81. Why Does This Always Happen To Me? How to Change a Career Pattern

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[00:00:05] Patricia Ortega: Hey friend, welcome back. Listen, the job market has changed and applying online just doesn't work anymore. You have to think a little bit different and you can start with the five essential steps that get my clients hired and hired faster. So grab it at theuncommoncareer. com slash checklist and that same link is in the description.

[00:00:23] Now for today's episode, picture yourself staying late at the office yet again, or maybe you're feeling like an imposter again at that meeting. Maybe you're at a new job. But for some reason, the same problem you thought you left at your prior job, it's creeping up again. Why? Oh, why does this keep happening?

[00:00:43] Well, listen, today we're going to talk about how to recognize these patterns in your career. Because getting clarity on the problem is going to get you 90 percent of the way to your solution and identifying that root issue is going to be transformational because it's going to [00:01:00] change a frustrating situation into a season of growth.

[00:01:03] It's going to open up an entire new way of being with all new opportunities, both in your career and And in your personal life, because when we're talking about transformational change, when we're talking about, you know, changing, identifying and transforming a internal pattern that we have, we cannot separate work and life.

[00:01:23] It literally is part of who we are. So what we're doing is we're identifying a pattern of how we live our life, how we interact with this world. And we are going to objectify it today so that we can then begin to make changes at the root level. So this is not going to be a conversation about a career hack or how you, you know, three tips to how you move forward in X, Y, Z situation.

[00:01:44] No, we're going to get at the root issue today. So let's get started because this is a really exciting topic for me. It is part of how I've been able to change my life. I've talked to other clients and we have worked with them to go ahead and change their lives. From, you know, a situation [00:02:00] that kept happening over and over and over again, a way of thinking, a way of being into an entire new world that they didn't realize was open to them.

[00:02:07] It's kind of fun to see them find this career satisfaction, this newfound life opportunity. And the best thing is that every single person I've worked with is absolutely phenomenal. I mean, when I think about just the sheer genius of every single client I work with, it just, it just lights me up.

[00:02:27] And it's so fun to see how amazing people like you and I and all my clients can find their space of their zone of genius, right? Once they can unblock this pattern. So let's get started with this. So why exactly do patterns matter in career development? There's this theory called happenstance theory that I learned about when I was going through my master's degree.

[00:02:51] Now, this was years and years and years and years ago, but happenstance theory talks about how careers often follow a winding path. It's shaped [00:03:00] by chance opportunities and unexpected turns, right? Maybe you are starting in the hospitality industry, but then you meet someone, they offer you an opportunity in sales, and you realize, I absolutely love sales.

[00:03:13] And from there, you learn a little bit about marketing and someone helps to mentor you and opens a door and guess what? You walk through that door. So now you have hospitality in your background. You have sales in your background, and now you're getting into marketing with all those tools in your toolkit.

[00:03:29] It is a really neat theory, and I think it's how we are actually, you know, it's our new career pattern in a very quickly changing world and this can lead to a diverse skill set and a really exciting career journey. However, when I think about happenstance, it also makes me think about the behavioral patterns that we have and how sometimes if we're going through a season where we seem to have this behavioral pattern coming up, if it's not positive and if it's left unaddressed, It can lead to really frustrating [00:04:00] situations. And ultimately that limits your growth in career, but also in your life.

[00:04:05] And it could unknowingly steer you into an unwanted direction. So for example, if you're wondering, hmm, I've been in this role for, or in this career for the past 10 or 15 years, and I really don't like it. And I'm not really sure how I got here. Maybe you picked a major when you were younger. And now you're still in a career that focuses or is in direct alignment with that major.

[00:04:29] But for some reason, you're like, I've never actually been satisfied. So let's talk about recognizing those patterns so that we can start to come out of them and really live out the life that we love. We enjoy. We're fulfilled with, we are satisfied by.

[00:04:46] All right, the very first step is awareness to any problem.

[00:04:50] So even if you're here and you're like, yeah, I don't know if I have an issue with behavioral patterns or emotional patterns. Um, I can tell you this awareness of the [00:05:00] problem, whatever problem it is, whether it's logistical problem, financial problem, a work problem, a relational problem, awareness is always the first step.

