Are You Sabotaging Your Career Change?
High performers self-sabotage their career changes in many ways. We put too much pressure on ourselves. Many times we’re recovering from years of overachieving and habits of perfectionism that have allowed us to be successful. If you want to make a successful career change - one that allows you to have more fun at work, less stress, and allows you to have meaning in what you do - you’ll need to release some of the pressure.
That pressure was one of the biggest factors in why it took me 3 years to take any real, concrete action toward figuring out what I was good at and what I wanted to do next in my career. And it’s a theme I see among almost every single high performer I connect with when they’re struggling to imagine what’s next and how to go get it.
Scene: A rockstar high performer who’s felt pretty stuck at work and wants to take back control of their career. They find themselves on a consultation call with me to try to figure out where they’re getting stuck and what their next steps could be.
High performer: I really want to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.
Erin: That’s awesome that you’re at a stage where you really want to take back control of your career!
High performer: Yeah! If I can just figure out what to do for the rest of my life, what that one perfect thing is, I’ll be good.
Erin:
High performer: I want to figure out exactly what I want to be doing. Once I figure that out, I’ll never need to think about this question.
High performer: I’ll never feel dissatisfied at work ever again. Can we do that? I’d really like to figure out the rest of my entire life.
Erin: smiles and goes into dropping some truth bombs. I love the energy! But it turns out, it doesn’t exactly work like that. I’d love to share more about how to approach making really solid career decisions and how to find work that lights you up.
Stop trying to figure out the rest of your life.
Saying, “Hey, right here, right now, I'm going to figure out the rest of my career, the rest of my life,” it's way too much pressure.
And what that pressure can do - if you don't address it and release it right at the beginning of the career change process - is destroy your creativity and your openness and willingness to explore. Creativity and curiosity are two essential mindsets in a successful career change. Without these mindsets, a career change becomes a frustrating process of waiting for someone to tell you “the right answer.”
Without creativity and a willingness to try different things, it's going to take you longer to figure out what exactly your ideal career looks like, if it happens at all. And it's going to take you a lot longer to identify where you want to go, whom you want to become, and how to build towards it.
Your career is iterative. What’s the best next step?
Taking back control of your career and finding work that lights you up, it's an iterative process. You have many possible best selves. There are numerous experiences that would allow you to feel fulfilled, happy, and engaged in your career.
Designing a list of possible best selves is actually something my clients do in Step 5 of my signature coaching framework. They expand their vision and ideas beyond the obvious to uncover options to test and explore further. This helps them to see very early on what would be a fit and what won’t be a fit. It saves time, energy, and sanity in the long run.
Chasing, searching for, and following a singular “passion” upon which build your entire life and career will never work. Your career is something you’ll constantly to refine and revisit as you grow and change. So release the pressure. Stop getting in your own way of finding work you actually wake up excited to do. Reframe your thinking from “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?” to “Based on where I am and where I want to be someday, what is the best next step?”
Get out of your own way
Making a career change is tough. It takes courage, vulnerability, curiosity, creativity, and a desire to wake up excited to go to work and help others. We don’t need to make it harder by getting in our own ways and sabotaging ourselves from the beginning by starting with the wrong question. The pressure of trying to figure out our whole career and life scope, it’s totally a high-performer thing.
Start where you are. You’re looking for the next decision, the next step. Not the best one. Not the perfect one. The next best decision. Take a deep breath. Release the pressure. You don't have to figure this all out in the next couple of days or weeks. But you can learn the skills and strategies to be able to get started to find the best next decision. You can continue to refine and build toward work you’re actually excited about. That’s how you take back control of your career.
If you’re looking for a little inspiration or one of the best books you’ll ever read about taking back control of your career, I highly recommend reading Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. It’s a resource I incorporate into my signature framework (among dozens of others) and highly recommend to any high performer who is looking to take back control of their career and life, not just land another job.