590: 7 Career Change Myths That Are Keeping You From Meaningful Work

Introduction 00:05

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does, and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:30

In 1939, the Swiss Chemist, Paul Herman Mueller, discovered that a specific chemical compound had profound insecticidal abilities. Shortly after, it was quickly determined that this was cheap and easy to manufacture. Sounds pretty good, right? During World War Two, this compound saved many lives, preventing malaria and typhus. And next, we discovered that this inexpensive compound was great for agriculture because it prevented crops from being destroyed by bugs. Still good, right? But later on, in the 1960s the public was up in arms because they learned that this particular insecticide was cancerous and potentially killing children. Everyone took a stand–John F Kennedy asked the EPA to look into it, Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it. Everyone unilaterally agreed that this couldn't continue. This eventually led to the ban of the insecticide, and you might have heard of it. It's called DDT, or dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane. Everyone knows DDT is a terrible chemical, right? The only problem? Well, turns out there's a disturbing lack of evidence that DDT was harming humans at all. That's right. The thing that we all thought was true, that had the public up in harm, turns out not true. Remember when we all thought stepping on a crack would really break your mama's back? I don't know about you, but I was terrified as a kid every time I couldn't avoid a crack on the sidewalk, thinking I'd come home to find my mom helpless on the floor. So I was blown away with my mom, by the way, very much upright and unbroken. Let me know that this was just an old wives' tale. I enjoyed walking outside so much more after that realization. But just like these two examples of myths, there are lots of things that we've been told about our careers and career changes that simply are not true. We've been told them so confidently and so many times that we haven't ever thought to question them. And every single time I get to chat with our readers and listeners, I hear the same misconceptions. And guess what? It's not your fault at all. Society in the media, have pounded these misguided non-facts and myths into our brains. Today, we're doing some myth-busting. I want to share with you the top seven misconceptions I hear almost every time I talk with people about fulfilling work, like, for example, if I career change, I need to take a pay cut. Actually, turns out that less than 15% of our clients end up taking a pay cut, and most make more. If you want to know about the other six, well, let's dive in further.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:14

Okay, first, before we go to the six here, let's address this pay cut. This is something where almost every time we get an opportunity to chat with people, the conversation goes like this, it goes like, "Hey, well, I could make as low as" I don't know, insert your number here. Often an amount that is lower than what they're currently making. And what we find is that that is not necessary. Do some people end up choosing to make less for one reason or another? Yeah. Intentionally so. But the fact is that we find most people don't need to, nor do they want to, they think that they have to. And turns out, the myth is you don't have to. And in fact, what we see is very much the opposite. Career change is the best time to get the biggest salary increase, because you often have the most negotiating power there, even when you're making a career change. By the way, if you want an example of an episode, go back to Episode 424. Jessica had received an offer from a smaller company that she really wanted to work for, but they were asking her to take a pay cut from her prior job. She felt really stuck because she really wanted to work for them and wouldn't be able to unless she could convince them to offer her a better compensation package in one way or another. So we helped her negotiate her offer and get this, not only did she end up accepting the offer, but raised her total compensation package from 165k to $359,000.It really is possible once you get past many of the limiting beliefs that are holding you back. Oh, and by the way, if you want to hear Jessica's whole negotiation story, one of the coaching sessions with her that she gave us permission to use, well, I'll link that in the show notes, in the description here, along with any of the other episodes that are mentioned along the way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:14

Okay, that said, let's go into myth number two. Myth number two is there will be a better time for me to make a career change. This is true if you're about to have open heart surgery. Otherwise, for the most part, you're fooling yourself if you think there's going to be better times. Usually, life always pops up new challenges. The people who are successfully leading fulfilling lenses are always working on what's most important to them, even if it's a small but continuous progression forward. Maybe a better question is, "Is this something that is a priority for me? Is this incredibly important not is there time for me to do it?" There will almost always be ways to believe that there's not time, there will almost always be things that feel more pressing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:04

Myth number three, doing what has worked in the past will get me to fulfilling work. This one is so fascinating. If you've been successful by working hard and working lots of hours, and you're trying to move to a situation where you spend less time working, this is just one example, this is going to require a behavior change and a mindset switch. You can't expect that you will work less by working more. It's absurd, right? But that's how we tend to go into these types of situations. Let me evaluate what is working in the past, and let me do that same thing, and then it doesn't work. This is also only one example of many behaviors that you'll need to change along the way.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:53

