The Career Change Studiois your go-to podcast to help you design and create a new working life so that you can live the way you want and need in your next chapter. Join Certified Career Change Coach Dana Stevens for practical advice, inspiration, mindset shifts, and proven strategies to help you move on from unfulfilling work, explore new directions, and design a career that works for you.
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Episode 23: Part two of a two part series.
In Part One we looked at indecision as an active choice with hidden costs. In Part Two, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens goes deeper into the most common reason women stay stuck: the very convincing, very rational-sounding belief that now is not quite the right time. Work needs to be less busy. Life needs to calm down. Each reason sounds entirely sensible. But underneath almost all of them is something else. In this episode Dana unpacks what the waiting is really about, why the conditions you are waiting for rarely arrive on their own, and what a different kind of readiness actually looks like.
In this episode you will learn:
The most common waiting patterns Dana hears from her clients and what they are really about
Why "I'll do it when I feel more ready" is one of the most common and least useful stories we tell ourselves
What you are actually waiting for when you say the time isn't right yet
Why the clarity and confidence you are waiting to feel is something the work produces, not a prerequisite for starting it
Special thanks to @Lou_Greenaway_Music for the piano composition and performance.
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Hello and welcome to part two of a little two-part series that I'm doing. So if you haven't listened to part one yet from last week, which is episode 22 of the podcast, I'd encourage you to go back and start there because it's called indecision is a choice and it sets up a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. But if you are jumping in here, the short version is this indecision is not this neutral holding position that we like to think it is. It's actually an active choice that comes with real costs. And the question I ended with last week was so if that's true, why do we keep making it? And today we're going to answer that question because the most common reason I see women stay in indecision is not because they don't care about making a change, quite the opposite. It's because they're waiting, often waiting for the right moment, the perfect moment, waiting until things settle down, until life is less hectic, until work is less busy, waiting until they've finished what they started or sorted out this other thing first, or feeling a little more ready. And those reasons feel so solid, right? Really responsible and rational and considered, which is exactly what makes them so hard to see through. So today I want to look properly at this waiting pattern, where it comes from, why the reasons it gives us are so convincing, and what is actually going on underneath them, and most importantly, how you can think about them in a different way instead. Let me describe something and I want you to think about whether any of it sounds familiar. So you know something needs to change, you've known for a while, you've thought about it, maybe spoken to people about it, maybe even looked into getting some support, and then something comes up: a busy period at work, a family thing, a project you need to finish, and you think, oh, I'll just deal with this first. Then I'll probably focus on myself, then I'll probably make time for this career thing. And then that thing passes, and then there's another thing. And then you think actually it would make more sense to wait until after the summer, or until after Christmas, or until the new year, or when the kids go back to school, or until the children are a bit older, or until I've finished this course I've started, or until I've done the house up, or until you've got more time to think. Right? And each of these reasons on their own is completely understandable, right? Even reasonable. The timing genuinely isn't always ideal. Life does get in the way. Finishing what you've started before beginning something new sounds sensible. But here is what I notice. For the women I work with, the waiting rarely ends because the conditions improve. It ends because something shifts internally. Because they get to a point where the cost of staying stuck becomes greater than the fear of moving. Or because someone or something gives them permission to prioritize themselves, or because they finally get the support that helps them do the thing that they couldn't do alone. The right time does not tend to arrive on its own. It tends to be created by a decision. So if the conditions don't usually change on their own, what is the waiting actually all about? And I want to offer you something here that might be, I don't know, maybe a little uncomfortable to hear, but I think it's a really useful thing that I can share with you because most of the time when we're waiting for the right conditions, we're not actually waiting for the conditions. In fact, we're managing fear. And the conditions are just the most convincing story we've found to make that feel acceptable. Because making a change can feel scary. Even when you know you need to make it, even when you're miserable where you are, there is something that can feel terrifying about stepping into the unknown. And look, it makes sense, right? Our survival brain is primed from an evolutionary standpoint to prefer the safety of what is known rather than what is unknown, as it may lead to potential danger in inverted commas. So of course we worry about potentially getting it wrong, about investing in something and having it not work out, about being the person who tried and failed rather than the person who was sensibly thinking it through. And our minds are really good at generating reasons that protect us from that fear. Reasons that sound like wisdom rather than avoidance, that sound like responsibility rather than retreat. Saying I want to make sure I'm fully ready sounds so much better than I'm frightened. Saying I need to finish what I've started sounds much more considered than I'm worried this won't work and I don't want to face that yet. Saying now maybe this just isn't quite the right time for me sounds far more reasonable than I don't really trust myself to make this decision. But underneath all the sensible reasons, that is often what is there. Fear, doubt, worry, a deep uncertainty about whether this will actually work, whether you're capable of it, sometimes even whether you deserve it. And here is the thing about waiting as a response to fear. It does not reduce the fear, but ultimately it just delays it. And while you're waiting, the fear starts to become the reason that the moment never quite arrives. So let me go through some of the most common versions of this that I hear, because I think naming them individually might be useful for you, right? Because it might resonate with you personally. So firstly, I'll do it once things settle down at work. So this one, honestly, so common, right? And I get it. And sometimes things do settle down at work, but guess what? They usually get busy again. And then there's a new project, a new pitch, a restructure, a change of management. Work in most people's experience does not ever settle down in a sustained way. It fluctuates. And if you're waiting for a sustained calm period to begin working on your own life, you may be simply waiting for something that