• Identity: We define ourselves as workers, as someone that “doesn’t quit,” as someone that works hard
• Relationships: We are scared that people will not accept us if we step into an unknown path and don’t have answers for where we are headed
• Belonging: We don’t feel part of anything except our company or work community
• Biological: We mistake comfort for safety and try to avoid the feeling of discomfort
• Inertia: It is easier to do what we did yesterday than to imagine a different possibility
• Emotional Pressure: We want to please the people we work with and our broader network
• Financial Realities: We literally will run out of money if we don’t work for a month
• Future potential money Fears: We cannot overcome the feeling that we will always need “more” and spend a lot of time imagining the worst case scenario (“what if I get sick?” etc…)
• Time-based economic pressure: “If I stay only six more months I’ll get my next bonus”
• Meaning: We find a lot of meaning at work and are not sure what could replace it

What else would you add?

The post The list of reasons we are scared to quit our jobs appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

Our fears are not a mystery, yet when we explain them to people, they are often in the form of excuses rather than the underlying fear.  Instead of saying “I’m scared that I’m not good enough” we say “I can’t do that because I can’t be unemployed.”  The fascinating thing is that while our bold admission of vulnerability may be more honest, it is the latter response that is more persuasive.  Dr. Robert Cialdini has shown that offering a reason, even if it is absurd – “I can’t leave my job because I am allergic to tootsie rolls” – can be convincing even if it does not make sense.

The Four Most Common Fears

In my work with clients over the past several years who are “stuck” in jobs they hate or even worse, deep into careers that they regret, I have discovered that there are four common fears that hold people back.  Some of these are solvable, while others are not.  The four most common fears are:

1. “I might not be able to achieve my goals”
2. “I might go broke”
3. “My health might fail”
4. “I might be judged harshly or not accepted/respected by people”

The common factor in all of these fears is a large element of uncertainty or lack of control.  Some, such as an unexpected health crisis, may be completely out of our control while others such as not being able to achieve goals, may be mitigated by identifying small actions that may alleviate our fears.

The Fear Setting Exercise: Taking Fears From Your Imagination To Reality

Tim Ferriss has grappled with insecurity and fear of failure all of this life.  He was able to finally tame his fears after being inspired by Stoicism and specifically, a quote from the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca, who said, “We suffer more often in imagination than reality.”

He took the spirit of this mindset and created a process really grapple with his fears and bring them to life.  His belief, like mine, is that we don’t adequately define our fears.  Instead, we grasp on to general concerns and use them as reasons why we can’t take action to move towards the things we want in life.  While I am less concerned with one’s action or inaction, I love helping people look at their fears and say wow, that’s not as scary as I thought.

Fear Statements: Being Specific About What You Are Afraid Of

I work with many people who are taking the leap to self-employment and help them work through the exercise mentioned by Ferriss as well a “fear sentence” exercise I developed.  People have a hard time moving from a general fear (e.g. “being broke”) to the specific definition of that fear (e.g. “making less than $36,000 in a year).  To address this, I ask questions that help people be very specific about what failure entails:

• I am okay not having any paid work for ____________ (time period).
• If I do not make _________________ in a month/year (circle) I am a failure
• I am willing to commit to self-employment for _________ (time period)
• The worst case scenario for me is when __________________.
• It is irresponsible for me to _________________________.
• I will know I have failed when ________________________.

An interesting thing happens when people are forced to be specific about their fears.  First, the fears lose power over them.  The act of writing something down forces them to stare at the fear with an external lens, almost as if it is someone else’s fear.  Second, it shifts the mind toward actions you can take to start to lower the odds of “failure” as you have defined it.

Following this, I have people work through Ferriss’ “Fear Setting” exercise.  My slight tweak on the exercise takes people through the following six questions:

1. Identify the “shift” or change you are making
2. List the worst possible outcomes
3. Identify actions you could take to mitigate those actions
4. List some steps or actions you might take to get back to where you are today
5. What could be some benefits of an attempt or partial success? (What might you learn? What skills might you develop?)
6. What is the cost of inaction (in 3 months, 12 months and 3 years)?

