I often find myself comparing career decisions with decisions about relationships. The two aren’t that dissimilar in my opinion.
I often find myself comparing career decisions with decisions about relationships. The two aren’t that dissimilar in my opinion.
Years ago I fell in love and in a romantic moment decided to pack up my life in the UK and move to Australia to be with my Australian partner.
Of course between making that decision and moving to Australia there were lots of obstacles to be navigated – months of time apart, collecting lots of evidence for the immigration authorities, dealing with being turned down and searching for more evidence, visits to Australia and my partner visiting the UK, packing up my home and sticking my dog on a plane, etc, etc. In short, lots of time for me to revisit this pretty large decision!
The thing was I got caught up in the plan itself and stopped listening to the part of me that wasn’t sure if this was really what I wanted. I threw myself into making it happen. I was blinkered and didn’t stop to consider any other alternatives. Essentially I did what many of us are very good at – I turned into a Human Doing rather than a Human Being. During this time in a quiet moment my wisdom announced ‘I don’t want to go.’ It was such a shock to me that I ignored it. It didn’t suit me to listen to it/myself when I had done so much Doing to put my plans into action. I’d told everyone I knew about my plans.
So, I moved to Australia where I tried to make the plan work for two years, making myself ill in the process, until I finally admitted to myself and my family and friends that it wasn’t what I wanted and I returned home.
Looking back, I see how my actions were being driven from fear. Fear of not having a plan, fear of being single, fear of having to return to my ‘old life’ rather than a new exciting one in rural Australia, fear of failure.
Lots of people do the same with their career decisions. They’re holding onto a particular career goal or training for something they no longer desire but are too afraid to consider it’s no longer what they want. Feeling ‘in limbo’ or plan-less can feel more scary than following a plan that deep down we know isn’t right for us.
What serves me really well now with my decision making in all areas of my life is listening to my wisdom or inner guidance system. We all have one. It will often show up as ‘common sense’ e.g. if we’ve not moved our bodies all day we might ‘know’ to go for a walk; if we meet someone we get a strange feeling about, we ‘know’ to do things to help keep us safe; if we want to leave our job we ‘know’ we need to stay if we don’t feel we have enough money to sustain us before getting a new job etc etc. It can affect all our decisions – small and large.
If you’re like many of my clients you might struggle to hear your own wisdom as your thoughts are so loud in your head. It just takes some time to tune into hearing that calm often quiet voice and then beginning to trust it/yourself.
My clients are those people who are courageous enough to look at alternative realities. They’ve realised they can no longer ignore their own wisdom about what work looks like for them. But they need some help in trusting themselves or knowing where to start with identifying alternative paths.
If you’d like to find out more about how I work with clients, book an initial free consultation here: https://calendly.com/lindseycarrcareerconsultant/discovery-consultation