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Redefining Ambition – a conversation with Alise Murray
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What happens when the job you worked so hard to achieve no longer fits the life you want to live?
A licensed clinical psychologist, life coach, and long‑time yoga teacher, Alise Murray joins host Michael Millward to discuss: What happens when your ideal job no longer fits the life you want to live?
Alise spent years building a career she loved — clinical work, teaching, and eventually a coveted assistant professorship — only to discover that the realities of academia were squeezing out the very parts of the work that once lit her up. As she puts it, “It’s like suddenly I’m wearing a size eight shoe when I have a size nine foot.”
Alise explains how she made the bold decision to focus on home and family, and talks candidly about the fear of leaving stability, the financial challenges that followed.
Yet she also shares how those difficult years taught her to align spending, time, and values — Your banking app can be a mirror of the life you’re actually living.
The episode explores:
- How to recognise when your “dream job” is no longer the dream
- The emotional and practical realities of walking away from a secure career
- Why boundaries matter — and what happens when institutions ignore them
- The role of self‑reflection in major life decisions
- How financial habits can reveal your true values
- The importance of designing a life that fits, rather than forcing yourself into one that doesn’t
Alise now runs a successful private practice built around, integrating psychology, coaching, and whole‑body wellness. Her story is not about abandoning ambition — it’s about redefining it
Discover more about Alise Murray and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Rest and Recreation' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr makes every stage of the podcast production process so easy. Use the link in the description to access access discounted subscriptions.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida. I'm your host, Michael Millward.
Guest Introduction: Elise Murray's Background
00:00:27
Speaker
Today, my guest is Elise Murray, who is going to be talking about giving up your dream job so you can live your dream life.
00:00:35
Speaker
Elise is based in Washington State. It's not somewhere that I have ever been, but if I ever get the opportunity to go, i will be making my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
Encouraging Critical Thinking and Work-Life Balance
00:00:55
Speaker
You can as well because in the description there is a link to the Ultimate Travel Club which has a discount on membership fees.
00:01:04
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:15
Speaker
As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Hello, Elise.
00:01:25
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Hello, Michael. Thank you so much for having
Elise's Career Journey and Challenges
00:01:28
Speaker
me. Please could we start by you telling us a little bit about your career and how you ended up doing what you do now? Yeah, so I am a licensed clinical psychologist. I've worked in a variety of settings. I'm also a certified life coach and a registered yoga teacher. When I was in graduate school, I was kind of a textbook workaholic and that carried over after I got my degree. Right out of the gate, I was working in two settings, working in a hospital setting with folks who had experienced stroke and traumatic brain injury. And then I also worked in a university teaching classes.
00:02:09
Speaker
I discovered that as much as I love the clinical work, i liked academia even more. After five years of straddling both, there came up an opportunity to do a three-year assistant professorship at the university. And this actually worked out perfectly because I had just become a mom.
00:02:31
Speaker
And so I thought, great, I can just focus on one thing, picture there being a pretty good amount of flexibility. So I really excited to just pour myself into that. So I walked away from the hospital job, loving being a mom, loving teaching.
00:02:45
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But at the same time, finding doing this all in A plus effort approach to my work was absolutely 100% not going to work when I had a new baby. They do have a habit of taking over.
00:03:02
Speaker
and That's right. Yeah, there's no greater teacher about work-life balance than a newborn. But then what really was the turning point for me is I went to a new student orientation at the universities.
Transitioning from Academia to Entrepreneurship
00:03:19
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And i heard the speaker say that student will have access to their professors virtually 24 seven. What happened to boundaries? I was shocked. and No one had shared this with me.
00:03:33
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It very quickly became this awful nightmare. As much as i love teaching, you know, and I just thought, you know, this is not,
00:03:45
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the best environment for me and for my family. I just thought maybe having my own business is the way. So that's what I did and really make sure that my work is centered around what I'm passionate about and what I'm good at.
00:04:04
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And i can bring in some of that teaching skill into my own business. And so so that's what I did. So I embarked on on this adventure of opening up a private practice. It sounds as if part of that decision-making process was almost being a clinical psychologist was to do an analysis of yourself to actually work out what it was that was going to be right for you.