The Fear Setting Toolkit Is Included In The Reinvent Toolkit

How To Re-Frame Fears

After working through the exercise, I dive into the fears with people.  There are different approaches for grappling with the four kinds of fears:

#1 “I might not be able to achieve my goals” – People often do not think small enough and are skipping many steps on their journey.  Once people take a leap to entrepreneurship or self-employment, they find that the journey is much longer (while more rewarding) than expected.  Whether acknowledge of not, there is often a shift from a goal-oriented way of thinking to a systems approach.  Instead of trying to build a million dollar business, you are focusing on building one-high quality relationship each week, delighting every customer or working on your craft every day.  Finally, as many know, not achieving your goals is part of the journey.  The key is to begin that journey and build up your resilience to those inevitable small failures.

#2 “I might go broke” – We’ll get to this in a second…

#3 “My health might fail” – While unexpected health crises are often looming, this is one of the easiest fears for people to address.  Often when someone mentions their health, they identify an exercise or nutrition regimen that can help help keep this fear at bay.  Major health crises don’t schedule themselves conveniently in your life and are a reality of life.  For me, a major health crisis helped me realize that I had nothing to lose because I realized that my worst case scenario was not working surrounded by my loving family.

#4 “I might be judged harshly or not accepted/respected by people” – The idea of self-sufficiency is strong in the West and it makes people blind to the love around them.  Our fears of lack of belonging often stem from this fear that we will be rejected once we have failed or are not living up to expectations.  This is rarely based in reality.  Just ask someone what they would do if their friend or family needed help.  To address this fear, I have people visualize themselves broke and without shelter. Then I have them make a list of the friends and family that would feed them, give them shelter and support them. Many people are surprised at how many people make the list.

Dancing With The Money Fear

When you start dancing with fear, money inevitably demands a spot on the dance floor, if not the entire ballroom.  Almost everyone I have worked with has a complicated and emotional relationship with money.

Some equate money with their own self-worth and to be broke (or sometimes merely making less than they currently make) is to be worthless. Others feel like they will never have enough and constantly yearn to need more.  Some even struggle with money in the reverse, not feeling that their work or creations are good enough to be paid for.  Regardless of the specific fear, understanding your emotional relationship with money is something everyone should spend the time to reflect on.

A lot of these fears are driven from our current state of modern employment which gives you a steady paycheck for the partial or total relinquishment of your unique skills or passions.  After years of this, many people assume that a steady paycheck is just a fact of life.

When people start exploring alternative paths, they quickly give up when they are not able to imagine an alternative path that also has a steady paycheck.   Most entrepreneurs and freelancers will scream from the rooftops “It’s worth it trust me!” but that rarely changes any minds.  Shawn Achor explored this fear and chalked it up to a failure of imagination in his book, Happiness Advantage:

“Just knowing this quirk of human psychology—that our fear of consequences is always worse than the consequences themselves—can help us move toward a more optimistic interpretation of the downs we will inevitably face”

I’ve written a bunch more on grappling with financial insecurity and lifestyle creep as well as re-framing how I think about retirement here.

You Will Eventually Run Out Of Time

Professor Shai Davidai at The New School for Social Research and Professor Thomas Gilovich at Cornell University published convincing research on regret suggesting that we should be more willing to follow our dreams.  They found that people’s biggest regrets have to do with failing to live up to their “ideal selves” rather than their “ought selves” which is what others expect of you, rather than your own hopes and ambitions.  The reason for this is that people are “quicker to take steps to cope with failures to live up to their duties and responsibilities” than taking action towards their dreams.

When you take the long view on life or talk with the elderly, like Bonnie Ware did, fears seem to shrink in importance.  While some fear may be in our imagination as Ferriss says, some of our fears will be realized.  When it comes to health, Ware shares her insight, “From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late.”