[00:05:10] So you want to reflect and understand the individual events in your life that make up this larger pattern. So, first thing, grab a piece of paper or just mentally jot down in your head, okay, if this situation keeps happening, that means that there are multiple events in which this took place. So let me write down or mentally note the top 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 events where this took place.

[00:05:35] Now imagine that your pattern is overworking, right? I'm going to walk you through this example. And sort of explain how we get to a repeated pattern, a repeated event that becomes a pattern, right? Let's say that your prior job, you found yourself constantly overworking and you're just so sick and tired of all the work being piled on you.

[00:05:56] It is a cultural thing. It's just toxic. [00:06:00] It's contributing to burnout and you just feel like no one respects your boundaries and all the work is being piled on you. And so you go out to get a new job in a better work culture that offers you more balance, which is awesome. This is a new opportunity to reset expectations.

[00:06:16] However, given yours and my emotional and behavioral habits, these are typically emotions thoughts and habits that we are unaware of. And they start from the very first day you join your new role. They actually never stopped. So from the last day at your old role to the first day at your new role the cycle continues. It might look like this.

[00:06:41] Maybe you or I would show up to our first day of work. So from day one we hop into the office and of course we want to be seen as helpful and cheerful and willing to be a team player.

[00:06:54] So you take on that new committee role that's offered to you. And you also know that there's a probationary period. [00:07:00] So let's make sure that all our work is done before the deadline, well before the deadline, we want to make a good impression after all. And also because everything is new, we want to do all the things and meet all the people like all of it today.

[00:07:14] Strategically, some of these things are helpful and really beneficial. But there does come a point where the benefit outweighs the cost. And even worse, there will come a point where you are once again overworking and what was intended to make you a high impact professional and a high impact team member is now causing you to be forgetful, overwhelmed, frustrated, and ultimately less effective at the things that really matter and really move your career forward. And the things that also are going to refuel you to continue putting in the work.

[00:07:51] Now, this point is a point at which burnout often happens.

[00:07:56] Now that may not be your pattern. That may not be [00:08:00] my pattern, but we all have some sort of patterns. The good thing is that a lot of our patterns are really positive and we can leverage those patterns for continued growth and accelerated growth.

[00:08:11] But when these patterns are more limiting beliefs or career limiting patterns like overworking or job hopping, where you explore, you know, different opportunities and you switch jobs, but then you realize it's not really for you. And so you switch jobs again, and ultimately you're doing this at the expense of a deep development of your expertise.

[00:08:34] Or maybe it's imposter syndrome, where self doubt stops you from reaching your potential by holding back what you share at meetings or how you express your ideas.

[00:08:46] Or maybe it's a pattern about how you make decisions. Is there just a little bit of fear in the decisions? A little bit of hesitation or avoidance or maybe a false belief about how you make decisions? [00:09:00] Maybe it's that you think, Hey, if I decide for this, that means I will avoid the thing. The scary thing.

[00:09:08] If I go for a career in... I'm gonna go for. the most general example possible. If I go for a career in law, engineering, or, I don't know the medical field, then I will never have to struggle with money. But the reality is that most people's struggle with money has very little to do with how much they make.

[00:09:28] In reality, most people struggle with money, has more to do with how they view and interact with the money that they make. There are people living quite a rich life and they are making much, much less than an engineer or a lawyer could potentially make. And I also know engineers and lawyers who are making a ton of money, but somehow still live paycheck to paycheck.

[00:09:50] So all of these are parts of some patterns that we can start to uncover. Alright, so you're getting a little bit of awareness on your patterns. Now I want you to [00:10:00] identify the pattern you see in your career. And for each of the events that we talked about, we mentioned, uh, going back and identifying maybe five, three to five events, right?

[00:10:09] That reflect that pattern. . Um, now do a quick free write, talk to a friend, journal about this pattern, about each individual event so that you can unearth some insights about what is behind this pattern, what is driving it. And what you're looking for is to explore the thoughts and the emotions and how those thoughts and emotions led to actions, but also gain awareness about how those thoughts and emotions led to actions and how those actions led to an outcome.

[00:10:41] Because chances are you can look at a pattern and say, Hmm, I've been doing the same thing over and over again, however, the outcome isn't exactly what I want. So why am I recreating the situation? Now that awareness is amazing. This is where the transformation begins. So once you've gotten that [00:11:00] insight, congratulations, write it down, make it plain.

