Are you choosing to feel you have no choice?
Posted on June 29, 2024 by Jo Yvon, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Perhaps you feel stuck with your work and that there is no choice. But if you dig a little deeper, options do open up. Are you willing to explore?
“I want to explore other job options. But I don’t have the time and energy. So I’m stuck.”
This is my client Amanda. She feels like the job she is in is not right for her. She’s thinking of making a change but feels too busy to look into that. Change is effort. How do you even start when you’re already feeling too tired?
I want to help Amanda explore how she was looking at this situation.
I ask “What choices do you see?”
Amanda replies “Quit my job. It’s the only way I’ll have time to look for another one. But then I’ll have no income. I don’t want to do that. I’m stuck”
Me: “If you absolutely had to make time, even if it’s difficult, what would you do?”
<long silence while Amanda sits with this challenge>Amanda: “Well, I always work through lunch. I could stop doing that, and make time to think about what else I could do.”
Me: “And what else?”
Amanda: “I wonder if I could even reduce my hours. I’m not sure that’s possible. I could try . . . “
Me: “What’s stopping you doing either of these things?”
Amanda: “They won’t be easy. But honestly nothing’s really stopping me. I guess it’s my choice”
Stuckness can sometimes come from what’s known as a ‘cognitive distortion’. That means the way we think about something isn’t actually true. A common cognitive distortion is black and white thinking. It’s this or it’s that. There’s no other way. Quit or stay stuck in this job. No other options. The first step is noticing this when it’s happening.
Amanda and I go on to talk about black and white thinking. How common it is. How unhelpful it is. How it’s possible to challenge it once we see it. Importantly, she sees that there was in fact more choice than she had been seeing.
Here’s the paradox. When you feel you have no choice, you may in fact be choosing to see it that way. Once you notice that, what else is possible?
