I am currently coaching a woman who is looking to take on her first Chief role. She has 2 exciting opportunities that she is actively interviewing for right now. This is the next step in her journey. She has the skills, experience, and education to move into the job. It is what she has been intentionally building towards in her career.
😧 So I was a bit surprised in a recent coaching session when she told me about a third opportunity. She said she was in the second round of interviews for a director role.
Not a Chief role. Not the role she had been working towards.
Because I am a mindset coach, I had to ask her what the thought was that she had when she applied to this role and she said, “This is my safety job.”
I get that. It is nice to feel like you have something to fall back on when you are on a job search, but I know that was not the whole story.
I then asked her what she was feeling when she applied.
Her response … self-doubt.
Then I understood.
Her primitive brain had hijacked her career dream.
What to do when your primitive brain decides to hijack your career dream
Our primitive brain has only 3 things that are important to it:
1. Avoid pain.
2. Move towards comfort/pleasure.
3. Conserve energy.
When we decide to go after a dream, something new and different, our brains immediately want to SHUT THAT SH*T DOWN!
When we stay where we are then we get to avoid the pain of uncertainty, we get to stay in what we know – our comfort zone – and we do not have to use our energy doing new things.
And nothing changes.
Once my client recognized what was happening, that her primitive brain was doing its job trying very hard to get her to believe that she needed to chase after roles that we not in alignment with her career dream, she had an epiphany.
“Career Safety is Boring!”.
She did not want boring.
She wanted adventure. She wanted growth. She wanted to make a larger impact in her new role.
She was going to manage her mind, not let her primitive brain hijack her dreams.
💥 Bam! 💥
