Stop Getting Stuck in the How

Episode 27: You think of a career idea and your brain immediately jumps to the how. The How feels difficult or even impossible, so you dismiss it.

In this episode, Career Change coach Dana Stevens unpacks why this pattern is so common, why it is costing you options you have never actually examined, and what to do instead. 

In this episode you will learn:

• Why asking how before whether is the wrong sequence, and what to ask first
• How to use the "is it worth it" question to completely change your relationship to difficult routes and complicated transitions
• A practical framework for the right questions in the right order, so that new ideas get a fair hearing before the how shuts them down

Book a free Coaching Consultation:

https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Connect with Dana:

Website: https://www.danastevens.com/workwithme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_stevens_coach/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danastevens1/

If this episode resonated, follow The Career Change Studio and share it with someone who’s feeling stuck in their career.

And if you’re ready to design a working life that truly fits your needs and lifestyle, book a free consultation call at https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Special thanks to @Lou_Greenaway_Music for the piano composition and performance.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Hello and how are you this week? Today I'm gonna talk about how you can stop getting stuck in the how. I'm gonna explain what I mean because it's something that I see happening when people start really seriously thinking about what they want to do next in their careers. What typically happens is you kind of come up with an idea, maybe something you've read about or you've seen someone else doing or heard someone else talking about, or maybe it's just something you've always wondered about, and for a moment it feels really interesting, maybe even exciting, and something in you goes, Oh, maybe this could be it. But then before that feeling has even had, you know, real time to breathe with you, another part of your brain kicks in, maybe the practical part and maybe the responsible part, and it starts thinking, but how would I actually do that? How would I get there from here? How would I get the qualifications? How would I make the transition? How could I afford to retrain? Or how could I persuade anyone to take me seriously in a completely new field? How could someone like me do this? And because you don't know the answers to those questions yet, because this is new territory and you haven't looked into it yet, the questions feel unanswerable. And when they feel unanswerable, they feel impossible. And so that idea, that little flicker of something, that hopeful thing, gets shut down. So if that sounds familiar to you, I want you to know two things. The first is that this is a really common pattern that I see in the women that I work with, and the second is that it's totally understandable, right? But it does have a cost if you don't change it. So I want to explain what that is and help you to think about it differently so maybe you can do something differently instead. Let's start with what's actually happening in the moment, right? Because maybe if you understand it, it might help you approach it in a different way. When an idea is new, when it's unfamiliar territory, your brain doesn't have any real information about what getting there would actually involve. You probably haven't looked into it, you might not have spoken to anyone who's done it yet, you probably haven't done the proper research into the roots or the qualifications or even the timelines or the costs. You don't have the facts, anything concrete yet. So your brain does what brains do when they don't have information. It fills in the gap. And the way our brains tend to fill in that gap is with difficulty, right? With hardness, with I'm not sure that's possible. Not because it's looked at the evidence and concluded that it's hard, but because unfamiliar equals unknown and unknown equals uncertain, and uncertainty feels difficult. It's a shortcut our brain does, a very fast, almost automatic, very convincing shortcut that our brain does. But what's interesting here is it's typically not based on fact, it's a thought. And a thought that's been formed usually without any actual information. And the problem is that it often feels like a fact. It sort of arrives with a level of certainty, it feels very practical, feels very reasonable even, that most people treat it as if the research has already been done and the verdict is in. But actually, for lots of you, lots of people I work with, this happens before any research has even been done. The idea has been dismissed before it's even been properly considered. And here's why that's important, because you're not making decisions based on what is actually possible. You're making decisions based on what your brain assumes is possible before it's even looked. And they are two very different things. And one of them is costing you options that you've never actually examined. Yeah. So your brain is telling you something will be hard, and when it does that, I want you to realize that that's not the same thing as something actually being hard. It's filling in a blank when it doesn't have the information. That's a thought and not a fact, right? And that's useful to understand. So if jumping straight to the how is the problem, what's the alternative, right? What could you be asking first instead? A different question is a better question, is not how, but could this be right for me? Not how would I get there, but could this be right for me? Would I actually want to? Does this feel like something that fits the life I want? Does the day-to-day of it, this career, this job, this opportunity I'm considering, does the day-to-day of it appeal? What would I actually be doing? What does the kind of work it involves feel like? The environment it happens in, the people it would put me around, does any of that feel like it resonates with who I am now or who I want to be in the future and how I want to live? Could this be right for me needs to come before? Because if the answer is no, then the how is completely irrelevant, right? But if the answer is yes, then the how becomes a problem worth solving rather than a reason to give up. Now, if you're sitting here thinking, but I don't know how to answer whether or not this feels right for me, I don't know what I want or what would feel like a fit, that's not a failing, that's not a massive problem. All this simply means is you're trying to evaluate options without having first built your framework to evaluate them against. Now that's why I create a framework with my clients called your life