Part 7 of My Journey Starting a New Career in My 40’s: "My Hidden Resistance to Change"

Ready to take action? I’ve spent the last 6 posts talking about awareness, acceptance and even appreciation when it comes to a career change in your 40’s. In the next few articles I’ll focus on how we catalyze an idea and turn it into action.???

After I left Meta so many people asked me questions about my career shift. In conversations I noticed most questions were around the “big leap” itself, or the moment I shifted from one role and began another. The reality was that my career change didn’t happen the moment I left advertising. The change occurred over a series of smaller action steps which for me, took a few years before I felt ready to make the jump. After 20 years in one industry, I needed to introduce change at a pace my system could handle. Taking proper time with these action steps not only helped me gain clarity on the direction I wanted to take, but also mentally and emotionally prepared for a big life change. Because of this, the action steps I’ll outline in the next few posts WON’T be about how to start a new career overnight. Instead, I’ll focus on smaller steps you can take on your timeline so that change feels friendly to you.?

Today’s post will be about an action step you can take that will help you understand why you have hidden resistance to change. It’s called an immunity map, and I’ve done the exercise myself in the latter part of this article.

The “Knowing Doing Gap”?

If you are considering a career change, especially later in your career, you may experience a kind of stuckness commonly called the “knowing doing gap”. This is a term used to describe the gap between knowing what we want and actually taking action towards what we say we want. For instance, we may SAY we want better work-life balance or to have a better relationship with our manager, but a closer look at our daily actions (or inactions) reveal we’re committed to keeping things exactly the way they are. For instance, if a documentary crew followed us around they might record us working weekends, sending late night emails and withholding our thoughts and feelings from our managers. So while it’s easy to name what we want, actioning towards requires behavioral shifts that feel difficult and scary. So why does the “knowing doing gap” exist and what causes it???

Understanding Our Hidden Commitments?

Much of this article will be based on theory from the book “Immunity to Change - How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization". The ideas in this book expanded my understanding of my unconscious beliefs and fears. In the book, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey explore the “knowing doing” gap and its drivers. The authors theorize that what creates the gap is a set of what they call invisible, or “hidden” commitments. According to Kegan and Lahey, visible commitments are what we say we want - a more fulfilling career, better work-life balance, a job that energizes us and aligns to our purpose. In contrast, our hidden commitments are underlying and often unconscious motivations that stem from our emotional immune systems. We all have emotional immune systems that serve to shield us from things our ego doesn’t want to feel - fear, sadness or anger, shame or disappointment. Like our physical immune systems, emotional immune systems are trying to protect us. You’ll see in the example chart below however, that hidden commitments can oftentimes conflict with our visible commitments.?

In the relatable example of losing weight above, you can see why Kegan and Lahey describe the tension between commitments as “having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake”.? In the example of changing careers, our hidden commitments could be about ensuring financial stability or staying in the known and comfortable. Because our egos often perceive the known as safer (and less threatening) than the unknown, hidden commitments create a kind of immunity to change. In trying to protect us, they stand in the way of change and evolution. This is the feeling of stuckness we feel in the “knowing doing” gap.?

If you want change in your career but feel stuck, it isn’t due to a lack of willpower. It’s because your emotional immune system is trying to protect you, and therefore limiting your ability to make big changes.

Challenging Our Assumptions About How The World Works?

In my first article in this series I talked about unsubscribing from toxic beliefs. This is a theme I’ll continually reinforce as I walk through my journey towards a career change. In “Immunity to Change” Kegan and Lahey talk about how our hidden commitments are often rooted in assumptions about the way the world works. As I’ve mentioned before, our assumptions about life are conditioned into us at a young age through external value systems - society, culture, religion, family etc. However, many of these beliefs are not grounded in fact and are arguable. Later in life, holding onto these beliefs too tightly can stunt our greatest growth and evolution. It is through a lens of greater self awareness that we can begin to challenge these assumptions, and look at life through a different perspective that may better support our growth.

As you can see from the assumptions I’ve added here, the simple act of examining if the opposite of our underlying beliefs can immediately dial down the intensity of our fears. This allows our emotional immune systems to relax in their hypervigilance, and can even begin to dissolve the power of our hidden commitments.?

My Own Hidden Resistance to Career Change?

As I mapped my own immunity to change, my map revealed that while I outwardly said I wanted a career aligned to my purpose, my actions and inactions all pointed towards creating the opposite. My ego prioritized hidden commitments over my visible commitments because it perceived that my approval and security were at threat and wanted to shield me from fear, shame and uncertainty.

In the practice of Conscious Leadership, we not only look at the opposite of our stories, we own our “unconscious” commitments (video on this here) as a radical act of self awareness. My unconscious commitment was undeniable after seeing my immunity map. I was committed to NOT having a career that was meaningfully aligned to my purpose. I knew this was true because I was unconsciously? prioritizing my hidden commitments over what I outwardly said I wanted. What I was doing/not doing was in direct opposition (and therefore creating the opposite results) of what I said I wanted. Oof!! What a wake up call!?

In Conscious Leadership we often say “we cannot change that which we are not aware of”. In the process of examining and challenging my underlying beliefs about how the world works, I could better understand the fears my emotional immune system so vigilantly protected. I could accept myself for being scared and began to treat the scared part of me with loving kindness and compassion. I was able to let go of being right that my assumptions were the absolute truth, which helped me hold these beliefs less tightly and created space for change to happen. I was also able to eliminate some beliefs altogether. I could see my ego clinging to old beliefs, but when objectively reviewing them (especially with the help of working with a coach) my independent mind could see they were stories created by my conditioned mind. Not only were they not true, holding on them them was limiting my growth and happiness. The more I reflected and processed, the more choices and possibilities revealed themselves to me. The aperture through which I viewed the world began to widen, and in time my full aliveness felt much more within reach.?I felt lighter, more energized and genuinely excited about what would come next.

Follow me for upcoming posts, where I’ll recommend more action steps you can take to prepare yourself for big changes. The steps I'll recommend all inspire me and give me courage, and I hope they will do the same for you.?

Follow joycechen_coaching on Instagram and?The Conscious Leadership Group

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Action Checklist?

Action Step #1 - Create Your Personal? Immunity Map

Creating an immunity map can bring to light your personal barriers to change. It consists of four simple steps. For anyone who feels trepidation around this, I recommend doing this with a coach who can act as a supportive guide and objective third party:

1. Outline the change you want to make (or goal you want to achieve) but are feeling “stuck” around?
2. Sketch what you are either doing or not doing that prevent progress
3. Identify your hidden competing commitments
4. Identify the underlying assumptions that drive the competing commitments?

Action Step #2 - Challenge Your Assumptions

Practice challenging each of your underlying assumptions. See how the opposite could be as true or more true than each assumption you have around how the world works. Feel into how your fears become less charged and hidden commitments begin to dissolve through this practice.?

Action Step #3 - Reflect and Process

While this is just one seemingly small action step, this map may reveal a fundamental shift in how you want to live your life. Take time to reflect and process, and treat yourself gentle patience and compassion.

Extra Credit: Based on the awareness from your immunity map, take one action step towards creating what you say you really want. Comment below or DM me and let me know what that is!