These days, there’s no shortage of distractions out there with endless amounts of content that’s just a tap away on your phone. As much as social platforms like LinkedIn are really handy for sharing and receiving professional updates, they’re also places that provide endless points of unnecessary, unproductive comparison. Not allowing external voices to sway you too much in your career is half the battle in finding work that’s right for you.
In this episode of the Career Relaunch® podcast, electrical engineer turned artist Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan has had to find ways to quiet the influences around her so she can focus on pursuing a career that makes her truly happy. In our conversation, we’ll discuss paying attention to what your body’s telling you, following your intuition, and finding space to reflect. In the Mental Fuel® segment, I’ll discuss how I quiet career distractions.
💡 Key Career Insights
Especially when you’re young, you may pride yourself on being able to hustle and power through challenging times in your career. However, your body has a way of telling you when you’re pushing yourself too much. Pay attention to these signs of burnout and overexertion before a bigger problem arises.
Building a financial cushion provides you with the freedom to make a risky career move, so if you can put in the time, energy, and discipline into building this cushion, it enables you to move more confidently into the next stage of your career.
Don’t be too consumed with what other people think about how your career should look.
💪🏼Listener Challenge
During this episode’s Mental Fuel segment, I talked about the importance of finding one way to have a quiet moment when you can be still and sort out your thoughts. I know life gets busy, and I know this isn’t easy to do, but you might be surprised by what clarity you might gain from the momentary pause.
📖 Episode Chapters
00:00:00 – Overview
00:01:07 – Introduction
00:03:47 – Chat with Sangeetha
00:48:11 – Mental Fuel®
00:54:01 – Listener Challenge
00:54:40 – Wrap Up
👤 About Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan
Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan has had to find ways to quiet the influences around her so she can focus on pursuing a career that makes her truly happy. She spent nearly two decades as an electrical engineer in semiconductor chip design before deciding to make a big change. After growing up in India, she moved to the U.S. for graduate school in electrical engineering and built a solid career designing chips, managing teams, and leading projects.
In 2024, she left her job to become a full-time outdoor oil painter, hiking into remote places to paint landscapes using sustainable, non-toxic materials. She also leads a women’s hiking group with over 1000 members in Southern California, helping others find confidence and connection in the outdoors. Her story is about choosing purpose over predictability—and having the courage to start again.
Follow Sangeetha on Instagram and LinkedIn.
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📄 Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Joseph: Okay, Sangeetha. Well, thank you so much for getting up early over there in California to join me here on the Career Relaunch podcast. It is great to have you on the show.
[00:00:10] Sangeetha: Thank you. It’s my pleasure.
[00:00:11] Joseph: I would love to start by hearing a little bit about what you’re focused on right now in your career and your life, so maybe we could start with that, and then we can go back in time and talk about your pivots along the way.
[00:00:23] Sangeetha: As you can see in my background, that speaks volumes about what I do now. I am an artist. I’m a fine artist. That means I do these finished oil paintings. I get inspiration from the outdoors. I usually go on my outdoor expeditions as just for recreation, and I paint outdoors, and I come back to my studio and I paint them large. People want to buy them. So I, I would call it like a business, but that’s not how I intended it to be. That’s my career now, an artist who works for myself.
[00:00:57] Joseph: I know you got into this a little bit. You talked about oil painting, but like how would you describe your style of art and your focus as an artist? What do you like to paint? Do you have a certain theme around your art?
[00:01:09] Sangeetha: I would call myself a plein air landscape artist. So plein air. I think it’s a French word that means outside. So the style is that you go outdoors, you paint what you see. So you’re actually capturing the emotions, the exact feelings that you get from looking at a scene, not from a photo, but an actual scene. And you paint it. And I do those on my hiking trips. I go on to these remote trails and capture them, and I usually capture them small, like small canvases, and I bring them home. And the ones that really speak to me, I paint them large. And these are done using oil paints. And there’s several ways that you can do it. People use like plenty of colors. People use certain kinds of paints. Paint, but I do all non-toxic paints in my oil painting process. I use only four colors and it’s done in an impressionistic style, so if you look at it, it’s not a photorealistic. It’s not what you see in a photo or even like exactly how you see in the landscape. But it’s an impression of what I see. So you can bring the painter’s emotions onto the canvas. So it’s a different style of paint making.
[00:02:25] Joseph: That’s amazing that you’re painting with just four colors, because when I see your background, this is an audio podcast. But when I look at your background and some of your paintings there, I would just assume you’re using the whole rainbow of colors out there. So that’s very interesting.
