May 7, 2026
Following the thread of moral ambition with Olivia Stamp
Following the thread of moral ambition with Olivia Stamp
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Transcript
0:00
[intro music] Hi, and welcome to Work Around, a podcast about career transitions and the people who go through them. I'm your host, Andra.
0:10
I'm a career transition coach, and today I sit down with Olivia Stump and we talk about her career transition from the world of startups and tech into the social sector.
0:20
In this episode, we talk about the idea of moral ambition, about the highs and lows of Olivia's transition, what motivated her to do it, what helped her throughout the process, and how she's doing now.
0:33
We end on a note of optimism after going through a lot, and I really love this conversation with Olivia, and I hope you will as well. So let's dive in. [percussion music] Hi, Olivia, and welcome to the podcast.
0:47
It's really great to have you here today. Thanks for having me. Well, to get us started, I'd love to hear the high-level story of your career so far before you actually moved to Brighton, where you are right now, right?
0:59
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I, I always go back to university to kind of start this 'cause I studied history, um, as an undergraduate, and I had no idea what I wanted to do afterwards.
1:12
I was in my final year, and all my friends were applying for grad schemes and seemed to have a plan for what they wanted to do, and I did not.
1:20
But I'd known that what I was always really interested in was this kind of Venn diagram between the public sector, the private sector, and what I now call the social sector.
1:30
But I was interested in how you can maximize all the best parts of those different sectors to create positive societal change. So that's, I guess, been a thread the whole way through.
1:40
But initially, I, as I say, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I accidentally fell into recruitment, um, which was not really my strong suit, I would say. Um, but through that, I ended up finding, um,
1:57
startups and how to get young people into startups, and through that, I ended up working for an organization that's mission was to get more people into entrepreneurship.
2:09
And I drank the Kool-Aid of that very, very deeply, feeling like tech was the answer. Getting ambitious people to start companies was how we were gonna change society.
2:18
I worked there for a number of years before I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable with the venture capital world and the incentives and the way that startup employees were treated, and it felt like there was a lot of collateral damage that the venture capital industry was fine with, like the personal burnout and stress and the fact that all these cool ideas could happen, but it didn't really matter if they all went by the wayside as long as there was one company that succeeded and made loads of money.
2:51
And so I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable with that, and I ended up going in-house at a startup, which was trying to build communication software, the NHS, which at the time felt really, really different, and I really believed in the mission.
3:01
It felt super important, and I joined as employee number twenty-eight, and I hold on to that 'cause it's my lucky number, my birthday.
3:09
And I joined them just before the COVID pandemic hit, so you can imagine it was a pretty wild time [chuckles] to join a startup that was trying to provide comm software for the NHS. Oof.
3:22
And the growth was just bananas, but amazing. I, I felt so aligned with the mission. I felt like I was helping, and I was the second operations hire in that organization.
3:32
So I was with them as it grew from about thirty people to two hundred and fifty people over the course of the four years that I was there. And I did all sorts of things, as you do.
3:42
Anyone who's worked in ops in a startup knows that the list of responsibilities is wide and varied.
3:48
So I did things all from kind of compliance, data protection, privacy, through to commercial strategy, and I was kind of a key relationship builder with central NHS bodies.
4:00
So I, I worked a lot with the public sector through that. So I would say my key role there was building trust between a private sector company and the public sector in terms of rolling out new technology.
4:10
How could you convince people in the public sector, who tend to be pretty risk-averse with this stuff, of the benefits of the technology that we were keeping people's data safe, that actually adopting this was gonna really help in the long run?
4:20
And yeah, I stayed there for about four years, just before my thirtieth birthday, and that is kind of the, the moment, I would say, the, the kind of pivotal moment where I thought, "Hmm.
4:31
[chuckles] I don't think actually this is for me anymore." Maybe something needs to change. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I feel a lot resonates from what you said.
4:40
Obviously, our path kind of intersected, and I'm also very familiar with the VC ecosystem and this kind of chaos that happens.
