In this solo video, career mindset coach Natalie Fisher examines the common dilemma of whether to accept any job that comes along, even if it pays poorly, versus waiting for a role that truly fits one’s skills, values, and compensation expectations. She outlines two prevailing schools of thought: the "take‑what‑you‑can‑get" survival mindset and the more selective, fit‑focused approach. Fisher introduces the concepts of "clean desperation" (a proactive, standards‑driven urgency) versus "dirty desperation" (a fear‑driven, self‑devaluing compromise). She shares a personal anecdote about a 2014 layoff that led her to accept an HR role with heavy accounting duties, which caused anxiety and a three‑month setback, illustrating the costs of people‑pleasing. She then explains how to set personal standards, communicate value, and align decisions with one’s future self, citing Brooke Castillo’s critique of over‑prioritizing money. Fisher concludes by promoting a free training that teaches four mechanisms for getting hired, emphasizing skill development over lowering standards. The video ends with a call for engagement.
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Should I just take this job for now, or should I just take a lower paying job just for now, just to get something, or should I hold out for something better? We're going to discuss the controversial take I have on it. Not everyone agrees with me, so stay tuned. I'm Natalie Fisher. I'm a career mindset coach. I'm helping you get the job you actually want and not settle for less. But let's talk about it. Let's talk about what settling for less actually means. So here's the school of thought. There's 2 opinions. One of them is you just gotta take what you can get. You just gotta take what you can get because something better might not come along. You might end up waiting for months or years. You gotta grab it now. And even if it's not what you want, it doesn't matter. That's one school of thought, and that is the most pervasive and the easiest and what most people tend to fall into. The second one is I would rather wait for something that's right for me. I would rather make the decision based on if it's the right fit, if it's actually gonna pay me what I want, if it's going to have the advancement opportunities I want, if it's actually going to be aligned versus just grasping for anything. That is probably the opinion that most people would like to be able to take, but often their brain will just trick them into thinking that the other one is more certain. And it's based in essentially survival versus faith. As someone who's done this several times, I'm going to share with you some of my experiences and some my clients so that you can make the best decision for you. So the first thing you need to do to know is that there are 2 kinds of desperation. There's what I call clean desperation and dirty desperation. Dirty desperation is the kind that feels really crappy. It feels bad. It feels like, oh, I'll just take whatever I can get because I don't have the value or I don't have the capability. To get better right now? Or maybe your brain might be saying, it's the market, it's just not possible right now, so I just have to take whatever I can get. That's dirty desperation. It does not feel good. You feel icky. You feel like you have no power. You feel like you have no control over your outcome. You feel just nasty about it, if we're honest. Okay? It's just like, oh, I'll just take whatever I can. Oh, you're going to offer me that really low-paying job for a lot of work? For a lot of extra hours? Okay, fine, I'll do it. I just need something. And a lot of the times, like my clients, they're not even really desperate. Your brain will trick you into thinking you're desperate, but you're not. It's a very easy mentality to get into. It's scarcity mentality. And then the second one is your other option where you think, you know what, I am just not willing to do that. I'm just not willing to work all those extra hours for that little tiny bit of pay. And I'm just Not willing to do that. Now, we all have a line. We all have a line where we're like, nope, just not going to do that. The line is just going to be different for different people in different stages of their lives and what they believe they are capable of. The only limitation is really you, your thought about it. So you can have a limitation where you think, oh, if I don't take this job, then I'm not going to be able to get something better. If you believe that, Then you will take that job. Then the problem there is that you have now told your brain, okay, that's all I can do. I can't tolerate uncertainty for any longer. I can't build my skill to communicate my value, to get out there to the right people. I don't have the capacity to do these things, so I'm going to just take this out of certainty. The argument there is, I have bills to pay. I have to survive. That is something that I've seen with my clients. It's like they're not going to be homeless. You're not going to be homeless. You're going to figure. and how to pay your bills. And you can either do that in that low-paying job, or you can do that reaching for what you actually want. And when you take the low-paying job, what you're actually doing is only really prolonging your financial insecurity, because that job, even though it seems secure now, is not secure. At any point, they could let you go. You could decide you're gonna quit. You could not be able to handle it anymore because you don't wanna be there. I'll tell you a story about how this happened with me. I was laid off, In 2014, and I was laid off many times, but I was laid off in 2014 for the first memorable time. And I got into that trap. The time started to pass and I started to say, oh, I better take something. I need to find a job. I need a paycheck. You know, like the brain just starts to log those thoughts. And so what I did was I took this job and in the interview I knew it wasn't quite right for me. It did not feel right for me. They were asking