Category: Coffee Break

Posted in Coffee Break

You are Successful, and that’s okay

Posted on by Nathan Westerberg

Good morning everyone, I hope we had all had an amazing weekend! I’m going into this week particularly pumped because we finally got around to watching Kpop Demon Hunters and for those who have not seen it yet, it is one of those few phenomenon that truly lives up to the hype. We laughed, we cried, and we were singing and dancing to all of the songs (there isn’t a single song that is not a banger). At one point we had paused the movie to restock on snacks and my exact phrase was, “We are 37 minutes in and I’m already looking forward to watching it again.” So if you are looking for a new movie to obsess over, not to mention a soundtrack to add to your playlist, this is it. So please, watch it and let us know your favorite parts because why not make that into some amazing water cooler talk.

My topic this morning is why do some of us have such issues being able to be proud and happy of our successes? I am not talking about those in our offices who make it known every time they close a big sale, or are straight up bragging about their successes. I am looking at the employees who are potentially some of the most successful people in the office who simply do their job and let any praise fall between the cracks. My company has a recognition system where employees can specifically give public credit to colleagues who truly helped them. Not to brag but I have received quite a few of them and I will say that yes, they routinely come from employees who I spent a great deal of time with helping with their problems or questions. But I normally do not talk about those successes because I see it as me simply doing my job, but this system is nice because I am proud of many of those instances and that feedback does make it easier for me to talk about them with my leader.

In my research I came across something called “imposter syndrome” which is defined as someone who has psychological instances of feeling inadequacy and self-doubt, to the point that any success in their life is seen as a form of fraud. I’m not sure that I have it to that degree, but it is true that I have problems talking about myself in that way. Taking this blog as an example, my biggest struggle is self promotion. I feel awkward trying to promote my writing on social media out of a combination of assuming it will only be responded with negative feedback as well as I do not want to be seen as one of the many “influencers” in the market promoting their false personas.

But these feelings an go beyond just the workplace and into our personal lives and learning to be happy for ourselves. Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine who got a brand new job which is a huge step up for them. I was so excited for them and insisted we celebrate, but they had issues trying to do that. Despite being given this opportunity they suddenly doubted how much they deserved and began to tear themselves down in a time that should be a moment of celebration. Even worse, they felt guilty about being happy because this was going to mean leaving their now previous company because they felt their leader and colleagues would see this as a betrayal. I found an article from Fiorenza Rossini who explains this happens quite a bit when someone is leaving a company. If you have been there long enough, you see this moment almost like breaking up a family. Almost as if you owe your allegiance to them above all else.1 But what is important to remember is that at the end of the day, this is your career and you need to do what is best for you. If my friend is reading this, this is a moment of success that you have worked for, deserve, and you are entitled to be happy for yourself.

This post is not to prompt people to start bragging and become that obnoxious employee that no one likes. Instead, take the time to take pride in your successes and let your friends and family celebrate with you. Did you finally publish that book you were working on? Close a big sale? Get a brand new job? Finish school? Maybe you just plain had a great interaction at work where you walked away feeling good for the work you did. Take a bit of credit and be proud of what you accomplished. Meredith Fineman explains in an article of hers that while shamelessly bragging can be bad, what can also be dangerous to our career are “humble brags.” That is where you talk about an accomplishment, but combine it with some self deprecation and leaders can see this as us not taking pride in our work. It takes confidence to be able to promote ourselves and that is an important skill people need if they hope to work themselves up.2

So learn to be proud of your work, and be able to be happy when you accomplish something. My personal goal this week is to do better about self promoting my work here with Breakroom Breakdown. I have diligently been working on this for more than two years and am moving it to a podcast. All of this is a lot of work which many people would have given up on already. If any of you have gone through this is the past, why don’t you share what you have done to work on your self promotion and the ability to be happy for your accomplishments. While you will find plenty of resources online, start with this article from Yesel Yoon Ph.D. who talks about acknowledging the “myths” that we tell ourselves which only serve to break down our confidence. She then gives us tools to practice in order to build our confidence and accept compliments, retraining our brains and our reactions when someone gives us positive feedback.3

I wish you all a great Monday, lets take this week on by the horns and kick butt!

  1. Rossini, F. (2024, November 11). How to manage career change guilt? LinkedIn. Retrieved September 21, 2025, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-manage-career-change-guilt-fiorenza-rossini-pcc-2a1qe/ ↩︎
  2. Fineman, M. (2015, November 18). Are You Sabotaging Your Accomplishments by the Way You Talk About Them? Inc. Retrieved September 21, 2025, from https://www.inc.com/meredith-fineman/are-you-sabotaging-your-accomplishments-by-the-way-you-talk-about-them.html ↩︎
  3. Yoon, Y., Ph.D. (2024, July 24). How to Overcome Insecurity and Accept Compliments. Psychology Today. Retrieved September 21, 2025, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/on-second-thought/202407/how-to-overcome-feelings-of-insecurity ↩︎
Posted in Coffee Break

Coffee Break: You are not a failure.