4:48
From the outside, it looks like, no, everybody knows exactly what they're doing, and everybody has their stuff together, uh, but there is a lot of chaos that goes on, uh, behind the scenes and a lot of toxicity maybe, but we, we can talk about that another time.
5:01
Um, but it sounds like you had a very interesting and intense time in this startup and VC world, and then the time you turned thirty came around, and that started to shift.
5:13
Tell me a bit more about what was going on for you or what caused this shift and what happened from there. Sure. So
5:21
I think it had been building up really from COVID, which obviously was a time of reflection for a lot of people, and I think I was so busy in the health tech startup for the first kind of year of that, that I hadn't realized...
5:33
And I burnt out very badly. I hadn't quite realized, I guess, the impact that that had had on me. But over the course of kind of twenty twenty-two, twenty twenty-three, I
5:44
was starting to really reflect on, well, a bit of kind of drawing back the curtain.
5:50
I think what COVID had shown me, as someone who had lived a very privileged and very sheltered life, and continues to, you know, but I think I hadn't been exposed to the corruption in the system in the way that other people who suffer a lot under our current capitalist systems-Have always been, you know, the murder of George Floyd, the blatant corruption of the Conservative Party in terms of the contracts they were doling out during the pandemic really started to make me realize that the world didn't work in the way that I thought it did, and I felt a lot of guilt.
6:26
I felt a lot of shame for not having realized sooner, but I was also starting to feel this sense of, okay, maybe I need to live in the world quite differently. I think it's easier for me to articulate it now.
6:40
Back then, it was more of this, like, s- uncomfortable sense. I was getting really anxious and just not feeling good or well.
6:47
And I guess on the personal side, it was also, you know, I, I was born and raised in London, and I'd always thought that I would stay there forever.
6:55
I think if you're a Londoner, it runs very deep in you and you're like, "This is the best city in the world. Why would you ever live anywhere else?"
7:01
But again, that was starting to shift for me, and as people around me at this age were starting to move in with partners and, and get married and, and get big promotions
7:12
that also I was not getting, and that was really frustrating me. But that's [laughs] maybe something else we can, we can talk about.
7:18
And there was something in me that was just saying, "I don't think that just adding a partner and a child to my life here is my path and what I want.
7:28
I don't think that that will make me happy, and it seems to be what I should want, but I have a real deep gut feeling telling me that's not my path."
7:37
So that was all happening, and then I was lucky enough to meet a couple of people who really set me on a new path. So I turned 30 in 2023, and at the beginning of 2023, as I said, my birthday's the 28th of December.
7:51
I, like, I love New Year. For me, it's like a huge time of change and visioning and manifesting and all of that. At the beginning of 2023, I was like, "My life has to be different at the end of this year.
8:02
It just has to be. I don't know what that's gonna look like, but I just know I need, I need a big change."
8:07
And literally, I think a week later, I met this, uh, wonderful person who's now become a friend of mine called Rachel Donald, who has a podcast called Planet Critical, and she asks guests, "Why is the world in crisis, and what can we do about it?"
8:21
And we met, and I think she just saw something in me [laughs] which was, "I think I can pull you out of the nine-to-five London life."
8:29
And we got to know each other over the course of that year, and she was the one who kept telling me to quit my job, and I kept saying, "Well, I can't do that. You know, I don't have a plan. I don't have enough money.
8:37
What would I do?" And she said, "You'll work it out. It'll be fine." And she was someone who had done that, you know? She was living the life, but I just couldn't see myself in her.
8:48
I was like, "Well, you can do that, but you're you, and you're brave, and you have all of these amazing skills and things that I don't, I don't have that, so how would I, how would I possibly be like you?"
8:59
I don't think I said that to her [laughs] at the time, but that's how I felt. And, um, what was the alternative that she was proposing for you?
9:07
You're going to leave this life behind, and you're going to come towards what? Hmm. It's a really good question, and it's one that I think I still struggle to articulate. There's something in recognizing
9:21
that we are living through the collapse of Western civilization that has been the dominant culture force for 400 years, and
9:40
we are witnessing the collapse of that. It doesn't work anymore.
