A client of mine is recovering from a bout of depression and is now thinking of starting his own business. He was describing the dark days where he felt all he could tolerate was his own bed, in darkness, whilst the sun shone brightly outside. Now he is wondering what could be beyond the curtains.
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:
Save up and start building that cushion!
Identify a 3 year financial plan.
Setting up effective cash flow systems.
Write a business plan.
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.
In this video my old supervisor Frank Bond talks about a ‘sea change’ happening in terms of our understanding of mental health and behavioural effectiveness. (And in the context of work, behavioural effectiveness equates to work performance).
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.
Conscientiousness has been linked with a whole range of desirable work outcomes. It’s linked to job performance, productivity, satisfaction, the works. Although theoretically it is neither good nor bad, most people see it as highly desirable.
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.
When I was a management consultant I hated my job, but at a low level of hatred. It was never bad enough for me to take a bold decision. So I carried on, spiralling into the following loop:
1. I hate this, I must move on
2. Move on to do what?
3. Something to do with my strengths…
4. What sort of thing do you have in mind?
5. Erm. Psychologist?
6. That’s 5 years full time study! Do you really want to be poor?
7. But I can’t do this for the rest of my life!
8. So what do you want to do?
9. Erm. Start my own business?
10. IN WHAT???
Then would trudge back to work, life would take over and a few months later I would think:
1. I hate this, I must move on.
This state of limbo lasted more than 3 years, during which I took two sabbaticals to ‘find myself’ (I found myself mainly watching sport and drinking), got fat, tried to set up a property company in a half arsed way, then unsurprisingly lost a deposit on a flat in Hungary, toyed with setting up a cricket coaching company , and even tried to set up a bar. In Bow. None of these options did I look at properly or seriously. They were distractions from limbo.
Each time I looked into psychology I felt too old to change, too scared of losing all my money and too short of ideas to make it work. I was lost, so I went back round the cycle again and again.
That was limbo.
But as it turns out limbo was my lowest point. As soon as I recognised it I was past the worst. If you’re in limbo, I hope this wakes you up.
So, dear readers, I am writing a book. It is going to be called Headstuck! The Psychology of Career Change. It will be dedicated to you, dear brave career changer, and I will pour every ounce of my knowledge – such as it is – and my love into it.
I would love to hear form readers of this blog what they would find useful to include in the book or what kind of questions they would like me to cover.
To give you an idea of what I’m aiming at, this is the first part of my proposal:
Are you in a ‘good’ job but find yourself thinking that there must be more to life? Do you ever wonder if there’s a job out there which you’d be better suited to?
If so, you are not alone. Millions of people aren’t happy at work – 70% of us are not really engaged in what we do and job satisfaction has fallen by nearly a third in the past 20 years.
Yet many of us don’t know what else we could do. All the alternatives seem scary and it’s difficult to know which career might suit us better. We can try personality and career ‘matching’ tests but somehow these leave us feeling more confused than ever (but what would I know? The computer says I should have been a dental hygienist). So we go back to our current jobs… feeling stuck.
Feeling Headstuck is the sense of going round and round in circles as we try to find our best career direction. Feeling Headstuck is a nagging feeling that there is something out there that’s better, if only we could work out what. It is a feeling of being trapped between an unwanted present and an uncertain future – and that there is no way out. But there is…
This book looks at the reasons why we get Headstuck and what we can do about it. Combining the latest research in psychology, decision sciences and scientific theories of behavioural change, it will help readers get unstuck and moving in a direction they can flourish in.
To celebrate the New Year, I’ve updated my career change presentation, Career Paralysis. I’ve had so many people contact me from this, it has clearly tapped a nerve.
The best way of viewing it is to download it and then view it in slide show mode. But you can just click through below – it only takes 10 minutes or so.
Anyway, if you feel like you’re in career paralysis and if this speaks to you, do get in touch.
May 2012 be the year you get unstuck and start to move forward with purpose…Happy New Year, everyone.
If you’re reading this blog, you are (presumably) someone thinking of changing their career or in the process of changing their career. Welcome.
So, how did you get on in 2011? Do you look back on 2011 with satsifaction and pride? Do you feel you have achieved what you wanted to?
Sometimes my career clients look back on a year and think they have failed. They have not found their ideal direction, they have not summoned the courage to leave a job they hate or they have not landed the job they want.
Life can be pretty tough when we judge ourselves only against goals. Our minds are pretty tough taskmasters.
I’m not suggesting there’s a way to change this, (though noticing how harsh minds are is a good start), but I am suggesting there are different ways of looking at achievements.
What kind of character strengths did you show in 2011? For example:
To what extent did you persist at your goals, despite the difficult circmstances and lack of reward?
In what ways did you show courage? (remember, courage is not the absence of fear, but a choice to move forward with fear).
Even in situations where you did not achieve your goal, how often could you be found working away, trying, showing up?
How many times did you come back to your goal, to try again?
How many times did you continue to make ‘towards’ moves, even when your mind screamed at you to move away?
When I ask clients to reflect on their goals, the answer for most of them is that they have not yet achieved their career goals. However, they have certainly demonstrated character strengths. If this is you, just pause to acknowledge this for a moment.
These character strengths are achievements in themselves. They are also precursors of success.
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
For most of my life I have spoken in ways that I thought other people wanted to hear. For example, when I wanted to become a management consultant, I would speak like consultants spoke. I was all about processes, change maps and risk registers. Dinner party hosts across the land would fight not to invite me round for tea.
