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Feel stuck in your career? This episode we’ll discuss the last 3 steps in the career decision making process:
- Know your reason for making the change
- The questions to ask yourself to eliminate confusion
- How to create the decision making mindset
Your confusion comes from your fear of how you think you’ll feel if you make a decision you later think was the wrong decision. Gathering the facts is important, but realize that you are hoping that data will make you feel good about your decision. Data doesn’t make you feel good. Only your thoughts can make you feel good.
| Read the Transcript |
| Hey folks, Welcome to the podcast. I’m glad you’re joining me today. This is part 2 in career decision making. This is part two in the how to make a career decision series. So if you haven’t listened to part 1, you’ll still benefit from today’s content, but, I do suggest you go back and listen to part one. Many people come to me asking for me to help them figure out what they should do next. To recap, making decisions for your career doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t have to swirl or overthink. I call my approach the B.S buster. B.S or belief system buster or builder depending on where you are in the process. So this belief system framework will help you think about some questions to ask yourself as you are building the career you want. In the first episode in this series I covered Who you are. You want to get clear on who you are. Grab a pen for this podcast bc I have some questions for you. Then you’ll reflect on What matters to you. And the results you want to create. Today I am going to cover. Why. Next you need to have a compelling reason for your career move. Recently I received an email from a listener who asked, why they never accomplish their goals. So we’re going to talk about why that happens and it all starts with your compelling reason. Understanding. Then we are going to clear out any nonsense around confusion. Action. And then lastly we are going to talk about how to refresh your mindset and get into decision making. Mindset is really the fuel running through all stages of decision making but here we’ll nail your belief system that fuels your decisions. Then I’d like you to spend some time with your compelling reasons. Your Why. Make a list of your compelling reasons for making this result in your career. The easiest way to describe this stage in the career decision process is to think about why you want a new job. Some days is going to be about meaningful work, other times it may be about benefits, or comp, or the people you work with, the experiences you’ll have, how you’ll stretch your brain, who you get to meet, the commute (I mean at some point some of us will go back in some way, on some days, to an office setting, right?)and how you get to show up in the world. Not every reason is going to work to motivate you everyday. Make a list of 15- 20 reasons for why you want this result. Or you risk giving up on your goal pretty quickly when things get hard. And if you can’t think of many reasons why you want to go after this goal, then I’d ask yourself is THIS really what you want? Get that pen again. Questions to ask yourself when creating the results your compelling reason. The why What would change about your career if you achieve this result? What would change in your financial situation? What would change in your relationships? What would change in your life? Next we talk about confusion. I did a deeper dive on confusion in episode 7 but a quick refresher here is that confusion is really stemming from the need to make the right choice while you are rethinking everything. You are confused because you haven’t made a decision. Sounds simple right? You think if you keep thinking about the choices you’ll eventually find the right answer. Or a sign or some secret decoder ring will tell you the answer. Your confusion comes from your fear of how you think you’ll feel if you make a decision you later think was the wrong decision. Look, get your facts together. Gathering the facts is important, but realize that you are hoping that data will make you feel good about your decision. Data doesn’t make you feel good. Only your thoughts can make you feel good. But when it comes to making a decision in your career there’s often no right or wrong decision. It’s really making a decision and then learning to manage your mind and choosing how you want to show up. The answer to all your questions, to all your confusion comes from making decisions. When you want to get out of confusion ask yourself these questions. If you knew that you were not going to feel guilt, regret, anxiety, which option would you go for? If you knew that you would feel confident, content, happy, and proud of yourself, which would you choose? Can you say yes to both options? Can you stay in your current role while building your side business? What if you could have both? What does your future self say about this confusion In 5 years from now what will she/he/they say? Give yourself a deadline. Pick a date and move forward. If it feels scary that’s ok. Because that’s growth. I find that choosing to work in 30, 60, or 90 day blocks is the most helpful because it gives you enough time to make a plan, gain traction, and pivot. And now, for the mindset piece. You know I can’t skip an episode without talking about mindset. One of the biggest things that I learned in doing mindset work was the impact that I was having on myself -all-the-time. When you learn that how you feel is caused by your mind, you stop trying to change the circumstance, the job, the boss, the department, to feel better. When you don’t understand that you keep moving jobs to find the perfect one. Layer on that you then dont know if this is the “right” decision and you tend to spiral into confusion and overwhelm. You fear making the wrong decision. You