9:44
It works for some people and a very, very small percentage of people, and a lot of us don't want to think about that and want to think about the implications of that.
9:55
And that's on a political level, but it's on an environmental level.
9:59
And what she was pulling me towards, I think, and what I now try and gently encourage people towards is that understanding of we exist in a dying system, and either you can continue to hold on to the vestiges of that system and try and make it work for you, and you know what?
10:17
If you're privileged, it probably will, and you might be okay. Your children won't be. Mm. But you might be okay.
10:23
Or you can accept the reality of what's gonna happen over the coming decades, and you can start to build a new future, and you can start to live your life and exist with that knowledge of collapse and build something else.
10:35
So that's the big, old answer. [laughs] Yeah. It reminds me of the book that I'm reading now, uh, which is Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman.
10:43
Yeah, it's this idea that a lot of brilliant, ambitious people are stuck in bullshit jobs, and actually, like you're saying, the world has so many fires burning all around us that we can either choose to ignore them and stay in these jobs that probably keep us comfortable,
10:59
or we can follow our m- moral ambition and figure out what of these problems we can play a role in solving in the world, and it sounds like you've followed your moral ambition.
11:10
I like to think so, and I, I would actually love to just pick up on a point that you made there, which I think about a lot, which is it can keep...
11:16
it keeps us comfortable in one way, but I think as a society, we tend to prioritize short-term comfort, what we believe is making us comfortable in the moment, over our long-term comfort.
11:27
Like, I think the whole point of this podcast, right, is for some of us, whatever the phrase is, like the frog in the, in...
11:35
and you think that you're comfortable, and then there becomes the moment you're like, "Oh my God, I'm so uncomfortable, and actually I've been so uncomfortable for so long."
11:43
But these kind of constant short-term comforts we choose over our long-term comfort of being able to live in alignment and, and do something that we're really proud of. 100%.
11:53
And if we go back a little bit to the moment when you were starting to feel the discomfort in the world that you were existing in, and then you also were starting to be pulled towards a new work or a new way of looking at solving problems and spending your time and your skills, what else was causing the dis- discomfort for you before you decided to actually make a change?You mentioned something before around maybe recognition in your role, misalignment there with some values.
12:19
Is there anything specific that you can point to where you were like, "No, this is really not the way I want to continue working"? Yes. I think I had really enjoyed my first year at the startup.
12:32
Felt valued, I felt part team, I felt like we were doing something really important and, and again, I think we were.
12:38
We had the number of GPs in the UK or in England who told us they just wouldn't have been able to manage the pandemic without our software. Was really heartening, and so that I loved.
12:47
And then the company grew, it got another injection of VC money, this time from US investors, and everything changed. I do pinpoint that as the moment. It changed the culture. We hired very aggressively.
13:00
Someone was hired in between me and my manager, who was the COO, and I felt just completely passed over and unrecognized, and I cared so much about the mission. I put my heart and soul in, and
13:15
I felt like I was, to be honest, then managed by people who didn't get me. They didn't get why I cared so much. They didn't get how I operated. They didn't like that I was so emotional.
13:25
They wanted me to be incredibly data-driven, and it's just not me to be [laughs] incredibly data-driven. I'm like, I get the value, but it's not my skill set, and I just think there are other things to take into account.
13:36
I don't think every decision has to be based on an Excel spreadsheet, but that was a hole that I'd got stuck into 'cause I ended up being the compliance person,
13:45
and I basically was turning into someone I didn't like, you know? It's for all my complaints about those managers, I also complained a lot, and I became so negative and
13:56
wasn't doing an amazing job anymore because I was just so frustrated all the time. And I would just complain, and I, I also just thought, "I don't want to be this person."
14:06
[laughs] I don't want to be the person who is spending all of this energy on negativity and
14:15
thinking that I know better and, you know, to this day, I still do think [laughs] that I knew better in, in a lot of situations, but I also didn't know better in certain situations.