does not exist in the form that you are imagining. Right? Another one I hear, I'll do it once I finish this course or this project. So you might have already signed up for something and be in the middle of it. And like I mentioned earlier, this one is particularly interesting because it sounds so responsible. You don't want to be someone who quits. You invested money and you want to get your money's worth, you want to finish things off properly. And I do understand that completely, but sometimes it can be useful to ask yourself, how long have I been working on this thing? Am I much closer now to finishing it? I say this because sometimes the work we started but didn't finish isn't really about waiting for it to be completed. Maybe it's about waiting for it to be replaced by something that actually fits where we are now. Another one that comes up all the time is I just need time out. I need a holiday, or I'll do it during a sabbatical, or once I'm on maternity leave. And there's something really appealing about this idea of doing this kind of work in a protected pocket of time, right? Like we imagine when all the pressures of everyday life and work have lifted, everything's going to be so much easier. All the answers will arrive. And I look, I understand why that feels right, but here's the thing: sabbaticals, maternity leave are just not usually the clear, spacious periods where we're just sitting around thinking all the time that we imagine them to be. They come with their own demands, their own adjustments, their own pressures. But really, it's because it's rarely about having this huge expanse of time, people think that they just need time. But what's usually missing is a knowledge of how to approach your thinking, how to get clarity, how to make decisions, how to figure out what it is you want to do next. It's not just a lack of time. I've honestly had lots of clients who've told me that they went on a sabbatical or took maternity leave or went on an extended holiday or took some time off work, thinking the answer would just appear, that just the time itself would help the answer to appear. And honestly, it really doesn't happen that way because people still didn't know how to approach things or what to focus on. And often the clarity people hope to find in that time is so much more accessible with structured support than it is alone in a quieter moment. Another one that might be coming up for you is I'll do it when I feel ready. I just need to be more ready. Now we did talk about this in part one in last week's podcast episode, but I want to say it again here because it really is so important. Ready is not a feeling that arrives before you begin. It's a feeling that emerges from beginning, right? From taking that decision to begin and starting something. You're not going to feel ready before you start. It's really rare, right? You normally feel it once you have started. The women I've worked with who describe a turning point in their confidence are not the ones who waited until they felt ready. They are the ones who started before they did and were willing to do it imperfectly, messily, and become ready through the act of starting. So, something for you to think about, a little question for you to consider, right? What specifically would need to be true for you for the time to feel right? Right? What would make the time feel right for you to get started? Now don't think about this in like a vague way. I really want you to get specific. What would need to have happened or changed or settled down for you to feel like now is the moment to start making the changes you want? Because if you can name it clearly and it's genuinely something that's achievable in a reasonable time frame, that is useful information. Maybe there is a real practical thing that needs to happen first. But if the answer is something more like, I just need to feel more settled, or things would need to feel a bit calmer, or I'd need to feel more sure, I just want to gently offer back to you that those are feelings and not conditions. And feelings do not magically change on their own. They change because of the work we do on the thinking that creates them. Right? They change because we can manage our minds, we can manage our thoughts. Our thoughts create our feelings, which means that the thing that you are waiting to feel is actually part of what the work produces. You're waiting to feel ready to do something that would make you feel ready. I'm gonna say that again. You're waiting to feel ready to do something that would make you feel ready. And that loops really hard to break from the outside, right? This is one of the things I find most meaningful about the work I do because so many of the women I work with arrive feeling not ready, not sure, completely unsettled by the whole idea of starting some change. And they leave with the clarity, the confidence in the direction that they were waiting to have before they began. The mindset work, the coaching creates the thing they were waiting for, but it can only do that from the inside. So, what if readiness is not about the conditions being right, but about you deciding that you are the kind of person who acts even when the conditions aren't perfect? Because that I think is one of the most powerful shifts. Not the time is right now, but I am someone who moves forward even when the time doesn't feel perfect, even when I'm not sure, even when things aren't settled, because I know the cost of waiting is real, and I am no longer willing to keep paying it. That's a really different kind of readiness. It's not, it's not just waiting for a magical feeling to arrive, it's an identity that you choose. And it's available to you right now, right? Not after the sabbatical, not when things calm down at work, not when life gets less busy, not once you've sorted everything else out. It's available to you right now. What if the version of you who makes the change, who has clarity in the direction, who creates a working life that really works for you, doesn't wait until everything is perfect, but starts in the middle of the imperfect, just like you can. So this is our two-part series, right? In part one, episode 22, we looked at indecision as a choice with real and hidden costs, and today we went a level deeper into the specific pattern of waiting, what drives it, why the reasons it gives us are so convincing, and what is actually on the other side of it. And if you've resonated with any of this today, as always, I don't want you to judge yourself. I want you to know that this awareness is useful, is the beginning of something, is a step forward for you. And I also want you to know that it's one of the most human and understandable things there is to be feeling this way, right? We're not weak because of it. You're not unusually indecisive. You're someone who cares about getting this right and who has been trying to protect yourself from the fear of getting it wrong. And that's okay. And we can move forward with fear and learn how to work alongside it. You can learn how to manage your mindset around it, right? That pattern can change. I see it change in the women I work with all the time. You just need the right support, the right structure, and someone in your corner who can see clearly what you can't always see yourself. So if you're ready, or maybe you're not quite ready yet, but you're tired of waiting, come and have a conversation with me. The link to book a free consultation is in the show notes. That is the decision. Everything else follows from there. That's it for today. I will see you next week. Bye for now.