[00:02:37] Sangeetha: I love challenges, so just with four colors, as you know, with color theory, you can make the infinite spectrum of colors interesting.
[00:02:45] Joseph: I know that your art business is also a California green business, so it’s certified for your use of sustainable art making the non-toxic Toxic paints. Why is it that people don’t do that? Like, why don’t more artists follow the sustainable art making process? Because to me, that sounds like a great way of doing it.
[00:03:06] Sangeetha: It’s just the same reason as why people wouldn’t do sustainability in any part of their life, right? Like, you know, that’s how everyone has done. So you just go with the flow and you never question it because the masters have done it with all the chemicals. And so you think, oh, that’s the only way. That’s the way I’m supposed to do. But I’ve grown up because of where I grew up and my family values. I always was drawn to doing things in a green way, eco friendly way. So when I first started painting, I was shocked by the amount of chemicals these artists were using. I took some workshops and the teacher was like mixing up all these chemicals in this and she was saying, oh, let’s leave the windows open because these fumes are. We have to let the fumes out. I’m like, this is not making any sense. I started doing some research and doing my own experimentation, and I figured you can use less toxic paints. You can use zero chemicals in your studio or outdoors. And I started trying it and I’m like, yeah, none of my paintings need those things that everyone was using that intention of wanting to do. And most people are not aware of it. They’re not thinking about that.
[00:04:20] Joseph: You haven’t always been an artist. You were once an electrical engineer in the semiconductor chip industry. But before we get to that, Sangeetha, I would really love to start by hearing more about your early years and you alluded to this. Where you grew up, where did you grow up in India and what do you remember about your childhood there?
[00:04:40] Sangeetha: I grew up in South India in the state of Kerala. When I say Kerala, I’m describing it would be very different from the rest of India because Kerala is very tropical, closer to the equator and it’s very green, full of coconut trees. Humid. Very green. Lush state. We get a lot of six months of rain almost because of the monsoons. It’s called God’s own country because of people feel how blessed it is for how it looks and the abundant resources. So that’s where I grew up. Until I was 18, I lived in Kerala until I moved out to do engineering. What I remember is, yeah, my childhood. I grew up in a family which is very middle class. My parents were central government employees. They worked for the Department of Telecommunications. They were focused on giving education to their two daughters. Very blessed to have been born. My family, I was like a math science nerd. I just focused on solving math problems. Like, that was like, my thing.
[00:05:43] Joseph: Was that because you liked it, or was it because you loved it.
[00:05:47] Sangeetha: Came very natural and obsessed with math and physics and all that. We lived in an area which was so green and beautiful, and so we always played outdoors, even though I was drawn to books. All our playing time was outdoors. We had a huge backyard with like, all the tropical fruit trees, and we had a swimming pool built by our grandparents. We would swim there every day after school, and what I remember is being attached to the books and then go outside and play.
[00:06:18] Joseph: It sounds like a really lush and wonderful childhood, one that I think a lot of kids these days would love to have. Just the freedom to be out and playing and enjoying the outdoors. What made you decide to move to the United States.
[00:06:31] Sangeetha: That way of living? I grew out of that. I wanted to pursue engineering, like further studies. As I got admitted into engineering school, I had to move out of my town because the college was in a different town. So that was the first move out of the hometown. And then I got a job in the city of Bangalore as a junior engineer for Texas Instruments. That was the first company that hired me. So that was the reason I had to move out of Kerala. So I was still in India. As for my first job, but I always felt that I could do something more than just living in a small town as a kid. You’re like, oh, I want to see what the world is like. I want to see where this will take me. So I had those ambitions as just to see the world, and that’s what I say. I wouldn’t say that. Oh, I wanted to be a techie and rule the world. Nothing like that, but I was. I had that itch to be traveling and seeing the world, I would say.
[00:07:37] Joseph: So in this desire to explore the world, I know you would eventually move to the United States. Where did you land and what did you then dedicate your career to. During that chapter of your life.
[00:07:48] Sangeetha: I worked for two years as a junior design engineer at Texas Instruments in India. And that’s when I realized I want to do more specialization in electrical engineering. So I applied for master’s degree to the universities in the US, and I got into two of them. One was UC San Diego and one is Columbia in New York. So for better weather reasons, we decided to pick San Diego.
[00:08:12] Joseph: La Jolla, nice spot.
[00:08:13] Sangeetha: Yeah, I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. You can study in a college right next to the beach. And yeah, so that’s where I ended up.
