52. Career anxiety, disillusionment and feeling stuck

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello, welcome back to the show. New listeners, old listeners. It's so wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for tuning in for a really exciting episode. So fun career anxiety we absolutely stoked. Note in all seriousness, it is actually one of my favorites. I know I say that every time, but every time I get the opportunity to really dive into a topic like this, especially one that is relevant to my life, which is what I always try and do is find something that I can personally relate to, it is just such a valuable experience. So that was the case with this episode. And before we get into the content, I just want to thank everyone who has subscribed recently. I've gotten a lot of new paid subscribers as well. For those of you who don't know about this option, I publish one exclusive episode every month. It's normally about an hour long and it's more of a chartty episode. Maybe you really like when you hear people talking to their friends about what's going on in their life, or getting a special guest on, or answering your questions. That's kind of the content that I like to put out there. So if you haven't already, it would be amazing if you checked it out, No pressure, just if you really love the show. It's a really easy way to support me and let me continue doing what I love. I've also recorded this intro about seven times today because I'm all over the place. I'm all over the place, so please excuse me if I mumble and jumble my words. I hope you can forgive me this one time because it's been a long day. But we're here to talk about work. We're here to talk about what it feels like when we're not, you know, succeeding, what it feels like when we feel like we're behind. I think we've all experienced this sense of anxiety to do with our work and to do with our careers and how we make money. It is a terrible feeling, that sense of anxiety, So definitely something I think is incredibly valuable to discuss on a podcast that is focused in our twenties, and during this decade so many of us are starting our first jobs, or entering into our careers. So this feeling of unease is definitely one that I would expect many of us to have perhaps already experienced, or to experience one day. And I also just think since most of our you know, I think most of us spend a great deal of our lives working or at work, it's really inevitable that it will play a pretty key role in shape shaping our levels of happiness and our overall psychology and sense of well being. And maybe you're listening to this today and you feel like you're not at the point you should be. You should be more ahead or have some idea of what you want to do. Maybe your career isn't fulfilling. You could be doing more or something you love more, something that lights your fire. Perhaps you're stuck in a bit of a rut, your productivity levels are an all time low, or you've reached a dead end, and you're feeling really stuck or like a bit of a failure at what you're doing, whether you're currently working or studying towards a dream career or job, and you're just not sure if it's what really motivates you. This is what that episode is really trying to nail down. I think there are so many ways we can feel like the career and professional aspects of our lives and our aspirations and not what they should be, and are causing us unease or anxiety, fear, unnecessary worry. Especially in this day and age, the opportunities for our professional and working lives a seemingly endless. So how do we know that we're pursuing the right part and doing what we actually love to do. There are so many points of comparison today for what we should be doing, what others are doing, and how we might be falling behind, perceiving ourselves as failures, or feeling super lost. So if this is you, hopefully we can dispel some of that anxiety today and remind ourselves collectively, all of you listening right now, that life is long, life is more than work, and there are opportunities in your future that I think none of us could ever fathom and it will surprise you and allow you to live your dream life, maybe even better than your dream life. And above all, we're going to talk about the psychology behind feeling anxious when it comes to what are we actually doing? What does our job mean for us. What is it about work and our careers that can be such a sensitive and difficult, difficult topic, And why is it that our twenties. I really do believe our twenties are so important for dispelling career anxiety and creating a really healthy foundation for a balanced work life. So very excited to jump into it, and thank you again for tuning in so personally and from personal experience. I think it is really easy for us to get caught up in social comparison when it comes to our careers and when it comes to our working lives. It's I think comparison in general is a huge killer of joy, and especially when it's linked to things like our professional capacity and our dreams and our career and working motivations, it can really make us feel quite awful and quite unsettled. There is a really amazing theory to explain this, to explain why perhaps you today are looking around looking at people you graduated with, looking at people in your cohort, looking at people you work with, at your friends, and feeling like everyone else seems to be really happy with where they are and I'm not. And this theory that explains is so perfectly is social comparison theory, and it suggests that people value their own personal and social and professional worth by assessing how they compare to others by having a look around and almost doing a quick equation or some quick math about am I head here? Am I winning? Am I losing? What are other people doing that I'm not? And, like I said, that's such a killer of joy, especially in our working lives, because there is this sense of competition, there is this sense of acceleration and a hierarchy. And I think that that social comparison is only being elevated and only becoming more severe by the creation of social media for our professional lives. I know LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a I think a huge culprit in this more frequent and more prevalent sense of unease when it comes to our working capacity. You know, now people have the opportunity to not just show the highlight reel of their social lives and the highlight reel of their day to day lives, but also all the things that they're achieving, all the things that they're doing, and curate that on like a public resume. And I think if you have LinkedIn, maybe you have this experience of checking up on people that you may have gone to high school with, or people you met at UNI, or people who are in a similar career path to you, and having that feeling of like, oh my god, I am nowhere near where they are. I have no idea what I'm doing. How did they land such a fabulous job. They seem so happy, they seem to have so much success. And that is social comparison to a t We don't look at ourselves as singular beings, and we don't appreciate our own accomplishments. We have to kind of assess them in regards to others. And I really think that there is this kind of sense of expectation that we have to have it all together, especially when we're young. And I remember I went into my final year of UNI with no internships. I wasn't obviously working a job that I loved, and I had this feeling like the career I'd always wanted, you know, working in politics or as a journalist, it wasn't really feeding my ambition. And everyone around me seemed to have these massive goals and these incredible opportunities, and I couldn't grasp on to anything that felt