Blog Post 24: the REAL reason you’re not making a career change…

“I’m so afraid to make a career change,” my amazing client Alicia said to me.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked, already knowing her answer.

“I’m afraid of failing.”

This is the main reason I hear why someone isn’t making a career change.

They feel unhappy and unfulfilled in their current job, but they are too afraid to leave their current job and career, for they fear they might ‘fail’ if they try something else.

A recent study found that over 70% of the workforce are unhappy in their careers and are actively looking for another job.

This doesn’t mean that they will move to another job, but they are looking for one. I’m sure for many of them, this means looking occasionally on job boards (which is NOT an effective job search strategy, and if you are doing this please stop and reach out to learn what an effective job search entails!)

Many of them will end up ‘settling’ and they will perhaps change companies, within the same industry, or change job titles. They think that the grass will be greener on the other side. But if they are not happy in their job they are currently in, chances are they will not be happy in the same job in a different company. Same level different devil.

I believe at least 70% of the workforce want to make a proper career change. They want to move industry, move job function. They want to do something completely different because they know in their bones that what they are doing right now does not light them up, is not purposeful work for them.

Many of my Mum clients come to me when they know they need to make a career change, but they have no idea where to begin.

The biggest work we need to do though is, not necessarily discovering their true career calling, because that will happen, it’s more about delving into how they define failure. And more importantly, what they make failure mean about themselves.

I have learnt over the years as a certified Career and Confidence Coach and entrepreneur, that we as humans, and particularly Mums, see failure as something that is terrible. 

We have been conditioned to literally fear failure. 

And if we do ‘fail’, we make it mean something terrible about ourselves as a person. 

So I wanted to talk about failure in today’s podcast. How it’s defined, what we make it mean about ourselves, and then look at how we can reframe what we make failure mean so that we can let go of the invisible prism that we create that holds us back from going out there and achieving what our heart truly desires.

The definition of failure is “the omission of an expected or required action”.

So, if failure just means we or someone else didn’t meet our expectations, why do we make it such a big deal?

Something just didn’t turn out the way we expected.

Failure is literally a construct that we create in our minds. 

If failing means that we don’t meet our own expectations, well, we can then define what our expectations are. 

You can create your own definition of what failure is.

So why not create a different definition of failure for yourself?

Despite this logic, I know that when we perceive we have failed at something, we make it mean something terrible about ourselves as a person. We don’t naturally think “oh, that strategy we tried didn’t work” we think “we don’t work”. 

A client gets an interview, and then doesn’t get the job, and she will make it mean that she’s really bad at interviews, rather than making it mean that the job wasn’t right for her.

So what can we do about this?

It’s time to reframe failure.

It’s time to see failure as a GOOD thing.

When I learnt how to reframe failure, my business and life exploded in the best way possible. I felt happier, lighter, and have been able to achieve amazing results in my business and my life.

Instead of making failure mean something bad about myself as a person, I choose to make failure mean that I’m courageous. I was afraid to do something and I did it anyway.

And maybe I didn't meet my own expectations of how it would go, but so what?

Instead of focusing on me failing and me being a terrible person for having failed at that thing, I think to myself “ok so that strategy didn’t work”, what can I learn from this fail?

You learn more from your failures than from your successes. 

And success is built on a pile of failures.

I listen to and follow a few very successful people. And each one of them have failed many MANY times, before they got to where they are now. What we see and think is that they were an overnight success, but in truth, they have 5 failed businesses, thousands of failed strategies beneath that success. 

So instead of seeing myself as ‘failing’ at something, I see it as learning what didn’t work and moving forward.

What I find helpful, and my clients find helpful, is separating the data from the drama.

So if you're going for a job interview and you don't get the job, you can make it mean that you're not qualified enough. not good enough, too old to change careers etc OR you can make it mean that the job was not the right job for you. Not every job will be right for you. And what did you learn from the experience? What did you learn about yourself, about the industry, about the role, about the interviewers? What did you learn about interviews? How can you further develop your interview skills for the next interview? 

One of my coaches taught me something that really resonated. There’s a very scientific method of achieving success. It is: try something, fail, learn. Try something else, fail, learn. Try something else, succeed. Then onto the next step. Rinse and repeat.

The other reason why I believe we are so afraid of failing is, not only what we make it mean about ourselves as a person, but also what we do to ourselves when we perceive to have failed at something.

We beat ourselves up.

Now this just compounds our negative thinking about ourselves and our abilities. 

No wonder we are petrified of failing. Of not meeting our own expectations.

So to counteract this, I come up with what I call a ‘failure plan’. 

I promise to have my own back.

If I am doing something new and feel afraid that I might fail, I promise myself that I’ll have my own back if I don’t meet my own expectations. I’ll have my own back and be proud of myself for stepping outside my comfort zone. I will love myself more and not less for doing something that challenged me. I will honour myself and my past self for setting that goal and expectation. And I know I would’ve learnt so much more going for that thing and failing than I would if I had done nothing and stayed stuck.

You can choose to learn something from a perceived fail or you can choose to beat yourself up over it. Why would you choose the latter? There is no upside to that.

So many of my clients say they identify themselves as high-achievers with high-standards, and trust me, I am also in that camp. But that doesn’t mean that failure means something that’s more catastrophic to you. You can CHOOSE what to make it mean.

Not going for something, not making a career change is when you REALLY fail. You are literally failing ahead of time.

Letting one (or many) fails along the way to your goal mean that you’ve failed at achieving your goal, and then quitting is also failing.

Quitting won’t get you there any faster.

So, for all my amazing Mum out there that are on the fence as to whether they want to make a career change, and the real reason behind them being on the fence is because they are afraid of failing, I encourage you to ask yourself: 

• How do you define ‘failure’?

• Why are you afraid of failing?

• What do you make failure mean about yourself?

And then, given everything I’ve said in this blog about failure, create your new career change goal AND your own Failure Plan.

• What do you really want to do? Discover what you want your career change to be (and I’m here to help you discover that with my 4 step framework that takes the guesswork out of your career change!)

• What would you be doing if you weren’t afraid?

• And if you do ‘fail’ along the way to achieving your goal, what can you make it mean that’ll serve you in moving forward?

• What can you learn from a failure along the way to your career change?

Remember, YOU have the power to make failure mean whatever you want about yourself. You can choose make it mean something terrible about yourself as a person or you can just make it mean that the strategy that you tried didn't work. Which one feels better to you?

You can choose to beat yourself up for not meeting your own expectations, or you can choose to have your own back.

So which one do you choose?

Love Loren x