14:25
And, and I just became obsessed with my title changing, like everything will be better if they make me head of... Everything will be better if they give me more money. I just need that to validate myself, and I was so...
14:36
You know, I, I, I was making all these plots and plans to become the head of service management, and I step back now with now what I'm doing in my life, and I think, "Thank God [laughs] I didn't pursue that harder," because that's not me at all working in compliance and service management.
14:53
What, what was I doing? What was I thinking? Yeah.
14:56
It's so interesting that you share this because it reminds me, of course, of my own experience and getting to a point where I couldn't really recognize myself when I was stuck in a role that I knew it didn't serve me anymore.
15:08
I wasn't doing my best either. I was waking up feeling angry, and I...
15:12
and then I realized this is not the life I want to live, and this is this tunnel vision that you can be pushed through when you operate in this startup world and you think, "No, what I need is the next promotion and the next promotion and this title that all my peers have.
15:25
This is what's gonna make me happy," just like you're saying, right? This is going to prove my value.
15:30
And then maybe you get that and you realize, actually, no, it's nice to have the promotion, but my value definitely is not this.
15:37
And then when you don't get that, that really has a role to play on, at least for me it did, on confidence, on the way that I relate to myself and the way I relate to my peers and my managers and the world that I operated in.
15:49
And for me, that was also a point when I thought, "No, I don't want to chase recognition here because I don't care that much about this work that's being done over here, and there are so many other things that I would be spending my time and my energy on, uh, much more gladly."
16:04
Thank you for sharing that. That's the reality of, um, so many other people I spoke to. So there was the pull towards something new and the push away from something that really didn't resonate anymore.
16:14
What happened when you finally decided, okay, I will leave my job and I will try to explore whatever comes next? How did that go? I'm probably imposing some retrospective
16:26
stuff onto that period 'cause I've become, you know, I now, as you mentioned, I now live in Brighton. I've become a lot more spiritual, uh, since I moved down. But it definitely felt like things just aligned. Hmm.
16:41
And it felt like a very clear push from, you know, whatever you wanna call it. For me, I tend to refer to it as the universe. It became clear to me that I needed to move out of the house that I'd been in for about
16:56
three years at that time for various reasons, but it, there was a push moment that I thought, okay, it's time, time to move.
17:02
And so I just put some feelers out and said, "Looking for a place," and this is where a lot of luck and privilege comes in, and I will always own that, and I know that not everyone has that.
17:11
And so whenever I talk about this journey for myself, I have to, you know, be honest about that.
17:16
But I was lucky enough to be given an opportunity to move into a flat that a family member was selling, and she was willing to let me stay there for reduced rent while she was selling.
17:28
So I was able to save up some money- Mm-hmm... which was very helpful.
17:32
But that was also that change of place, just that simple change of location from the place that I'd been for three years into a new space just opened up my mind.
17:40
I still, during that period, was thinking like, oh, how can I... Maybe, maybe I'll quit in six months or nine months or, or whatever. I genuinely can't remember what had happened at work that day,
17:50
but what I do remember is going home and writing in my journal and just saying, "I have to quit. I have to quit."
17:58
And it also coincided with the time my second nephew was born, and I've talked about this in other places, but my nephews, who I absolutely adore, have been major catalysts in me needing to change my life, me wanting to be able to look them in the eye and say, "I did everything that I could."
18:13
Hmm. And that was all happening in kind of a two-week, three-week period, and yeah, I just decided to hand in my notice, and I did.I took a bit of a cushion 'cause I was like, "I'm gonna work a longer notice period."
18:25
I was doing a very boring audit process. Mm-hmm. But I was like, I'll st- I'll be good. I'll stay until the end of that, while secretly also thinking, and then they will pay me for an extra couple of months.
18:35
[laughs] That will make this, this move easier. Yeah. But that was... Yeah, that... And that was all happening at the end of 2023. Okay. End of 2023,
18:45
you handed in your notice, and I know you mentioned that you're a big fan of the end of the year or, and new beginnings.
18:52
What were you thinking, planning in that moment as you're about to cross into 2024 and basically change your life around? So there's a few different strands to it, but the work one was I was planning to go freelance.