[00:08:20] Joseph: That’s so funny. I actually almost went to UC San Diego. I visited San Diego when I was a high school student. I loved it, I loved La Jolla, and just like you, I thought, how cool would it be? And I was living in Missouri at the time. So like the idea of living next to the beach and that being college like that just seemed so incredible to me. I ended up going to northwestern, which is a great school, but like the weather is just really tough.
[00:08:43] Sangeetha: That is a great school.
[00:08:45] Joseph: Yeah, it is also quite popular with aspiring engineers. Okay, so you’re in Southern California and then you would eventually move into an area that I know virtually nothing about, which is RF mixed signal IC design. Do I have that correct? Could you explain exactly what that is? Like radio frequency design and what you were working on?
[00:09:06] Sangeetha: That was my specialization for my master’s degree too. So RF is radio frequency. It is the core of every wireless communication that we have today. So we need radio waves to carry the transmission of data from, let’s say a cell you call someone. It’s the radio waves that are carrying the information from one phone to the other, or from a cell phone tower to your phone, or from a Wi-Fi router to your device. So this specialization that I did was designing circuits that actually Communicate to another device through radio waves. I would call it like the most in-demand technology right now in semiconductors, because we are going wireless more and more. We’re getting rid of wires. So you you need more chips that do this. So this specialization is actually for designing circuits which are called RF circuits or RF mixed signal circuits. And that was my specialization. And just to explain what mixed signal is, everything in the core of your device is done in digital. Like there’s ones and zeros. But then as you come closer to the real world you have to make them analog. Yeah, I can keep going on and on about the details of it, but I would bore people.
[00:10:27] Joseph: I think that gives us gives us a good high level overview. So mixed signal design and circuit design. Hugely important to modern day technology and communication. You were doing this for? Do I have it right? Like 15 years at Max Lanier.
[00:10:44] Sangeetha: That’s right.
[00:10:45] Joseph: How was that for you? How were you enjoying it? What do you remember about, like, your level of enjoyment of doing this kind of highly specialized technical work?
[00:10:54] Sangeetha: I graduated right at recession in 2009, and it was really hard to find a job. But then I landed this job, luckily, and the company was still a startup, it had not gone IPO. It worked like a startup. I was the first woman engineer to be hired and they worked like 12 hours. 14. I don’t even remember how many hours everyone worked. It was a very overwhelming environment when I joined, I remember, but very challenging and also exciting for a new grad because you’re learning all these things. It’s all these engineers with PhDs and years of experience, and they’re inventing things, and they’re designing these complex things and being the only woman engineer the culture, it’s very different. Like when you’re in a new environment, suddenly you’re like, oh, you have to figure all this out and this tough environment. It was a mixed feeling because you had to work really hard to establish yourself and prove that, hey, I can make it here too. So it did take some time. So the initial years were harder. I remember like working really crazy hours. It really, really, like, took a toll on my health. But then there was that excitement of that’ll keep you working because you’re so into it and you have these joys of like, oh, I designed the circuit and it’s working and drag you into it. And you’re like, oh, I didn’t realize all these consequences of it. Yeah. So I would say the initial years were tough, but also exciting.
[00:12:28] Joseph: You mentioned there the consequences of working in these intense environments. What do you mean by the consequences?
[00:12:35] Sangeetha: Within a year I had really bad health problems, like I was diagnosed with herniated disc from sitting for long hours without moving. My spine had like compressed and it was like I had like a disc flipped. I mean, that’s like the most common way of saying it. And I was only 26 years old. I had sciatica, which is like the shooting pain on my leg that comes from this pinched nerve because the disc is touching it. I had not imagined that my health would deteriorate so quickly because of these long hours of working. So that, I would say, was the biggest thing I had not imagined would happen. And the scariest thing. So that caused me to take like some break from work, and I had to take like a six weeks or eight weeks disability leave from work and take a break.
[00:13:28] Joseph: Your back is out of commission. You’re off work. Were you thinking, okay, once I get better, I’m going to get back into this. Maybe I’ll, I don’t know, work at a standing desk or I’m going to adjust my work style or my work habits. Were you thinking at that moment that this could still work out, or were you thinking, hey, this is something that I need to really reassess, that this long term is not going to be great for me. Like what was running through your head at the time?
