#701: Changing Careers Is Scary

So Leila nervously asked, how do I feel more confident about changing careers? I have to change careers. I want to change careers, but I'm David, I'm scared. Welcome to the Self Belief Chief podcast. You're here with David Holman. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast to keep up to date with your favorite episodes and to hear the latest ones come out. We've got content coming out regularly. And let's begin. So I was speaking with Layla. Layla wanted to move into a new career. She had enough in her current one. She felt stuck. She wasn't growing anymore. She felt underpaid, and she wasn't really able to use the most of her skill set. So she wanted to change careers. But she says, david, I'm scared. What if it goes wrong? Will her fail? What if it's just that the grass looks greener somewhere, you know, over there, but actually in reality it's. It's not better, it's worse, the situation gets harder. She said, I think I know what I want to move into. I found that I've seen looks exciting. I can really use my skill set, but I'm just feeling uncertain. So what I showed Layla is, look, there's a five milestone model that I use to help people change careers. But I'll talk about one of them in this episode, which is called Risk Reduced. Risk Reduced. This is to help remove as much the uncertainty and discomfort with changing careers. I've changed careers twice in my life, right? I was an athlete and had to retire because of injuries who once enforced. And then I was in a corporate environment and I thought, I don't want to be here. I'd love to create my own coaching business. So the second one was by choice. But I can tell you how difficult it is changing careers. I've been there, I've experienced it myself. It's a lot harder than we can even imagine to actually do it. And on top of having coach hundreds of people to do it as well, you start to see the patterns of what make it easier for people. So in the Risk Reduced milestone, what I talk about is three key areas that we need to create some certainty around so that we feel a bit more comfortable so we don't associate as much pain with changing. So the three areas are finance, relationships and mental well being. It's very likely that if you feel really stressed, really anxious about the idea of changing careers, even if you want to, at least in one of those areas, you're worrying either that, well, what if something bad happens and I'm not gonna have enough money? Or what if I, you know, feel down or it has an impact on my relationships? Or what if, you know, I really struggle to deal with it mentally and I start to feel really overwhelmed and uncomfortable and depressed. So it's likely in one of those areas. So you might want to start by, in each of those three areas, scoring how much certainty you have in each of them when it comes to the idea of changing careers. Right? So, for example, if you're really, really worried about money when it comes to changing careers, then your certainty might be added 2 out of 10. If you actually feel pretty good about your relationships that they're not going to be affected by changing careers, you might say an 8. And then your mental well being, if you're not really sure, you might say a five. So scores like that. So when you're thinking about changing careers, how do you feel in regards to finance relationships, mental well being with regards to, you know, how you feel making that change. And a score out of 10, just so we can see where there might need to be a bit of an adjustment. Now I'll talk about each of them briefly. So with finance, I never advocate someone leaving a job and unless they've got another one to go to, right? But sometimes it's an enforced change, isn't it? Right. So sometimes you get made redundant or it's untenable and you just can't work there anymore. Could be reasons, right? What we want to do is create some savings for a period of time. So ask yourself, how many months worth of savings do I need to kind of tide myself over? That will help reduce my uncertainty. So you might say, you know what, if I've got some money that just allows me to get through three months without being paid, then that might be enough, and that gives me enough time to find a job. You might say six months, whatever it might be, work out that number and then start creating ideas in terms of how you can save. Now, some people go, david, there's just no way for me to be able to save any more money. And it's just not true. For example, do you know that households waste about a thousand pounds a year on food? Waste, right. On food they have to throw away. We waste about a thousand pounds. There are loads of things, loads of little tiny things that we can do that actually equate to a lot of money, right? That you can start to start saving that money. So you can have a think about that. How many months of savings and how can you start to create a bit more saving? Where can you sort of, just for a number of months at least just reduce some of your expenditure. Okay. Then we talk about relationships. Now people start to worry about the impact it might have on other people and I totally get it, but they worry about it based on the things that the person changing careers, that is, you know, Leila, she's worrying about, in her case going, I'm worried it's going to affect my fiance because it might affect him from the financial side of it. And actually what we, what I needed to address with later was that's what you, that's what you value most to worry about from his point of view, of course finance is important, but is it the thing he values most in the relationship? She said, I don't know. I said, well, let's go ask him. So she asked him and she wrote, wrote down three things that he values in a relationship and guess what? None of them were to do with money. So what she can then do is do a better job at giving him those three things that he values. Right? But money is one thing. It's important, but it's not the thing he values most in the relationship. Give. Whether it's your partner, whether it's your children, whether it's friends, whoever you think might be affected, give them what they value, not what you value what they value. Because the default is if you don't know what someone else values, we just give them what we value and then we, we're actually missing the bullseye for them and then it will affect the relationship. So give them what they value. And then in terms of mental well being, there might be a number of things and I usually unpack this stuff with people, but let's say, for example, it's just the uncertainty of it, right? You, and you really desperately need some certainty. If I ask you what has to happen for you to have certainty, you'll likely have a very tough strict rule like, well, I have to have this amount of money and I have to be in a job and my relationship has to be going well and this has to happen and this has to happen. And it's a really bad rule when you have multiple things have to happen simultaneously and you're not in total control. So what I want you to do is diversify your certainty. I want you to write down 10 different ways that you get certainty in your life. So I want you to do it the following. You're going to write down anytime I. And then you can look at things like how do you get certainty in terms of how you look after Your health, right. It might be to do with sleep. So you might say, anytime I get a good night's sleep, anytime I drink water, anytime I eat healthily, you might go into a different category. How do I create certainty in my structure routine? Okay, anytime I schedule things, anytime I map out my week, anytime I write down my shopping list, etc. The reason why we write down anytime is we're saying, we're not just saying when this happens, we're saying anytime this happens. And it's anytime I things that you're in control of, not anytime they do something. Anytime I do something. So what we did with Layla is I started to show her, okay, this is how you create certainty in your finances. This is how you create certainty in your relationships. This is how you create more certainty in terms of your mental wellbeing. And then we can up each of those scores. Now she feels more certain that she can succeed at changing careers because it's not all just wrapped up in the next job. She's got ways that she can control her relationships, control her influence in the relationships, control her mental well being and have better control of her finances as well. Allowed Lada to have the flexibility. And Leila, you know, sent me an email saying she's really enjoying and loving her new job. And it's always nice when people have the opportunity to do what they really are meant to do. My name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life. So enjoy the rest of your day. Enjoy the rest of your life. If you want to learn more about this episode, visit the Self Belief Chief website. We'll put a link in the description to be able to schedule time with me as well and enjoy the rest of your day. Speak to you soon. Just one more thing before you go. So I hope you're enjoying the daily episodes. We put in a lot of work to keep providing content because to create permanent change needs consistency. To get that consistency, we want to make sure we keep providing you value on a daily basis. But to keep up with that pace, could we ask for one very small favor? 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