What is driving your career decisions: purpose or fear?
The are two reasons to do anything
Iris emailed me with a predicament:
She loves her job (that’s not the predicament part). This part-time role affords her time to care for her elderly father. She’s doing meaningful work. And she has the best manager she’s ever had.
But that manager is about to retire, and she’s asked Iris and her colleague, Felipe, to step up as co-directors and fill her position.
Iris is conflicted because this would be a career move. It would be a step up and a bump in salary, title, and responsibly. But—does she want more responsibility? She doesn't know. She’s just not sure what to do.
There are reasons for Iris to take the job, and reasons for her to stay right where she is.
Fear or purpose?
As a career coach, I’ve learned that the driver for every reason is one of two things:
Purpose: moving towards something you want.
Fear: preventing or avoiding something you don’t want.
You can accept a job offer because it’s the right fit and you’re excited about it. Or you can accept a job offer because it’s like a passing lifeboat and you’re not sure if another one will come your way.
You can go to graduate school because you’re interested in deepening your know-how in organizational psychology, and this degree is going to be the key to opening doors that you want to walk through. Or you can go to grad school because you’re feeling lost and cross your fingers that being there will buy you some time for everything to magically come clear.
You can accept the promotion up the next rung on the ladder because it looks good on paper and you’re scared that not moving forward will mean falling behind. Or you can stay in a role that you feel content in and suits your work/life needs, even if it’s not the fanciest title out there.
Is fear a productive motivator?
To be sure, there are a lot of scary things along our career paths—uncertainty, precarity, and job loss. How maddeningly complex it can be to pay rent, care for the ones we love, and put food on the table. So it’s perfectly understandable that we want to protect ourselves from the bad stuff.
Some people even say that fear is a powerful motivator.
But in my experience, decisions fueled by a sense of purpose are more empowering and motivating than those driven by fear.
It reminds me of the movie Monsters, Inc. where the electricity in the city of Monstropolis is powered by the screams of young children. Each night, monsters visit the bedrooms of little ones to freak them out and capture the energy that results from their blood curdling screams. But everything changes when (spoiler alert) the monsters accidentally discover that children’s laughter produces 10x the energy of a scream! Instead of scaring kids, the monsters pivot to making them giggle. Joy is a better power source than fear. (Pixar is about deep Truths, right?)
[Side Note: Yeesh, these folks thought a little too hard about screams vs laughter as an energy source! ]
Your Turn: What's driving you?
Next time you’re weighing out a career decision, ask yourself:
What is my sense of purpose here?
What am I afraid will happen if I don’t take this opportunity?
What doors will this open for me?
What would it look like to make this decision out of purpose?
What would it look like to make this decision from a place of fear?
Notice what comes up for you.
I’ll always look for a way to move forward with purpose instead of fear—even in challenging circumstances.
Need help with a career decision? Book a Career Mapping Session and we’ll put our heads together to understand what’s driving you—and how you can move forward with purpose.
