Episode 5: "I want to make a career change but I don’t know how to start"

This episode applies to anyone who is looking to make any kind of major pivot in their lives - and specifically to those looking to make a career pivot. Whether its moving to a new role, a new company, a new industry, or an entirely new sector, whatever it is, this episode will be useful for you because we’re talking about where to BEGIN with your career change- and that is changing your self identity.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. I'm your host and coach, Stephanie Finigan, and on today's episode, I want to talk about one of the most common topics I coach on, which is making a big career pivot, or specifically the problem of, “I want to make a career change, but I don't know how to start. I don't even know where to begin”. This comes up all the time.

This episode, it's gonna apply to you if you're looking to make any kind of major pivot in your life. So we're gonna talk specifically about career pivots, and I'm gonna pull on my examples that I'm gonna use from that topic. But this can also apply to you if you wanna make a pivot in your relationships, with your finances, your money habits, your health habits - anything that you wanna make a change on, the process I'm gonna walk you through is gonna be able to help you with that. And it's because what we're gonna do is we're gonna start at the top. If you think about making a pivot as a big funnel, we're gonna start at the very top, which is, “I don't even know how to start. I don't even know where to begin”. So we're gonna go through that. So again, if you're a career changer or you're looking to be a career changer, this is definitely for you. But for everybody else, you still are probably gonna find this useful, because we're gonna walk through a process that you can apply, even if the pivot you wanna make is not about career.

Okay, next, what do I mean when I'm talking about making a career pivot? What I mean is that I'm talking to anyone who wants to make a career change, and that can look like a new role within the same organization that you're working in. It can look like going to a new company, maybe moving to a new industry, or maybe it's moving to an entirely new sector, like going from the for-profit to the non-profit space or vice versa, or going from the corporate space to the entrepreneurial space or vice versa. Whatever it is, this episode will be useful for you.

So I am very excited to bring this to you. I have made a couple of significant career pivots in my life and I really could have used some guidance like the kind I'm going to give you here when I was going through my career pivots. And so I'm going to walk you through when this was a problem for me, as that's the format of the show. And hopefully you'll be able to see through the example that I give you how I applied this process to myself when I was going through a career pivot.

And secondly, I also want to mention I have a new course that I'm launching called the Career Pivot Starter Kit. That is going to be filled with everything you're going to need to make your career pivot. That is going to be coming soon. I will have more information, like I said, at the end of the show. So just listen in for that.

With all that, I'm going to dive in, but I'm super excited to bring this one to you guys today because this one is very personal to me and it's also something I coach on a lot. Okay, so let's dive in.

First things first, when we're talking about making a career change of any kind, I know there are a million resources online. They're going to help you with making your career change or tell you how to get your dream job. They will walk you through how to format your resume better or how to write a business plan or how to network more effectively or how to nail that big interview. But very few of them are going to talk about the most important step here, which is what it takes to even get to any of those actions, which is that you need to decide to become the person who has the career you want and become the kind of person who can make a career pivot before you'll ever do any of those actions. So what I'm really talking about here is shifting your self-identity.

That is what has to happen first before you'll ever get yourself to take any of those actions. For some people, that happens very quickly and very easily. For most of us, that's a little bit more of a process. But if you talk to anybody who's made a big career change, myself or anybody else, at some point, they had to go through this process whether they were aware of it or not. Here's why that matters: if you want to get a specific job or have a specific career, you need to not only think that you're capable of being successful at it, but you also need to start thinking like the person who already has the job or career that you want.

Why is that? It's because your thoughts will always create your reality. What you think ultimately becomes the reality that you create. That's just how it works. This is what obviously what coaching and thought work and everything that I work on is based on. But if you look across anybody that's giving you advice in personal development, goal setting, self-help, career change, self-improvement, anything in that genre at all, what you're going to find is that they're all saying that. They're all saying the same thing. It's just sliced up differently. No one's going to tell you to start taking actions without working on your mindset first. And if they do tell you that, then go find another coach to listen to because it's all about your mindset.

So let's keep going. When we're talking about self-identity, before I get into specifics here about examples and the process to do this, I just want to define what I mean by changing your self-identity. A self-identity, which sometimes we talk about that, you could hear it as self-concept or a self-structure. I like the term self-identity. When I first learned about this concept from a coach, that is the term that this coach was using. So self-identity, it is by definition, a collection of beliefs about yourself that make up how you define yourself. If you just Google this, that's what will show up for you. So this can be something like, I'm a coach, I'm a mom, I'm a dentist, or it can be something more personality-based or internal, such as I'm an optimist, I'm impatient, I'm organized. All of those beliefs that you have make up your self-identity.

