Erase Your Career Limiting Beliefs And Get Empowered.

Empowerment is a concept that has evolved over the past five to seven years, by people who are no longer fulfilled by the predictability of their traditional career paths. Today, you have a choice to shift from Employment to Empowerment?. Empowerment is an analogy for self-sufficiency, taking control of your destiny and being proactive about your career.

“Employment (working on somebody else’s dreams) to Empowerment (working on your dream)”

The patterns that have emerged in corporate America provide greater flexibility for “employers” that employees do not control. By choosing career servitude many allow the corporation and/or their boss, to control their career for them. The main problem is that we are not wired this way. The majority of us are wired to be self-sufficient. Seventy-five percent of the adult population has a strong to very strong desire to be self-sufficient.

Gone is the era of being a lifetime wage servant:  By 2020, more than 40% of the American workforce, or 60 million people, will be self-sufficient.  Source: 2020 Report from Future and Emergent Research and Intuit Future of Small Business Report

What limiting beliefs are holding you back from controlling your career?

Many who have embarked on the Journey of Discovery coaching experience suddenly experience the freedom and liberty of being able to work on their dreams. Along the way, they are surprised because some of the myths or limiting beliefs that they held near and dear to their hearts are dispelled.

“People often believe that being in business will remain a dream for them. What they often realize throughout the Journey of Discovery is that the business opportunity is simply a vehicle to attain their dreams. So, empowerment is all about discovering things that people did not realize to be true beforehand” says Terry Powell, founder of The Entrepreneur’s Source?.

An example of a limiting belief or myth is the idea that a person needs to love a product to be able to capitalize on it. For instance, you may love donuts. However, if a donut business were to be a feasible business model, you would need to put your emotions to the side and look at the return on investment, what the day-to-day activities of the business owner are, the work environment “behind the counter”, and does the business fit in other considerations you may have such as flexibility, number of employees to manage, investment level and so on.  It is important to do the same with any business model. Thinking that people need to enjoy or love a product to capitalize on it is a limiting belief. I’m not saying it has to be something you “detest”, but it doesn’t have to be a product or service you’re in “love” with. Your business skills are transferrable to many other types of business.

There is another limiting belief known as FEAR, or False Evidence Appearing Real. It is when people believe their emotions are actually facts, but once they start examining and comparing facts, they realize that they were making an emotional decision as opposed to a fact-based one. So FEAR is a limiting belief.

There are many other limiting beliefs. Sometimes confidence is an issue. People believe that they do not have the right skills, or maybe that because they have not previously been in business, they think they are not good enough. A good example is military in transition and veterans. Many veterans I speak to initially think they don’t possess many skills: “I worked in the motor pool. I fixed airplanes. I drove a tank.” As we dig deeper we learn more about the soft skills – managing budgets or expenses, overseeing people, following direction, strategy and tactic implementation, etc. People are surprised when they go through the discovery process and realize, for instance, that many franchisors are not looking for somebody who has previous “industry” experience. In fact, franchisors have a paint-by-numbers approach as well as a proven business model for owners to follow. Many soon learn they do not need to limit their possibilities based on past experience and branch out in to new sectors.

This is where working with a Career Transition Coach can be of benefit to those questioning their career paths. A Coach can help talk you through the advantages and disadvantages of self-employment and help you discover if it may be the right career choice for you to achieve self-sufficiency.  Take the first step towards YOUR future and talk with a career transition coach!