Posted on by Nathan Westerberg

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! So I decided not to do a full Breakdown this week, I intend on trying to get an extra one this week but I still wanted to post because I have a lot of thoughts going on that I really wanted to share with my reader.

I contemplated putting this is a podcast to celebrate with our official launch from last week but I didn’t want it to feel rushed. Last week our pilot was absolutely meant to be our rough draft as we learn what not only works for our material and format, but also the process of learning the recording tools as I am teaching myself as we go along. We wanted to have it launched in time for Excalibur Con 2025 (which exceeded all projections and kicked ass) but now we will be conforming to a proper schedule which does involve having episodes already banked to maintain that ability.

For those interested in hearing our podcast you can find it at the following locations (and more):

Breakroom Breakdown Blog: https://breakroombreakdown.blog/2025/08/14/the-office-s1e1-pilot/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/546RYYNjZoEIMIM5sxGv9N

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/380135a2-32e4-40dd-9e07-d13bd8c061c0/breakroom-breakdown

What I wanted to use this post today as part of a Coffee Break is to talk about that thing that are never meant to talk about, and that is how it feels like we must have a roadmap for our entire professional lives already figured out. And if something goes wrong we feel like we shouldn’t complain about it because it is likely our fault because we are not working hard enough. As my reader might remember I got my MBA degree four years ago and have been attempting to grow my career using it, focused on human resources as that is where I currently work and it seems like a reliable industry that is always around. Four years later and hundreds (literally) jobs applied for I can actually count the number of interviews I’ve reviewed on my hands. I know I am not alone, this is happening to so many individuals out there who were taught that if you get a degree, the rest of your professional future will fall into place. But that is no longer the reality and instead we feel like we are applying for jobs into black holes as we do not hear back, we see “over 100 applied” and question what is even the point, we meet all of the qualifications in the job posting and are then told we lack “vision” or “clarity” in how we meet those qualities. And instead of a problem with the system that is corporate America or placing the blame on how these companies conduct business, we are made to feel like we are not trying hard enough. We are told that your degree is good but you should be taking these seminars, getting fancy certifications, and then find ways to get experience but unfortunately since you need experience simply to get a job you will just need to find unpaid ways to get that experience. And I want to say the quiet part outload for everyone and that is I am exhausted, broken, defeated, and consistently feel like just crumbling because it all seems useless.

After applying to a Human Resources job (which would be a good transition up from my current position) almost a month ago, I finally go the call that I have an interview this next week. On the one hand I was excited to finally potentially have a chance to grow; oddly enough it actually came about three hours after I reached out to a friend explaining I am ready to call it quits on Human Resources and I want to transition into an Analyst position. The old me would have been eager to write of the Analyst goal because this is now my chance and then get overly eager and then devastated that I do not get it. What is the new me doing? I am not going to sweat this interview, I will still study (as I always do) but I preparing the mindset that if they choose to go elsewhere, they didn’t deserve me in the first place. I hate that we have to plan our professional futures so carefully because we can no longer simply get a job and then work our way up with experience and remaining in the same country. So I plan on upskilling and finding out how I can perhaps pivot into a different field that can better use my skills and perhaps I’ll actually find more satisfaction instead of consistently being told I am just not good enough.

To those young professionals reading this, it sucks that the world expects you to have an elaborate plan starting from 18 right up until retirement but that is the world we live in. So what advice can I give you?