believe there is a right or wrong decision Then you don’t want to get into action. Because you’re uncomfortable. You are going to uncomfortable either way so which speed bump do you want? One gets you a result and may be uncomfortable. The other keeps you safe, stagnant, stale, and without growth. Which is equally uncomfortable. When we don’t make a decision it’s so exhausting. It’s living in the hallway. Lots of doors. No movement. Nothing opens or shifts. You’re in a mind loop. Your brain is using energy but there’s no forward momentum. What do you want to spend your brain power on? Do you want the brain to keep making the same decision again and again? Being in a mind loop that does not produce a result? You’ll drain your energy and be unable to make other decisions. And this inability to make a decision stems from believing that you won’t be able to manage your mind in the future. You are afraid of what you’ll think and feel. If the job is good and the people are great, then you think you’ll feel awesome. But, if the job is something unexpected, you expect you’ll feel regret, doubt, guilt, disloyalty. If you don’t manage your mind, no matter what decision you make, you will experience self-doubt, fear, anxiety, and regret. When you find yourself evaluating and reviewing the options to make a decisions, I’d offer the mindset to prepare, and the question to ask yourself is, If knowing my brain is going to cause anxiety and regret no matter what I do, which option sounds like the kind of professional experience I want to have? And because there is a bit of positive and negative in everything, Know you’ll experience regret. And you’ll be excited. Know you’ll have belief and doubt. You’ll feel anxiety and you’ll have a surge of confidence. And just because all these feelings are coming up that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the “right” decision. Because my friends, Don’t @ me, but I believe there are no right or wrong decisions. There are simply decisions. And if you don’t like the results you’ve created then you choose again. A decision is always based on thoughts. You make a decision based on how you think you’ll feel. Or because of a feeling you want to avoid. So when you begin tackling what’s now, what’s new, what’s next, here’s a framework of questions for decision making. You may want to pause this podcast and grab paper and pen. Or open your notes app. As you go through your discernment, here are some questions that I would ask yourself as you are figuring out what you want: If you knew you get to choose how you feel, and I mean feel however you wanted, which choice would you choose? And lastly, if it didn’t matter. Really didn’t matter and that your career path, your wellbeing, your visibility would not be impacted, which choice sounds like it would be more exciting and fun? What moves you towards who you want to be? Fear is not a reason for not doing . As my mentor says discomfort is the currency of your growth. Get to a place where you understand that making decisions in your career is an inside job. I help clients understand this in the work I do with them. Even as you all walk around with a half-managed mind, You can still make a decision. This is a weird thing. Your decisions don’t actually matter that much. I’m not saying your career decisions don’t matter at all, but what really matters is how you manage your mind. Your decisions then cause less drama than you think. So thinking this career opportunity is going to be awesome, you’re right. It will be as long as you continue to monitor your thoughts. At some point you will have a negative thought. You get to question it and challenge your thinking. Then you may be thinking, well Jill, If we can change our feeling and our thoughts then why don’t we just stay in shitty situations and change our thoughts. To adjust. Well, you could. But I’d offer that step one is realizing that it’s your thoughts creating the shitty experience. Prove to yourself that you can create your feelings with thoughts and you have that control. Then change because you want to create something different. Change emotion first then change the situation. Change emotion first. You are happy either way. Enjoy your job before you leave it. There is still good/bad. Positive/negative. Yet with practice you get to learn how to create those feelings on purpose. Then there’s a lot less drama and pressure around your decision making. Contentment isn’t somewhere else. It’s not at the next gig. Contentment is now. Here. This is all different to how most of us were thought to think about things. It’s what you think and feel that determines your experience and your reality. It honestly does not matter that much which job you take. Because your mind is what creates your experience of the world and it creates all your feelings, and if you have an unmanaged mind, it’s going to create the same negative feelings no matter where you are. I’ve had clients stress over which job to take, then which apartment to buy, then where to go on vacation. It didn’t matter which scenario they picked. Their thoughts were the problem. My thoughts are always the problem. So once you decide what you’re going to do, you have to just commit, When you get to contentment, then go for it, change jobs if you want to. But don’t put pressure on the new job to make you happy—it won’t. Don’t take your avoidance of discomfort and conflict with you. Wherever you go there, you are. That’s also the title of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book. It’s well worth the read. Ok, I would love to hear from you. I’ll put the details in the show notes. And…who’s helping you with your career strategy? I’d be honored to help you. Check out the details in the show notes where you can apply for my 1:1 coaching program. Alright my friends. Thanks for joining me this week. Until next time. |
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