Harnessing Mental Fitness & Defeating Procrastination: Your Career Change Game Plan
Binny Langler
Career Transition, Strengths & Executive Coaching @ The Inkling Effect | Leadership Development | Team Productivity + Collaboration | Founder & Director | Experienced Head of Digital Product
There are two key aspects to a successful Career Shift: Mental fitness and overcoming procrastination.
Let's start with Mental Fitness.
We have spent most of our lives assuming every voice in our head...is trustworthy.
Take a moment to contemplate that idea. What if this isn't the case, all the time?
It's time to meet your Saboteurs
When faced with pivotal decisions, or you're about to step out of your comfort zone, can you rely on those initial thoughts that guide your actions? Your internal voices?
Decisions like leaving a job, transitioning industries, or pursuing childhood dreams trigger a chorus of opinions in our minds - coming from our saboteurs.
These voices often prioritise safety, discouraging major changes and warn against potential mistakes.
They are trying to 'protect us', or are they?
Embarking on a career change journey involves challenges like social acceptance, lifestyle adjustments, and self-trust amidst uncertainty.
Our internal saboteurs create an illusion that a career change is like stepping into an abyss - holding us back and perpetuating feelings of doubt and fear, all in the name of protecting us. Which inevitably leads to feeling stuck, paralysed, unsure and generating a huge amount of fear.
This then results in procrastination, which we'll cover next!
The Power of Mental Fitness
Imagine instead, maintaining calmness, clarity, and positivity throughout your career change journey.
It requires a dedication to enhancing mental fitness, a practice that evolves over time.
Allowing you to take back the drivers seat of your life, pushing your saboteur voices and opinions to the side, into the passenger seat, or better still, asking them to leave the vehicle entirely!
Breaking Habits and Trusting Your Inner Voice
Transforming habits involves intercepting your saboteurs, questioning their validity, and reinforcing positive thought patterns instead.
Knowing your saboteurs empowers you to silence them, allowing you to embrace new thought habits, and creates space to connect with your inner sage (your true internal voice!).
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Your Inner Sage has often been silenced by your saboteurs over time, it's time for your Sage to have a voice again.
Completing the Saboteurs Assessment over at Positive Intelligence will introduce you to your most powerful saboteurs, helping you to recognise their voices and advice they will provide during your career change journey:
This is an activity I suggest all my clients complete - they find it really useful.
Overcoming your Career Change Procrastination...
The Power of Process
Procrastination often stems from overwhelming tasks, when your saboteurs convince you moving forward isn't a great idea!
Just as learning a new skill breaks down into manageable steps, a career change can be navigated by dividing tasks into smaller, achievable milestones. This approach triggers a sense of accomplishment with each small step completed, propelling you forward.
The key to starting a career change is not having the entire plan worked-out before you start. It's simply taking one small step after another. A small step is less overwhelming, and less likely to trigger your saboteurs. And we know how to tackle a small step, it's something we've done before.
Insights from Experts
Experts like Tamar Chansky highlight the brain's struggle with starting tasks lacking immediate rewards ie. a change career, it's a long process when you look at it as 'one big thing'.
Dr Barbara Oakley emphasises focusing on the process rather than fixating on the outcome, thus reducing overwhelm.
Embracing a Process-Oriented Mindset
Shifting to a process-oriented mindset activates automated responses in the brain, simplifying complex tasks and reducing resistance to change. Viewing career change as a series of manageable steps fosters clarity and progress.
Pick one small step every day that you can complete to move you closer to the change you seek.
Conclusion: Empowering Change
By embracing mental fitness, breaking procrastination habits, and adopting a process-focused approach, you can navigate your career change journey with confidence and clarity.
If you need support in this transformation, reach out for guidance and a structured framework to help you to design the work life you desire.