The important word here when we look at the definition of self-identity is the word “beliefs”. A self-identity is a collection of beliefs and beliefs are just thoughts you think over and over again, okay? We often think that like thoughts are on one hand but beliefs are much bigger and they're much, no, but I believe that. No, no, I don't just think it, I believe it, right? We say that or we think that all the time. But the reality is a belief is just a thought that you've thought over and over again. So that's the good news.

The reason why this is all good news is because beliefs slash thoughts, because they are the same, they are totally changeable. They are written in pencil, as I like to say. You can totally change your thinking, which means you can change your self-identity. And once you do that, it's gonna be so much easier to actually go ahead and take the actions you need to take to change your career, okay? So that's where we're starting from.

So with that foundation there, as you guys know, I like to format these episodes by walking you through how the problem we're addressing is something that I have experienced before and how I've used coaching tools to resolve that problem. Or sometimes it's current, you know, how I'm using coaching tools to solve a problem that I'm currently having. Sometimes I will talk in the future about some of my clients, but for these last few episodes I'm giving you specifics on myself because this is the early season of the show and I want you guys to get to know me a little bit. But that being said, you know, the title “I'm the Problem” is because I'm the problem sometimes, I'm also the solution, as we all are.

So for this episode, I'm just going to hone in on a time when I made a specific career pivot and I'm going to talk you through how I had to start with a total self-identity shift in order for me to make that pivot. Now, I have made a couple of different career pivots and they've each got their own kind of story to them. So I'm just going to hone in on one example for today and then, you know, other episodes I'll talk about other experiences. But here goes.

This is my experience with how I had to make a career pivot going from working in the corporate world to a brand new career in the field of international development, which I did for about 15 years. This all started when I was working in corporate. I was there for a long time with an amazing job at Google in New York. While I was there, I knew pretty much most of the time I was at Google that I wanted to move into a different career, it just took me a long time to figure out what that was. All I knew was that I wanted something that I felt was very purposeful and had a lot of meaning to it. And I didn't feel like I was finding that at my career at Google. Put an asterisk on that, we're gonna revisit that later because, you know, as it turns out, that was just a thought, but let's keep going.

So for me at the time, I knew what I really wanted was a career that had an emphasis on social impact or addressing social issues. And I also really ideally wanted to be working on social issues internationally. So those were the things that I knew at a very high level. At the time, I did not know there was a field called international development. I didn't know anyone who did that kind of work. It was just not in my orbit at all. And on the flip side, I had this very steady and frankly amazing job at this amazing company with all these benefits and perks and a great salary and disposable income and a really nice, comfortable life by anyone's measure. My whole social circle was there. There was just a million reasons to stay at that job and at that career. Not to mention the fact that it was very secure. I know times have changed. Things are a little different now, but for the most part, that job was as secure as a corporate job could be. And I was somebody who had come out of a lot of student loan debt as an undergrad that I had worked really hard to pay off. And I was finally at a point where I was comfortable financially and things were looking great and I was really enjoying the stability of all of that.

So at this point, I was kind of at a strange crossroads because I did not really think of myself as somebody who was comfortable making such a big risk, financially or otherwise, leaving something so steady. And yet, I also really knew I wanted this new career. So I wasn't really sure what to do. And I was a little bit stuck, and I was stuck for a long time. And in addition to all of that, I did not have a ton of support when I would talk about this career change I was looking for, because it was for no reason other than most of the people in my life didn't know what I was talking about, because I kind of didn't know what I was talking about. So I had a few people that were close to me who I'm always going to be eternally thankful for that they were supportive. But, you know, for the most part, my wider circle just wasn't. And that makes it even harder to make a career change.

So for all those reasons, I can fully understand if you're feeling like I want to make a pivot and I don't know how to do it, and I don't have a lot of support and it feels risky. I went through all of that. I was sitting there thinking like, I really want to make this career pivot, but I just don't know where to start because it all feels way too big and overwhelming. I was interested in personal development and I just always have been. So I was reading enough full setting motivational Tony Robbins type of books to know in order for me to actually do this, I was going to have to figure out how to change my thinking. I was going to have to figure out how to change my self-identity. I was going to have to become the person who did these things even before I had evidence that I could do that. In other words, I needed to start thinking of myself as someone who could make this change, leave the safe career, go do something totally unknown and new and scary without a ton of support, because that was the only way that I was ever going to do it.

