Where’s your Moxie?

Moxie is my new favourite word, and it means having courage and determination; it’s like a cousin to being gutsy. Do you have the guts to change what you’re doing in your search for career development? How determined are you to find fulfilment this year? ?Will you have the courage to face the rejections you know are coming, and persevere anyway until you find what it is you’re looking for?

Change is hard, and too many of us accept the status quo simply because our comfort zone is so well known to us. Yet, the only way we will ever find true fulfilment in our careers and indeed our lives is through pursuing change. Small incremental change perhaps, but change, nonetheless.

The first question you need to face is:

What are you not happy with?

It takes moxie to ask this question, but it’s an imperative if you’re after a life well lived. And it’s not enough to say that you’re not happy with your career or your job. Why are you not happy? If you took one element away and added another, would you be happy? Is it your boss? Your commute? Your hours? Your salary? Your colleagues? Your role? Your clients?

Make some time to sit with yourself and journal the answers to these questions. And more. Don’t rush it. Have the moxie to face what you’re uncomfortable with. No judgements, no expectations. Just sit with the thing that makes you unhappy. Dig into it. Scratch at it. Figure it out. Write it down.

Once you’ve explored this question as much as you can, here’s the next one:

What is one thing I can do today that will change this situation?

Now I know that if you’re not happy with where you are in your career, doing one small thing today is not going to bring you your dream job. But what it is going to do is start a cycle of small incremental habits that will ultimately change your situation entirely. If you can build a habit of asking this question of yourself every morning, and you make a small, tiny change every day for the next 365 days, can you imagine what could be possible in the next year?

Studies have shown time and again that people resist change for several reasons, and I plan to elaborate on three reasons below. Before that though, I want you to think for a moment of your unhappy situation, and the possible reason you resist change.

Could it be that change just seems SO BIG? ?

It’s kind of like diving into a pool of ice water. Flippen’ scary! Not sure how I’ll react. Will I like it? Will it work for me? What if I don’t like it?

If you manage change correctly, it needn’t be like diving into that ice water. It could mean dipping your big toe in today, your little toe tomorrow, and eventually by the time you’re fully immersed, the summer has arrived, and you realise the water is in fact wholly marvellous!

Here are some reasons we resist change, and how you can find the moxie to change anyway:

1.??????There’s no certainty

Better the devil you know, right? At least that’s how we justify it when we choose to stay in a toxic work environment or an unfulfilling role. Friends, there is no certainty in life!

To find your moxie when you’re uncertain, you need to remember that nothing in life is in fact certain. You could be laid off tomorrow, a meteor could hit the earth, or life could change in the blink of an eye in so many ways. The beauty of uncertainty is that every day brings new decisions. Your life is a tapestry of all the decisions that have brought you here. Trust the small decisions that bring you certainty and explore with small decisions that create uncertainty. By exercising this muscle, you learn that uncertainty can in fact be a good thing. Explore it: swim a little deeper than you normally would, take a different route to work, agree to meet a someone you’d normally refuse, brush your teeth with your other hand. Play with the uncertainty – see how it feels. It’s not all bad right?

2.??????Fear of failure

“I’ve tried to change things in the past and it’s always backfired on me!”

Being scared is normal. Fear is a response that was designed to ensure our survival after all. I’d ask you to shift your focus here. You walk, am I right? Yet you were a baby once with no ability to walk. Did you give up simply because you failed? What else have you done that’s succeeded? It doesn’t matter how small it may be; it is evidence that not everything you have tried has failed.

Fortunately, this is not an episode of Survivor, and I won’t insist you face your fears. But if you’re looking for your moxie, a great start would be reminding yourself of the times you’ve succeeded. Build on that. And then slowly ask yourself what is one small thing I could do today that will be scary, but that I know I could do.

I read an article over the weekend of a very overweight man who wanted to reclaim his health. His commitment was that he would move for 5 minutes a day. It’s taken him a year, but he has lost the weight and now exercises for up to 2 hours a day – something that terrified him when he started.

3.??????You view change as an event and not as a process

If you’re changing jobs or careers, there will come a day when you walk into your new office for the first time. That will be the event, but that that was neither the starting point nor the destination of your commitment to change. Change is a process; it is incremental, and by the time the major event comes around, you will be ready for it.

Find your moxie by reminding yourself that you are not starting the new job tomorrow. You are going to take all the time you need to acclimatise to this new position, but you are going to commit to doing the daily actions that will bring you closer to your goal.

Having been on the road for 8 months already, I am learning all the time that everything is in fact a journey, and there is much joy to be found in the process if we just pause and take in the vista as we go.

Friend, change is the only constant in life. Embrace it or life will pass you by.

I have launched Moxie March in celebration of initiating change – if there is anything about your career that wants changing, this is a great place to start. Check it out: https://www.subscribepage.com/a1f4t2