[00:11:03] You don't want to forget this because this is where your belief starts to change.

[00:11:07] Now the next thing is in order to go deep into these situations, to continue to get as much insight as possible, you're going to have to do a little bit of time traveling. So I want you to mentally revisit the situation.

[00:11:22] So there is a surface level where you write down what your thoughts or emotions and actions were during the event, but go even deeper. Imagine that you are looking at yourself in third person. You're a fly on the wall, but now you have all this new information, right? Hindsight is 2020 so now you have all the information of knowing your thoughts, emotions, and actions, but now go back and see yourself in that moment and view it objectively now because now you don't have the emotional attachment that you did when you were in that situation.

[00:11:55] When you were in that situation, there may have been a worry, a [00:12:00] concern, a little bit of nervousness, maybe even fear about what the outcome would or wouldn't be. Or maybe there was another stressful situation going on at the time that was also driving or affecting your emotions and your decisions. But now, all that emotion, all that is worry, is gone.

[00:12:14] Um, all that anxiety is gone. So you can kind of be a fly on the wall and look at it without any emotional attachment.

[00:12:21] Okay. So as you're doing that, you're gaining all these new insights, you're writing it down, you're making it plain. Now it's time to start planning for your future by putting these insights into practice.

[00:12:35] So, ask yourself, hmm, as I look through each of these events, what are some of the common thoughts that I kept thinking that were impacting my decision making?

[00:12:43] What are the emotions that kept coming up? Ultimately, what is it that drives my pattern? And here's the interesting part. I really like to ask myself and ask my clients a question of if this pattern continues, where is it going?

[00:12:58] Where am I going to end [00:13:00] up? And is that really where I want to go? Now, oftentimes, you know, when we go into coaching, there's so many more questions I ask, but to me, this is one of the big ones. And as part of this process to get insights, you also want to talk to different people and get different people's perspectives, because I promise you, you've got some blind spots.

[00:13:21] How do I know this? Because I have some blind spots because every client I speak to has some blind spots. And because as humans, we just cannot see ourselves 360. And so this is where either a friend, a mentor, or yeah, a coach can come in.

[00:13:37] All right, now here we go with the upside, the transformation. This is the fun part.

[00:13:42] I absolutely love changes and new beginnings and building new patterns and being intentional about our lives. And so here's where we go.

[00:13:50] When you start to make changes, make incremental changes. I'm talking about setting the smallest, tiniest little [00:14:00] goal. Imagine, I think the book is called Atomic Habits.

[00:14:03] You're following that principle. You're going to set the, the tiniest, um, small and actionable goal that ensures success. That is one of the most important things.

[00:14:13] When you talk about behavioral change, you want to see success because when you see success, that is the gasoline, that is the fuel for you to continue to put energy and invest energy to try a little bit more and make this change last a little bit longer. And when that happens, then guess what? You're going to see a little bit more success. And that fuel is then again, going to be reinvested to continue to a, make bigger changes and b, continue with the changes that you've already made.

[00:14:45] So, a really small actionable goal might be, next time we have a meeting, I am going to go into that meeting with the intention to speak up. You're not actually gonna speak up. You're just going to go in there with the intention of what would I say? Do I [00:15:00] have an idea? Right? And of course, if something comes up and you want to say it more power to you bonus, right?

[00:15:06] But if in that moment something doesn't come up, then that's okay. We go back. It's still a win that you now have an idea of what you could say at the meeting. Now you're getting yourself into the mindset of how to speak up at meetings. You're kind of finding your voice as other people talk. Then at the next meeting, you can say, okay, well, I kind of have a point of view now I'm kind of used to thinking like this.

[00:15:28] Now I'm going to actually say something. Right. It could also be that you could decide to set boundaries around work hours where nobody needs to know that you're setting this new boundary. You just step out and stop working at five o'clock and maybe the incremental change after you've been successful with that, then it's telling someone, Hey, I can't make this meeting because it's after my work hours.

[00:15:50] So what you're doing is you're making really small, actionable, incremental changes. And as you gain success, then you move the bar up just a little bit.

[00:15:59] [00:16:00] Alright, now I'm going to continue to say just one more thing here because I am so, so guilty of this. Don't make behavioral change goals too ambitious.