19:07
I think I, I realized that I wanted to be my own boss. I was really sick of managers and being managed, and I wanted to give freelance life a go. So
19:19
I had an idea that what I was gonna do was consult and freelance in, in helping other health tech companies try and sell to the NHS and help them navigate that, and I was really at that time excited about public procurement as an opportunity for change.
19:34
Still, in that vein of technology can be really helpful and can be really useful and good, but we use it for such useless purposes. You mentioned, um, Bullshit Jobs.
19:44
I'm a huge David Graeber fan, and I recently read the book.
19:47
And I was frustrated actually about the number of people I saw who were working in tech companies or starting tech companies that fundamentally weren't helping anyone. They were just for profit.
19:56
So I wanted to try and make it easier for people to start useful companies that could then navigate that very tricky thing of trying to work with the public sector and sell into the public sector.
20:09
And that was really my plan, was to, to do the work that I had been doing, but without management and as a freelancer.
20:14
But on the side, I'd also started a Substack called Unraveling Together, and that was much more that personal journey of systems change, capitalist collapse, and how do you navigate that as a human.
20:26
And so I was like, oh, maybe that... Maybe I'll make money out of that as well. Um, so those were my kind of dual tracks that I was thinking about, but didn't have anywhere to live. I had thought as far as...
20:37
There's someone else I should mention in my journey, a guy called John Alexander, who wrote a book called Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, and John has become a friend and a mentor and a massive support to me.
20:49
But once I'd handed in my notice, I was talking to John, and he had, knowing everything I was interested in, had said he'd connect me to this very cool person in Taiwan, um, called Audrey Tang, who, uh, is the first non-binary minister anywhere in the world and the first digital minister in Taiwan, and is just one of the coolest people I have ever come across.
21:10
And John said, "If you go to Taiwan, I will introduce you to Audrey." And I was like, okay. So I'm lucky enough to have a friend who's half Taiwanese, and we organized a trip, and that was as far as I'd got, basically.
21:22
I was like, I'll go to Taiwan, I'll meet Audrey, and I'll keep doing this freelance stuff on the side, and let's see what happens. So I was in Taiwan. Well, actually, no, this was just before.
21:32
And again, this was a connection through Rachel. I got introduced to someone who had very similar interests around, you know, what some people term the polycrisis.
21:41
They'd been very involved in Extinction Rebellion, and I got introduced to them as someone who I might get on with, who had similar shared interests and worries to me.
21:50
And I was saying, "Oh, I'm gonna have to move back in with my parents. Don't really have a plan for where I'm gonna be." And they said, "I've got a spare room in Brighton. Do you want to come and live there?"
22:01
So I ended up moving to Brighton, and it ended up being one of the best decisions I could have made. But I don't wanna pretend that it wasn't without its challenges.
22:09
I'd been living on my own and ended up in this relatively small space, and it was a way of living that I had not lived before. [laughs] It was- Mm...
22:18
very emotionally open, and it was a vegan household, and I was not a vegan. And there was a lot of music and live music all the time, and I felt so much like a fish out of water for the first little while. It was- Mm...
22:31
a real shock to the system of having been living the tech London life. But made some beautiful friendships there, and I'm, I'm very glad.
22:40
And got plugged straight into a community 'cause the people I lived with there were members of this community garden nearby, uh, and managed to essentially get a community around myself almost instantly- Mm...
22:53
which is not always true for people who move to new cities, so I felt very lucky with that. But all of this is important because the work journey was really stalling.
23:02
I was doing this contract, this freelance contract for, again, a really important, really cool piece of tech, um, for the NHS that I fully believe should be rolled out across the NHS.
23:12
But I was sitting there thinking, this is really quite boring work.
23:18
[laughs] Why did I, why did I leave my nine-to-five job that I wasn't enjoying to do the same work without, like, any of the people around me and being in an office and having fun, and now I'm just sitting at my desk on my own doing work that I don't find particularly interesting?