Myth number four, If I only knew what I was looking for, I could finally go get it. This, by the way, is really similar to, "if I only knew how to be in peak health, I would totally do that." Spoiler alert, I read lots of health and biohacking and life extension books. I read those for fun. I actually love that stuff and constantly implementing things all the time. The two biggest things, the two biggest variables that really move the needle for you that come up consistently across all different types of science are consistent exercise, particularly certain types of exercise and caloric restriction. What does this mean? Move more, eat less. Is that a surprise to anybody? No, absolutely not. We say, if only I could just... and then it's actually not true. There are still going to be many challenging obstacles in the way, even if you finally know the thing that you want to do or pursue or whatever else. Plus, as you've probably heard on many episodes of the podcast, it's not really totally about knowing the thing. It's much more about understanding what creates the life that you want to build, and then figuring out how work fits into that. So that, in itself, is a myth of a myth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:12

Okay, let's talk about another one though. Number five, "I should wait and see if I get this job before I start figuring out what will be fulfilling for me." This is super common, by the way. If you're listening to this podcast at all, chances are high that you have some type of opportunities available to you, some type of opportunities. And what happens is that, yeah, you'll probably get a job offer. But this pattern of behavior is absolutely going to lead you down an unfulfilling road too. Here's why. Like, if you haven't figured out what is going to allow you to experience any level of sustainable fulfillment, or if you haven't figured out what is going to allow you to have work that actually fits, then how are you going to know, even if you get that job offer or five other job offers, how are you going to know if they're actually going to fit? And the reality is, you're not. You're just absolutely not unless you've done that work to identify specifically what creates an amazing fit, and then you've gone and tested it in reality in order to get evidence, your own evidence that you're moving the right direction for you, it's impossible to know. You're just going to make a shot in the dark guess, and you're going to likely accept an opportunity that is right in front of you, because those are really hard to turn down for almost everyone, and then you're gonna be in some variation of the same situation. Maybe it's better, maybe it's a little bit improved. But if you find yourself waiting to see if I get this job before I move forward on figuring out what is fulfilling for me, then you're in danger of falling for that myth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:58

Number six. That there is a right way to make fulfilling work happen. If I only just put in the time and do the work, then fulfilling work will happen. We tend to treat this like a college course in one way or another. Like, if I just put in the time and effort and do the work, then automatically, I will create a fulfilling work and fulfilling life. And actually, it turns out that isn't true. A ridiculously small amount of people in the world have fulfilling work that pays well, and part of the reason is this is a nonlinear journey, which means it's iterative. It isn't like getting a master's degree instead. Rather than having a very well-defined path, it is the opposite. It's different for every person. The milestones are the same. The high level milestones are exactly the same, like, you have to go through and you have to have an incredible understanding of what you believe that you want, and what creates great work for you. It works much, much better if we base that on research and actual evidence because it turns out that all humans need variations of the same thing. And then if we further define what that means for you and the life that you want to build and how you want to fit work within that, then that allows us to be able to get a hypothesis, which then you can go and test, and then you can see it is what I thought I wanted, actually what I wanted. And it's only when you do that that you can begin that iteration where you're saying, "Okay, you know what? I thought I wanted this. It's actually more about this. Now I can go ahead and move in that direction." And then it also is iterative throughout your entire life, because what you want and need will change too, and that's something that people don't expect. Instead, they feel like, "Hey, I'm going to do all this work and it's going to... I'm going to find the one thing that I love, like beekeeping. And then from there, I'm going to live out my life, and it's going to be amazing." So it turns out, it's continually changing. So if you can set yourself up with systems to address those continual changes, that creates a much more fulfilling life in the first place, but it all starts with understanding what you want and then being able to assess in reality, "is that true?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:23