first criteria. And it's always, always the first place to start before you look at jobs, before you research options, before you ask how or is it right for me about anything specific, you need to know what success looks like for you personally at this stage of your life, what matters to you, what kind of days you want to have, what you need your work to give you, and what you need it to cost you, what your non-negotiables are. Without that, you're trying to evaluate options against a set of criteria that exists only vaguely and inconsistently in your head, which is why the process feels so overwhelming and hard. You're not missing the ideas, you're missing the filter. So once you have your life first criteria, the could it be right for me question becomes much more answerable. And then you can start to give ideas a fair hearing before the how shuts them down. There's also a related pattern that I wanted to highlight because lots of people, when they encounter a career idea or an option about what they could do next, start evaluating it by asking, could I do that? And what they're typically assessing, often without even realizing it, is they're thinking, could I walk into that job now as who I am today? Right? Could I walk into that job tomorrow, next week, next month? Do I have the qualifications? And then when they're really thinking is do I have the qualifications right now? Do I have the experience already? Would someone hire me for that role today? And they're typically thinking about it based on what is currently on their CV. And of course, if we are talking about a genuine career change, the answer is almost always no. That's the whole point, right? You're not already doing the thing. You do not yet have the specific credentials or track record for a brand new field. So the answer is often no. I couldn't go and do that straight away. And then what our brain does is it just dismisses that idea. But this is actually a really strange way when you think about it to try and evaluate a potential future. Because the question is never about whether you could go and do it tomorrow or even next week or next month. The more helpful question is whether you want to be doing it in the future, in two years' time, in five years' time, maybe even ten years' time, right? Whether it's the right destination, even if the route there takes time. Think about it this way. If you told someone who was training to be a doctor that they couldn't go and practice medicine tomorrow, they'd be like, yeah, I know. I know I'm not ready yet, right? That's the point. The point is in seven years I'm going to be doing the thing I've decided I want to spend my working life doing. Right? The length of the path doesn't change the rightness of the destination. And the same applies here. The relevant question is like, not can I go and do this tomorrow, it's would I want to be doing this in the future? And if the answer is yes, then the how, whether it turns out to be easy or complicated, this becomes something that you're trying to resolve and make a plan for, rather than it becoming a reason to rule it out before you've even begun. And you know, I'm not saying everyone's going to take seven years to transition. Of course you're not, right? Sometimes it's months or one year. But you've got to be willing to think about the destination being right, so that the length of the journey isn't the thing that determines whether the destination is right for you. So what a lot of this boils down to is this central question that I want you to keep asking yourself when you're considering other options, right? It's always, is it worth it? Does this feel worth it? Because that's really what you're trying to get to when you're exploring a career idea. Not can I do it, not even do I want to do it in theory, right? But is the destination worth the journey? Is what is waiting on the other side of this, the other side of the time or the effort or the uncertainty and transition, right? Does that feel worth it? And the reason this question matters so much is because it really changes how you respond to any difficulty or challenges, right? Because if you don't know whether something is worth it, then the first sign of a complicated route is enough to make you give up. But if you know, really know that the destination is right for you, then a complicated route becomes something you look for a way around rather than a reason to stop. Now, not all changes you might choose might be complicated, right? Or even involve retraining. Some people make changes based on existing skills, and it's not always about a long journey to make change. I just want to make that point here because some people's changes aren't this radical or aren't difficult or don't involve lots of retraining or changing, but to get to the right path for you, you've got to be willing to consider all of the options. So it's really useful to allow yourself time, give yourself permission to explore bigger ideas, even if it's to park them and think that they're not right for you. And I want to just share something with you here. When I first started thinking seriously about becoming a coach, I wasn't thinking evaluating it based on who I was then, or whether I thought anyone would be able to hire me straight away as a coach, or I could set up my business like straight away and immediately start selling my services as a coach. I was thinking that looks like exactly the kind of work I would love to be doing. I can see myself doing that. I can see myself in it, I can feel how right it is for me. And if it takes me a year, two years, three years to get there, four years more, it will absolutely be worth it for me. Honestly, that was the thought. And it could have been very easy to spend weeks or months, even years, getting caught up in the how. And instead, I decided it was somewhere worth getting to. And then I was genuinely motivated to figure out the how rather than letting it be something that stopped me before I started. I was retraining with two young kids, a full-on job, trying to run the house. It was like it was a lot, but instead of seeing that as the problem, I thought this is going to be worth it. I'm going to figure out how to make this work. And that's what I see in the clients who make big, meaningful changes, right? They're not the ones who found the easiest routes necessarily. They're the ones who got clear enough on the destination that they were heading towards, so that the route, however it unfolded for them, felt worth navigating? Here's a question that might be helpful for you to start thinking about. If you've got another 20 years of work ahead of you or whatever your time frame is, and there is something you've been quietly dismissing because you couldn't see how to get there from here, would a year or two years of transition feel worth it?

