3 Mindset Shifts You Need to Navigate Transition & Change
Since March 2020, most of us have been forced to endure more sweeping changes in the workplace than we ever have previously. The switch to working remotely has meant not just the loss of colleagues, a commute, and a routine that assured for the most part that when we left work, work was left behind, but quite literally our identity.
Our sense of who we are and where we are going in our career may feel up for grabs as we operate in an environment where we are only seen from the chest up. For most of us a significant part of our identity is formulated based on how those closest to us reflect us back. What does it do to our sense of self-identity when we can literally only be partially seen by our colleagues? This is just one of many challenges the pandemic has imposed.
As a former lawyer turned career coach, I’ve learned that transitions of all kinds can be both challenging and deeply rewarding when we learn to leverage them as an opportunity for personal transformation. In my practice, my clients come to me because they are looking for a guide to help restore their confidence, reduce self-doubt and connect them with their true self, the self that gets conditioned away after 40 plus years of being taught by our culture and family that there is a “right” way to live our lives. As a result of the often-outsized influence of these cultural constraints, it’s common for a gap to develop between whom we perceive ourselves to be and the actual person staring back at us from the mirror. Staying stuck in this gap between our feelings and our limited self-understanding is the birthplace of a midlife crisis and it’s where many of my clients find themselves when they come to see me.
In order to bridge this identity gap, I help my clients expand their self-understanding. For most of us, it’s nearly impossible to truly know and understand ourselves without some form of outside assistance. Anais Nin famously said, “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” In other words, it’s our perceptions that attract certain experiences to us. If we don’t change them, we keep attracting more of the same painful experiences into our life that usually mirrors something we experienced in our childhood. In order to bring them into greater alignment with their true self, I work with my clients using a variety of tools, including their astrological birth chart. The result is that how they earn a living represents a fuller and more complete expression of who they are. In order to embrace change as an opportunity to step into a fuller and more powerful version of ourselves, it’s critical to embrace three mindset shifts:
1. From Avoidant to Curious. When we first enter the liminal zone of a career transition, practicing curiosity is a critical mindset because it’s the gateway to understanding ourselves better from a place of nonjudgement. It allows us to be detached from the outcome while at the same time it is a powerful energy that fuels our expansion and our belief in greater possibilities. It is fluid and flexible, rather than stagnant and resistant. Curiosity is a game-changer that enables us to shift our perspective on some of the most painful experiences we go through in life because it refocuses our attention away from an outward orientation to becoming more inwardly reflective about what’s holding us back. When we give ourselves permission to ask, “what if things could be different?” This is the place from which magic can occur. I see this shift frequently with my clients who feel constrained by working too many hours at a job that is dissatisfying or for an employer that doesn’t value them, but they are afraid to take the leap in working for themselves or doing something more creative. Letting go of self-defeating patterns of behavior including the propensity to play small doesn’t happen overnight because truly detaching and giving up control is possibly one of the hardest things we are asked to do in life. Practicing curiosity consistently, however, reminds us that the true source of our power, in any circumstance in life, is internal. When we make the decision to open up to the possibilities for our lives and question the true source of our own unhappiness, this makes navigating uncertainty more easeful because we become motivated to find a deeper meaning and purpose in our experience.
2. From Fearful to Courageous. Rainer Maria Rilke said, “In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.” Whether you’ve recently left a job voluntarily to take another, been downsized due to Covid or are making a transition from being employed to self-employed, you’re likely to experience a range of uncomfortable emotions from fear of failure to financial fear. The risk is that in order to avoid any uncertainty, you decide to play it safe and endure while staying in situations that feel hard. If we do this too often, it can lead to living life from a place of bracing yourself to be prepared for the next difficult thing in life. Eventually, we become all “armored up” as Brene Brown famously describes this state in which we stop inviting joy into our life because it feels too risky. The real challenge is not that fear of disappointment can keep us stuck in the past and can cause us to play small, which it will. It’s that it can suck all the joy out of our life if we allow it to. This is why it’s imperative that during transitions we exercise the courage to feel our feelings rather than allowing the mind to control things and keep us stuck in a place of fear. Once we practice this way of living consistently there is a tremendous feeling of liberation. We realize because we have the power to say “no” to the very thing that is creating so much unhappiness in our lives.
3. From Self-Critical to Self-Compassionate. Shifting our perspective toward ourselves from one of criticism to compassion is the lynchpin to successfully navigating transition without fear and trepidation. Like many of my clients, I was hard-wired to confuse things feeling hard with things being important. It took navigating a lot of ups and downs in both my professional and personal life to teach me that it's only when we soften toward ourselves and others that we can to giving ourselves permission to create the change we truly desire in our life. Once we have given ourselves permission to learn from the past and transform our fears, there is a sense of momentum and growing resiliency because the mind is no longer in control and keeping us stuck in judgment. According to Kristen Neff, self-criticism is attractive because it gives us a false sense of control. The excitement we are finally feeling is bigger than anything we could ever feel because there was always something that blocked how we saw ourselves. When we say “yes” to expanding into our potential we are no longer paralyzed by self-judgment and self-doubt. We are learning that there is strength in being soft and yielding rather than rigid and controlling because underneath it we are firm in our sense of self and able to be more generous with ourselves and others. There is a sense of expansiveness greater than we have ever experienced and we are opening to new beginnings and a new vision for our future. Our heart is learning to express itself and our mind is more and more at peace. We are no longer pushing and striving but find that life begins to flow when our resistance and fears are no longer standing in our way. We experience greater confidence than we thought possible because we can finally accept that while failure is one possibility, it doesn’t need to define us. It’s in that place of acceptance, that the doors to possibilities greater than we ever thought possible can open.