Even today I think my worst blog posts come as a result of trying to write in a way which I think might ‘impress’ someone.
The result is usually that I bore people to death and miss a chance to actually connect with people.
I was reminded of the imperative to connect with people when I read Benedict Le Gauche’s hilarious CV. If you haven’t read it, do so now.
Of course, being a serious professional, I am not recommending mimicking his style and content, but I am suggesting we can learn something from him. There is something refreshing and comforting about reading it. Somehow, I can’t help thinking that I wish he worked in my office.
The ability to communicate a serious message in a human way is really important in a job search. This isn’t about trying to ‘stand out’ with gimmicks, but finding ways of reflecting your authentic self on paper or in person.
How well does your CV portray you as a person? How well does it capture what y0u are actually like and what actually fires you up? How authentically are you able to talk about why you’re a good fit for a job? Other humans can tell when you’re going through the motions.
For further inspiration, here a couple of other CVs which manage to convey a message – without losing the person behind it.
It started to happen when I did well in exams at school. It gained serious momentum when I got a first at University. Then it became a pattern when I got onto various prestigious graduate programmes.
It’s the thought in my head that says ‘I am brilliant’.
I mean, I have lots of other voices that tell me how much of a failure I am. But this voice never truly goes away. It tells me that I am special. That I have unique gifts and that I must use them.
This is also the voice that tells me that other people should recognise my brilliance. If only they knew how brilliant I am they might treat me differently. And when a client session goes really well, this voice pipes up. Oh wow! You are brilliant!
And this is the voice that can turn on me, suddenly, viciously, when I get something even slightly wrong. When I try to do things that are ‘good enough’ and press send. When I say something awkward in a conversation. So often, I write e-mails I don’t send. I shy away from going out and meeting people and doing projects that would help me develop, in case it goes wrong and the voice turns.
The longer I do nothing, the longer I get to keep the idea ‘I am brilliant’. It’s a strategy that really works.
Except in the long term , of course. In the long term it doesn’t work in really important ways. And some less important ways, too.
Today I had a really stimulating conversation with someone who I really admire. He asked me whether I’d ever read any John Updike. I hadn’t, so the conversation stalled.
The voice stopped me wasting time on fiction years ago.
Finding meaning in work becomes a whole lot simpler if you start from a clear definition. So if you are reading this without reading my previous posts it might be worth doing.
By using a definition of meaning as comprehension in context, it is possible to identify a model of meaning in work which can be empirically tested. It may be worth identifying what my model turned out to be:
Predictors of Meaning in Work
1. Strength of purpose – I hypothesised that by identifying a strong and well articulated purpose people are far more likely to interact with the world, experience more and in turn generate more learning and comprehension. 2. Transcendent purpose. I hypothesised that people have different types of purpose and I compared people who reported a ‘self related’ purpose (i.e. to make money, or be successful) with those who also had a transcendent purpose (i.e. to ‘dent the universe’ or impact the world in some way). I hypothesised that those with self-related purpose will be focused on themselves and their immediate surroundings. Those with a transcendent purpose will have a wider experience, because theirs is an “externally oriented quest” to affect the world around them through their work (Damon, Mennon, Cotton Bronk, 2003). Thus over time, a transcendent purpose would bring someone into contact with more stimuli than the narrower self-related purpose, and eventually to greater comprehension. 3. Use of strengths at work. By understanding one’s own strengths, individuals display and experience a certain amount of self-understanding. By subsequently using strengths at work, this also implies some understanding of what the world needs in terms of that individual’s contribution. 4. Work role fit. Work role fit refers to the relation of the individual employee to the role that s/he performs in the organisation (Kristof, 1996). Researchers have linked work role fit to meaning due to the connection between a person’s sense of identity and the role which they fulfil at work (e.g. Brief & Nord, 1990; Shamir, 1991).
Clearly, there are other predictors which could increase comprehension (like job control). But these were the predictors which seemed most likely to increase comprehension in context and to be largely under the control of the individual.
So what did I find?
As hypothesised, each of these 4 factors did significantly predict meaning in work.
As a predictive model, these factors accounted for 73% of the variance of meaning in work. This is a very good model.
Transcendent purpose did predict meaning in work, but of those who reported a self related purpose, they were less likely to experience meaning in work. In other words, if you want meaning in work, you need to focus beyond your own self interest.
Meaning in work fully mediated the relationship with employee engagement and psychological wellbeing. So it is good for both health and productivity.
Conclusion
By identifying a clear and transcendent purpose and by using one’s strengths in a job which fits with one’s own values we can find much greater meaning in work. But in addition, (in keeping with classic work design models like the Job Characteristics Model) this state of meaningfulness also predicts other desirable outcomes like employee engagement and psychological wellbeing.
This is my own experience too. When I had work with little meaning, my mental health and performance plummeted. Now I have a great deal of meaning in work, both have risen.
Below are my slides from when I presented these findings at various psychology and career coaching conferences:
Hello my name is Rob Archer and I’m an Occupational Psychologist living and working in London, UK.
Welcome to my blog, Headstuck. I called it Headstuck because it’s written for people who don’t like their current jobs, but who also don’t know what else would suit them better.
Feeling Headstuck is miserable. If this is you, I’ve been there, and I can help.