23:37
Interesting. That's a big question to land after a while. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was. It was. And so I,
23:44
I stuck with my integrity, and I talked to the person who I was freelancing with, and I said, you know, "I don't think that I can commit to the work that you need doing, and so I think we should kind of close it after this, this particular thing."
23:59
And then I entered free fall, and I do think that for, you know, your audience and anyone who's thinking about this, I wouldn't want to sugarcoat what the following months were like.
24:10
And it was a period of real low mental health for me. I felt so untethered from everything, having moved cities, having had all these profound...
24:23
changes in the way I related to myself and the way I was relating to the world that were really hard and continue to be really hard to describe to people.
24:31
I think unless you've been through it yourself, it's really difficult to explain the depth of the change. Yeah. I had no idea what to do for work.
24:40
I had a million ideas, and I was like, "Maybe I could do this, or maybe I could do this, or maybe I could do this," and couldn't bring myself to take the action I needed to take to move any of them forward.
24:51
So I would just kind of sit there feeling like I should be doing something, but not knowing what. Sometimes finding it quite hard to get out of bed.
24:59
Had entered into a relationship with somebody who had a very intense hands-on relational job, and found that really hard as well because I knew they were out all day doing really important things, and I was sitting at home not doing anything, and there was a lot of guilt around, I've made this move so that I could make positive change in the world, but actually,
25:22
what am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing, and it was rough. Yeah. That's really hard, and I, I am familiar with the low phases of deciding to do something
25:34
in a completely different way than, you know, what you were used to before. How did you navigate that? What helped you in these times? Friends- Mm-hmm...
25:43
and the new community that I'd made in Brighton who really did get it. They, they...
25:48
And you know, and part of the changes that I was making was supported by them, or in some ways, kind of an emulation of the people that I'd found who didn't fly, as I say, were, were vegan, and I can't say that I completely stuck to that veganism, but it, it was an important part of that change of doing things that I actually thought were good for, for people and, and the planet.
26:11
And I did a lot of spending time in nature, and a lot of solo time really reflecting, and I kept having coffees and chatting to people, and I think that is a really important part of anyone who wants to make the switch.
26:23
And again, I'm quite lucky that it comes fairly naturally to me if I see an interesting... It didn't used to. It's a skill I've built, but if I see someone interesting on LinkedIn or...
26:33
I will just have a coffee and, and so that kept me sane, is that I kept talking to people.
26:38
And every conversation gets you a little bit closer to thinking, okay, maybe this is what I could do, or they could introduce me to someone else. And, and so that, that really helped. And I was writing a lot.
26:47
I actually, during that period, which was low for me from kind of a mental health perspective, I rediscovered some creativity, and so I was relatively prolific on my Substack, and so I was writing a lot about what I was going through, and that seemed to resonate with people, which really helped make it feel like it had some worth.
27:06
I'm sure it did because, um, yeah, as you know, a lot of people go through these low mental health episodes alone because sometimes it's very hard, like you said, to find the words to even speak about this.
27:19
So I'm sure that whatever you shared in your writing really resonated with people and helped them kind of figure out their own ways as well, and at least to see, hey, I'm not alone.
27:27
There's somebody else who can put words in this, and things can change. How are you feeling now? Are things better for you right now? Ha- have things changed? Things have changed beyond recognition.
27:38
I look back to where I was this time last year, and I... if you sat me down [laughs] opposite me and said, "By the way, [laughs] this is gonna be your life at the beginning of 2026," I would've thought, what?
27:50
So yes, you know, I still have anxious moments, and I wouldn't say that everything's l- glorious all the time, but I am now doing work that is...
28:00
I'm being paid to do work that I think is fundamentally important, and it's incredibly interesting, and I can't really believe that I am getting paid to do it. I have my dream job right now. Okay. What is it?
28:13
Tell me more. So I work part-time for a think tank called Demos, which has existed for a number of years, uh, and kind of has served to maintain and strengthen and innovate democracy in the UK,
28:28
and I am running a program for them called Waves, and Waves is the largest trial of digital democracy in the UK, and we're essentially looking at how we can make participatory, deliberative democratic processes, which is a bit of a mouthful, um, more accessible and cheaper and easier for local councils to run so that they can get residents more meaningfully involved in decision-making.