Let's go on to myth number seven. Myth number seven, I should try to do this on my own. When I say this, I'm talking about what we would say is pursuing fulfilling work, building a fulfilling life. Often, we'll call it the goal of intentional career change. If you're trying to do something that most people aren't, it's not going to be easy. In fact, rather, the opposite. Olympians have coaches, complex projects have teams built around them. Building a fulfilling life, inclusive of your work, isn't like learning to solve a Rubik's cube from YouTube videos. Hard things happen through finding the right support. I want you to take Paul's story for example here. Paul was a self-proclaimed problem solver, but his misfit career turned out to be one problem he could not solve, at least not on his own. When Paul knew his job was not working out, he began to update his resume, reach out to his network, fill out applications, all the things that he thought he had to do to change careers. And as you might imagine, nothing worked, or at least it didn't work well, didn't work in the way that he wanted it to. So he decided to set a deadline for himself. If he didn't have a new job by the beginning of the year, then he would reach out for help. Well, the beginning of January, you can predict how the story goes, right? Beginning of January came and went and no amazing fulfilling job prospects on site. So that's where we got to meet him. I'm gonna let him tell you a little bit about that.

Paul Stockhoff 13:54

I feel like I have run. I had done everything I could have done within reason for it to work, and it wasn't working. I felt like my resume was okay, my contacts were fine, but I was putting stuff out, and it was yelling into the void, and nothing was coming back. And it was kind of that, "I'm doing something. It's not working. I've tried everything. It's okay to ask now." There's clear I'm missing something. And I come from the architecture construction world, and like, you realize there are specialties, like, all the trades are specialties. And I finally started going, "Oh, I just need to get the right trade in that knows how to do this, so I can get their expertise at this and do it." Like, we hire plumbers, we hire electricians because they're good at that stuff. I'm going to go get the trade that's good at career stuff. And then once I got kind of formulated that way, I was just like, "Oh, of course, I'm not good at this. This isn't my background, and that's okay." Right. And I think as I started doing that, and I just kind of flipped it around of, like, "I don't have to be good at here, but like, let's bring in the team to do this to make it easy, to make it successful, that has time to do the research on everything", and just the expertise was really helpful. Like, why would you not hire a professional to help kind of navigate some of this? And I think this realm is always kind of looked at as, like, I think early on, people don't have a full understanding of the depth that it takes. I think that's the difference between a job and a career. I think a lot of people kind of understand what a job is. It's the thing you show up, and it's that low-level expectation stuff of you get paid, here's the role. But not the career of, like, "Hey, I need to work in my strengths. I really want this great team. I need this kind of flexibility to be really successful." And you need some guidance to figure that out. And reading like, "Top five. Here's the thing to boost your career" is not going to solve it. And it's going to take time. Just like, anything that's probably worthwhile doing it's going to take time, and a little bit of investment in getting some help in navigating that situation. And once I could frame it under the well, of course, you would go get help in these other things. Go get help here. Like you just need time. You have a lack of experience here, that's okay. You have ways to get that through others. Go have a conversation.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:37

Hey, I hope that these couple of myths that we see all the time help you think a little bit differently about your own career. And by the way, if you want to bust some myths and you're not sure where to begin, check out the episodes that we mentioned. Those are linked in the show notes. Or if you're serious about making a career change, we'd love to help take that first step towards fulfilling work. Just open your email app right now. Send me an email with 'Conversation' in the subject line– Scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Just put 'Conversation' right in the subject line. I'll get you connected with the best person on our team who can help in your unique situation, and we'll figure out the very best way that we can support you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:23

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 17:28

Don't be afraid to, like, just make that really awkward connection. Because if you don't, you're right where you are, and if you do, you know maybe after that conversation, you'll still be right where you are, but maybe you'll be somewhere further along in the road.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:46

So tell me if you've ever had this thought when you were wanting to change jobs, it goes along these lines, "If only I could simply hop onto a job board, plug in the right keywords, and then poof, have my ideal career appear." If you've listened to this podcast for a while, or if you've ever searched for jobs online, you know that this is not at all how it works. But many, many people believe it is, and wonder what the heck they're doing wrong. So what if I told you the connection to your ideal role isn't buried somewhere on the internet waiting for you to put in the magical keyword spell or take the right assessment or anything else? But what if instead, it was much, much closer than that. Maybe it was through a past coworker, a fellow parent, or your kid's sports league, or maybe even your neighbor.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:39

All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it. And if you haven't already, click subscribe on your podcast player so that you can download this podcast in your sleep and you get it automatically. Even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. Until next week, adios. I'm out.