Often when my clients hear about a friend/colleague who has made a change to their career, they say "I wish I could be as brave as X". In today's episode of The Career Confidence Podcast, I am talking about:

• The myth that those who successfully change careers are inherently braver than others is completely misleading.
• Career changes often stem from a tipping point where individuals can no longer tolerate their current situation.
• Staying in a job that doesn't fulfil you requires its own form of courage, as it can be emotionally exhausting and draining.
• Taking small, manageable steps towards a career change is more effective than waiting for a moment of exceptional bravery.
• Recognising and utilising personal strengths and resources can facilitate a successful transition, making it more accessible than you might think.

About Nicola Semple

I help people build their career confidence and achieve their career goals.

You can book a free no-obligation chat about how I can support you to achieve your career goals: https://nicolasemple.com/chat

You can get my free guide "Back Yourself: Your 7 Step Plan to Build Confidence and Achieve Your Career Goals": https://nicolasemple.com/backyourself

You can buy my book The Career Confidence Toolkit: Take Control of Your Career and Fulfil Your Potential: https://nicolasemple.com/book

Connect with me on Linked In to carry on the conversation: https://linkedin.com/in/iamnicolasemple

A new episode of The Career Confidence Podcast is released every second Friday. Hit the subscribe button and you will be the first to know when a new episode goes live.

Foreign hello, and welcome to the Career Confidence Podcast, where we share inspiring stories, practical strategies, hints and tips so that you build your career with confidence.

And in this ever changing world, I'm your host, Nicholas Semple, a career and confidence coach and author of the Career Confidence Toolkit.

Today, I am going to be busting another myth about career change.

And that myth is that the people you know who have made a change to their career are not braver than you.

I know that if you're feeling stuck and you don't feel that you can make a change to your current role, when a colleague announces or you see a post on LinkedIn with somebody saying that they've got a new job or possibly that they've transitioned into a whole new field, I know that you might be thinking, they are so brave.

I could never do that.

And when you're saying that, on the surface, it sounds like you're admiring that person, and I'm sure that you are.

But you're also putting up a shield.

It's a way of putting people who have taken the bull by the horns and made that change into this special category of humans.

This category of humans who possess qualities that you believe that you lack.

It's okay for you to stay exactly where you are because the people that do make a change are fundamentally braver than you.

It's proof that some people have what it takes and others don't.

But let's be absolutely clear.

The people who successfully change careers are not braver than you.

They're not special.

They're not blessed with some unique courage gene that you were born without.

They simply reached a point where staying stuck felt worse than moving forward.

I believe that we have romanticized career change as this exceptional act of courage, like climbing Mount Everest or running into a burning building.

This story we've told ourselves makes for inspiring LinkedIn posts, but it's not true.

The truth is much more mundane and much more accessible to all of us.

People who change careers aren't superhuman.

They're just ordinary people who get tired of feeling miserable and decided to do something about it.

They feel the same fear you feel.

They have the same practical concerns about money and about security, about what others will think.

They lie awake at night wondering if they're making a terrible mistake.

They question themselves constantly.

It's not that they don't feel the fear that you do.

It's what they're doing despite the fear.

When you're labelling someone as brave for making a career change, you're actually letting yourself off the hook.

You're suggesting that courage is something that you're born with, and some people have it and others don't.

But actually, it's a choice that anyone can make.

What I have observed from working with lots of people who have successfully changed direction, is that they didn't wake up one morning suddenly feeling brave.

They woke up one morning realising they couldn't bear to spend another day, another month, another decade, feeling the way they feel.

Their career changes weren't driven by courage, they were driven by them reaching a tipping point.

If you think about it for yourself, it's that slow buildup of that Sunday evening dread.

It's dragging yourself out of bed on a Monday morning.

It's getting to Wednesday lunchtime and realizing you've passed the halfway point.

Hooray.

You're closer to the weekend than you are to Monday morning.

It's when it all finally becomes unbearable.

And if you think about courage a little differently, staying in a job that is slowly crushing your spirit, sucking your soul, that takes its own form of courage, takes strength to show up day after day to do work that feels meaningless to you.

It takes resilience to keep on keeping on when you've lost all sense of purpose.

You've been brave all along, just in a different situation.

So the question isn't whether you're brave enough to change, it's whether you're ready to redirect the courage you've already been using to put up with being unhappy, to move towards creating something better.

When you look at someone who has successfully changed careers, you're seeing the outcome, not the process.

You're seeing them on the other side.

They're looking happy.

They're probably relieved.

And you're assuming that they must have some advantages or some qualities that you lack.

But you didn't see the months or maybe even the years of uncertainty before they made that move.

You don't see the countless roles they applied for and didn't get, the conversations with friends and family members who didn't understand why on earth they would give up their security.