00:04:32
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Exactly. Steve Jobs said in that commencement address that was so beautiful to Stanford, he said something about every day i ask myself, do i love what I'm doing?
00:04:45
Speaker
and if the answer is no, then I immediately block off some time to look at what is going on. Why am I not excited about this? That has always been something that I have done too, is that You know, over the next 48 hours, i am making a two hour appointment with myself whenever this has happened. Often I don't need two hours, but I just want to give myself enough space so that I can really think about this deeply because these are the times that make a profound difference. So yeah, I feel like I'm a pretty good therapist of myself when I follow that approach. But also from what you're saying, it sounds as if the answers to those questions, what is working well, what needs change were different for you than for
Recognizing Career Misalignment and Seeking Fulfillment
00:05:33
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the university. yes
00:05:34
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They fully, like you said, they fully expected you just to want to renew your contract with them. But somewhere along the line, ah someone had not understood or not seen whatever signs there may have been that you weren't completely as happy as they thought you were or wanted you to be. Yes, exactly. So you've landed your dream job. But what are the signs that it's not quite a nightmare, but it's not the dream that it actually you hoped it would be? What, what, what are the signs?
00:06:08
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When you're approaching your work and you're feeling like I am not feeling excited about it. And of course, there are going to be parts of your work that are always going to be dreary.
00:06:22
Speaker
I think in any job, yeah to the greatest extent possible, it's important to look at, can I take these off my place? but There's always going to be certain things that are not to your liking, but if it feels like I have talents that are not being utilized. Now, this was not really the case for me, but I'm just saying this is probably the most common thing that I see when I'm working with folks is gradually the job has changed so that now the things that were lighting them up are just being squished into a smaller and smaller
00:06:59
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corner of the job and other things are really starting to, they have been expanding for a while so that the person is just feeling like it's become more and more drudgery.
00:07:11
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It's just not as good of a fit. It's like, suddenly I'm wearing a size eight shoe when I have a size nine foot. i know exactly what you mean. It's a great analogy to make. The discomfort of ill-fitting shoes and the discomfort of a job that is ill-fitting to you as an individual are quite close.
00:07:32
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Yeah, it affects your entire outlook and demeanor, not just at work, but in your life. Teaching was something that i absolutely loved.
00:07:43
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Before I became a parent is I would get so excited with an idea about how to creatively present something, or I would get an idea about, oh, I wonder if research has been done on that particular aspect of the question. I would be off and running, digging into materials. Before I know it, I would just be like looking at the clock and, oh, it's that time.
00:08:09
Speaker
It would be, you know, past a reasonable bedtime. You can get away with that once in a while, perhaps if you don't have kids. But when you have kids, there is absolutely no way. Above anything else, I knew what kind of parent I wanted to be. You talked about how you'd been like a grade A student in everything that you'd done and you'd worked at grade and then you become a parent. And your natural approach to that is to be the best parent that you can be, to be grade A plus parent that
Aligning Financial and Time Management with Values
00:08:39
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situation. listening thing to describe it, your passion for teaching, you're then in a teaching situation with this young child. And whilst you're describing loving the teaching, but not the the systems that you had to apply in order to be a teacher, you could transfer your your need to teach to your child, which then I suppose in some ways probably
00:09:05
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i freed you up a little bit to pursue your career in a slightly different way. Yes. It's not like got an A at every subject. I meant that I put in a plus effort.
00:09:18
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I'm talking more about your attitude towards whatever it is that you're doing. It's A plus effort. If it's something that I love, then absolutely I'm passionate about it. I'm not going to be that way about everything, but if it's something that's really important to me, then that's absolutely And the way that I am and integrity is important.
00:09:40
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You make the decision to move, to change your life. What sort of obstacles did you encounter as, as part of making that, that decision? Oh my goodness.
00:09:52
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One obstacle was that my husband wanted to walk away from his job at the same time. and I was like, oh my goodness, fortunately,
00:10:05
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He had left a job for this one and he went back to his former employer and they snapped him back up. So that was great. It was a big cut in salary. I had been kind of counting on this cushy salary while I figured out starting a business and that went away.
