653: The Limiting Beliefs Keeping You Stuck in Work That Doesn’t Fit (And How to Break Free!)

(00:00) Aaron B: I was driving home one day, and I was like, “Man, I would rather die than go in tomorrow.”

(00:04) Scott Anthony Barlow: That's what Aaron told himself commuting home from his job in construction management one day.

(00:08) Aaron B: All of the stories that you're telling yourself about what can go wrong if you do something, in all likelihood, the worst case is where you're at.

(00:17) Scott Anthony Barlow: On the outside, Aaron was making good money with a respected position. But he'd reached a breaking point so severe that he seriously considered whether or not he should jump out of his office window so he could get a few weeks off of work. Meanwhile, halfway across the country, Steph was working as an operations manager at Amazon.

(00:35) Steph Strine: They looked for people that, you know, can be there for 12 hours at a time and kind of put their life on pause during the holidays. We have to start working at like midnight. I have one life to live, and if I don't do this, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life, no matter what way it happens.

(00:51) Scott Anthony Barlow: Two completely different people, two different careers, but the exact same crisis. They were both trapped, not by their circumstances, but by the stories they've been telling themselves for years. Stories so convincing, so deeply embedded that they couldn't see the way out, sitting right in front of them.

If you've ever felt stuck in work that doesn't fit, convinced that certain paths just aren't for you, then Aaron and Steph's breakthroughs might completely change how you think about what's possible for your career. In this episode, we'll cover how they broke free of limitations that they’d imposed upon themselves and how you can do the same.

This is Happen To Your Career, the podcast that brings you real people, real transformations, and the courage to do work that truly fits. By the way, if you haven't already subscribed, click Follow right now so you don't miss any new episodes.

Now, here's Aaron describing what he had tried to do in the past.

(01:47) Aaron B: I believed that I had tried law and failed, like that was the number one thing that was holding me back. You know, before I left my previous employment, everyone was saying, “Well, you should book a construction law. That's a pretty natural transition for you.” Yeah. It's one of those things where it's like you hear that and you make the right noises, but inside you're like, “You don't know anything about me.”

When it turns out that that voice that's saying that inside your head's the one that's wrong, but it was this massive wall of this huge resistance that like, “Everyone thinks you should do this.” But no, it won't work out for me. I've tried that. I know better. I know better than you.

(02:31) Scott Anthony Barlow: Aaron had convinced himself that he'd tried law and he'd failed, but the truth, well, he'd not really ever tried at all. Fresh out of law school during the 2008 recession, he'd looked for legal work but hadn't found what he wanted. So instead of viewing this as a temporary setback, he created a story that, “I'm not cut out for law. I failed.” That door closed forever. For over a decade, this false narrative kept him trapped in work that slowly drained his soul. But here's the fascinating part: his analytical mind, which should have helped him easily see through this story, it actually reinforced it.

(03:09) Aaron B: Well, it's, you know, believing too much in the strengths of your convictions. And so, yeah, what you're good at is analysis and context and which, it's funny you say context, connect. I mean, those are two of my top five as well. Contexts and connectedness.

(03:24) Scott Anthony Barlow: Oh, like your Clifton strengths themes?

(03:26) Aaron B: Yeah. So I need–

(03:28) Scott Anthony Barlow: Not surprised.

(03:29) Aaron B: Yeah. I can spin a yarn that will fool myself.

(03:31) Scott Anthony Barlow: Think about that for just a moment. Aaron's greatest strength, his analytical ability, became his greatest weakness when it came to a career change. He was so good at building logical arguments that he created an ironclad case for why he couldn't practice law. By the way, this isn't just Aaron. Steph faced a different kind of story, but equally limiting.

(03:53) Steph Strine: I had this self-limiting belief that like, I could never make money doing fitness full-time. Like I always, I think it was something that was just kind of like pitched to me growing up, is that like, people don't make money in the fitness world, or, “You can't do that full-time. You won't be making the amount of money that you will.” Which is true, actually. That is true. But at the time, I was making really great money and hated waking up every single day.

