Many people are simply afraid to look for another job in this
economy. Doesn't it make sense to wait for the market to pick
up?
When anyone considers a job change, there will be reasons to stay
put—the economy, your pension, being vested. Reasons always have a real
element and an anxiety-avoiding element. Your strategy is to test reality
by facing the anxiety (are there really no new jobs?). As you take
action—write the resume, network—you will begin to assess your
realistic limitations. You will also whittle down your anxiety.
What if the anxiety is crippling?
Try to separate your anxiety from your ambition. Picture your fear
sitting on your right shoulder. Now look left. Desire and its
accompanying vision have an energy—it's a counterpoint to anxiety.
Reassure yourself that if you are allowed to dream, you may never decide
to act.
Dreaming, thinking—and then acting—will strengthen the vision and
make you cower less behind anxiety. Thinking costs nothing. Don't
impulsively decide to quit and become a carpenter. Just register for one
woodworking course. You're moving to the left but keeping the right in
place.
How do I find my focus and vision?
Start by formulating positive statements from general to specific:
"I will have a job that interests me" to "I would be good in my own
business." Once you've formed the statements, write them, repeat them and
visualize yourself in a setting where you might live them. Visions grow
in this kind of mental soil.
Creative activity—journal keeping, a return to the violin—has a
way of stirring vision. We lose parts of ourselves as we grow older.
Reclaiming them can renew possibilities. So can giving. When you don't
know what to change, volunteering can be rewarding. At the least, it will
take you out of yourself, and at the most, it will return you to
yourself.
So we need to turn on the vision and turn down the
anxiety.
Break job change down to bite-size steps and never look past the
next task. If you need to call three scary people for an interview, put
all your energy into that first call.
Also, volunteer for new tasks at your job and give yourself an
opportunity to test your range in a safe environment. Try on a new
identity at a volunteer job: You will feel less pressure because pay is
not involved. Request a transfer at your current job or offer to train a
new employee—you might get a larger vision of yourself.
What can we learn from the divas, explorers and entrepreneurs
who embrace change? What do they have that the majority of us
lack?
Juice, life force, X-factor—we are all born with it. Then, it's
tampered with because life is hard, we have to be civilized or your
mother told you you were stupid. Shyness and fear overwhelm this force,
depression submerges it, rejection scars it and competition makes us
uncertain about it.
But the person who acts with courage—to face down anxiety—has the
great reward of knowing it can be done. And that person is more likely to
do it again. And even when these risk takers fail—which they do
plenty—they don't die.
This is true whether you're batting your eyes at someone in a
singles bar or going to the bank for a loan. You went in, they said you
were stupid and you lived to tell the tale.
What if I have the desire and talent to design clothes but
must hold down a desk job because I have four kids and am up to my neck
in bills? If your reason for doing nothing is that life got in the
way—that's a trap. We're all living in the same economy, but while
some people change jobs, most don't.
Nobody can write a book when she has a job, bills and kids. Except
for the person who wrote the book while she had the job, bills and kids.
Except Danielle Steele, who had nine kids.
Maybe you have to take the design course on Saturdays and get up at
4:30 a.m. to do your sketches. Either you have that creative outlet or
you have reasons.
You say "reasons" but you mean "excuses."
We don't call them excuses; we call them reasons. So I call them
reasons. People have reasons until they start having plans.
You say "plan," but you also mean "vision."
Yes, but I emphasize that vision can be just a whiff. Do you have
any idea how you're going to design clothes and make money? No. Do you
need to make a complete career change? Not yet. Maybe you'll sell
T-shirts on the boardwalk and make a fortune. It doesn't have to begin
with a five-year plan. A long-term plan is nice; it's just not
required.
What if I have a good, creative job, say, making commercials,
but I am driven to direct a meaningful film?
Well, isn't all of adulthood the narrowing of options? No matter
who you are there are only 24 hours in a day, and time is finite. So you
have a choice to make.
Often we say, "You can have the job and make your film on the
side." That's nonsense. You may have to abandon the vision: "It's going
to require too much sacrifice of my career, and I'm not going down that
path." Making these decisions is a requirement of adulthood.
Tags:
anxiety,
carpenter,
change,
counterpoint,
creative activity,
desire,
element,
fear,
new jobs,
own business,
possibilities,
resume,
soil,
transition,
violin,
visions,
whittle,
woodworking course,
work