me questions like about credit card reconciliation and fixing accounting issues and talking about their accounting software. And if anybody knows me or they've been watching me for a while, you know I do not like accounting. I do not like that kind of work. The job was advertised as an HR representative. However, when I got into the interview, it was very different. So instead of saying what I should have said, which was, I don't think I'm the right fit for this job, I people-pleased and I said, oh yeah, I could totally do that. Of course I could do that. I've— I did that in my past job and these are the results I got. No problem. So I people-pleased and they hired me. What happened there was 3 months later, I couldn't even go into that job. I had anxiety. I was sitting in my car doing everything I could to avoid going inside because I hated it so much. I ended up quitting, and that just set me back 3 months from getting where I actually wanted to be. So in the next opportunities that I got, when they talked about accounting or they brought up accounting tasks, I said very straightforwardly, Look, I understand accounting might be part of HR in a small capacity. However, accounting is not my strong suit. So if this job requires a lot of accounting, it's probably not the right fit for me, and I'm just gonna let you know that upfront. Then I would ask them about how many hours a week is the accounting portion of this job. In the job I ended up landing, they told me it was maybe 2 hours a week max approving some expense reports. But I said, okay, that sounds good to me. No problem. Glad we clarified that. But me just taking anything and getting into that people pleasing, like dirty desperation mode just prolonged me to get where I actually wanted to go. So my aim is for you to see that just taking the whatever you think you can get now is basically like selling your soul to the devil. It's like saying, okay, I'll do it because I need the money. Here's another really interesting take I heard on this. Brooke Castillo from the Life Coach School, she put it like this. She said, "You all are willing to do so much more for money than I would be," and she's got millions of dollars. She's like, "Y'all care so much more about money than I do because you're all willing to do so many things for money that you don't want to do. You're willing to put yourself in situations just for money that you don't even really want." If you really want to get somewhere bigger, you have to be thinking like the future version of yourself. Would the future version of yourself who believes you have a lot of value to offer, who believes you have the skill or the ability to develop the skill to communicate that value effectively and become the person who can attract those high-quality opportunities easily, would that person be accepting that really low-paying job offer that you really don't want and that actually isn't gonna set you on a path forward if we're being honest. Now, here's what I'll see a lot of people doing too. They'll justify it. They'll be like, oh no, but this low-paid internship is going to give me the experience that I need. Now, I would open you up to the possibility that if there was no option for that, let's say there's no option for working for low pay. Let's just say the only option is you either get the job that you want that pays you a decent amount that you're happy with and has a trajectory. Let's say if that's the only option and you either gotta work harder to get it You either gotta get smarter, figure out how to communicate your value better, figure out how to tell stories that resonate better, and that's your only option in the world. And the low-paying options and the crappy options that are only for desperate people are not even available anymore. Then what are you gonna do? That's my question, because we all have a line where we have a standard. Some people's is way up here and some people's is way down here. And simply we choose what that standard is. It's easy to say, I just gotta take a low-paying position, I just gotta do whatever I gotta do to survive. But the truth is, you can build the skill to create something better for yourself at any time, and you can just make that decision. That's what you wanna do. It's very difficult for the brain. The brain's gonna say, oh no, no, no, just do the easiest thing. Just hang on to the certainty. Do whatever you can to just be certain. And that is the survival brain pulling you down. And many people will get pulled down by that. They will get pulled by the fear. They will give into the fear. They will choose the fear and they won't know it's a choice. You can choose the fit. You can choose your— you can choose that your values and your standards are higher. That is a choice you make at any time. If you would like to learn more from me, I have a free training that I've just created. It gives you the 4 mechanisms that it takes to get hired. It got 99+ people hired in the last 12 months. And it's the 4 mechanisms. It goes through the thing that kills a job offer, the thing that prolongs a job offer for anybody in the market looking, and how to fix that, exactly what you need to do. Then it gives you the rest of the 3 mechanisms that go into the details of what it takes to close an offer, what it takes to communicate value in such a powerful way that you become one of the people that are chosen. Because with all the competition, You need to get better. You don't need to lower your standards. You need to get better. And so that's what this training does. It actually focuses you on exactly what you need to be focused on, what you need to do, what you need to say, how you need to think in order to raise your game so that you can raise your standards and your new standards become normal for you. So that's all I have for this video because it's getting long. Give me a thumbs up if you like it. Give me a thumbs down if you didn't like it. Engagement is welcome. Comments are welcome. I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye!