(04:18) Scott Anthony Barlow: Steph had been taught and believed for years that you can't make money in fitness. So even though she was teaching yoga and taking classes constantly outside of work, even though it was clearly her passion, she kept it as a side hustle.

The story was so pervasive, so strong that she admitted making great money, but hating every day of it, and still couldn't see fitness as any kind of viable career path. Both Aaron and Steph were living proof of something psychologists call confirmation bias. You might have heard of this, and once we are believing something about ourselves, we unconsciously seek evidence that supports that belief while ignoring all of the other evidence that might contradict it.

But this is the part where their stories take a turn. Sometimes, it takes hitting rock bottom to question all of these stories that we've been telling ourselves for years.

(05:07) Aaron B: I got to the point of just like I was having thoughts of like, I was driving home one day, and I was like, “Man, I would rather die than go in tomorrow.”

I've had depressive episodes before, and like identified that as, “Oh wow. Like, no, there's nothing that is worth wanting to hurt yourself over.” I don't know that I really won't even get into that, but it's just like having the presence of mind at that point, say, “No, like this is enough.”

(05:35) Scott Anthony Barlow: Aaron reached what he referred to as his breaking point, but something crucial happened at that moment.

Instead of viewing this as confirmation that he was trapped, he finally recognized it as a sign that something had to change. He stopped asking, “Why am I stuck?” And started asking, “What if I'm wrong about my limitations?” For Steph, the catalyst came when personal loss collided with professional misery.

(06:01) Steph Strine: My grandmother had also passed away late last year, and that was around the time that I was at my new job with Amazon in Atlanta, and I was just like, I can't. I got to that point where I was just like, “I cannot do this and make a lot of money 'cause I'm terribly unhappy.”

(06:16) Scott Anthony Barlow: Loss has a really interesting way of clarifying what really matters. Steph's grandmother's death forced her to confront a harsh truth. Money without fulfillment isn't success. It's a different kind of failure. Both of them reached a point where the cost of staying stuck became higher than the risk of challenging their limiting beliefs, and that's when the real breakthroughs began.

(06:37) Aaron B: I was doing the StrengthsFinder. I was looking at those things in tandem with the responses I had gotten from friends and family about, “What do you do well?” “What do I think of when I think of you?” And the types of responses there, like the StrengthsFinder, is your, you know, your stated preferences, right? Like these are the things that, but what other people say about you are the revealed preferences. You know, this is like, this is how you are, what you're not thinking about who you are.

It was like half or 75% of the responses were, “Well, you're a compassionate problem solver. Very analytical.” And you know, so you're Googling ‘problem solver’ and ‘compassionate helper', along with a few of those strengths from the strengths finder, and everything I got like lawyers at the top of the list, so I see that, and it's like, “Nah, this list doesn't work. I gotta go find another.”

(07:30) Scott Anthony Barlow: So this moment is actually pretty hilarious, but also eye-opening. Erica gets the feedback, exercise results that scream, “Lawyer! Lawyer!” And his first reaction is, “This list must be wrong.” That is how powerful our limiting beliefs can be. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence, we reject it rather than question our story.

But fortunately, Aaron had a moment of awakening, which he described as almost spiritual, when he finally challenged his core belief.

(07:57) Aaron B: I was meeting with her, we were talking, and she's like, “Yeah, the tough thing about this is that like no one can tell you what the answer is.” You know, it's like, “Yeah, I know it's awful. I just wish like someone give me a sign.” It was like this, it was a prayer, right? Like it was this like from your gut, like this is what I need, and like within five minutes, like that, “Why don't you practice law? This is what you need to do.” It just like pops into my head, and I know that's not a believable story, but it is how it happened.

And it was like this, it was this consuming thing, you know, it's like, no, like what, I need to, like, I need to see this out. And it was like this awakening of like certainly ambition, but like, “No, you're not gonna knock me down”

(08:48) Scott Anthony Barlow: For Steph, the breakthrough came through a different exercise. Reaching out to people who knew her best.

