Take a Leap of Faith in Yourself!

In another article that I wrote in my blog with the title “The urgency of midlife career change” I described how in the ‘afternoon’ of our life (Jung, 1933) we experience a sudden craving to realize our ideal self (Higgins, 1987), the person who we always wanted to be in our life but somehow forgot or denied along the way.

When asked why they did not pursue the dream of their life, the vast majority of people will give you a ton of excuses about how they had a family to raise, how they were trapped in the golden cage of their career, how they fell in love and chose love instead of pursuing their dream. But what is the truth? What stops us from pursuing our dream, our passion, our charisma, our gift? Ourselves. No one else and nothing else. Nothing profound, nothing fancy, nothing substantial. Our comfort zone. That is what is stopping us from living the life our dreams, the life that we deserve.

Anyone who has been through a midlife career change knows that changing our working identity in midlife is an extremely challenging task. We are faced with the unknown and we are asked to take a leap of faith. In Greek we have an expression “in the unknown, with hope as a boat”. This expression constitutes the epitome of a lack of control, of leaving things to chance. True, one aspect of midlife career change entails an element of luck, as all other things in our life do. The harsh reality of life is that anytime we leave our house for work we might never come back. That is one truth of life, the element of lack and unforeseen consequences.

But this is one side of the coin. The other side is up to as to pursue.The other side is about stepping out of our comfort zone and taking a leap of faith. Trying our different possible selves (Ibarra, 2003), deciding which selves to try out and see how we feel about them. Challenging ourselves and thinking “I will try it out and see what happens”. This side of the coin involves stepping into our stretching zone and taking a leap of faith. But what stops us from taking this leap of faith?

We are afraid, we are anxious, we are shameful, we are vulnerable. People around us know us through our current working identity, an identity that we tried so hard to establish for years. Changing our working identity is hard even as we think about it. It involves acquiring new knowledge, new skills and most importantly, a new lifestyle and a new support system.

How will others see us? What will we tell them? What will they think?How will we know? Will we make it? Shall we fake it ? If we are leaving a working identity in which we are competent, successful and reputable, how will we achieve all of that in our next working identity? We start to question ourselves, our abilities, our motivation, our resilience. Ambivalence kicks in.

Our various different self-states (Bromberg,1996) start to talk with one another making an unbearable noise which barely allows us to think, let alone talk to others and operate in our daily life. Our confident self-state says “I know you are going to make it, so go for it!” Our fearful self-state says “ Don’t you dare change now, how will you make it?”. Our pessimistic self-state says “It’s too late now. You have made your choice and now you are going to have to live with it.” Our adventurous self-state says “Come on! Give it a try! What have you got to lose?” Our shameful self-state says “I am not good enough to make the career change that I want”.

This unbearable chatter goes on and on, unrelentlessly. We try to silence it, we try to resolve this ambivalence through pros and cons checklists, through coaching and counseling conversations, through discussion with friends and family. However, we soon realize -with great dissapointment and frustration- that talking to our beloved ones is exactly what we should not do as they want to keep us exactly where we are. The whole system in which we operate is trying to maintain its homeostasis, meaning is balance. This means that the people who love us the most are the ones that stop us the most from pursuing the dream of our life, our ideal self. And that is heartbreaking…

This is exactly why we should “shift our connections” (Ibarra, 2004). That means that if I am a consultant and I want to become a psychologist I need to meet other psychologists in order to introduce myself as a future psychologist rather than a present consultant. It is much easier to introduce yourself with a new working identity to perfect strangers rather than persuading people that you already know that you as a consultant that you have changed your working identity. This is why, the development of new networks is absolutely necessary if you want to change your working identity. Introducing yourself as an aspiring psychologist will make you believe that you actually are a psychologist. Or in the process of becoming one at least.

When we change our working identity, we need to develop a new career narrative, and it has to somehow make sense. Now, persuading others that you were once a coach and then decided that you want to be a psychotherapist as you were genuinely interested in the problems of others makes sense and is believable. But how do you persuade others that you were once an archaeologist who decided to become a psychotherapist? That is far trickier. And yet, if you work your career narrative with the help of others, you always find a connection link which makes sense to you and others. For example, both archaeologists and psychotherapists are interested in the past and both dig into the past to bring something to the surface of the present. Now, that is a connection, wouldn’t you agree?

So developing a narrative that makes sense and is believable to us and others is a sine qua non in midlife career change as it allow us and other to buy into our story and eventually make us believe that we have actually acquired a new working identity. That we have actually become a new working identity. That we have actually bridged the gap between who we we are and who we have become. Between our real self and our ideal self. That we have successfully took a leap of faith in ourselves and in our dreams.

References

Bromberg, P. M. (1996). Standing in the spaces: The multiplicity of self and the psychoanalytic relationship. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 32, 509–535.

Higgins, E. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review, 94(3), 319–340.

Ibarra, H. (2003). Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Jung, C. G. (1933). The stages of life (W. S. Dell & C. F. Baynes, Trans.). In C. G. Jung, Modern man in search for a soul (pp. 19–114). New York, NY: Harcourt. (Original work published 1930–1931)