Find Work

Since this is the first post of a brand new blog (eek!), and because there are other fresh starts on the horizon (our kids going back to school being another), I wanted to spend some time talking about new beginnings, especially as it pertains to work. People often talk about taking that first step towards major change as if it were the same thing as taking a step up a flight of stairs. ‘All you need to make change happen is to take that first step,’ is a commonly heard refrain. Truth is, it’s just not that simple.

If you’re currently in a situation craving change in your work but find it extremely difficult to take that first step, it’s likely there are mental cobwebs you need to remove first. One of the biggest roadblocks, I’ve found, is the little guy with pitchfork in hand: your inner critic. It’s the part of your conscience that tempts you to believe the worst about yourself.

The drudgery that preceded the action to start this blog is a good example of this. I developed an entrepreneurial itch in grad school 8 years ago while studying journalism. Yes, I wanted to write for magazines. But I also I wanted to the owner and editor who oversaw the entire content process of a syndication. And for me, this translated to having my own blog. Yet, many years were spent shuffling papers around.

If I can muster the courage to ask why pursuing a blog professionally took as long as it did [I’ve started many leisurely blogs], I can pinpoint my pangs back to the pings of my inner critic: “A blog will take too long to develop,” “If you wanted to start, you should’ve started a long time ago,” “There are just too many blogs. What makes you think your work will stand out in a deluge of content anyway?”

While it may have taken many years to remove those cobwebs and silence my inner critic, I’ve figured out how to do it. Hopefully reading about my past mistakes will mean it wont’ take you as long. Here’s how to cut out the noise and take that first step towards change.

1. Have the courage to admit what you want. It’s important to give definition to what you’re protecting your inner critic from. Part of the reason why it took so long for me to start this blog was my perception of other people’s expectations of me. I thought I needed to be at a certain place in my career by a certain age. A bigger reason though was insecurity. I had written articles but I didn’t know how to grow an audience to millions of page views. The task seemed daunting. I told myself I didn’t have the time to take on a project this big. And since I didn’t want to set myself up for failure, I merely flirted with the idea but never committed to it. It all sounded so logical at the time. It’s easy to listen to your inner critic. That is, until you’re honest about what you want. When you’re honest about what you truly want, you become protective of your goals. It’s the first form of defense against your inner critic.

2. Stare your inner critic in the face. Acknowledge that your inner critic is a force to be reckoned with. Only in clearly hearing what your inner critic has to say, can you make a rebuttal. If you’re merely shooing your inner critic away before you’ve had a chance to clearly hear it, the buzzing will only continue to bother and distract you without being able to swat it quiet. Is your inner critic telling you you’re time as a stay-at-home mom has made you unemployable? Or is your inner critic telling you it’s too late in the game to pursue what you really want? Whatever your worst fears are, draw them out of your subconscious and bring them to the forefront of your consciousness. Then say it out loud. Write it down even. Your fears always sound and look worse in the confines of your mind.

3. Make a logical assessment. Mark Twain once said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” Most of what we fear will never happen, not to the large majority of us. Rather than magnify and fantasize about how awful things can be, make a logical assessment of your worst fears. Dr. Mark A. Reinecke, in his book “Twenty Lessons for Managing Worry, Fear, Anxiety and Fear,” suggests asking yourself these three questions, which I’ve tailored for the topic of this post:

• In which working situations do you exaggerate the risk of negative outcomes?
• In which working situations do you underestimate your abilities? Why?
• Think about three or four recent events while working that made you feel anxious. Did you anticipate negative outcomes that never happened?

These questions may serve as a window into trends and habits that may have formed at the suggesting of your inner critic. The good news is that you can actually break the bad habit by talking yourself out of it, says Reinecke.

4. Make peace with your past. One stronghold your inner critic may have over you is your past mistakes. So it’s important to make amends. Forging a peace agreement with yesteryear requires two things: admitting your error and owning your choices. Of course there are legitimate reasons for why we haven’t pursued our professional goals, especially when you’re a parent. Are you kidding me? Life as a parent is insane. There are those decisions we chose to make. Then there are excuses we made. For me, I don’t regret my time as a stay-at-home mom during my kids’ most formative years, as hard as that was. I wasn’t focused on career during this time and I am owning my choice to be home with them. However, the last couple of years were spent busily but not productively. Instead of dealing with the cause of my paralyses, I chose instead to hide in my daily routine and make excuses for not pursuing what I truly wanted. I was afraid. And that’s okay. The peace agreement happens when you’re able to learn something from your mistakes.

5. Focus on what you can control. Did you know that most people think worrying is helpful?  The logic goes something like this: ‘If I ponder a problem long enough, I’ll come up with better answers, insights and outcomes.’ Worrying is only helpful if it leads to solutions. Yet so many of us spend time worrying excessively about things that are out of our control. Focus on what changes are within your control and then come up with solutions that move you to action. Forget the rest. One effective way to “forgetting” (because you can’t ever completely blot out a thought), is to allot a specified time for obsessing. When those 10 or 15 minutes is up, it’s time to think about things you can do.

6. Break up your goals. If your life’s aspiration is to cure world hunger, who wouldn’t become paralyzed? While it’s okay and quite noteworthy to have such lofty goals, create smaller, digestible goals for how you’re going to achieve this.  This is actually the approach that empowered me to start and organize this blog. My goal for Work Life Parent was and still is pretty lofty. My own chaos and hearing about the incessant modern demands from other moms has made me want to address the issue of work-life balance as a mom. This is not something that can be chewed on in one bite. But by breaking it up, bit by bit, morsel by morsel, post by post, it felt more achievable. My inner critic didn’t have a lot to say about my ability to write a single post or article. I’ve done that many times.

7. Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness in it’s simplest form is single-tasking. Put another way, it means living in the present. Research shows that mindfulness increases acuity, health and happiness. Part of the peace that is missing in our lives happens because we live in the future or in the past. We need to be focused on the here and now because our inner critic is loudest when we think of regrets or when we fear future uncertainties. Many people think mindfulness only happens deep in a forest while wearing yoga pants, or on a scenic beach. That’s not true. The trick is not to find extra time, but to incorporate mindfulness throughout your day, whether it’s focusing on the coffee you’re sipping or enjoying the skyline of a sprawling city even while sitting through mind-numbing traffic.

In short, don’t be fooled. Your inner critic is not muddled annoying background noise. It can paralyze you and keep you from taking that first step. Sometimes our inner critic echoes the voice of a loved one — or a hated one. But when it comes to what we hear in our own minds, ultimately we are the final filter. We have the final say in what we choose to hear and what we choose to ignore. It can mean the difference between taking that first step or not.