Even to the end he retained his stoicism and humour.  Last weekend I went to see him and he was wearing an oxygen mask.  It had not been fitted correctly and it was sitting awkwardly on his face, part of it jutting into his eye.  I thought he was asleep because his eye was closed, but actually, he was wide awake.  He was just sitting there, uncomplaining.  We moved the mask.  “Oh, that’s better, thank you”, he said.

Then the pharmacologist came in to try to find out his weight and height so as to give him the correct dose of medicine.  When she left he said “was she measuring me up for my coffin already?”  Cue general hilarity.

All the Doctors and nurses loved him.  In fact, pretty much everyone loved him – easy when you treat people with respect and are always up for a laugh and a joke. Some of my most enduring memories will be about his love for dressing up in silly hats and making up silly songs whilst doing the washing up.  These things sound simple, yet if they were easy or commonplace they would not be so precious.  Or infinite, I suppose.  Pa was a man who believed in and fought for freedom, but who used this freedom to have fun and to laugh at himself.  Is there a better use?

Pa’s humour, loyalty, decency, kindness and silliness are the things I will most miss and which at this moment feel irreplaceable.  It’s easy to think these qualities will be forgotten now he is gone.

In Never Went to Church Mike Skinner reflects on how his own Father had thrown away all his belongings before he died, so that it felt like there was nothing left to remind him of his Dad.  But then someone reminds him how similar his own mannerisms were to those of his Dad:

I guess then you did leave me something to remind me of you;
Everytime I interrupt someone like you used to,
When I do something like you you’ll be on my mind all through,
‘Cause I forgot you left me behind to remind me of you.

That’s what Pa gave me – the best bits of me, and something to aspire to.  Gone but not forgotten, thank you Pa.  For everything.

The thing is, career change is also (for many) a fight for life itself.  That’s how it felt for me at least, and I think for most of my clients.  I had a safe, comfortable job which looked good on paper but which was quietly throttling my soul.  If I had stayed where I was I would have been comfortable in the short term, but then inch by inch, play by play, I would have crumbled.  Many of my clients are the same, but they are stuck fast between an unwanted present and an uncertain future.  Stuck between fear of death and fear of life.

Just like Pacino’s team, if this is you then you have a choice.  You can stay where you are and get the shit kicked out of you and the life slowly squeezed from you, or you can fight your way out.  One inch at a time.  This is painful and scary – I know, I’ve been there.  In fact, I didn’t have the guts to change for 5 years.

If you choose to change it will be painful.  You will need to fight for every inch.

Are you willing to fight for that next inch?  And the next?  Because that’s the difference between living and dying.

If you’re in career paralysis right now, watch that clip again.

Now.  What are you going to do?

First we have ‘chimp’ mind.  The chimp mind is impulsive, reactive, and very black and white and rigid in its thinking.  We all have a chimp mind, in fact it is the oldest part of our brain.  It is always concerned with our survival, so it is in charge of the fight or flight mechanism.  It is very powerful and is usually the first part of the brain to react, especially under stress.  The chimp mind makes you want to push people on the tube, it makes you want to shout at your computer and it finds people falling over very funny indeed.  Oh, and without chimp mind, we’d be dead!

Next we have the human mind.  This is the part of the mind which makes rational decisions, is capable of working towards long term objectives, is able to empathise with others and see more than one perspective.  The human mind – situated at the front of our brains (the prefrontal cortex) is the most incredible thing in the universe, capable of astonishing insight, cooperation and nuance.  Where the chimp sees black and white, the human mind sees shades of grey.  The human mind wants more than survival.  It wants meaning, purpose, connection and fulfilment.

Finally, we have the computer mind.  The computer mind is not really situated in one place, but is responsible for learning, and turning behaviours into habits.  In that way we programme the computer mind through what we do.  If we do something enough we will make strong neural connections which create habits.  The problem is, the computer can be programmed by either the chimp or the human.  So, if your chimp is regularly in control of your life, it will be the human that drives most of your decisions, interactions with others and even your thoughts themselves.

But if your chimp is regularly in control, then it will be the chimp that is programming the computer.  Your thinking is likely to become more rigid.  Your behaviour less flexible. You may only see black and white, and not the possibilities within ambiguity.  You may find it hard to compromise or to move in the direction of your long term values.

This is why mindfulness is so useful, because at heart it helps us notice one simple thing:

Who’s in charge of your life, is it you or your chimp?

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation.

Your Talents

Meaning is generated firstly by introspection.  We need to become aware of our unique skills and strengths (and in particular to consider which of these we have developed to please others and which we develop because we choose to).  Self awareness has been the golden currency of careers advisors for many years, and rightly so. But it is not enough by itself.

The Needs of the World

Meaning (unlike happiness) cannot be developed in isloation.  It can only be developed by considering how our particular constellation of strengths fits the context in which we find ourselves. (This is why incidentally meaning has such a special relationships with contextual behavioural sciences, like ACT).

Just as we can only understand the true meaning of a word by seeing it in a sentence, so we can only really understand our lives by seeing them in the context of the world around us.  That means thinking deeply about what the world needs from us, and how our unique talents can meet this need.

