Successful Career Changers Start with these 5 Mindsets to Figure Out Their Next Career Move
When we're feeling stuck at work and trying to figure out what's next in our careers, there's usually one massive obstacle that’s bigger and more crippling than any other. OURSELVES.
Us and our massive overachieving, high-performing brains.
Us with our hardwired negativity biases.
Us with our finely-aged perfectionism still calling the shots.
In this blog and video, I break down the 5 mindsets you’ll need to figure out your next career move. It's time we get out of our own ways so that we can find and do more of the stuff we actually enjoy doing.
Here are five mindsets that my most successful clients adopt early and often in regaining control of their career and their confidence.
I will take action before I feel ready.
High-performers who have the most success in taking back control of their careers and finding work they’re excited about take action before they're ready. There's a courage element needed even before confidence ever has a chance to develop. It turns out that confidence isn’t a switch you flip on or off.
Confidence comes from gaining small wins. Gaining small wins comes from taking small imperfect actions. Small imperfect actions come from having the courage to try before you feel ready.
High-performers who want to make a career change must find and create courage before they will ever feel confident. They realize that it’s courage - not confidence - that will be the deciding factor in their success… or in their choice to stay complacent and stagnant in a role that’s comfortable.
I am resilient. Rejection isn’t personal.
For mid-career high-performers (and those in the mid to late career), the greatest return on time and energy investment comes from connecting with and expanding their network through informational interviews - or what I call coffee chats or career chats.
There are various figures on this, but I look to job search expert, career coach, and author Steve Dalton in his work The 2-Hour Job Search where he shares that an average response rate for an outreach note to schedule such a conversation is somewhere between 20-40%.
Can you think of any other instance in your track record of high-achievement when you’ve been shot down 80% of the time? Ouch. That stings. We’re predisposed to feel the pain from rejection in the same way that we feel physical pain (thanks brain for not being able to distinguish the two. I know you’re trying to keep me alive, but dang that’s confusing).
But high-performers who successfully take back control of their careers and their confidence, they understand that getting better about being rejected can help you succeed in life and at work. And that, ultimately, rejection is not personal.
NBC News shares some tremendous insights on how to lessen the sting of rejection in its article Why getting better about being rejected can help you succeed in life. High-performers use these insights to move forward in your job search. Because remember, we can ignore the stuff that gets in the way of us finding work we’re excited about - we have to talk about all of the things that no one seems to want to talk about.
I don’t know… yet.
Now, the once-upon-a-time math and science nerd in me loves this one. The client who I see have the most success in this process, they adopt a scientific mindset. They act like scientists in that they approach the whole process of making a career change like a massive experiment.
They set out with informed hypotheses (that are grounded in who they are and where they’re headed - their strengths, values, and vision for whom they want to become). And they design ways to test those hypotheses, constantly reminding themselves in the face of the massive amounts of ambiguity and uncertainty in the career change process that, “I don’t know…yet.”
They don’t through their hands up and say, “Jesus take the wheel” like a Carrie Underwood song. It’s that “yet” piece that is everything. They’re relentlessly curious and open to the process of asking better questions to get better data and iterating as they go.
I can be successful and still ask for help and support. I don’t have to do this alone.
I know looking for help in your career can feel overwhelming. High-performers who make successful career changes don’t waste time spinning in a mental loops of half-baked ideas, doubts, and fears trying to think their way to your “perfect” career.
Sure they may start by piecing together advice from well-intentioned friends, family members, and coworkers. Or by digging into career podcasts, email freebies, and promises of quick fixes. They probably have even wasted time searching job boards for inspiration and not finding it.
But eventually they realize that that mindset is a great way to get nowhere fast. My clients who are successful in this process have an incredibly clear moment where they realize that if they don’t seek out help and support, they’ll stay stuck waking up every morning exhausted with a pit in their stomach dreading going to work. For the next 20 or 30+ years.
Instead, they identify people who can help. Maybe it’s a friend who just navigated their own career change. Maybe it’s a mentor who has always been in their corner. Maybe it’s a coach. Regardless of who it is, they intentionally design a support system and lean on it for guidance and support.
How can I help others?
This mindset that is usually missed. During a career change process, we can feel some kind of way. We can feel like we’re asking for too much. That we’re putting other people out. That we’re being selfish.
For me, I felt ashamed for being ungrateful for what I had. I honestly felt pretty stupid for not knowing what I was good at or what I wanted to do. I felt guilty at the thought of selfishly throwing away the investment my mentors, my managers, people who I respected, the time and energy they had put into helping me growth in this industry.
I felt terrified that I’d be stuck, have to start completely over and throw away the last 8 years of experience and educational training, or even end up feeling exactly the same way in my next job. Knowing if it’s time to actually do the brave thing and take the next step in your career is tough! Since our caveman days, we’re built to seek safety. Here’s how I knew it was time for me to leave my job and make a career change.
But the high-performers I work with who move faster and make better decisions in their career, they keep a focus on other people throughout their journey in a very unique way.
They’re not concerned about what other people think or if they’ll think differently about them now that they are asking for help. No. Instead, they focus on how they can add value together.They focus on building genuine relationships. They aren’t desperately asking for a job in every career conversation they have.
They don’t feel that way because they are confident in their “why” and how they add value to others - whether that be their friends, family, coworkers, manager, team, or organization. They know their strengths and values and are constantly living into them searching for ways they can help others during and after taking their next step.
Are outdated career mindsets holding you back?
And guess what? Those who struggle to generate real progress from coaching and to make shifts in their career, they aren’t able - or in some instances willing - to let go of mindsets and mantras that are holding them back from doing more of what they are best and enjoy the most. These sound something like:
“Once I feel more confident and can see the end result and path, I’ll take the next step.”
“I’ve been ghosted or rejected so many times. Obviously I don’t have the skills to do what I really want to do.”
“I don’t know.”
“Asking for help is cheating. People who are most successful do it completely by themselves.”
“What’s in it for me?”
Making a successful career change is always about getting your mind right.
As a former math nerd and two-time fifth grade math pentathlon silver medalist (oh, yes), I always think a good equation can help to see things more clearly.
Taking back control of your career has three core elements. Mindset + Strategy + Execution.
Yes, for some talking about mindset is squishy and induces a pretty intense eye roll. But ignoring how we think about success, our careers, and our confidence is what keeps us stuck on the achievement treadmill pounding out miles for someone else’s dream yet getting nowhere.
Getting our minds right - and continuously practicing and building the habit to think with a growth mindset - is often the only thing keeping high-performers from building a career that is more fun, energizing, engaging, and meaningful. Like Yogi Berra said, "Baseball is 90 per cent mental. The other half is physical."
Are you struggling to get unstuck in your career?
If you’re having a hard time getting any sort of momentum going in taking back control of your career and your confidence, there's a good chance you're missing at least one.
When strategy is missing… it looks like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. So. much. spaghetti. And maybe a noodle or two barely clinging to the wall.
When execution is missing... it can feel like spinning in endless thoughts and ideas hoping to find clarity by thinking. “Why hasn’t it happened yet, I’ve been thinking about it for 13.25 months?!” Spoiler alert: clarity doesn’t come from thinking. It comes from doing.
When mindset is missing… confidence and hope about ever finding work that’s fun is tanked.
With every single one of my clients it’s always about mindset. It’s always about the convoluted, evidence-less stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’re capable of.
Which outdated mindset has the biggest grip on your career and confidence right now? What would be possible if you switched it out for a fresh perspective?