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post How the fear setting exercise can help you unlock the courage to take bold action appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

It was July 2014 — I was at a networking event in Boston and ended up having a conversation with someone who just made the jump to being a career/life coach.

I ended up sharing one of my dreams with her:

“I’m want to be a career coach one day. I’ve helped a lot of people land great jobs and figure out what they want to do. I love it.

What she said next scared me:

“You already are a coach, you just need to start doing it”

Damn. Now I had to do something.

I could tell you about taking massive action immediately after this conversation, but that’s not what happened. I was still scared. It took me several months to take action on this thing I knew I had to do. You know what held me back? Picking a name. At least that’s what I told myself. In reality, I was a bit scared of doing something out in the open.

What would people say?

Everyone has something that holds them back. For some, it is perfection — needing everything to be perfect. For others, it is creating such massive goals that they become overwhelming. For me, this was the first time I was attempting something outside of the

On a quiet day in February 2015 in snow packed Boston, I finally landed on “Careers with Paul.” I registered the domain name and put up a quick website. It felt great to take action. It felt like I was moving forward on something that I was excited about.

Within a couple months, I had enhanced the website even more and had re-learned HTML, but was not sharing it with the world or actively finding clients.

Lingering doubts still held me back:

What was I doing?

Can I do this?

What if I’m bad at it?

How do I get started?

But the biggest thing: What will people say? But more on that later…

At this point, I saw a mailing from my alma mater about a career coach that was beginning to work with alums and was intrigued. I quickly sent him an email saying I’d love to connect and see how I could help with alums as well.

That conversation turned into a deeper discussion of what I was trying to accomplish. He asked me the same question: Why haven’t you done anything yet?

I didn’t know it yet, but having someone that saw opportunity and not limits was addicting — I decided to hire him on the spot. Plus, how could I coach other people if I hadn’t put myself through the same challenge?

The Experience Impacted me in Three Powerful Ways

1. Ignoring my self-limiting beliefs — Like many people, I have a laundry list of reasons why I can’t do something. Excuses are easy. But a coach looks past these and focuses your dreams and helps you move in the right direction. This was a powerful emotion I felt consistently while working with the coach. I would say something bold — expecting him to poke holes in my idea — but instead, he would say “that sounds great, when will you do it by?”

2. Having a safe space to consistently reflect: Building a nice website was good fun, but I wasn’t actually learning anything more than CSS and HTML. In each of the coaching session, I kept coming back to the fact that I needed to put my coaching into action to see what I was good at, what I enjoyed and even more important, what I didn’t enjoy or wasn’t good at.

3. Picking a small goal to kick-start action: When I thought about being a career coach, it seemed BIG and overwhelming. I was thinking about the end goal before embarking on the journey. I often tell my clients to pick a small goal and go do it — I needed the same advice. On my first call with the career coach, he said to me “You are already qualified to do this, why don’t you just do it?” So we decided that I would write an article explaining what I was doing and launch the site to everyone I knew in 30 days (here is the original e-mail I sent to 100 family & friends). No excuses. Once I committed to this, everything started flowing. That article was a breakthrough — it led to multiple speeches, helping a client land their “dream job” (their words, not mine), developing an e-book and online course and leading my first group coaching workshop — all in only six months.

So back to my question from above— what will people say?

I still think about it. It never goes away. Criticism is painful, but luckily it rarely comes. What has been more surprising is the incredibly positive reception I’ve received. So many people have emailed me and said how much they appreciate my help, insights or style. One friend even mentioned a small thing I did five years ago and how much she appreciated it. I have faced some skeptics, but the excitement and fun I’m having by experimenting with new ideas outweighs all the haters.

I’m excited for what’s to come and I’m here for you. Just like the coach I worked with, I’m probably going to ignore your weaknesses and when you share your dreams with me, expect to hear:

“That sounds amazing — go do it!”

The Coached Has Become the Coach.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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