After finishing my research I met the fantastic Roman Krznaric at the School of Life.  His premise is that if the 20th century was the age of introspection, so the 21st century must become the age of outrospection.  I would agree.  Our fascination with our own happiness and fulfilment is doomed unless we pay attention to the context in which we live.  And at the heart of outrospection lies empathy, so I urge you to make a cup of tea and to listen to Roman identify the 6 habits of highly empathic people:

The first handful of times I missed rush hour were quite nice.  It felt like a relief from the treadmill. But from then on I remember, whenever I went into town at 11am or came home at 3pm I felt like a loser.  I felt like I’d dropped out, failed.  I certainly did not ‘feel’ free.

Now some years have passed and on occasion I still do miss rush hour and I still get those pangs of guilt and failure.  But – mainly thanks to what I learned from my work as a psychologist and particularly ACT – I recognise those feelings are just the flipside of my freedom value.  Freedom is something that I pursue in real life, not some inner feeling I am trying to manage or attain.  How freedom actually feels varies – sometimes it feels great, often it doesn’t.

And that’s fine, because in the end I am willing to feel what I feel if I get to live my values.  Like the flipside of a coin, I can’t have one without the other.

But the days have been lengthening since the end of December.  Back then we didn’t notice anything.  It didn’t feel like there was any change happening at all.

And that’s what changing careers can be like.  At first we will make a small change and nothing will happen.  All remains darkn.  Yet, if we can keep chipping away, finding time every day to work on the process we can begin to notice a difference.

In last Saturday’s Guardian Oliver Burkeman wrote about the the midlife career-switchers who finally decide to stop ignoring the inner call they’ve been hearing for years.  He calls them the ‘quiet heroes’ who recognise the stirrings of the urge to change career and cultivate it, rather than suppressing it.

And so as Spring emerges I find several of my clients are reaching the point where they are about to make a change in their career and they do so with greater certainty than they had before.  This post is dedicated to them.  They may be benefiting from greater clarity now, but they were the quiet heroes who, in the depth of winter, decided to change their lives and committed to that, even when the nights were long and darkness was all around.

His struggle and transition is a surprisingly common one.  Many of my clients – about 40% – end up either working for themselves or working in some kind of portfolio career.  So I often end up discussing what barriers there are to self employment and how these can be overcome. Some of the most common are:

• I’m too young / old
• I don’t like selling
• I don’t know what the business should do
• I’ll never succeed

This is a lovely list and one I may well return to, but by far the most common is…

“I Don’t Have Enough Money”

As with most complex problems, I find it useful to distinguish between problems (and actions you can take) that are within your control and those outside of your control.  For example:

Actions within your control:

1. Save up and start building that cushion!
2. Identify a 3 year financial plan.
3. Setting up effective cash flow systems.
4. Write a business plan.
5. Building a team of experts – from moral support to legal, IT and finance advice – get a small team in place so you don’t feel so alone.

There is so much that can be achieved with little or no money from developing your brand, articulating your concept, identifying potential customers, running focus groups – even a website could be built from scratch for nothing in a few hours.

Actions outside your control:

And yet the truth is, your mind is likely to tell you that you never have enough money.

Money would allow so many shortcuts and so many short term problems would disappear that your mind will not resist telling you that it is impossible to proceed without it.  And that may sometimes be true, but remember that your mind did not evolve to tell you everything was a jolly good idea.  It is there to spot danger, warn you of traps and to worry, ruminate, obsess and look for downsides.  It is not your enemy, but it is not your friend, either.

So the question is who do you want to trust on this?  Do you want to trust what your mind says?  Or will you choose to hold what it says lightly and inch forward on the actions that you can take, right here, right now?  Can you navigate forward, making do, being creative, being imperfect, taking longer than you need, and making progress even as your mind tells you to quit?

Because if the answer is no, the journey will stop.  That is your choice.

But if the answer can be yes then you can begin to peek beyond the curtains.

Why sea change?

Beacuse for many years psychologists believed that thoughts determine behaviour.  However, evidence is growing that this is not the case.  People who recover from depression don’t have their thoughts changed.  Rather, they react differently to their thoughts.

This matters in career change because too many people are being told that the right career choice will change their thoughts.  Find your ideal job, discover your true personality, identify your core values and all will be well.  It won’t.

What people need are skills which enable them to start moving even in the presence of difficult thoughts and emotions.  As Frank’s talk shows, that is the definition of psychological flexibility.

What I try to do in my career psychology sessions is not to change peoples’ thinking but change their relationship to their thoughts.   It is this which allows them greater freedom in terms of what they do, gets them unstuck and moving in a valued direction.

But I believe my own conscientiousness has hampered my career. There is no doubt that my gratitude for a job, my desire to please people and my natural pride and competitiveness all translate into high levels of conscientiousness.

But if I hadn’t tried so hard, hung in there, gutsed it out and showed such determination I’d have left my consultancy job earlier. If I hadn’t been able to subjugate my own needs to those of other people I’d have followed my heart earlier. If I hadn’t been so willing to tackle things that I didn’t really care about I’d have realised that this isn’t as effective as tackling things I really, really want to be remembered for.

In short, the trait called conscientiousness allows people to be good at most things. Being good at most things leads to the paradox of choice – how do you differentiate between all these things you can do? (More often than not, whatever pays the most and whatever other people think become the main decision makers).

But the loser is you, your dreams and a life only partially lived.