Erica Yanney, Career Coach at Altitude Career Coaching.
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I could sense the thickness of the fear in the room. I could observe the nonverbal signs of discomfort, tension and doubt. There were so many “what ifs”; is this the right pathway?
During the previous session, there was flow, there was the excitement of discoveries and possibilities, but now it is time to move and ... paralysis. Am I making the right decision? What if it's not the right path for me? Fear sank in. This describes the beginning of one of my recent sessions.
Dealing With The Fear Of Not Making A Good Career Decision
How do you move beyond the fear of the unknown or the fear of making mistakes? How do you make good decisions and know they are right?
Before committing to a decision about your career, you may want to try it out empirically. Start envisioning yourself in that new job, company, country or role. What do you see? How does it feel? What will be pleasant about it? What challenges may you encounter? Bring to mind old circumstances in which you experienced a similar shift—how did you feel? What were some of the learnings?
Move a step further into more concrete ways to experiment. Can you try before saying yes? Can you visit? Can you shadow someone? Can you interview someone and ask questions? Can you touch that job with your hands and become aware of the realities on a deeper level?
Can you talk to someone who made that change? What did they experience? How was their situation different than yours? How do they compare?
Journal, create charts with pros and cons weighed in categories that matter for that decision-making process. What is involved? What are the risks and benefits?
No Analysis Leads You To Certainty, So What?
Even after a thorough analysis, certainty is not always possible. We need to become comfortable with not knowing it all. There are no certainties in life. The best we can do is to assess all the factors in a given situation, reflect, research, seek support and seek the opinion of experts, friends and family, then hope we make a choice that is good for our career. Every change requires faith in the unseen, faith in the potential of the situation to turn out the way you desire.
One comfort we can have is that we can turn around. We can set trials and agree on experimenting with it for a while. Ultimately, it is only by living through the experience that we can gauge if it is good or bad, and sometimes it takes more time than expected to be able to arrive at that conclusion.
Career Change: What To Consider?
Some factors to weigh in when thinking of a career change:
1. Why? Underneath it all, why are you making this move? What value is moving you? What desire? What need? Will this career move bring about what you are looking for, or are you under the illusion that a change will solve your life’s problems and negative feelings like magic?
2. Are you moving toward a goal or trying to escape something? Will you really escape, or do you need to resolve something inside of you rather than outside?
3. Who are you, and who do you need to become to undergo this transition? Are you up to the transformational challenge? Are you aware of the transformation needed?
4. What ingredients do you need to experience career happiness? Are they there in this new environment?
Happiness Is Worth Fighting For
Any change is unsettling, no doubt here! But it is worth fighting for what you think will make your life better, more fulfilling, more vibrant, more stable, more meaningful—whatever you yearn for in your dreams. It is better to live with the certainty of knowing that wasn’t the path than the frustration of having never tried and forever wondering, "What if?"
Whatever the outcome, going through a change can stretch, enrich and make you wiser. It can help you learn and become more aware of who you are and what you are capable of doing.
Change is great for generating deeper awareness. If you don’t change, you already know the price of the discomfort of your present situation. How bad is it? Is it worth the try? If the potential for happiness is real and likely would it be worth it? What if you succeed?
Let Go Of The Paralysis
After doing your due diligence with planning and reflection, having seen a good potential for success, take a step of courage into the unknown. I can almost guarantee that you will experience turbulence during the transition; don’t mistake that for bad decision-making!
Keep moving toward your goals; change course if necessary, but pursue the dream of achieving more for you, whatever that “more” is! Move toward change. Change has great potential for growth, regardless of the outcomes. Take the risk to become who you want to be and achieve what you yearn to achieve! Embrace the risk wisely; even if you don’t reach the goal, the journey of learning and the potential for success is worth the chance!
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