Why is it so hard to make a career change?
Let me count the ways. We may not have the information, training, education or contacts that we need, just for starters.
Or perhaps simply the act of making the decision to make the career change is a huge hurdle to clear. After all, deciding to make any important change can confound us. But why?
One big reason is that when faced with a decision, we humans perceive the pain of loss to be about twice as potent as the pleasure of gain. The fancy term for this is loss aversion.
It's part of a larger psychological phenomenon known as negativity bias, which as Jonah Lehrer explains in his book How We Decide, means our brains perceive that bad is stronger than good.
Loss aversion is not rooted in logic; psychologists discovered that it's a defect hard-wired in the brain, present in all of us who experience emotion (which is as I see it, most of us). Loss aversion has widespread implications for many areas of our lives, including relationships, how we manage investments, and how we steer our careers.
When we consider changing careers, we naturally imagine all kinds of losses. We fear losing financial security, traction in our career trajectory, close relationships with people we work with now, that feeling we have of being competent at what we do, even perhaps the good opinion of our friends and of society.
Compared to the losses, the possible gains, such as feeling more satisfied, feeling reinvigorated, learning new things and even earning more money trigger a weaker emotional response.
So what can we do about loss aversion? According to Lehrer, "The only way to avoid loss aversion is to know about the concept."
So now you know. You can practice being aware of when you're engaging in the mental habit of loss aversion and then turn your attention to the facts of your situation.
Does this mean that emotions play no part in complex decision making? Absolutely not. In fact as it turns out, making complex decisions requires tuning into our emotions (also known as a "gut check") after we've had a chance to mull over data.
You can overdo the pros and cons list-making, however. Psychologist Ap Diiksterhuis found in his experiments that that the longer people spend analyzing options in complex decision making, the less satisfied they are with their decisions.
Deciding to change is hard because we focus on what we have to lose if we make the change. But when we realize that potential losses may not in fact be a bigger deal than potential gains and decide to do more investigating, we just may make the best decision of our lives.
I'd love to know: Have you ever decided to make a career change, despite fearing what you had to lose?
