced by her family, Isil decided that what she really needed was a good stable career with a respected employer where she could separate work from her personal life, so she headed off to Istanbul to study Management. During her studies what she really enjoyed was marketing, but upon graduation, she was fearful about not getting a job quickly enough. When the job offers did not come, Isil quickly pivoted to accept a job as an auditor for a barge bank and left her marketing dreams behind. The work was far more technical than what she wanted to do but there were also many positives to working at a bank, specifically the stability and having a respected employer. She was also good at it and over time moved up the ranks to become part of a global team working all around Europe and this allowed her to travel to fancy balls in Vienna (which is how she met her Italian husband - but that's a story she'll talk about in the interview).
Eventually, Isil became unfulfilled in her career, and by now she was living in Munich, Germany. Her role had become overly technical and she needed more freedom to be creative and more one-on-one work with people. How could she pivot thought when this was all she had done? She had this one specific skill set and was a foreigner so she was concerned about who would hire her. In this episode, Isil shares the journey that led her to her career crossroads and all the steps she took to overcome it.
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To buy a copy of Isil’s new book, The Gift of Being Unfulfilled at Work, click here.
Join her workshop, Unwrap Your Gifts on April 17th, 2002 from 4 PM - 7 PM CET. Register by clicking here.
You can sign up for Isil’s newsletter here, and listen to her podcast, Unique Careers, Unique Lives, here.

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