  1. Learn your strengths. A few years ago my husband, while training to be a coach, had me take a CliftonStrengths assessment to evaluate my strengths. It is consists of 34 strengths that we all possess but we use differently and in various frequency and effectiveness. My top strength was Intellection which means I am an information gather, I make decisions and problem solve using as much information as I can attain in order to make an informed determination. When working with a coach, they would then go through such an assessment with you and help take this information and put it into real world scenarios and how you can use it to achieve your goals.
  2. Life never goes the way you expect it to. I have worked in numerous jobs and always thought that I found my niche, but something changes and I learn to adapt and change. At 35 I have learned that no matter how much I plan I know I cannot guarantee what the future brings, all I can do is do my best to be prepared.
  3. Build a support system. As much as it can hurt to have to admit to your friends or family that you are struggling to grow professionally or just find out what to do, find people who can support you. My husband has always had my back, and I mentioned that friend of mine is going to give me some professional advise and insight on what I can do to grow. I know it feels embarrassing to admit we need help but I think it is crucial to break this stigma where we feel like it is all our fault we cannot succeed despite having followed all of the “rules” we were given growing up.
  4. Upskill and grow. I wish college was enough but while I have a great deal of knowledge and great soft skills, it is the hard skills I need. Soft skills refers to traits like customer service, analytical thinking and even problem solving. Think of them as personality traits that make you a good employee. Hard skills, however, are actual abilities that can be measurable and can typically be learned while soft skills very often are tied to your personality. Examples can be knowing multiple languages, proficiency with specific software, perhaps understanding accounting principles. Once you have an idea of the type of line of work you want to go into, rather than thinking you can be trained at the job you should start figuring out what skills you already have, what should you get, and find means of learning them.
  5. Don’t give up, and do not blame yourself. It is very hypocritical of me to try and tell you to not feel depressed and like a failure that you feel you wasted four years of your life only to now pivot to a new industry, but you are not a failure. The business world is cruel, unnecessarily difficult, and quite simply sucks when you are likely just looking for a job to keep your roof over your head. Do not give up on yourself and do not think of yourself as a failure. Reach out to a recruitment company, check with your friends to see if they know who is hiring, trying to find Youtube videos teaching you how to use Excel. It is not over until you truly have exhausted every avenue and given up and I don’t believe that should ever happen. You could even message here and I could get you in touch with my husband and his coach expertise so there is always something else.

I have gotten very open and honest here and that is because besides the fact that I needed to get this off my chest, I know there are others out there feeling the exact same and I want you to know you are not alone. For those struggling or who have struggled, please reach out and let your fellow reader(s) know so we can support each other. Thank you all for listening (reading) and I hope you all have a fantastic Friday, a great weekend, and be sure to say hi the next time you see me around the Breakroom.

Posted in Coffee Break

Coffee Break: Creative Technology “Hacks”

Posted on by Nathan Westerberg

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Breakroom! I am out of the office today, need some relaxation after feeling a little under the weather this week. Plus, preparing for my friend’s wedding this weekend so needed some time to run a few errands to get myself ready! Now, I did not want to leave you in the lurch so I decided to give you all a Coffee Break.

Today’s topic is actually being taken from a recent huddle my team and I had. When we do not have major news to discuss, we often end up on odd topics and our most recent one has been on useful “hacks” that we can do with technology that we had no idea about! I do have two here to discuss, and obviously I would love for any readers to share their own in comments for everyone to know about.

The first I have is, searching in your photos. You read that right, when you go into your photo gallery in your phone, there is a search field that you can look things up. What I did not know, is that if you were to type in a word like “dog”, your phone AI will review each photo and try to find all of those that have a picture of a dog in them. While playing with this, I also noticed that my phone started to recognize faces and would assign names to them if it had a way of knowing it. Besides being able to search for pictures of objects, it can even register if there are words in a picture. Where did this realization come up? If you happen to take screenshots of recipes, you can search for an ingredient like “parsley” and it will bring up any image that has that word listed anywhere.

Absolute game changer, right? Can make looking through photos so much easier and especially if you do lots of recipe screenshots.

Now for my personal favorite, and that is one I picked up from a video online. If you find a recipe online that you like, I am sure you will find that it could have pages and pages of story and lore associated so it takes forever to get down to the recipe. What you can do is go into the web address at top and go to the very beginning (before even the http) and type in cooked.wiki/ and then click ENTER. This will then convert the website into a recipe card of sorts with only the recipe and ingredients, and cutout all of the unnecessary verbiage. This has been my newest obsession and it makes hunting for recipes so much easier. No offense to the food bloggers out there, but most of the time I really only need the recipe.

I hope to come back with more fun tips like this in the future, but please share your own with all of us!

I’ll be back next week with a full Breakdown, but as always you can catch me around the Breakroom!

Posted in Coffee Break

Coffee Break: Ode to a Morning

Posted on by Nathan Westerberg

As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn commission from qualifying purchases through shared links.

Good morning everyone and welcome to another Coffee Break chat with me here at the Breakroom Breakdown. We have a great deal to be excited about, most importantly because you will see we officially have a logo courtesy of Amy Ugstad with OneUP Creative. She was a dream to work with and truly was able to help put this together quickly, and beautifully, so I hope you will consider them for your design needs and visit them at https://oneupcreative.net/.

Goodness number two, we are officially sponsors for the 2024 Teeb Con! This convention here in Duluth, MN seeks to bring together all things nerdy and fun including tabletop games, trading card games, anime, sci-fi, fantasy, and more! This will be August 24th and 25th at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. Go to https://mnswca.org/teeb-con-2024 for more information, including getting your tickets. Interested in possibly getting free or discounted access? I have heard they are looking for all sorts of volunteers, so look this up through the website if you would like to offer your time to help support this event, and then get to enjoy the fun!

There is some more upcoming news, but I will wait for to reveal that, for now let us get into the topic at hand, which I am calling ‘Ode to a Morning.’

