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Episode 24: Want to change your career? Start by changing your mindset with Kate Solis Silva

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you! 

Controversial opinion alert: changing jobs isn’t hard. 

The data backs it up. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as they’re bringing their careers in for a landing, the average Boomer changed jobs more than 11 times in their life. (So much for labeling Millennials as the flighty “job hopper” generation.)

But changing jobs successfully — where you shift your job duties while you upgrade your happiness and income — isn’t always simple. 

Why’s it so tricky? The biggest stumbling block in making a career change isn’t the mechanics. It’s the mindset. 

To successfully transition into a job you love more, you need an empowering mindset that allows you to execute on the methodology with resilience if you hit setbacks. Which, let’s face it, everyone will always hit.    

Mindset is critical because when you’re considering finding a new career that can unleash the fire and passion inside you, it can feel really scary.

Limiting fears will pop up all over the place. 

Your brain is trying to convince you that it’s doing risk management. But what it’s actually doing is crushing your dreams.

For some people, you haven’t made a shift yet but are paralyzed by the idea of change. The persuasive voice of fear whispers in your ear “Your current job isn’t that bad, and your dissatisfaction is not that big of a deal. Work isn’t supposed to be fun all the time, right? Who do you think you are to expect work to be enjoyable?” 

For other people, you’ve actually *tried* a career change before…and it didn’t quite work the way you wanted. Despite your best efforts, you feel like you landed in the same shit, different day. If this is you, your fear tells you, “It didn’t work last time, what makes you believe this time could be different? Do you really want to go all-in again? Maybe it’s just not meant to happen for you.” 

The fear is persuasive, for sure. 

But there’s a teeny part of your heart, brain, or gut that knows it isn’t telling the whole story.

You have friends (or maybe have read stories about people) who truly, deeply enjoy their work. You’re not ready to give up on the idea that you can enjoy your 9-to-5 (or, in this day, more like 8-to-6) for the remaining decades of your career.

This is where mindset magic comes in.  

You brain is an incredible debater, and it has two primary modes: either arguing for your dreams, or for your excuses. It’s up to you to choose which one you champion more effectively.

Career coach Kate Solis Silva says, “All of the limiting beliefs we’re talking about are sexy, persuasive, and can wrap you in a big ol’ fuzzy blanket.” 

But when you want to change your life, being suffocated in a fuzzy blanket of familiarity and complacency is the last thing you need.

If you want to take a courageous career leap that’s set up for success, here are 3 neuroscience-backed mindset and resilience cultivation tips that are like kryptonite for paralyzing fears:

1.Get vulnerable.

Sharing your truest, deepest feelings about what you want (and are not yet getting) is important, whether it’s anger at your family for pushing you in this direction, grief over a job changing from great to sour, or a real (and painful) reckoning with the coping defense mechanisms that have kept you stuck in a mediocre job for years. 

We’re taught not to feel what we feel because it’s inconvenient. However, if you don’t let yourself feel the full magnitude of your emotions around your work, you won’t know how to address or heal them, and will have to keep carrying them as volcanic baggage for months or years. 

So, let it out. It’s time. 

Being gentle with your vulnerable, exposed psyche is the key. Sometimes when you look at how you’re feeling, you won’t like it. That’s okay — you are not your feelings. Feelings aren’t forever (unless we suppress them, hold onto them and never release them). 

2. Get community.

If, when you let yourself get vulnerable, you noticed you’re feeling lonely or unsupported right now, those painful beliefs become jetfuel for your fear.

Fear thrives in darkness and isolation. It whispers in your ear that: “You you’re the only person going through this, you’ll never be enough, nobody knows what it’s like, you’re doomed to fail, and you don’t deserve happiness anyway.”

You won’t change your life for the better if your fear is mainlining jetfuel. And, in fact, fear only survives when it’s given fuel. 

The best way you can take away its fuel is by exposing your fears and scary feelings to compassion, love, and creative brainstorming energy. When community or external perspectives are present, all of a sudden the painful fearful thoughts lose their hold over you. 

Sharing your vulnerability with a friend, a mentor, or a coach is an incredibly important step…and the one we resist the most. It’s terrifying to think that there’s a possibility vulnerability in community will lead to more pain, rejection, or fear. 

And yet, after working with over 500 clients, I’ve seen that the things you think are most shameful, scary, weird, or uncouth to feel are usually the most relatable things you’re experiencing. Who hasn’t wanted to punch their boss in the face, or felt embarrassed that someone else took credit for their work? Who hasn’t felt ashamed for being stuck in the same job for 4 years, or afraid there’s nothing else out there for them?  

Your community can echo the voice of compassion, gentleness, understanding and encouragement to help prepare you for what’s next. 

Hold on to these words. Savor them. If you, like me, have your anxiety black out your memory, bring a tape recorder to these conversations so you can memorialize the kind words your team of supporters say to you. 

3. Get baby steps.

A former coach of mine, Todd Herman, says, “Fear can’t paralyze a moving target.”

So, your mission is to get moving with teeny tiny baby steps of action. 

You can find small ways to start making your shift so you don’t try such a big leap that you end up paralyzed (or try something that feels so infeasible that you end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater and give up). 

Micro-pivots within your job or company are absolutely a thing (and something I’m teaching about in this upcoming online masterclass

And if you’re feeling stuck on generating ideas, now that you’ve been vulnerable with your coach, friends, family, or partner, that community can help you think creatively about what could be next. 

Maintaining an empowered mindset through a career shift can be hard — but putting in the work to stay motivated and hopeful can make the tactical parts of changing your job feel so much easier. 

Want to learn more about our philosophy of career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

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About the Author Lisa Lewis

Lisa is a career change coach helping individuals feeling stuck to find work that fits. She helps people clarify who they are, what they want most, and what a great job for them looks like so they can make their transition as easily as possible. Lisa completed coaching training in Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method, Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions, Kate Swoboda's Courageous Living Coaching Certification, and the World Coaches Institute. In addition to that, she apprenticed with the top career coaches in the country so she can do the best possible work with — and for — you. She's helped more than 500 individuals move into more fulfilling, yummy careers and would be honored to get to serve you next!

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