unknown 14:03

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Would even three or four years feel worth it if what was waiting on the other side was work that genuinely fitted your life? Right? For most people, when they actually sit with that question, honestly, the answer is yes. Of course it would. The maths aren't complicated, right? The problem is that we rarely stop long enough to do them. So I'll tell you another story about one of the clients I worked with. He um was working full-time, um, he had four kids, he was often doing a lot of the childcare, main childcare for the kids, because his wife worked away a lot and he was making a career change. And if I'd told him at the beginning to make a change, you're gonna have to find a way to study for five years, part-time in between working, he would have been like, No, I don't want to do that. But instead, we focused on like what it is that he did want to do, found this passion and interest that he had in kind of the human body and helping people, and he decided that he wants to be an osteopath, right? And so he got so excited by the idea of being an osteopath and the lifestyle it could give him, how much he could help people, the purpose it would give him, that when we came to really explore the how and realize that he'd need to retrain, do his degree whilst working and looking after the kids, and therefore it would be five years part-time, he decided it would be worth it. And he was 48. So I'm saying that because I get lots of people who are younger than that telling me that they could never study or never take that time out. And if you decide that, that's totally fine as well. I'm not saying every that's the right path for everyone, but what I'm saying is it is possible to do that, to study if you want to, if you decide it is worth it for you, and that's the thing, but you have to start there. Is where you're going, is the destination worth the question? And if the answer is yes, then the how becomes a problem worth solving rather than a reason to stop. So I just want to give you something practical to take away from this episode because I don't want this to stay as like this abstract thing. I want you to be able to use it next time an idea arrives, and your brain immediately tries to shut it down with a how question. Here is the order of questions that will actually serve you, right? The first question is not how. It's do I have a clear enough sense of what I want and need for my next chapter to even evaluate this properly? This is the question I would start with. Because if the answer is no, if you're not sure what you're looking for or what would feel like a fit, then this is the thing you must address first. Not start thinking about options, not start on LinkedIn scrolling different things, not endlessly looking at lists of jobs. You've got to start with your criteria, your life first criteria. Really getting clear on what success looks like for you personally at this stage of your life, what kind of days you want to have, what your work needs to give you, what your non-negotiables are. Without that, you can't evaluate anything properly, and the going around in circles will continue, right? And once you have that foundation, then and only then would I start considering all the options, right? Then you can start the question of does this idea, this idea I've got in principle feel like it could be a good fit for me? It's not, could I do it tomorrow? Do I know how to get there now? But does the substance of it, what I would actually be doing each day, really feel like it resonates with how I want to work and live? Does it feel exciting to me? If the answer is yes, even tentatively, then the third question is, does the destination feel worth getting to? If I imagine myself doing this work in two years or five years, does that feel right? Does it feel like somewhere I want to end up? And only once you've answered those questions, and if the answers are pointing in the same direction, do you start asking the how then? Then you could ask, how could I make this transition? What different routes exist? What qualifications might I need? How have other people done this? Are there multiple ways to get there? And here is what changes when you ask how from that position. You are not asking it as a test that the idea has to pass. You're asking it as a genuine problem to solve because you already know the destination is worth getting to. Which means that if your first bit of research shows a complicated path, your response is not I knew it, that's impossible. It's okay, are there other routes? Other ways to qualify, other ways to make this transition work for my circumstances. Do I need to get an interim job or whatever else it is, right? That is a completely different relationship to the how. And it produces completely different results. So, just to finish off today, if you've resonated with this pattern of jumping straight from idea to how and letting the how shut the idea down before it's been properly considered, just know it's a very common pattern, right? And it's not that there's anything wrong with you, it's just what brains do when they encounter unfamiliar territory. They fill in the blanks with difficulty, and difficulty feels like impossibility, and impossibility feels like a reason to stop. But that feeling is not evidence, it's an assumption. And assumptions made without information are not the same as conclusions reached after looking properly. The reframe is to change the sequence. Asking, could this be the right fit for me before asking how? Is it a fit before is it feasible? Is it worth getting to before is it easy to get to? And to build your life first criteria first so that you have something real and personal to measure your ideas against rather than just trying to evaluate everything in a vacuum. And then when the how, or if the how does get complicated, as it sometimes does, you want to stay connected to the worth in question, right? Because when you know where you're going and why, a complicated route is something you can navigate, not something that stops you. So if you have an idea that you've been dismissing because you couldn't see how to get there, I want to encourage you to give it another look. Not through the lens of tomorrow, but through the lens of the future you. Not who you are now, but who you could be in a year, two years, three years, five years, if you let yourself properly explore it. That version of you is worth figuring out the how for. And if you want help doing any of this work, doing any of this work properly, you can book a free consultation with me. The link is in the show notes. Come and have a conversation. We can talk about our life first criteria, you can bring the ideas, maybe the ones you've been dismissing, we can start there. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.