00:10:22
Speaker
So we ended up being very, very broke while I was trying to get things going. We had child number two come along. And so it was definitely a scramble.
00:10:35
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primarily financially, but I knew that, you know, this this is going to work, but it's hard when you're asking other people who had done the same thing. I said, so how long did it take you in my particular field, you know, to really feel like your private practice was going well? It felt like I'm i'm getting a good living, that sort of thing. And everybody i asked said, oh, about three years. And I was like, three years. I was hoping for an answer like, oh, five, six months.
00:11:10
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So that was very challenging. It makes you extremely frugal. We developed some really good habits in saving money and really getting by with less.
00:11:23
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So it all worked out. I mean, we didn't accumulate massive debt or anything like that. We we muddled our way through. Yeah, it sounds as if when you're talking about setting up your business and running it, you don't seem as interested in large amounts of money. What you seem is interested in making sure that the bills are paid.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yes. But not in the accumulation of large amounts of money. That the bills are paid and also that... When you open up your banking app and you look at what you've been spending money on, that's a good reflection of your values. It's the same thing as flipping back through your planner or your digital calendar. You want to look and see, okay what I'm spending my time on is a good reflection my values. So I feel like money and time, you know, that should really reflect the life that you want to live.
00:12:18
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And so, you know, when, when you're strapped for cash, I think, it's important to think about, well, what I what have i been spending money on? you know If I cut back on things, I want to make sure that I'm not compromising my values.
00:12:33
Speaker
That was the approach that we took. That is a really interesting approach and sort of being able to look at a credit card statement and ask the question, has my spending lived up to my values?
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah. It's a really interesting thing to do. And i I, yeah, you can look at a credit card statement thinking that I didn't really need that.
00:13:00
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yeah I spent too much money on that. Why did I do that? And it's it's not just the fact that you've spent money on something that you didn't need. That's not the point that's important.
00:13:12
Speaker
What's important is that the person that spent that money, you, was not living to the values that you wanted to live to. And there is the real life financial proof on that particular moment, you were weak.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. And of course there's only so far we can go with this. You are kind of voting for the world that you want when you pull out your card. Personally, I do think about that, but at the same time, you know, we we can't be completely, you know, like giving up our cars, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, there are limits, right? And so there have been times where I've i've paused and I've thought, you know, not for very long. i mean, I tend to sort of make an overall decision
00:14:04
Speaker
I could save money by not doing this convenience, but if I didn't do this time saving convenience, that would be time away from family. So it's a no-brainer to me that I want time with family. Other people may think differently about it. So everybody has to kind of come to their own conclusions. But part of having your dream life is being able to look at that credit card statement at your bank statement, banking app, and be able to see that the the way in which you have spent your money over the last four weeks has actually lived up to the values of the life that you've decided you want to live.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yes. It's a bit like today. i
Building a Successful Practice and Work Ethic
00:14:48
Speaker
have, it's July. I've started my Christmas shopping and buying a collection of beanie hat. I spent an absolute fortune on them.
00:15:00
Speaker
And if they had been... Well, if they'd been one of those hats with a commercial branding on, it would have been wasted money. But I bought them with the branding of our local air ambulance on it. And what I've paid for is not necessarily the hat. What I've paid for is to help keep that helicopter in the air.
00:15:29
Speaker
Beautiful. Yeah. And so although I spent a lot of money, when I look at the statement, I'll be ah thinking like, yeah, that money will be used for something that is important to me. I have never ridden in it. I hope never to. But I feel so much better knowing that there are people who are prepared to operate it and it is there for the people that need it. And that I think is part of one of my values of like, I am prepared to sacrifice something for myself so that other people can be little bit better off ah or safer or receive the the healthcare care that they need in an emergency.
00:16:09
Speaker
I'd never thought about it before, but this idea that you can look at your credit card statement, your bank statement, and use that as an assessment of whether you are living your best life, living the dream life, and are you really doing it or are you doing something else?