[00:16:10] So there is the incremental small actionable change that you decide to make. intentionally move forward in the next week. But I'm guilty and I don't know if this is you too, but maybe it's the both of us. I'm guilty of saying, okay, in three months, I'm going to be a whole new person, right? You watch those YouTube videos that are like how to become unrecognizable in four weeks, right?

[00:16:33] Um, don't make behavioral change goals too ambitious because the reality is when we treat ourselves like machines, we fail. But we fail for being something we're not. And I don't know about you, but I don't really want to be a machine. So now I've created this situation where I'm failing and I feel like a failure and I feel discouraged for trying to be something that I don't really want to be.

[00:16:57] Interesting, right? So listen, my friend, just [00:17:00] enjoy being a human. Take your time. Enjoy the struggle of like being a little bit different, implementing some change, being intentional. Take your time. And those little wins will give you confidence. They'll give you momentum. And ultimately, they're going to give you the fuel to make real, sustainable, lasting change that just becomes a part of who you are.

[00:17:23] And that takes time. Now listen, inevitably, I'm going to, I'm just going to tell you right now, inevitably, there will be some setbacks. I have this amazing mentor who drew this line. He was talking to a behavioral change because of course we geek out on that. But he showed me this, chart where he said, most people want to do this and you have this line that goes straight up.

[00:17:49] Well, maybe diagonal, right? Because the more time you spend, the better you get at things, right? So you have this line that is like, It's very much a straight line moving upwards and he's like, but that's not really how [00:18:00] behavioral change happens. The way that behavioral change happens is more of either a squiggly line where it's all over the place, but it has a general upward movement or maybe even a zigzag line where you take two steps up, one step back, three steps up, two steps back.

[00:18:16] But at the end of it, when you zoom out, you've actually made forward progress. The line is moving up. It's just that when you're in the day to day, it's going to feel like you have a win one day and a fail the next day. And that's normal. It's just that you're going to become more resilient and you're going to get stronger.

[00:18:35] So ultimately, again, when you zoom out, it is generally going in a positive direction. So change is gradual. Setbacks are normal. And your goal is less to reach the outcome, which is kind of unmotivating sometimes, and more to increase your consistency, to be patient with yourself and practice self compassion [00:19:00] as you change, literally, some parts of who you are that have been there for a very long time.

[00:19:04] I'm missing the word for it right now, but your consistency, your patience, and also you're growing your resilience and building new behavior. And also getting to see how small wins build momentum.

[00:19:17] And this is the beauty of it, that the skills you are learning and the strengths you are building are not only going to impact you in the change you're making today, it's going to impact you in the future because now you're like, Hey, I did this hard thing that I didn't realize I can do. I can do it again with a different pattern or with a different situation with a different habit I want to build.

[00:19:42] So listen, here's how you do it. Start to finish. You recognize the patterns. You build awareness on the individual situations that create the pattern and you use those insights. You turn them into action to build new habits for growth. Now, at [00:20:00] the end of the day, if this is your first time trying to make one of these major life changes, it doesn't feel necessarily major at first, but when I say major, it's the impact that it will have on your life is pretty major.

[00:20:15] You are going down a road and what we're going to do is turn just a few degrees. So we're just going to turn a few degrees now, but as time goes by those few degrees are actually going to make a really big difference in where your life is going. So listen, try the reflection exercise on your own and start with one very small behavior change this week.

[00:20:35] Take a look at one pattern, process the pattern, learn your insights, identify your small action and start putting that into, into play.

[00:20:45] But again, listen, sometimes we need to be asked the right questions. I promise you, I can start journaling my life away, but I can get about 10 percent of the insight that I actually get when I meet with my coach.

[00:20:58] When I meet with my coach, oh my goodness, it [00:21:00] is. Exponential. So know that I'm here for you. Check out the link in the description to start a conversation and maybe coaching is exactly what you need to get back into the driver's seat of your life.

[00:21:11] Now listen, if you have already overcome a pattern, if you've already changed your life, I would absolutely love to hear your experience. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn handle is PM Ortega, but an even easier way to get there is the link in the description. All right, again, remember that self awareness is the first step towards a more intentional and fulfilling career journey.

[00:21:33] Thanks for listening. Know that I love you. I'm praying for you and I'll see you on the next one. [00:22:00]