[00:13:52] Sangeetha: The goal was just to get back. I was flying. I was in my 20s and oh, I was like, oh, I have to get back to this as soon as possible and work harder. That was like the initial initial thing. I did get standing desk. I got like changes to the ergonomics were all taken care of. But I remember the whole time I was in bed, I couldn’t move. I had to be laying flat on the bed. The moment I get up, I, you know, it was so painful. But I remember at that age the thought was just to get back and get better and just go at it. But that was while I was in bed. But then once I started going back to work, I felt that something switched in me. I still remember the nagging thought that, is this really what I want to do? Is this what how I want to spend my, you know, the rest of my career? And I remember those thoughts coming, but then I’m like, this is what everybody’s doing. I’m no different. And I hear jokingly from other engineers that, oh yeah, once you’re in RF circuit design, back pain is your best friend. I’m like, really? Is that. Yeah. So that’s like a running joke in the company. And yeah, I had this unsettling thought that, oh my God, is this what I want to do? But I had no idea what else I would do. I’m stuck with this career where this is what I want to do, but the way it’s done is not right at all.
[00:15:23] Joseph: You were enjoying the actual nature of electrical engineering work, but the structure of that work and the demands it put on your body and the work hours and the ways of working that wasn’t quite sitting well with you. I know when we first connected. One thing that you had written to me, which really struck me and I’m just going to read this is you wrote deep down, I’d known for years that I wanted to do something more meaningful and soulful than a desk job. I read that, and I was just thinking, what do you think was stopping you from making that move at that point in time?
[00:15:58] Sangeetha: To answer that question, I’ll have to tell you, like, one of the things that the doctor prescribed was being active. After I had this injury, because I was not an active person at all, I was just a, you know, like anyone else in their 20s, just focused on work. And the prescription was to be active outside, go to a park and walk for or take breaks every 30 minutes and walk. And that was the first time I really used the outdoors as a recreational thing. And although I grew up outside, it was like a way of living. It was never. Different from life. But here, to be outdoors, you had to make an intentional effort to be outdoors. And so I started doing those, and that’s when I had like more reflections on my life, and I remember. The more and more I spent outdoors, I was getting time to think about this kind of life. And. That’s the power of nature, I believe, is that it really makes you present and really evaluate. Help you evaluate what’s truly valuable. And the constant thought was exactly what I wrote there. Is this the most soulful thing I want to do? And every time my manager say, oh, in ten years, I see you. The head of the department. And I’m telling you, I wanted to throw up when he said that it was making me sick. Like I could feel that my soul. That’s not what it wanted. Although I loved engineering and like. You explained the way it’s conducted and structured and in the corporate world, I feel it’s so wrong. It’s just like people are used as this machines to churn out efficient things, to make the next best phone or the next best TV, or I did not want to sacrifice my health for that. So that’s what I actually wrote.
[00:17:49] Joseph: Did you ever think about just changing companies? Did that seem like that could be a solution or or were you feeling like something more radical needs to happen here to my career?
[00:17:59] Sangeetha: If anyone knows anyone working in IT world or the industries, they’re all the same. I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley, you know, all across the world who who work in different companies. The story is the same. I knew changing companies is not the way, and I did not know what else. I did not know any other skills, anything else. I just decided to, like, stick on and create my own way of working. Like after years, you know, you become the senior person and you have a little more command over your team and so you can set boundaries. That’s the best I realized I could do. Like, hey, I’m coming in at nine, I’m leaving at five. I’m not available after that, I don’t care. So that’s what I decided to do, not change companies. But in the place that I work, let’s see how we can make it work.
[00:18:51] Joseph: How did that mitigation strategy work out for you over the years? Did that? Did that help or not?
[00:18:58] Sangeetha: It worked for a while, but then you end up looking like that person who is not a team player, right? Because you will be the only person who’s setting boundaries. And when I became a manager, I was managing teams. And it does not look right for as a manager to be the person who sets the boundaries. But then I expect, you know, my team members to work these hours because there are these deadlines to be met. So it did not work. Well.
[00:19:29] Joseph: How did you get yourself out of this? Because it sounds like there’s a bit of a conundrum here, which I think many people face when they are at this cusp of making a change, is I’m not happy with my current work situation. At the same time, it’s quite esteemed. I can probably think of a lot of people who would want my position. So I don’t necessarily want to just leave it behind, but at the same time, it’s wreaking havoc on my health. I can’t seem to change the system. What do you do then?
[00:19:57] Sangeetha: Nothing I did was planned. I had this excel sheet I had built when I said, when can I retire? Just make the maximum money out of this. Just retire.
[00:20:07] Joseph: Put your time in and. Yeah, exactly as much as you can.
