Career Change: A Glittering Invitation To The Emotional Stalkers

As much as you are yearning for career-change, and as much asthe trends actually favor it, just contemplating a shift is aglittering invitation to four emotional stalkers who lovenothing better than to play a nasty game of team-tag at yourpersonal expense. When you unmask these bandits -- even a little-- they begin to lose their emotional charge – leaving you freeto more fully explore the opportunities to re-invent yourself.   Stalker # 1: The Devil You Know. Just imagine that you’re headedfor work. You’re at the station, briefcase and newspaper inhand, waiting in a narrow sea of gray look-alikes to catch the6:10 train. Or, jailed in your car, radio droning, you crawlalong the highway, hypnotized by the swaying bumpers ahead. You arrive in town, grab your daily coffee, rise silently in apacked elevator and pad to your office, numb before you evenstart your day. Work done, you reverse direction, back and forth, each day moreeffort than the one before. After ten or twenty years, oncecolorful work has faded. Yet how good it feels to know theropes! How seductively easy it is to stay stuck in what youknow!   To break out of your comfort zone, tap into the mostinspiring, personal benefit that your career change can bringyou: More intriguing and challenging work? Being your own boss?or, perhaps it’s the luxury of more personal time to pursueadditional interests.   Mentally scan your list of friends andacquaintances who are fulfilled in their work. Who has a workinglife that you would like to have? Who is demonstrating that hardwork and life in full bloom are not mutually exclusiverealities? Stalker #2: Clueless in Seattle. If you have apassion for particular work, or specialized expertise that youintend to lever, Fortune is smiling and waving you forward.Count yourself lucky, indeed! The rest of us face the thornybattle of believing that there is work out there for us that iswe can embrace with our logic brain and our heart brain. Twodifferent animals, worlds apart! Intellectually, lots of optionsexist, but how do you make the visceral leap that one of theseoptions is right for you? This was my #1 dilemma in 1999.Objectively, I knew that I had good skills that I couldleverage. But emotionally I was not a believer. Since I didn’tknow what THE work was, how could I believe it was possible? Iwould have given up then and there, if it wasn’t for a friendwho suggested that I was trying to accomplish too much, tooearly. He saw me desperate to “swing from tree to tree” andchallenged my need to nail down exactly what I was going to dofor work before I even started the change process.   “Figuringout what to do for a living IS the process,” he explained. “Theanswers unfold slowly, with diligent work.” He encouraged me toexplore my talents and work preferences fully and methodically.And to think with my heart. “It’s your heart,” he advised, “thatallows you to leap.”   Stalker #3: The Slippery Slope: Money. Our desire for financial security screams at a deafeningcrescendo and sabotages our willingness to step forward even oneinch. Fat paychecks, bonuses, expense accounts, paid vacationsand health benefits -- perks to flutter our hearts and, onoccasion, puff our egos with a sense of status and independence.The green stuff pays our bills, educates our kids, entertains usand gives us a sense that all is well with the world.   Car?Mortgage? Health insurance? All of these are completely validissues. But as long as you are still drawing a paycheck,worrying about financial ruin is completely self-defeating.Spend your energy constructively, working the math in adeliberate way and letting the results dictate your path – notyour fear. Once I “got” this wisdom, I scratched out budgetslike a miser obsessed. The results weren’t ideal, but theyweren’t devastating either. After chopping expenses andeliminating debt, my savings would support me for 11 months. Iwanted a minimum of 24 months of cushion to cover a ramp upperiod to get my coaching business off the ground. Closing thegap meant staying put until next year’s bonus was paid -– 10months away! This placed my escape squarely at 20 months fromstart to finish, longer than I had anticipated, but at least Ihad a solid target in my gun site. My exit had become a questionof “when” not “if”. Stalker #4: The Mush Factor. Lack ofconfidence is the subtlest form of exit sabotage, but just aslethal as its three stalker-friends. It creeps up, scores, andthen evaporates like soft mist. Just when you’re ready to takeon the world, it attacks again, melting you into a puddle ofdoubts about your ability to even come close to career change.  When you feel vulnerable, think about the bounty you’ve gainedfrom your corporate run -– sharp-as-a-tack analytical skills,business acumen, process know-how, leadership, and the solidtechnical expertise -– law, accounting, finance, organizationaland human development, marketing, sales – the list is as longand as rich as Rapunzel’s hair. These attributes fueled yourcorporate career; they will do no less for you now.   That said,perfect confidence all the time is not realistic either.Emotional wobbles go with the territory. To steady yourself,remember that your journey is one of choice, not force. Youcontrol it from beginning to end –- the pace, how it unfolds andwhen. When the level of uncertainty feels too great, accept it.It will pass. When it does, pick up the reins again. Work withyour flow of energy, not against it. Before you know it, youwill have conceived a plan and a financial strategy that willfeed your confidence -- not suck it dry.   Mastering your fatemeans rolling up your oxford sleeves and plowing through lots ofrocky terrain. It means caging the four stalkers into submission-- once, twice –- as often as it takes to open the space forthoughtful career-change work. In fact, get to know thesestalkers well. Even thank them for their guidance -- and remindthem that you’re the boss now -- and you’re getting ready totake on the decisions around your future.