Chief Change Officer
#157 Career Math 101: Erica Sosna’s Formula for Bouncing Back – Part Two
Sat, 1 Feb 2025
Life’s Toughest Recalculations. Part Two. Erica Sosna, author of The Career Equation, knows a thing or two about career pivots—but 2022 threw her a plot twist she never saw coming. An accident left her paralyzed, forcing her to relearn not just how to walk but how to rebuild her life and business from the ground up. Two years later, she’s standing tall—literally and figuratively—proving that resilience isn’t just a mindset, it’s a full-body workout. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Speaking the Same Career Language: The Foundation of The Career Equation “The Career Equation is designed to create a common understanding between employers and employees around career development, much like having a shared accounting system. Without it, career conversations risk inconsistency and lack of clarity, but with it, we can truly align aspirations and strategies.” Building Career Conversations with Four Simple Components “The Career Equation focuses on four key insights: understanding strengths, uncovering passions, measuring success, and aligning with optimal work environments. These components create a common ground, enabling both employer and employee to understand what’s needed to thrive.” Insatiable Curiosity: Embracing Unconventional Paths to Healing "An insatiable thirst for novelty keeps me exploring, whether it’s acupuncture, microcurrent therapy, or spine-specific chiropractic techniques. I’ve discovered that healing requires openness to new possibilities, even when they fall outside the traditional model.” The Right Environment: The Crucial Factor for Success “From workspace to team dynamics, the environment is essential to performance. Knowing where a person does their best work and making adjustments as needed creates a space where strengths can flourish.” Visualizing the Outcome: A Plan Begins with the End in Mind “I start by envisioning the experiences I want—whether it’s dancing, running, or picking up my child—then map out the steps that would lead me there. By framing it with vivid goals, I find clarity and purpose in the smallest daily actions.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Erica Sosna --Chief Change Officer-- Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself. Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs, Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts. 6 Million+ All-Time Downloads. Reaching 80+ Countries Daily. Global Top 3% Podcast. Top 10 US Business. Top 1 US Careers. >>>100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today.<<< --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What is Erica Sosna's remarkable journey?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chan, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, I'm speaking with Erica Sosna, a fellow podcast host and the author of The Career Equation, who, like me, is passionate about careers.
Chapter 2: How did Erica overcome her life-changing accident?
But what makes Erica's story unique is her remarkable journey of resilience, purpose, and transformation. In 2022, a life-changing accident left her paralyzed. Facing months of recovery through immense pain and uncertainty, Erica fought her way back. Back to walking? Back to work? and back to a renewed mission.
Chapter 3: What is the Career Equation and how does it work?
After a year away from her consultancy, Erica returned with fresh purpose, balancing her career on a three-day work week, launching a podcast, and expanding her reach to create a bigger impact. Yesterday, part one, Erica shared her career journey, the twist and the turns, and the accident that changed everything.
Chapter 4: What role does the right environment play in success?
Today, in part two, she'll share the hard-earned wisdom she gained from overcoming paralysis, starting a new chapter, shaping a path to personal and professional growth. Erica will also dive into the career equation she created and how we can all work towards becoming better versions of ourselves in our careers. Your experience and the journey are exceptional.
Chapter 5: How can visualizing outcomes aid in personal recovery?
The challenges you've faced, both physical and mental, are beyond what many of us could even imagine. I deeply applaud you for that resilience. As I listened, I wondered, now that you're looking back and you call yourself exceptional, which I think is entirely fitting, what would you say is your superpower?
Chapter 6: What unconventional healing methods did Erica explore?
If you had to pinpoint exactly what it is that helped you sustain and succeed through all of those things, what would that be? Is it a deep-rooted faith? Something within your career equation? Or an other quality? What do you think that allowed you to endure all the pain and ultimately come back even stronger?
Chapter 7: What key qualities contribute to resilience?
It's a really good question, Vince. And in many ways, at the beginning, when people were saying it's so inspiring, because I was posting a bit on LinkedIn about my physio and things, because that was my work at the time. And I wanted to feel like I was in the world and that people knew what I was up to. Initially, when people started saying that was really inspiring, I can't believe it.
Chapter 8: How does embracing challenges lead to transformation?
How do you do it? I can't imagine how I would do it. I was a little bit dismissive. I was, look, you don't know until you're in the situation. Of course, you would do the same if you thought there was any possibility that you could recover your function, whatever it is. I had a spinal injury, but plenty of people have all kinds of debilitating health and mental health conditions and all of that.
Of course, you would just go for hell for leather for recovery, wouldn't you? And it took me a while to realise that the answer to that was not recovery. Yes, for everybody. So then I started to ask myself exactly this question, which is what, so what am I doing that perhaps might be useful and helpful for other people to get a grip on or that they could use?
And I suppose there are a couple of things. I think one of the things is I do have a strong faith. I have a faith in the kind of goodness and benevolent intention of the universe I suppose like that. And that meant that I wasn't in resistance to what had happened to me. I was once taught that when something rubbish happens to you accept it as though you chose it.
I found that to be a very helpful thing, whether that's you're being made redundant unexpectedly, or you've had a loss or an illness, or it sounds crackers in a way to say, accept that thing as though you chose it. But what's the alternative? The alternative is not to accept it, even though it's happening to you anyway, or to be in battle with it when you can't change it.
Embracing the experience as though, okay, this has happened and I'm just going to accept it as though it was on my list of things to do. And then I'm going to act in response to that in a positive way. So the first was accept it as though you chose it. The second is that in your life plan and your career plan, which is the program that we run around the equations...
I teach this modality of starting with the end in mind, so knowing what it is that you want to accomplish, what you want to see and feel and experience, and then working backwards from that to work out how you're going to get it done so that you are left with a kind of what do I need to do today or right now that is, if you like, a penny in the piggy bank of the future, whether the future is I want to walk again or I'd like to have a child or I'd love to move countries or whatever that thing is that you want to experience.
And so I used, of course, that modality because it's always worked for me. You start by vividly imagining you having the experience. And notice that I'm talking about experience rather than stuff. So say you want the experience of travelling the world or managing lots of people. If we get stuck on, I want to be promoted... It's quite difficult to envisage that as an experience.
So I would then ask, if you do want to get promoted, what experience would that give you? Why do you want that? Is it more interesting work? Is it more strategic opportunities? Is it greater prestige? But you start by envisaging the experience. So for me, it was, I want to experience dancing again, cycling again, yoga again, running again, picking my child up.
And I really vividly imagined how joyful and pleasurable those moments would be. And then I worked backwards from there to say what would need to happen the week before, the months before, the year before, and what are the things that I need to start doing.
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