(08:54) Steph Strine: There's an exercise that y'all have us do in the bootcamp that, I mean, quite frankly, like changed my life, kind of getting emotional about it, talking about it, but like reaching out to friends and family about like, “This is how I’d introduced Steph.” And almost every single person said things that like I just hadn't really internalized, or I thought that was like, “Yeah, whatever I do that.” Like, you know, I bring people together, or like I inspire people to make changes in their lives. And it's like, not that I wasn't doing that in the military or at Amazon, 'cause in a sense I feel like I did, I brought that element. But like most of the time, I was doing that in a fitness room, and I just had this overwhelming sense in my body.

I was like, “I am not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.” Like I need to go do this now. Even if I don't know what it looks like. And as someone that likes to know what things look like, it was a lot of fear. I was like, “I don't know how I'm gonna make money. I don't know where am I gonna go?”

It was a lot of just like I really needed to see it, and I read it and I got it from a lot of people, a lot. And I was like, “I can't deny this from people that I trust and value.” Like, even mentors in the military were saying like, “Fitness professional,” you know, and I was like, “What?” Like now that I–I mean like, I mean, I guess, but it was just, I needed to see it to believe it.

(10:20) Scott Anthony Barlow: That last statement, “I needed to see it to believe it.” Sometimes, the people around us see our potential more clearly than what we do. Both Aaron and Steph discovered that their limiting beliefs weren't shared by anyone else. Everyone could see what they couldn't see for themselves. Now, once they questioned their stories, everything changed rather quickly.

Aaron returned to law. He’s now thriving as an attorney. Steph left Amazon, moved to New York, started building an entirely different career. But here's the most important part. Neither of them needed to acquire new skills or dramatically change their circumstances. They just needed to stop believing the stories that were keeping them stuck and start making movement on what mattered to them.

(11:02) Aaron B: Why not try? There is nothing that could get worse, so then that could have broke things with this, “I tried and failed.” It was just like, “Oh, like I have to try this.”

(11:15) Steph Strine: And once I decide on something, I just kind of get the wheels going. And it’s actually pretty quite insane how quickly I started to roll once I like made that decision of like, “Okay, I am gonna go for this.”

(11:28) Scott Anthony Barlow: Both Aaron and Steph discovered that their impossible career changes became possible the moment they stopped believing their own limitations. Their journeys reveal five essential truths that we see over and over again about breaking free from the stories that keep us stuck. I wanna go over those for you.

Number one, recognize that your biggest strengths can become your biggest blind spots.

For example, Aaron's analytical mind built such a convincing case for why he couldn't practice law. He never questioned it. And if you're particularly good at something, if something is a strength, whether it's analysis, planning, for me, being futuristic, practicality, whatever it is for you. Be especially wary of how you might be accidentally using these strengths and how they might be working against you.

Number two, ask people you know well what they see in you. Both Aaron and Steph were shocked, just literally shocked by the consistency of feedback that they received. Sometimes we're the last to see our own obvious talents and inclinations.

Number three, question the story behind your cant’s. When you catch yourself saying, “I can't do that because…”

That's where you should dig deeper. Is that really true? “Why can't I do that? Why does this keep showing up?” Or is it a story you've been telling yourself for so long that now it feels like a fact?

Number four, recognize that hitting bottom isn't actually a failure. Sometimes it's clarity. Both Aaron and Steph reached crisis points that became turning points.

If you're miserable in your current situation, that's not a sign you're stuck. It's a sign you need to question the beliefs keeping you there.

Number five, remember that most of our career limitations are self-imposed. Aaron never really tried law. Steph never seriously explored fitness as a potential viable career.

They weren't stopped by external barriers. They were stopped by their internal stories. This is something we see over and over and over again. The most transformative question you can ask yourself isn't, “What should I do?” It's what stories am I telling myself about what I can't do, and what if they're wrong?

You might find out that the only thing standing between you and that career and the life that you love might just be yourself.

So by the way, if you're ready to stop believing the stories that are actually keeping you stuck and start creating the career and the life that you want, drop me an email directly, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put “Conversation” in the subject line. We'll connect you with the right person on our team, and we'll figure out the very best way that we can support you.

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