And that was really key. And the reason is this, thoughts are optional, thoughts are changeable, or as I like to say, and I said at the top of this podcast, thoughts are written in pencil, which means our self-identity is written in pencil, since our self-identity is just a collection of thoughts, it's a collection of beliefs. Facts, on the other hand, are written in pen. They're just there. They are what they are. They're not changeable.

So if we go back to my story as an example, a few facts about me from around that time. My birthday is April 5th. I have hazel eyes. I am 5'6". I work at Google. I live in New York City. I have a six-figure salary. I have no debt, right? Like those are the facts of my life back during that era.

Whereas thoughts I had about myself around this time when I was thinking about the career pivot were, you know, I love learning about international development, but I don't know a lot about it. I don't feel like the current job I have has a lot of meaning. I want a job that has a social impact. I want to live and work abroad and travel a lot. I'm interested in going back to school. Maybe I'm okay taking on student loan debt. These are all thoughts that I was having at the time, even if they felt like facts, which they did, and oftentimes our thoughts really feel like facts, but that's the key. They're not. They're thoughts, which means they're changeable. They are flexible.

My thought, “My current job doesn't have a lot of meaning or my current job isn't purposeful”, that was just a thought. I did not know that then. I was very convinced that, nope, this job does not have enough meaning for me. It's not purposeful enough. I'm not helping enough people. And I was very convinced of that. But the reality is that was just a thought. It wasn't true because people around me, many people around me that had my job or worked at the same company felt very differently than I did. They all felt like they were having an impact. They all felt like they were having purpose. Or maybe they defined purpose differently than I did. Maybe they were finding purpose elsewhere. Maybe that wasn't that important to them. Whatever it was, my thought about purpose and meaning in my job was just a thought.

So this is all to say that if our self-identity is made up of all these thoughts and our thoughts are changeable, then like I said, the self-identity is changeable. It's not permanent. You are not stuck in a job. You are not stuck in a role. You are not stuck with personality traits or habits or anything that defines you if you don't want to be. So we think, I'm a teacher, I'm a coach, I'm an engineer, I'm in sales, I work in non-profits, whatever it is, or I'm a mom, I don't work, if that's your case, but we grab onto our professional titles, we claim them as part of our self-identity, and we think this is who we are.

So when we want to go ahead and make a change of any kind, specifically here a career change, and we want to try something new, we're often blocked by our self-identity because we confuse job titles or careers with the thoughts about our self-identity. We so easily forget this is all changeable.

So, to keep following this example, I had a self-identity that I needed to work on changing before I was ever going to actually take the leap and do this very big career change. So, my self-identity at the time included thoughts like, I'm a Googler. That's what people at Google call themselves, or at least they did. So I'm a Googler, I'm a New Yorker, I'm debt-free, I'm not a risk taker, I'm not that smart, I don't know if I'm smart enough for this, I don't know enough about international issues. Those were all thoughts that I was having, and they were all part of my self-identity.

What I knew was that those things were changeable. I wasn't a risk taker, but I knew I could start to be one. Just like once upon a time I wasn't a runner and then I became one. And maybe I wasn't someone who knew a lot about international issues or was super well traveled, but I knew I could become that person. Just like I'd never been to New York before moving there and fast forward 10 years, I considered myself a New Yorker at that point. All of these thoughts I'd assigned to myself and made up as my self-identity were just thoughts. So I decided to start changing them. And the more I did this, the more I began thinking of myself as someone with a career in international development. And the more I began thinking of myself as someone who could make a career pivot like this. And the more I began having all of those thoughts, the more I began taking the actions I needed to take to actually make the pivot happen.

So the reality is when it comes to your self-identity and your career, there's two really key points. One is you are not your career. You are a person with a career. It's a very important distinction. You've probably heard it before if you are doing any work around career change, but I'm going to say it again because it's really key. You are not your career. You are a person with a career. It's very important. Okay. Okay? Secondly, you can change who you are. Your personality, your habits, your values, your thoughts, your actions. Just like you can change your career and how you identify yourself in relation to that career. I'm a doctor, I'm a sales rep, I'm a mom, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a Googler, whatever it is. You can change all of those things. All of that is stuff that's changeable.

What it comes down to is you are who you think you are. And you can always change that. You are not locked into anything. But the key here is to look at who you are now and look at who you want to be and then decide to make the shift to move towards being that person.