00:16:28
Speaker
that's really important. Yeah. And now you have a ah successful practice. Yes, I do. You say that it's like, oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, well, it just happened type of thing. it's like There is a huge amount of work that goes into that setting up any business, but setting up a service business is is especially difficult, especially one that that's medical.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yes, yes. mental health well-being not just being about something that above your shoulders it doesn't matter what exercise that you take you may not really be feeling as if you want to do it you you may drag yourself to the yoga class to the gym to the swimming pool wherever it is you drag yourself to it don't really want to do it but I've booked the class, I've paid for the ticket, i I've got to use it.
00:17:19
Speaker
All sorts of various different reasons, but you're there. Most important thing is getting there. But exercise, you may not want to do it, but you do it anyway. And after you've done it, because of the effect of the physical exercise releasing all of those happy hormones in your head, you always leave physical exercise feeling better.
00:17:44
Speaker
Well, usually, I mean, I suppose you could push yourself too far and and feel worse, but apart from that. Yeah. If you end up um injuring yourself, it's not, you're going to be in a different mode, but yeah, generally speaking, if exercise is good, not just for your physical health, but also for your mental health as well. yeah What is the thing that you think other people can learn from your experience, the, the,
00:18:12
Speaker
Sorry, I'm hesitating a moment because something just popped into my head. There's a question that i learned when I was going through my yoga training that is you just ask it at various points when you're teaching a yoga class, what am I noticing now?
00:18:33
Speaker
And it's just, it's that attitude of curiosity. It's that attitude about your present experience. What am I noticing? How do I want to accommodate or adjust to that?
00:18:48
Speaker
You know, if you're in a pose that's rather challenging, what am I noticing now? You know, then you may feel like perhaps I want to back off a little bit or perhaps I want to stop doing this entirely. Or conversely, i am noticing that I'm really wanting more challenge. You know, my body's really saying a resounding yes to this and I'm going to go more deeply into it.
00:19:12
Speaker
it's similar with life that we, it's so important to not just be living for the future or stuck in the past, but to be asking yourself regularly and routinely the equivalent, what am I noticing now? And work and personal life standpoint, just thinking about Am i feeling like I am living a life that is centered around a feeling of purpose, a feeling that my gifts and my passions are being tapped into so that think we all want to feel like we are having a positive impact on others or the world.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's terribly sad when we don't do this, what am I noticing now type cure question on a regular basis. And we just realized one day, oh my goodness, I am miserable.
00:20:17
Speaker
I've been doing this dead end job or I've been, ignoring my family or whatever it is. It's so important to just regularly take a look. And, uh, for instance, once a week, looking at the week that's coming up and thinking about what kind of life do I want to live is the week that is coming up. What are the opportunities for expressing what's most important to me? My values, my passions, my talents, which might sound rather abstract, but there are ways of doing it that are more structured. The point being that, know, you don't want to feel like you're in a batting cage, just constantly, you know, hitting the ball back and getting worn out so that you're in a reactionary stance
00:21:07
Speaker
day in, day out. And so many people are, they feel like they are just reactionary at work and then they come home and they're reacting to family needs and they're getting disconnected from what can really light them up. And then in turn have a positive ripple effect on, effect on others, because that's what it all comes
Viewing Career Crises as Opportunities for Growth
00:21:31
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down to.
00:21:31
Speaker
When we take care of ourselves, we have more energy to give. It's not like I'll take care of myself after I've done you know all this for work and all this for family and all this for the volunteer committees that I'm doing. Then I'll take care of myself and by then you're wrung out.
00:21:50
Speaker
it's It's the reverse. yeah You're reminding me of the number of people that I have spoken to after i in my role as an HR professional, have had to tell them, know, your job is being made redundant, therefore you no longer have employment.
00:22:07
Speaker
And the number of people that have come back to me months later, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. you it was the best thing that ever happened to me because i would have stayed in that job forever and what you're saying i suppose is that the reaction part is that we wait for someone else to do something which forces us as individuals to think about some sort of change when you left the university job that was Someone saying you've got to be available 24 seven to this, the students and you're thinking that isn't how I want to live.
