How to stop believing your gremlins - and start creating a better career
When you’re feeling dissatisfied with your current career, the chances are, there are at least a couple of gremlins at play. You know them, the annoying, sometimes noisy voices in your head telling you things like:
‘everyone hates their job’
‘just put up with it’
or ‘it’s too late to change.’
We all live with gremlins, they’re part of being alive and human, but the secret is to learn to manage them so they don’t stop you getting where you need to be to feel happy and fulfilled.
Creators of Amazing If and the Squiggly Careers concept, Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, call gremlins ‘ a belief that holds you back’. In their book ‘Gremlins’ they describe the range of voices and personas our gremlins adopt. Together or separately:
Gremlins stop us moving forward and leave us trapped in situations
Helen and Sarah identify a range of gremlins that include: The Imposter, The Failure, The Comparison, and The Age Gremlin. Do you recognise any of these?
Gremlins have a negative bias - they like to tell us what we cannot do and be, rather than revealing the things we can do and the person we could actually be if we stepped into our full potential. Part of being able to do this, is to learn to know and cage our own gremlins.
This is something that comes up often in the career changers I work with, so in this article I want to take a look at which gremlins are most common when we start thinking seriously about creating a more fulfilling career, and how we can work despite them to identify what we really need to thrive in our working lives.
The best thing to know is that the automatic control these gremlins have over how we think and act CAN be changed. If we can see things differently, we can do things differently - we have regained control of our lives!
How can gremlins get in the way of a career change?
Unknowingly perhaps, gremlins can keep us trapped for far too long in roles, careers or organisations that leave us unfulfilled, unhappy, and frustrated. It’s time to call them out, and take steps to reclaim your career, and own your right to career fulfilment.
Career Change is possible - I see it every day in the clients I work with, and from my own experience of changing career direction three times. But when we first start noticing that we are unhappy in our current work, it’s easy for any alternatives to be drowned out by all the fears, doubts and catastrophes that our gremlins tell us might happen if we dare to plan a change.
The most common gremlins for career changers I see are those that say:
I’m not clever enough (so I won’t even try)
I’m not qualified enough (so I won’t even try)
I’m too old (so I won’t even try)
I’m too specialist to change (so I won’t even try)
It’ll all go horribly wrong (so I won’t even try)
Do you see the problem here? We tend to believe what our gremlins tell us, we therefore don’t challenge the truth of what they tell us, and inevitably stay exactly where we are.
What if we take a radical stance, first noticing their voices, then saying:
‘my gremlin is lying to me’
This opens up the possibility of exploring and testing out another option that could be much better for us. It also allows us to face the real challenges we might encounter, but which can be overcome when we have enough clarity and self-belief to start considering a change. And that is a much better place to be.
Time for change?
If you’re ready to name and cage your gremlins, to stop believing everything (or anything) they say, and give fresh and exciting new career options a serious chance to make you happier, here’s what I do when I work with career changers.
Clarity is a complete game-changer, and in the case of changing career direction, this is the kind of clarity you will need to free yourself from the automatic default of believing your gremlins:
Know your WHY - what will motivate, energise and bring fulfilment, including what matters most to you (values), what feels like meaningful work (purpose) and the skills and strengths you have and want to use in your work (strengths)?
Create new options - including identifying a completely new direction, tweaking your current current role to align with your WHY, or a portfolio career which allows more than one income stream or work strand
Compass and small steps - you don’t have to do it all in one leap, use your WHY compass for your long term direction, and start to take small steps towards it. For example, what one thing could you do today to test out your idea without leaving your current job?
Own your achievements and successes - it’s hugely empowering to really accept your strengths, achievements and successes. Spending time reflecting on these and how they could help solve problems in your target role will start to bridge the gap and make your transition more credible
Connect with the empowered you - and start managing your gremlins, every single day. You now have an alternative narrative to their version of your reality - you don’t have to believe them, you don’t have to be limited by them.
You don’t have to go it alone - if you’d welcome a structure and support to achieve clarity and develop a plan to change direction, take a look at my Career Change Programme available in coaching format or in a self-study version.
And if you have any questions, or want to set up a free 30-minute Zoom call to see what’s really holding you back and how to get started on a better career for you, use the connect button below. I’d love to hear from you!
For more on Squiggly Careers from Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis (aka Amazing If ) follow these links:
Squiggly Careers Podcast: #386 How to cage your confidence gremlins