Let's just say now as another example that you are in sales in the corporate world, but you wanna make a career pivot and become an entrepreneur. The self-identity switch there is not only about you needing to start to actually see and feel yourself in that new role as an entrepreneur or a business owner, but it's also about how you think about yourself during the process of making that pivot. So if you've thought such as, I'm someone who can't take that risk to leave my current career, or I'm someone who just needs the safety of my nine to five, which I thought for a long time, or I'm someone who could never own their own business, which I also thought for a long time. When you think those thoughts, what do you think the chances are that you're actually going to move ahead with the pivot? I had those thoughts for so long and I didn't take any action. I wished I could. I wished I could make changes, but I kept coming back to like, nope, but I need the safety of my nine to five. No, I don't want to go back into debt. Nope, I'm someone who could never own my own business. Nope, I can't take that risk again. So once I had those thoughts, of course I wasn't gonna go ahead and make a pivot.

This is where the self-identity work comes in. It's not just about identifying as someone who could go from corporate to entrepreneurship, but it's also about being someone who goes from, I don't know if I can make a career change to someone who thinks things like, I am someone who can make a career change. I am someone who can take a financial risk and I know I'll be okay. I know I'll figure out my finances. I am someone who can learn the new skills I'll need to be successful. I am someone who can get comfortable taking on student loan debt if it's worth it for me emotionally, right?

It's all a mindset switch, but you have to see yourself and you have to think yourself into that change before it will occur because that's your thoughts leading to your results like we talked about. So you need to start thinking things like, I'm an entrepreneur, and lean into that. And from that place, from that energy, what actions would you take? You need to start thinking things like, I can take a pay cut to go after my dream, or I can go back to school, or I can go back to work after taking a long break, or I can move industries with the transferable skills that I have, in order to then get yourself to take the actions to make the pivot that you're seeking. Remember, thoughts first and results will follow. And your self-identity is just a collection of thoughts.

So I've hammered this home completely. So how do you do this? So there are five steps. It's a five-step process. This is the process that I went through myself when I was going from, oh my gosh, I need the security of my nine to five, to I don't need the security of my nine to five, or I can't go back into debt to, no, I'm actually comfortable going to student loan debt to go to grad school to make this new career a thing for me. This is the process I went through for the most part. I have added a few coachy things in here, but this is for the most part the process that I went through myself. I just didn't know it at the time. So here we go.

Step one is decide on purpose what the change is that you wanna make. Seems very obvious, right? But for some of you, it's gonna be something like, I wanna go from X profession to Y profession. For others, it's gonna be like, I wanna go from being scared of making a career change to being confident I can do it. For others, it's gonna be both of those things. Whatever it is, wherever you are, just get really clear. Just decide, this is what I want. Just ask yourself, what exactly is the change I wanna make? Just get very clear on what that change is, okay? Decide.

Number two, say it before you're ready. Don't freak out. This one everybody hates, but I'm going with it anyway because it's really important. You have to practice. You have to start talking like the person who has the career you want. What I mean is you need to start believing that you are the person who has the job or career you want and start saying it, say it out loud, tell other people, just start getting used to hearing the words come out of your mouth. I was saying I'm a life coach long before my business was profitable because I decided I was a coach. I started talking like a coach and thinking like a coach and telling people I was a coach because I was, I'd made the decision, this is what I'm gonna do. And the more I said it, the more I believed it, and then the more the results followed. Now look, if you wanna be a doctor, if you wanna be a life coach, if you wanna change professions, if you wanna do something like that, and you're like, I can't say I'm a doctor if I'm not a doctor, I can't say I'm a coach if I'm not a coach, fine, start saying, I am making the change to become a life coach. I am in the process of becoming a life coach. I'm in the process of becoming a doctor. I'm in the process of leaving my career. I'm in the process of going back to work. Start talking about it that way, but just start saying it out loud. Say it before you're even ready. Just do it.

Third, start visualizing it now. This is not something that a lot of people like, unless you're very much into personal development, visualization, it's a whole topic in and of itself, so I'm not gonna get too deep into it, but what I am going to say is just start going from having it in your head, the idea of you in this new career, to actually being able to see it. Again, journal about the version of you who has the career that you want. Write it out, and you don't need a fancy journal or anything, just start typing it out on your notes app on your phone. But what does your life look like when you've made that change? Start thinking about it now. Think about it when you're driving. Think about it when you're out for a run. Think about it when you're standing in line at the grocery store. Like, when you're deciding what actions to take, ask yourself, what would that version of me do? The version of me that has the career that I want. What does she spend her time doing every day? What is she thinking about? How would she make this decision? What does she wear to work every day? Or what does she wear every day, even if she's not at work. Like, just start visualizing what that person looks like, acts like, sounds like, makes decisions like, how they interact with people, where are they spending their time. Start getting into the mindset of that person by imagining yourself as that person.