00:22:45
Speaker
It's the same type of thing is that if you're in a reaction mode, you are waiting almost consciously or unconsciously for someone else to do something.
00:22:58
Speaker
that forces you to rethink how you're going to live, whether that's a change in policy, process, procedure, or someone taking your job away from you. one of the things I quite like is this idea of instead of sort of just drifting into your work,
00:23:16
Speaker
actually sitting down and reviewing what it is that you are going to be doing over the next working week and asking yourself those sorts of questions of is this exciting me or when i started doing this job five years ago i was really excited about doing it it was exciting invigorating and new all sorts of different words how have your emotions changed about your job in those intervening five years and how do you get back to that feeling once you'd learnt the job of being excited to do it and welcoming the rewards of doing it well
00:24:00
Speaker
Why have you lost that enthusiasm and what can you do to regain it? And if you cannot convince yourself that it's regainable, then having that courage to okay, it was great whilst it lasted.
00:24:17
Speaker
But it's not you, yeah it's me. Type of situation. But actually, very often, it is both. The job may have changed in ways that you don't want the job to go, or you as an individual may have changed that makes you no longer the ideal person for doing that job.
Communicating Career Dissatisfaction
00:24:37
Speaker
Yes. And yeah, and I certainly don't, what, you're just supposed to up and leave a job when you're not happy? I mean, I think that sometimes... we underestimate, we still stop to think about the fact that the employer wants to have employees that are bringing their talents and their passions to the work. and so sometimes, you know, talking with the employer and saying, i have noticed that what I feel like I shine at is this,
00:25:13
Speaker
What, yes you know, I'm giving specific examples and feeling like I'm wondering about, it seems like lately in my job, that hasn't been happening as much. I'm wondering about more opportunities to do this and just really asking. And sometimes they may surprise you. They may really say, you know, you're, that's right. That's good to We haven't really, we we could totally you know shift some things around and try things a little bit differently. Sometimes no, sometimes they say, well, I'm sorry, but you know the organizational structure has changed or whatever. And so then you know then it comes back to having a hard a hard look at what you want to do. But ah yeah, it's it's like the you know the Chinese character for crisis is a combination of the characters
00:26:05
Speaker
or danger and opportunity, supposedly, which I love because you know when you face a crisis, a turning point, then there is this terror, but then there's also this amazing opportunity that unfolds.
Aligning Career and Personal Life with Values
00:26:20
Speaker
Of course, it's deeply upsetting to have somebody you know say I had a panic attack as I was leaving the board meeting. And I thought, you know, this is not working for me anymore. Then of course that's, it's awful to think, oh, you got a panic attack. How terrible, you know, but there's a part of me that gets excited because I feel like I think they're getting closer to recognizing that this job is just not a good fit for me anymore. And this panic attack is giving them the courage to say, know, it sounds strange being anxious, giving you the courage, but it's more like a highlighter pen over saying, see,
00:26:58
Speaker
this is not working anymore. Sometimes, unfortunately, we do get to kind of a crisis point and say, all right, that's that's that. And we can avoid getting to too disruptive a crisis sometimes by just doing a little bit more of this regular questioning. How am I doing with this? and And yeah, and talking with the employer, what what are some ways that I can do this? Or if it's your home life that's not lighting you up, looking at Are there some commitments where I can step away from, you know, volunteering for this group? Or can I ask my partner to take on certain things so that I can explore something that I've been dreaming about and not pursued?
00:27:44
Speaker
So it goes both ways. Very much so.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:27:48
Speaker
Very much so. If people are interested in finding out more about the work that you do, how can they make contact with you?
00:27:56
Speaker
Yes, I would love that. My website is prior10.com. P-R-I-O-R ten dot com p r i o r number 10.com. Thank you very much. Really enjoyed. Very interesting conversation with you today. Thank you very much, Elise. It's been great.
00:28:13
Speaker
Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. And in this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Elise Murray, who gave up a dream job in order to have a dream life.
00:28:32
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:29:26
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Elise and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:29:39
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:29:52
Speaker
Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.