28:55
And so I'm, yeah, part-time with them for the rest of the year, and that is wonderful for me in so many ways because b- I am allergic to going back into a nine-to-five full-time job. Mm-hmm.
29:11
I have no interest in it at the moment because having that freedom and flexibility and free time, you know, to be able to wander. I live, I live 10 minutes from the sea now.
29:21
Uh, I can just go and have, have a walk by the ocean, which I actually should have mentioned, I said spending time in nature, sitting by the sea has been my salve through this whole process.
29:33
Just being able to be next to it and feel its spaciousness is life-changing, and I love living by the sea. But so, so yeah, the part-time of it is great.
29:43
I'm setting up a business or a pilot with, with someone on a similar vein of, um, how can we use technology to enable organizations to actually tap into their collective intelligence and imagination of their employees and members and make decisions that are based on everybody's input in a meaningful way, which now you can do with AI in a way that you just could never have done before, uh, and that's a really powerful and useful and meaningful use for that technology that is, in so many other ways, being used in very destructive ways.
30:15
So I'm doing that. I've just finished a research project, which is similarly using deliberative technology to engage public opinion on an, a really important political topic.
30:23
That, that's now my life.And I get paid to do it. [laughs] I love that for you. It's incredible. I love it for me too. That is so cool.
30:31
It's incredible how much can change when you have the, the patience to sit with all the, all the discomfort and the not knowing, and the when am I gonna figure this out, and move through it and find your, your ways to nurture yourself, right?
30:45
Connect with people, sit by the sea, write it out, and then, yeah, looking back now a year from it, realizing that, look where I am, look how far I've gone. This is, this is fantastic.
30:57
Are there any questions still on your mind right now about what might come next? Yeah, there are, but I think I've come to enjoy the unknown, and once you release the need to control the outcome, life gets a lot easier.
31:14
So yeah, I don't know. I mean, you make financial choices. I'm renting. I have to move out because the house is being sold.
31:25
You know that the life that you choose of this instability, um, and not knowing where the next contract is coming from or exactly what you're gonna do has its downsides.
31:34
Actually, I use the metaphor in my head a lot of the river bend, and if we're kind of constantly clinging onto the side of the river, trying not to get swept away by the current, you might miss the most beautiful thing that's just around the river bend, to quote Pocahontas.
31:49
[laughs] But in terms of questions, yeah, I think I, I have been working two jobs then trying to start a business for the last couple of months. It's been really hectic.
31:58
I've been working evenings, I've been working nights, and I promised myself when I quit that I wouldn't do that again.
32:03
So there's definitely still work to do on how to maintain that balance and how to really commit to the instability.
32:13
The reward is the flexibility and the fact that you can go to the sauna on a random morning if you want to and not have to work really late to, to meet a deadline.
32:23
So I, I definitely still have some questions around how I can make that balance work for me and make sure that I'm getting all the best bits of, um, [laughs] of the flexible lifestyle.
32:33
Yeah, I definitely also feel that one myself. I feel
32:38
that the question of when does stability finally come is a big one, and it might just be that in this journey of building something that you like on your own and following creativity and ideas, stability will look different, you know, from month to month, or balance will be different.
32:54
Mm-hmm. And that's, that's okay. And as we come close to wrapping up, I wonder if you have any suggestions or tips for people who might be sitting with this feeling of I'm really stuck doing something that I don't love.
33:10
I know I need a change, but I'm not ready for it yet, or I don't know how to begin. Make any change. Make any change in your life and learn that you'll be okay, and I think that's the...
33:24
people are so scared of making big changes, and that's fair enough, you know, and, uh, particularly when people have responsibilities. If they have kids, they have a mortgage.
33:31
It's a different thing, and I didn't have any of those, and I still don't have any of those, so I appreciate that that's harder.