And then step number four, which is related, you visualized what this version of you looks like and thinks like and talks like and acts like and makes decisions like. Now, step four is you start living into that. If you want to have your own business, ask yourself, how would an entrepreneur spend her time? And then go do that. How would she dress? Go do that. How would she spend her money? Go do that. Start living like that. We often think, when I get there, then I'll do X. Like, when I have a profitable business, then I'll hire help or then I'll get a coach. When I've made that career change, then I'll start working out early in the morning, so I'll have more energy. People even do this with other things, right? Like when I lose weight, then I'll do X, Y, and Z, or go on the dating apps, or wear a bathing suit in the summer, whatever it is. We all kind of do this. We sort of delay living like the person that we want to live until we actually are there. The reality is in order to get there you've got to start living like that person now. And it makes sense when you think about it. If you want to start having your own business you can't just think like well once I have my own business then I'm gonna act like an entrepreneur. No no no no no. Start acting like an entrepreneur now. Start thinking like an entrepreneur now. That's how you get to do it. Start living into it.

And then step number five, get around people who have this kind of thinking. This is so key. I did have a couple of people in my life who didn't really, you know, they weren't in the field I wanted to be in when I was making my career pivot, but they were very supportive of me. And that was helpful because I had a lot of people who weren't, but the helpful energy I had from the people who supported me was so important. It's really important to get around people who have that kind of thinking and who are going to be supportive. You don't need a ton of cheerleaders, but you do need to start surrounding yourself with people who are thinking the way that you are about the possibility to make change. So it's been said by a lot of people in the personal development space, and I'm not sure who said it first, so I can't give proper credit, but it's been said, like, we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with. I know I heard it on Tim Ferriss' show. I'm not sure where it came from. If that's true, which I believe it is, then you want to get around others who have changed their careers or people who have made, even if it's not careers, they've made big pivots or that they've taken a big chance on themselves. You want to get around people who have that kind of thinking. If you don't have people immediately in your life, go find them. You can get a coach, of course, you know I was going to say that. Get a coach who's done this before or who's helped others do it, or ideally both. You can spend time online looking for examples of people who have made the pivot you want. You don't have to physically or even virtually connect with them. You just start looking for stories around about people who've made those kinds of changes. Go find Facebook groups or go find other people online that you can connect with. Just surround yourself with people, even virtually, people, examples, stories that give your brain the evidence that this is possible.

Because the fact is, it 100% is possible.

That's the five-step process, but now I'm gonna give you the little Coach Pep Talk here. You are who you decide you are. That's it, that's the trick to all of this. Self-identity is not any more complicated than that. So you can decide who you wanna be and start taking steps to make that happen for you today. If you're somebody who's like, I'm a moody person or I'm a pessimist, you can start changing that today. Those aren't permanent personality traits. If you're somebody who is like, I'm a mom and I want to go back to work, or I'm a Googler and I want to leave my job, or I am an entrepreneur and I want to go back and work at corporate, you can start taking steps today to change all of that.

It's all totally within reach and there's no reason to choose to believe otherwise. There just isn't.

It's so easy for us just to say it's not possible for me.

Why in the world would you choose that thought? That is just not a useful thought. Just decide it's possible for you and then go from there. I have done it. I am not special. Many, many people I know have done it at this point. You can do it as well. You can make the career change or any pivot that you wanna make.

All right, guys, that's what I have for you today on this. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, I also do wanna add a little more information about the course I have coming up on all of this called the Career Pivot Starter Kit. That is gonna be an online self-paced course where we get into not only the self-identity stuff that we just talked about here in relation to your career pivot, but so much more. We're going to talk about everything, all the mindset, all the objections, all the practical steps, everything that you need to make your career pivot. So if you've been thinking about changing careers, if you're in the midst of a career change and it's not going well, if you're thinking about making a career change in the new year, this is the course for you. It has everything in it that I wish that I had when I was making my own pivot. So I am very excited to launch this for you guys. The course will be live December 15th and if you want more info you can sign up for the pivot newsletter which comes out every Friday. Go sign up for that over at makeyourpivot.co or it's at my Instagram bio at pivot underscore coaching and you can sign up there. Get on the email list so you will be the first to be updated. The target date right now is December 15th. Be on the lookout for that. It is a great course and I'm so excited to bring it to anybody that wants to make a career change because you can probably tell I'm super passionate about this topic as I am about the idea that anybody can change anything they want. I've seen it, I've done it, and now it's your turn.