I had a wonderful discussion with about 75 people in Europe yesterday, talking about career planning.\u00a0 An excellent question was raised about being paralyzed by fear – fear of job loss being a primary one these days.<\/p>\n
We’re all human.\u00a0 We have fears, and the general responses are Fight, Flight, or indecision and paralysis.\u00a0 Basically, paralysis means we’re hoping for\u00a0a difficult\u00a0problem to “fix itself” and go away because we don’t know how to deal with it.\u00a0 Losing your job can require a redesign of your life and all your relationships, and that’s an extremely scary prospect for most of us.<\/p>\n
But there are ways to deal with these deepest fears.\u00a0 The first step is to put a name to the fear, and recognize that\u00a0you have a deeply emotional response to it.\u00a0 Let’s say that I’m afraid of losing my job.\u00a0 Fine.\u00a0 It is what it is, and the feelings of anxiety that I have around this are real, they exist, and they’re mine.\u00a0 They’re even rational – I should<\/em> feel anxious about such a big change in my life.<\/p>\n By stating this, I can now move beyond the fear.<\/p>\n One of the most useful tools I’ve found is the “Career Plan B.”\u00a0 Here’s the key question:\u00a0 What direction would you take your career if you could no longer do your current job?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are many interesting answers you might have for a question like this:<\/p>\n Now here’s the interesting part:\u00a0 Just having that answer in your mind helps you to make useful decisions right now, even if you’re not particularly interested in changing your career.\u00a0 And even more fascinating:\u00a0 It helps to reduce that fear of change which keeps us paralyzed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n