[00:20:10] Sangeetha: I created a spreadsheet, like where, you know, if you know how compound interest works, you can create all the equations to decide. What can you get out of this? I felt that’s the most best part of this corporate world is that you can just make the money and get out as soon as possible. So that’s how my brain started working. And then I said, when can I retire? My spreadsheet would say the age I can do it. So I said, by 40 I can be comfortable and let’s get out. So that’s what I you know, I was following my spreadsheet. But even then, like 40 is such a young age to be retiring and not doing anything. And even until the last few years, I had no idea what else I would do. So that’s when Covid hit, which, you know, transformed everyone’s life.
[00:20:55] Joseph: Let’s talk about that transition because it sounds like Covid hit. And this is obviously a huge event that affected everybody. Their way of working, their way of thinking, their prioritization. And I would love to hear what impact it had on you and how you thought about your relationship with work at this point.
[00:21:11] Sangeetha: It gave me like, all the freedom to work flexibly, and that was great. And then I think 2020 is when I discovered that I had all these, like, pains lying around in my house and I decided, oh, okay, let me just try doing some doodling painting in my house. And, you know, somebody, one of my friends probably left them there. I found them and I decided to play with them, and I thought, oh, this is looking nice. This is fun. And then I sent to some friends and they were like, wow, it’s beautiful. And then I got into it so much that I was painting on every book cover in my house. A hard bound book cover I found I was painting on top of it, made them like these beautiful book covers, and I ran out of books to paint on. I was painting on coasters. I was so close to painting my walls. So this I became that kid again who was obsessed with something. So that was 2020 and I didn’t think much of it. Okay, it’s something I liked. And then a couple of years past 2022 is when I was taking on this big project at work. It was like the biggest chip that I had led. I was managing teams and it was such a very stressful time and I decided to again turn to. I remember that let me just try this and see if maybe it will be a stress buster. And I was painting every day. I would come home at like 6 p.m., I would start painting at 8 p.m., I would paint into like midnight. Then I would look at my watch and I would be like, oh, I have a meeting at six in the morning or seven in the morning to go to bed. But what I remember is those hours of painting were like the most joyful. That was the start of what I remember as something that really caught my attention and drew me into it.
[00:23:04] Joseph: That’s really interesting. It sounds like you had this. What started off as a side interest became a side hobby. Eventually people really liked this kind of work. And you then face, I suppose I’m kind of reading between the lines here, a bit of a decision of, well, how much time should I invest into this? It sounds like it was conflicting with your day job a little bit in terms of just the hours of the day required. And so what was running through your head about how to balance the two?
[00:23:28] Sangeetha: Actually, I had no thoughts like that. I was still just thinking, hey, it’s just a way for me to decompress. Even at that time, 2022 is I seriously had this itch to leave my job. It was very clear to me I had to leave it, but the whole message I could hear from my intuition, if I may say, is just stay. You will know the path when the time is right. And I was not even thinking of painting as something I wanted to do. And I was looking at, oh, maybe a part time job, maybe a consulting job. I was still thinking of engineering as something I want to keep trying, but in a different way. Maybe a medical industry which needs some electronic, you know, design where it won’t be as demanding as semiconductor industry. All these thoughts are still going on in 2022. Do. What happened is 2024 came and again, people may not believe when I say this. I’m someone who goes with a lot of intuition and it really drives my decisions. It’s a very strong knowing. 2024. Spring and summer. That’s when I realized this is what I want to do. It was like a very clear knowing. I had been painting outdoors too, because outdoors had become like a such a strong thing in my life. After my back injury, I was painting outdoors a lot. I would carry my painting gear. It became such a strong calling for me, and it became clear in 2024 that this is what I want to do. This is fitting so well in what I had been looking for. I can be outdoors, I can paint. It’s still like a challenging, I can solve problems in painting and I wasn’t missing my engineering thing at all. By that time when I thought about it, this is the time I’m going to make the switch and my spreadsheet said, yes, you’re ready to make the switch. So I would say it was almost like an instantaneous decision.
[00:25:21] Joseph: That’s interesting. The intuition piece. And I know you’ve mentioned spreadsheets here a few times. You can, I guess, do the math on like when you can retire, when you’re financially comfortable. But at the same time, part of it is just feeling like, hey, now is the right time to make the move. And it’s hard to explain in concrete terms the exact criteria that got cleared to lead you to the decision. Were there times in your career when you didn’t listen to your intuition, and how did you, I guess, shift your mindset around trusting your intuition more.
