Making work/career changes can bring up a lot of fears - fear of failure at what you’re going to do next, fear of making a mistake, fear of the possible judgments of others, fear of giving up what you have now and later regretting it - the list could go on and on. These fears have the potential to stop us from going for what we want, but they’ll have much less power if we learn some tools to help us address them. Once examined, we can see many of our fears are really coming from our mind whipping up false narratives about potential events that are not currently happening, likely won’t happen, and even if they were to happen, would not be nearly as big a deal as we initially think. Our minds like to make these things feel very high stakes when in reality they are not. 

To illustrate how I use each of the tools to help myself, I’ll use an example of my own experience of leaving a job and the fears that it brought up for me in the past. I’m a career coach not because I’ve had some amazingly smooth sailing career journey, but because I had to face a lot of challenges, many of which you might be experiencing now. I learned a tremendous amount about work and happiness and can’t imagine not sharing what I learned with others. 

1. Play it out and examine the facts 

Often what we fear is a worst-case disaster scenario. For myself, each time I left a “good job” without another job lined up, I’d have fearful thoughts of completely failing in my career, never being able to find another job and ending up destitute - cue visuals of homelessness. My life mastery coach, Doren Lawson, taught me this quick exercise. Identify the worst-case situation that you’re worried about. Then ask yourself, “What is the likelihood of this worst-case situation happening by my taking this one next step?” The interesting thing to see is that it’s often quite low. In my example, the chances of my never finding my way to another job and ending up without basic needs were actually very slim.

Look closer at what would actually have to happen for this worst-case to become a reality. My thinking was that if I couldn’t immediately find a job with the same salary and one my ego likes, I’d be homeless. But that just doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I could have found a job that would cover my basics while I continued to search. We can be quick to forget all the resources that are available to us, including our own strength, ingenuity and know-how. Whatever happens as you take your next step, you will be able to respond and in all likelihood, it will be ok. 

2. Look at your thinking and find what’s true 

Fear often has little to do with any sort of physical survival like I mentioned in my example above and more to do with our own beliefs about ourselves and the world. Our mind makes things mean way more than they actually do and the significance it places on events and outcomes can create so much unnecessary fear and suffering. It can really help to examine the situation you’re afraid of and the conclusions your mind may be jumping to that are creating your fear. Ask yourself, “If this situation happens, what am I making it mean about myself?” Then you want to look a the validity of that thinking. The work of author and teacher Byron Katie changed my world when I learned from her that the majority of our stressful thoughts are not true!

In the past, I equated my professional accomplishments and résumé with my worth. So leaving a “good job” that gave me a sense of identity as a “successful” and worthy person was excruciatingly difficult. I was terrified of losing my acceptability and no longer being “good enough.” And of not succeeding at the next thing to regain it. I could have asked myself, “If I leave this job, does it mean what I’m making it mean? If I face challenges in what I do next, does it mean what I’m making it mean?”  If I had taken the time to look at my thinking, I would have been able to see the answers are no and my thinking was not true. The truth is that your worth is inherent, untethered from professional achievement, from lines on your résumé, from the concepts of success or failure, from having or not having a job that others deem prestigious or acceptable. If I had realized this back then it would have made leaving my job a lot less scary. 

 3. Ground yourself in the present. And get out of your head

Fear comes from living in a narrative of the imaginary future. It’s all projection. Since we can’t know what’s actually going to happen in the future, it’s best we don’t spend too much of our energy focused on the numerous potential scenarios. That’s a great way to make ourselves anxious - and that’s about it. It’s also helpful to remember that we aren’t even aware of many of the possible ways things could go - life is so unpredictable! And that can even play to our favor, bringing us what we want in ways we never would have imagined. When I left my job, I had no idea that this is what I would be doing today. 

Ideally, we could politely thank our mind for wanting to jump into the future, but make a deliberate choice to stay in the present. Sometimes this works, but often I find when I’m scared about something, my mind is totally fixated on it and letting it go is the last thing it wants to do. My mind wants to think through all the angles over and over, making me totally exhausted from the stress. What I’ve found works to get out of this state is doing any activity that gets me out of my head. It could be meditation, or exercise or anything you enjoy that is grounding. After, I find not only am I more present but because I’m not so caught up in the fear I can look at the situation more objectively and more easily do the exercises mentioned above.  

 4. Comfort the part of you that’s still scared

You may still feel the sensations of fear. They may not go away even after applying all these tools. And that’s totally ok. With these exercises you will gradually develop a part of you that has more clarity around your fears, that can see they don’t warrant as much of your attention as you once thought. But there may remain a part of you that is still very scared. My coach, Doren Lawson, has taught me another technique that’s very effective. While the initial impulse may be to try to push the fear away - instead speak to it. Remind it of what’s true and comfort it. From the part of you that has clarity, bring comfort to the part of you that is scared. You don’t need to jump into the fear with it - instead, speak to it like you would a child afraid of a monster under the bed - validating that they are scared, but lovingly and calmly reassuring them they are safe.

Still today I have a part of me that doubts my inherent worth, that sometimes hooks me with narratives and makes me scared that if I don’t achieve something or be a certain way it will mean I’m not ok. In those times, when I catch that this is what is happening, I use loving language to speak to that part of me and remind her that she is now and will always be ok, no matter what.