You also didn't see the moments of panic at 3 o' clock in the morning, wondering if they were making a terrible mistake.

You don't see that they might have a partner willing to be the primary earner for a while.

You don't see the savings they've spent years accumulating specifically for this purpose, or the projects they've worked on to develop new skills that have helped them to take a different path.

These practicalities matter far more than courageous.

And also you probably have advantages that other people don't see.

You're so focused on what you lack that you're overlooking the resources you've actually got.

You've got years of professional experience that have given you skills and capabilities that most people would love to have.

You've got a network of relationships that you've built over time.

You likely have more financial stability than you had at the start of your career.

And your lived experience means you understand how organisations work and how to navigate complex professional situations.

These are not small things.

They're significant advantages that make career change much more feasible than you think.

You're not less equipped than people who have successfully changed careers.

You're just more focused on the obstacles than the opportunities.

And sometimes you make those obstacles bigger for yourself than they need to be.

You might think you need a massively brave grand gesture, walking away from your career and burning bridges to your past.

But people who change careers have usually taken a series of small, brave acts, and you can take them too.

The first act might be admitting to yourself that you're genuinely unhappy, rather than telling yourself you should be grateful for what you have.

That's harder than it sounds when you've spent years conditioning yourself to believe that you should be happy with what you've got.

If you have a partner, the second step might be having an honest conversation about how you're feeling.

This takes real courage, because you're going to have to be vulnerable about how you feel and the potential financial impact your decision is going to have on both of you.

The next step might be researching alternatives, even though looking feels like a sense of betrayal, or admitting that your career to date has been a mistake.

It's not.

But fear doesn't always listen to logic.

Push past that fear and start to investigate what opportunities might be available to you.

And then start reaching out to people in fields that you're interested in.

You've got to take a risk.

You might look a bit naive, you might look a bit foolish, but take that risk and start talking to people.

Try something new, even in a tiny, small way, and just accept that you're not going to be the expert in something new straight away.

Then start reaching out to people in fields that you're interested in.

You might be surprised how many people you have in your network that could actually help you make some kind of transition into a new field.

Each of these small acts requires courage, but broken down step by step, they are all manageable.

You don't need to be exceptionally brave.

You just need to be brave enough to take the first step, then the next step, and then the next one after that.

People who have made a change to their career are not superheroes who've made one dramatic leap.

They're ordinary people who kept taking small steps forward and despite the fear that they felt.

If you're waiting to feel brave before you make a change, you'll wait forever.

Because courage isn't something that you magically acquire.

It's something you develop through action, not through thinking about it.

The people you admire for their career changes didn't feel ready when they started.

They felt scared, they felt uncertain, they felt under prepared.

But they did it anyway.

And by doing it, they built their confidence.

But the cost of your waiting is adding up.

Every month you spend in work that drains you is a month that you could have been building towards something better.

Every year that passes makes the gap between where you are and where you want to be feel even wider.

And the irony is that staying stuck, I believe, requires more courage than making a change.

Showing up to work that you don't enjoy, pushing through, delivering when it doesn't make you feel happy or make you feel fulfilled, these things are exhausting.

You're already being courageous.

Start directing it towards something that you actually want.

So instead of waiting for this exceptional bravery, what you need is clarity about what you're moving towards, even if that clarity is imperfect.

And I can promise you now that to begin with, the clarity will be imperfect.

You need to make a realistic assessment of the constraints you're working within and the resources you have to support you.

You need to think strategically about how to bridge from where you are to where you want to be.

And then you need the willingness to feel uncomfortable while you figure things out.

None of these things require superhuman courage.

They require ordinary human determination combined with practical planning.

If you're listening to this and recognising yourself, maybe it's time for you to take the first small, imperfect, courageous step to what might come next for you.

If you would value support to help you push through your fear and identify what you need to make you feel happy and fulfilled at work, then perhaps your first imperfect, courageous step could be setting up time for us to chat.

And I can share with you how I might be able to help you and how we could work together to make this change happen for you.

You can do that by going to Nicholas Semple.com chat.

Thank you so much for listening.

That's all from me for today.

I've got some great episodes lined up over the next few months, so be sure to hit subscribe on your podcast app of choice so that those episodes are delivered straight to your device when they become available.

And remember, you can buy my book, the Career Confidence Toolkit on Amazon, where it's available in paperback, Kindle and Audible formats.

And if you'd like to keep in contact, be sure to download my free guide, Back yourself.

Your seven step plan to build confidence and achieve your career goals by going to nicolasemple.com backyourself as well as getting instant access to the guide.

I'll send you my fortnightly newsletter or with Career Confidence hints and tips.

Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you again very soon.

Bye for now.