[00:25:52] Sangeetha: I feel it’s actually something that my engineering career has taught me to like a lot of times as a manager or if you’re a project lead, I believe one of the strongest points of a good leader is making those decisions, which nobody else can. You have to make those decisions quick and make it very simple for people to understand. And a lot of those moments I’ve been able to use this intuitive might sound too woo woo for a lot of people, but you cannot use just logic. You have to look at the big picture and you’ll really see that, hey, okay, this is the right thing that’s zooming out and looking at things and be able to make that right decision. That’s a skill that I had developed over the years by managing teams and leading projects. So I feel like that got stronger and stronger, that skill, it’s a skill that you have to keep to sing. You have to use that part of yourself.
[00:26:49] Joseph: Just to kind of shift gears here a little bit and talk about your current chapter. Now, Sangeeta, you are now a fine art entrepreneur, now self-employed. I am really curious to hear about how you thought about how to create a business around your art because it sounds like, okay, I now know I want to do this. How do I turn this into my actual professional life and my main, I guess, source of income? What was your thinking behind turning this idea into something a little bit more concrete?
[00:27:25] Sangeetha: It wasn’t easy. I have no background in business. My parents are no business people. Nobody in my family has run a business. So it was really like jumping out of an airplane and building a parachute. That’s how I feel it. Like, I have no idea. No art godfathers, nothing. So I had to do some homework and I actually enrolled in an actually a coaching program for that, an art marketing coaching program, which actually really helped because I quickly realized that just painting you cannot be you’re not going to be discovered, like, you know, someone will just come and say, oh, wow, your paintings are great. Let’s, you know, make you famous, right? That’s the dream everyone has. But real world does not exist. So you actually need some marketing sales that coaches need to be in. So I did enroll in a coaching program, which actually really helped.
[00:28:15] Joseph: I know that you started this officially, I suppose, at the beginning of 2025. We’re recording this in the back half of 2025. How are things going for you now as an independent artist?
[00:28:26] Sangeetha: I’m always forgetting my past engineering life because this is so flexible. It gives me so much freedom to be outdoors, be creative, and just to express myself and what inspires me. I can capture it on canvas, create these beautiful things, and also seeing that people actually want to spend their money to buy them. That’s like a big validation of how much it touches you. Yeah, if you give something for free and they like it, that’s different. But someone to spend their hard earned money to buy something that you created. Did to me more than making money, that knowing is actually quite valuable.
[00:29:11] Joseph: Now, before we talk about some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way, I do have to ask you a ruthlessly practical question. And it does relate to money, because I know you mentioned salary there, and I don’t know what your financial situation was when you left your full time work. But financially, how are you feeling right now with the independent artwork? And also a related question to that is you’d mentioned before, you’d kind of thought, okay, I’m going to work really hard. I guess I’m going to build up a lot of savings. Was there some sort of financial cushion that helped you feel more comfortable making this leap? How did finances enter into your decision to do this?
[00:29:53] Sangeetha: One of the things when I look back, the blessing was that I had this back issue early on in my career and I could prepare myself for this from the beginning. Learning about investments and savings at a very early part of my career was very crucial in my decision making, I would say, because that really helped me to build this cushion. Now I can do this. Not like a 21 year old who’s starting an art career, which would be very hard because art, it’s not predictable. When do you get your next income? It’s not like getting a salary every two weeks or every month for that. I feel like my previous career really helped me create that. In my case, it’s been crucial in making it very, very comfortable and I can do it at my own terms. I don’t have to stress about where my next paycheck comes.
[00:30:45] Joseph: It’s not something that I go into in tremendous detail on this podcast. We tend to talk about like the emotions and the dynamics of a career change, but there is this financial component to it. What you’re touching on here is quite important because if you can build that financial cushion or at least a level of savings that makes you feel comfortable taking a risk. I feel like it results in you maybe not being as desperate to, yes, sell that piece of art, or sell your service, or get that customer or whatever your industry might be. And I think that instills confidence in your clients and the people around you.
[00:31:20] Sangeetha: It’ll make a big difference in the way that you do your business, because now you’re more confident, you’re not scared to take risks, and you can invest more in your business. So for me, that was very crucial. Although even though I felt ready for my next phase because of my finances, I did not know what to do. That was my problem.
[00:31:40] Joseph: Well, I’d love to wrap up here, Sangeeta, with just a few of the things that you’ve learned along the way of your career change journey, and I’d love to go back to some of the ideas that you shared with me in your first message that you sent to me about being on the show, and I’d love to just kind of in like a lightning round, go through four things here. The first is just the influence of people around you. And one thing you mentioned to me was this idea of not discussing your career change ambitions with every single person out there. And I know that some of the, I guess, career advice gurus out there are, they’ll say, hey, you should be sharing your plans with everybody, because the more people know about what you want to do, the more people are out there who can keep their eyes and ears open for you. And I would just be really interested to hear why you think it’s not always a good idea to share your plans with other people.