We all sleep and inevitably wake up each day, unfortunately not all of us are what you might call morning people. I am one of these people, I really am not motivated in the morning. I am usually okay if I do not have to speak to anyone until around 9am, but this is not always the case. So how are we supposed to mentally and physically prepare each morning? Well I have some hot tips right here, most I have done or currently do (to varying success).

  1. Go to bed at a reasonable time and try to wake up early enough to have the morning to yourself. Easier said then done, there are times that I am able to get to bed at a good time but I really have to force myself to do so, and getting up in the morning is equally as difficult. My average routine is bed between 11pm and midnight, roll out bed perhaps 15+ minutes before I start work. But I am trying to do better. The key is really setting that routine and reprogramming your body to be used to it. One step that I do is I don’t sleep in on Saturdays; instead I wake up with husband (who does work Saturday morning) and then I go out and run my errands. It keeps me from sleeping in, plus I can get to the stores before too many people are awake
  2. Morning fuel up. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When I am really motivated, I do love to have some egg bites meal prepped but I am not always that fortunate. I might default to some oatmeal or even whip up some scrambled eggs, but the truth is that first thing the morning my stomach is not quite ready for that kind of food. My secret fuel is a protein smoothie. I love my Ninja blender because it has the special blender mugs that you can drink right from, must like this one and it is much easier to drink a breakfast than eat one right away. My go to smooth includes: ice cubes, peanut butter, a banana, coconut water, sometimes a bit of yoghurt, and then a scoop of the BSN SYNTHA-6 Protein Powder (Chocolate Milkshake) which helps fill me up and get me going. I love that it has all that protein but tastes like a dessert and certainly can be convenient.
  3. Workout. Morning workouts; we all see people on Instagram or other socials who rave about how amazing they feel when they workout in the morning. I’m usually just sore, winded, and sweaty. But it is hard to argue with the fact that a light workout really get help perk you up. I have done it, although not in a good while (being honest for you all) although I really would love to be able to do it even once a week. I like the idea of a morning run (or more likely, walk) because you can use it as a chance to swing by your favorite coffee place as a morning reward. For some motivation, listen to either an upbeat playlist or favorite podcast with some Bluetooth headphones like these. You really do not need some overpriced pair that runs more than $100, there are plenty of simple ones for $15 or less so seriously do not get me started on that topic.
  4. Sip and social. No I do not mean social as in socialize, I mean grab your morning beverage (mine is coffee) and just sit for a moment in silence while you catch up online. I love some hilarious videos about being a dog daddy to corgis, ridiculous videos as a DnD player, or some ones with tasty looking cakes being featured. It shouldn’t be about talking to people or getting worked up with whatever is happening in politics, but some general feelgood topics. Maybe catching up on your favorite blog that talks about scenarios in the workplace, whatever makes you happy.
  5. Get dolled up. This was an interesting concept I had heard about for remote workers like myself. Since our morning process is less hectic, it can be beneficial to still take the time to shower and put yourself together in the morning like we would if going into the office. This is meant to stimulate us a bit, trick our brains into thinking we have to get productive right away. And those morning showers really can help perk you up. Doesn’t mean you can’t still be in your sweats, but maybe you take the time to slip on your favorite jewelry like a Hammerhead Shark Bracelet which I just got for myself last week and am a little in love with it. Will anyone see it? No, but I will and it makes me happy. It is also Shark Week so this is the perfect time to get shark-themed decor.
  6. Remember those vitamins. Gone are the days where my mom hands me my Flinstones Vitamins, now I have to remember to take them myself! I’ve tried many, but the one we have been using for several years now are through Olly. These are for adults (though they have released some for kids) but what is fun is they are gummies. You take enough of them in the morning (or at night) and it is basically a snack so I absolutely will put my name to them. Some of our regulars each day include Happy Worms, Men’s Multivitamin, Metabolism Rings, Undeniable Beauty, Daily Energy, and then Sleep which is one you take at night. Vitamins are not for everyone, but if they are then why not make them like a candy?!
  7. Screentime. Finally, sometimes we just need a little screentime in the morning. I know when I first played Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I was highly motivated to wake up early in the morning to do some daily stuff before I needed to start work. For me, a simple game that I can turn on and play for 10 to 15 minutes was ideal, especially because it encouraged me to wake up even earlier so I could get more time in. Everyone has their own personal rules on how much screentime they put in, but I think it can be a great motivator in the morning. And Animal Crossing was slightly lifechanging so I will also swear by that game (and the endless amount of merchandise I have accumulated because of it).

So these are all tips I have used or try to use in my own life to encourage myself to be more of a morning person. Any of these work for you? Do you have your own recommendations that I didn’t mention? Please comment and let us know! Until later this week, I’ll see you around the Breakroom!