How to respond to fear in times of career change
Is this you?
· I’m feeling a bit restless professionally
· My job is more draining than energising
· I resent not having more time for my family and outside interests
· I envy (or admire) the people around me who have made major career changes
· I find that my career ambitions are changing
· I have fewer care responsibilities (children, elder care, etc) and this is freeing me up to explore different options
These are some of the questions that Herminia Ibarra asks in her new book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing your Career. They are designed to help you assess if you are ripe for a career change.
Herminia’s questions summarise that state of early readiness to moving on. It can begin simply – say with a feeling in your bones or a growing sense that things could be better. It may be that your personal situation has changed giving you more time to focus on you. You might have been planning this change for a long while.
The odd thing is that whether we feel keen to make a change or are just feeling that inkling for something different, we can find ourselves holding back. What if it doesn’t work out? What if I am kidding myself I could get that kind of job? What if I hate it? Or fail?
It is easy to get stuck in the paralysis of “What if?”. It is also very normal. We all engage in this kind of thinking, especially at key transition points. Excessive “What if?” thoughts can signal heightened anxiety and trigger your sense of imposterism.
But these thoughts are also a safety valve that are asking you to work through, and beyond, your fears. With fear we feel a tightening of our body, heart or mind. Our body releases hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Our blood pressure can increase as can our heart rate. Fight or flight is kicking in.
In these situations it is easy to forget how helpful breath work can be for creating the mindset where you can begin to tackle your fears. Breath work is one of our most powerful tools in times of stress and anxiety. Breathing exercises activate the parasympathetic nervous system helping to promote feelings of calm and a clearer mind. Kristin Neff offers a guided meditation that she terms ‘affectionate breathing’. This is a means of developing compassion for ourselves – something we all need especially at times when fears and imposter thoughts loom large.
Breathing exercises can be seen as a precursor to taking the time to explore the kinds of anxieties or worries you are experiencing, Tara Mohr offers us two versions of fear to consider in situations like this:
· Pachad: This is that trembling kind of fear that happens when we think something awful will happen. For example, it can be experienced when we fear a rejection. Or, if we step out of our comfort zone. Or our lives will change in unsustainable ways. For example, many women say how concerned they are about changing jobs in case they find themselves in a situation where hard-won flexibility to, say, pick children up from school, is taken away. This kind of fear is more likely to tell us to stay put.
· Yirah: One way of recognising ‘yirah’ is when you have butterflies in your stomach. This kind of fear happens when something good – maybe you think it is too good – could happen. It is this imminent excitement that scares us because it creates a kind of awe that is frightening. This feeling can lead to fearing that our very success will cause us problems – perhaps our friends won’t like us anymore or success might change us in ways we wouldn’t like. Indeed, it has been said that the greatest fear of all is fear of success.
How do we deal with these kinds of fear? Ask yourself:
a. What part of this fear is pachad? What part is yirah? Name that fear and write down the outcomes or consequences you are imagining will happen. Ask yourself if you really have to take direction from these feelings.
b. Can I handle the worst? When faced with fear and anxiety our brain takes us to the worst of all outcomes – for example out and out failure resulting in losing our job or finding ourselves in a situation where we never see our children/partner/friends/family because there is so much work to do. Follow those thoughts to their very end by asking “So what?” Keep asking “So what?” until you have exhausted all your thoughts about a concern. You may well find that you have options for pretty much every scenario of worst-outcomes you come up with.
c. What is the best-case scenario? It is natural to focus on the worst that can happen. Go to the opposite end of the spectrum. What is the best that can happen? Imagine this and ask yourself how you would feel if you gave up on this prize.
d. Find ways of managing your fear so that it isn’t the major driver of your decisions.
i. Listen to music or do an act of kindness to lift your mood.
ii. Explore more of the resources that Kristin Neff provides to develop self-compassion. Self-compassion encourages us to be kind and understanding to ourselves rather than harshly self-critical when we fail, make mistakes or feel inadequate. As Kristin says, research indicates that self-compassion is one of the most powerful sources of coping and resilience we have available to us, radically improving our mental and physical wellbeing.
iii. Imagine yourself at 80. What do you wish you had achieved or done? What regrets might you have?
iv. Always remember how much we learn from our mistakes. It may be that a decision you make doesn’t work out as you had hoped. But the learning you will achieve most often is more worthwhile and powerful than a miscalculated decision.
Finally – and we need to say this very loudly - savour yirah. Tara tells us that you’ll know yirah because it has a tinge of exhilaration and awe -while pachad has a sense of threat and panic. Lean into yirah– and look for the callings and leaps that bring yirah into your life. Welcome it. It holds the promise of a whole new future.
With the warmest of wishes,
Naomi and Christina
Professor Christina Hughes is Founder and CEO of Women-Space Leadership.
Dr Naomi Dempsey is Founder and CEO of TertitiaryEdX and CEO of Women-Space Australia
About Women-Space and Women-Space Australia
We believe that when it comes to your career, gender matters. We work to help you navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with a career in universities. Because there is still so much work to do to create more equal societies, our aim in collaboration is to use our joint resources to support women to flourish in their careers wherever you are in the world.
We provide consultancy, career support, career advice, leadership and career workshops, executive coaching, mentoring and resources that are unique to you and your needs as a woman working in education.