[00:32:32] Sangeetha: Everyone’s decisions are driven by their own life experiences and what they had seen, and what they’re scared of, or what they’re excited about. So anytime you say your plan, they might have opinions about it and they might have different thoughts about it. I’ve noticed that the things that I’ve decided to do, they are so different from what all my friends or family would do normally, and if I had followed their opinions on if I take them to heart, or if they say that’s the better idea, I wouldn’t be where I am today. In any decision I’ve done in my life, I wouldn’t be here. What I have seen results is that go with your intuition. If your intuition is strong. But if you don’t have that skill developed yet, like you have that strong knowing, yes, you might be the person who needs help to make decisions, then this advice is not for that kind of people. But if you have like really strong knowing about what you really want to do, if you know for sure, don’t care about what other people have to say or offer, you will figure out a way. Because that drive to do things, it’ll create the path to get to where you want to be.
[00:33:46] Joseph: My second question was actually related to that topic of being a little bit more focused on what you want versus what you think other people want, or what they think you should do with your career. Do you have any tips or perspectives on what somebody can do to sort of stave off that pressure they might be feeling from other people’s opinions or input on what they should do?
[00:34:10] Sangeetha: So this comes from my cultural upbringing in India, which is a very, very non-independent in the sense you go with what everybody else wants. You know, you go as a society, you you go with the flow. You do it for the benefit of everybody, right? So that’s how that culture works. And a lot of cultures in the world work. And I had been trying to get out of that kind of mindset all my life, to be able to do things that actually what the individual wants is also important. You know, you need a good balance. So I had to consciously make that decision, hey, is this what really what I want to do? Or am I doing it because everybody else is doing so? That was like a conscious decisions I had to make. And I would say I’ve been successful in doing that.
[00:34:58] Joseph: Is there anything that you feel can be helpful to the people who maybe, I don’t know, maybe they feel compelled to listen to what their parents once told them they should do, or what their peer group is saying they should do. Or like you mentioned earlier, like where your manager sees you being in ten years. Like, is there a way to kind of insulate yourself from the noise around you?
[00:35:18] Sangeetha: Reflecting when you’re by yourself helps quite a bit. Take your space like maybe go outdoors. Give yourself space to reflect. Is this really want to do again? Goes back to like listening to yourself. That’s what I always tell my friends. Also just develop that skill more and more. Like what is it that you really want? And for that you have to get away from the noise. Like, you cannot be with like ten people in a group and just listen to their advice as you really have to go back and really listen to what you want.
[00:35:53] Joseph: Last couple of questions for you. And then I want to finish up by talking about something I know that’s quite important to you. I’d love to hear your perspectives on risk taking, especially if there’s somebody out there listening to this. And and maybe they are kind of like me, just kind of risk averse. And that might be stopping them from taking a leap themselves. How do you think about risk and how to manage risk taking in one’s career?
[00:36:19] Sangeetha: Risk is definitely subjective. It depends on how much you think you will fail in this, compared to how much you think you would succeed. So for me, I was like a not a risk taker at all. Again, go with what everybody does, the safe thing. But then the way that I did it was taking small risks, which are not like it’s not going to kill you or kill your career or, you know, taking those small steps and get the confidence like you can do it. Like you can make it work, or even showing to the rest of the world that, hey, you thought this was a risk, but I succeeded. Look, I did this. A lot of my friends were engineers. And now seeing that, oh, this is a risk we can take to, you know, changing things and the world is not going to end because you do it. I would say start with small things that you can get confidence in instead of. You don’t have to like jump off a plane and prove that. But get the confidence and you can do bigger things.
[00:37:20] Joseph: And finally, going from engineering to art is quite a leap if you think about it. Like if I think about what could be more opposite, you’re going from kind of technical, very left brained, logical, non-risk loving worlds to a little bit more of a right brained, creative, maybe more intuitive space. And I’m just curious, like, what have you learned about yourself as you’ve gone on this career change journey?
[00:37:46] Sangeetha: I do have a correction to make there. I don’t know why people think engineering is a left brained, analytical, logical. I have to tell you, it’s the most creative field ever. Because what engineers do are you’re solving problems and you have to creatively solve problems. I cannot imagine what is the logical part of it, but people think it is. It’s the most creative job that exists. To solve a problem, you need to be creative, which is exactly what I’m doing as an artist. It’s just I’m using different tools. It’s a different set of problems that I’m solving. What I am realizing is that ultimately, I’m a creative person who likes to solve problems and enjoy challenges, and I’m kind of done with solving these problems. Now I want to solve these problems and I’m enjoying these tools, so that’s the way I look at it.