33:38
But I think we so often enter this all-or-nothing mentality where either you're changing everything or you change nothing. And make a change to your morning routine. Read a book you wouldn't normally have read.
33:49
Reach out for coffee. I think that's my other piece of advice, is just meet people.
33:54
People want to help, and they want to give you their time, and they want to support you, and you never, ever know where a conversation will lead.
34:02
So take the risk of asking someone who you find interesting if they'll be willing to have a chat with you.
34:08
And I think the other thing I would say is fill your LinkedIn, or if you spend time on LinkedIn, with different people. I can...
34:15
maybe I'll give you a list to put on your podcast of people I recommend that, that you should follow because the people I follow now make me realize that a new world is possible and that there is so much hope.
34:24
There is so much activity. There is so much amazing stuff going on in the UK.
34:30
And I'm particularly focused on the UK because that's, you know, my home, and I feel a duty and a responsibility to try and make it a better place to be.
34:37
There's so much happening and so many people who desperately need more feet on the ground or more support and, and their voices to be amplified.
34:48
So it's an amazing, exciting, incredible world when you let yourself get into it and don't, uh, spend all your time thinking that nothing can be changed and that it's all doom and gloom. I love that.
35:00
I really, really love it. On this note of inspiration, we'll have a list of people that people can follow, and I know you also mentioned books and podcasts throughout the conversation.
35:10
Um, can you name those again so I can link them in the comments later on? So what book or podcast or both would you recommend to people?
35:18
So yeah, there's Planet Critical by Rachel Donald, which is a podcast, Citizens by John Alexander, which is a book that everybody should read, and there's one more that I'm gonna add in who will be in my list of people to follow, a podcast that's just launched called, uh, Screw This, Let's Try Something Else, which is all about these stories of hope and change.
35:37
Uh, and there's a lot of plugs I could do, but [laughs] I'll leave it there for now. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that maybe you want to mention? Yeah.
35:47
I guess I haven't found a way to mention my passion project, which is called Learning to Love Where We Live, and it's in its early phases right now. I'm still working out exactly kind of what it exists as.
36:00
Um, but at the moment it's like a series of, of written posts by me, which is all about my belief that if we can learn to love where we live in all sorts of ways, um, starting with ourselves but also the communities we're surrounded by, the places we're in, and the planet that we exist on, we can live very fulfilling and joyful lives right where we are.
36:23
And I think so often people feel like you need to make huge changes, but the irony for me is that I've realized the most important changes are learning to be happy right now exactly where I am.
36:36
And so I would love for people to check out the project. I'm, yeah, hopefully gonna be writing a lot more over the coming months. Fantastic. Yes, I'd love to share. Where does this project live?
36:47
It is, uh, www.learningtolovewherewelive.com. Perfect. And any other places you'd like, uh, for people to connect with you or to follow you? Yes.
36:59
Uh, I'm also involved with a project called Actionism, uh, actionism.space, which is where we encourage people to take action. It's about taking that first step in whatever direction.
37:09
So I'd love for people to connect there and, and, and follow us over there with the work that we're doing, and I'm always happy to hear from people on LinkedIn, so yeah, just Olivia Stamp on LinkedIn.
37:18
Um, I might not necessarily get back to you straight away, but please do follow and connect. Thank you so much for sharing.
37:26
I really, really love the vulnerability that you brought and how deeply you kind of took us on your journey of transformation.
37:32
I'm, I'm happy to hear that things are going well for you right now, that you are filled with, like, possibility and energy for making the world a better place, so thank you for sharing. Thank you so much for having me.
37:46
It's been a pleasure. [outro music] Thank you so, so much for listening until the end. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did.
37:56
If you have any feedback, questions, or thoughts, uh, feel free to reach out to me or Olivia on LinkedIn. I'm going to leave our contact information in the comments.
38:06
And if you think anybody else should listen to this episode, please share it. It's really, um, appreciated.
38:11
I'll be back with a new podcast episode in about a month, but until then, please, uh, like and subscribe and stay connected. Thank you so much, and take care.
Workaround with Andra Nuta
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