[00:38:39] Joseph: That’s good to know. It is interesting. It’s really useful to be able to find those unifying factors between what might, on the surface seem like a radical change. But actually what you’re saying is, hey, there’s actually a lot of common space here that may not be obvious to maybe the outsider, but actually I’m just taking my skills and my experiences and just reapplying them in a different context. And what have you learned about yourself along the way of maybe not this radical career change journey, but maybe the career evolution that you’ve gone through?
[00:39:06] Sangeetha: Well, one of the interesting things I’ve learned is that I still have that childlike obsession with learning something new, and I love that even as a kid, like I was saying, I was obsessed with solving math problems. And I realized that I still have that childlike obsession and that spark to learn something new, to get really into it and just be lost in it for hours. I do that, and I love that people lose that as once you become, you know, 30s, 40s. I’m 42 and I, I’m so excited that I can still do it at this age. And I want to have it when I’m 90 or 95, however long I live, and that’s what I’m excited about.
[00:39:46] Joseph: I would love to wrap up with something I know is important to you outside of art and outside of your now day job, your work, and speaking about being lost in something for hours. I know that you’re passionate about being in the outdoors, and I’d love to wrap up by just hearing a little bit more about the Women’s Outdoors group that you founded in 2019.
[00:40:06] Sangeetha: Again, outdoors was again a consequence of my health problems. I’m most grateful for right now. And you know, in America, outdoors are amazing. Like you have this so much land you can explore. The wilderness is like true wilderness. You get in there and you’re just incredible. And so I had been exploring for years, and in 2019, I felt that I was at this stage in my life where I can offer that path to someone else, because I had been shown the path of the outdoors through some other people who led the way. And I felt, I want to create this for other women who have not been able to explore the outdoors. So I started this group with a friend. Then I started inviting friends. It grew slowly and I organized hikes. We organized camping trips, backpacking trips. We go for days. We just came back from a ten day backpacking trip in Lake Tahoe with 120 something miles. We did anything that you can think outdoors. We try to organize and even beginner level events and invite people, and they can be members and they can go on these trips with me and it’s all free, like a volunteer thing. I love to do because I’m very, very passionate about it, because outdoors was like a place of healing for me and a place of joy for me. And I want to offer that to more people. So that was the goal of it, and it’s still going strong. Yeah, we’re doing another event next Saturday, so.
[00:41:40] Joseph: I think you’ve grown the community to over 1000 members now. So yeah, that’s really great work. If people want to learn more about you, or check out your beautiful artwork, or even learn more about this women’s outdoors group, where can they go?
[00:41:53] Sangeetha: My website is my first name, Sangeeta. Com so that’s my art website and they can contact me through that. So I usually my outdoors group, I kind of keep it private because I want to send it to people who actually contact me and say, hey, I’m interested in joining so people can contact me through my website. It’s kind of a curated group where we want to really make sure they’re the right fit, and but they can contact me and I will invite them to join the group. So that’s definitely the way to do it. And I’m on Instagram. My Instagram handle is Sangeeta G artist. I do post all my art and all my next events and all of that will be there.
[00:42:36] Joseph: Well, we’ll include those links in the show notes, and I would encourage people to check out your artwork and to follow you on Instagram. Thank you so much for telling us more about your former life as an electrical engineer, your transition into being an artist, the work you’re doing to bring like minded women together, to embrace the outdoors, and also just reminding us of how important it is to trust your intuition. So best of luck with all your endeavors. Sangita, and thank you so much for joining me here today.
[00:43:02] Sangeetha: Thank you. I mean, it was such a pleasure. I had been telling everybody I met that this podcast is really great, and I know a lot of people who want to make this transition. And I’ve been sending it to all my friends and family who’ve been thinking, and it’s great to have one place where you can hear so many people have done it, and there are lessons and learnings and it’s such a great thing that you’re doing, so I really appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. I love talking to you.
[00:43:31] Joseph: Well, that’s great to hear. Thank you.
🎶 Interview Segment Music Credits
Podington Bear – Bountiful
Cora Zea – Faith in Aurora
Hushed – Sibyl
Rannar Silnard – Siljan
Podington Bear – 88
Podington Bear – Leftover Fog
Jakob Ahlbom – Crossing the Rubicon
Colombia