permanent or meaningful in my life, especially in my career or in the professional sense of the world, and it was an awful feeling. I think it can be especially hard for those of us who have always been high achievers, always gotten really great grades, been slightly ahead of the curve, and that social comparison where we're looking around and seeing people doing amazing things can be quite deadly and really undercut that sense of personal accomplishment. But there were some really important lessons I learned during that time. Firstly, absolutely everyone is faking it. I'm promising you, no one really knows what they're doing with their career or where their aspirations are going to take them, especially in our twenties. Our twenties are about learning and making mistakes. It's the Golden decade, the Forgotten decade, the wayward decade, where you're actually allowed to quit, you're allowed to fail, you're allowed to try new things. Anyone who's not doing that is faking it. Honestly, I really do believe that. And Secondly, so many of the decisions we make concerning our careers and our jobs and our professional lives, I don't actually think because we actually want to do them, or we feel like they'll make us happy, you know, taking internships, applying for jobs that are going to pay us little and require more hours than we want to give. You know, of course, there are some opportunities that are just incredible and we should definitely leap at. But a lot of the time, the path that we are on has in some way been selected for us by those around us and by society, and it feels really natural to go along with the status quo and what everyone else is doing, even when that might actually make us unhappy. And third, in this amazing, huge world, there is always going to be someone who is doing more than you, making more money than you, that is, you know, better at their job than you, smarter than you, or at least it seems that way from their facade and from their LinkedIn. But all of that really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter if you're feeling behind right now, feeling a bit lost, feeling a bit stuck at a crossroads, or maybe you're just simply unhappy with what you're doing. I just want to remind you, and I will remind you again. Society has repeatedly told us a narrative since childhood, and especially in Western cultures, that work is way mortant than it ever should be that status and appearing successful are going to make us happier. But time and time again, across an ever increasing body of research, we can see that work and employment are really not the only drivers of our happiness, but they can still cause us really significant anxiety. And it's a really strange paradox. The thing that doesn't actually tend to bring us the greatest happiness can also bring us some of the greatest struggle and the greatest stress. Based on this survey from Anxiety Disorders Association of America, whilst only about nine percent of individuals are living with a diagnosed anxiety disorder something like general anxiety disorder or a phobia, forty percent of people will experience ongoing stress or anxiety in their daily life that is associated purely with their work or their careers. During this episode, if my preamble hasn't given it away, we are going to talk about more than just work anxiety or career anxiety, which is anxiety that's specifically associated with the jobs we're doing now. But I thought that this type of concern and some of the experiences that come along with it, might be a really good place to start, because they really do have applicability across a spectrum of worries that we're going to be discussing. And if you're someone who is experiencing anxiety and even maybe a level of distress that's specifically associated with performing your task at your job, attending your job, or going into work, you might feel symptoms that are very similar to an anxiety disorder, and symptoms that might be interrupting your life and making you feel quite awful. Taking an unusual amount of time off that is such a huge indicator that you might be dissatisfied with your work, focusing too much on the negative aspects of your job, struggling to complete tasks, or over reacting worrying too much. You might also feel a lot of anticipatory anxiety before you go to work, and just a general sense of fatigue like something isn't right, Insomnia, an exaggerated startle reaction, not being able to catch a breath. I think if you have ever worked a job you've hated or been in a work environment that was hostile, unpleasant, you know, had really high stakes these experiences, these symptoms might be very common to you, might be something that you know a lot about. For example, I used to work at this steak restaurant when I was at Uni. Yes I'm a woman of many hats, and it became such an unpleasant environment and was so awful and just like exhausting and draining that the few weeks before I quit, I think I must called in sick at least three to four times. And it's a really natural way of coping with anxiety. It's a really normal coping mechanism. When something is unpleasant, it's avoidance. We're avoiding the thing, in this case of work that makes us feel uncomfortable, and that's supernatural to do. And when you're avoiding work, I think that's a really clear sign that you're probably not very happy. You're probably not fulfilled or respected, and it's time for a change. There's something in you that's really saying, hey, like, this isn't for us. I know this is what's expected of us. I know I have these conflicting feelings about why I'm here, But maybe this environment isn't for me and maybe I would be better able to learn somewhere else. When we talk about anxiety that is associated with work and our careers, are these two other types of anxiety that I think are really important to talk about and which don't really seem to get much attention or the tension that I think they deserve. And these two types of anxiety that may occur in relation to our careers and our professional lives, learning anxiety and survival anxiety, and these types of anxiety they act in tandem to either motivate us to stay or to leave a job or a career path. They're kind of these this inbuilt reactions that's really directed towards the environments that we're most often in, and especially our work environments. So I'm going to explain them a little bit now, and while I do, I want you to think about the situation you might be struggling with and how this might apply. So firstly, we have learning anxiety, and this comes from being afraid to try something new out of fear that it's going to be too difficult, that we're going to look stupid, that will have to part from old habits, that it's going to be uncomfortable. And learning anxiety is what might stop you when you think about starting a new role, when you think about leaving a toxic work environment, you know you're going to have to learn something new You're going to have to meet new people, you might not be great at it, you might not have those solid relationships to begin with. It's the fear that arises when you realize you're you know, you might have to take a risk to change your path and to achieve the goals that are related to your career and your professional life, and it might not go perfectly. But on the flip side, we have survival anxiety, and that is this horrible, sometimes not always, but no normally unpleasant realization that if you want to make it maybe not that that's not the right phrase, but if you really want to do something that you love, if you really want to be in control of your career and your professional life, you're probably going to have to make a change. And this anxiety is what propels you to maybe look for a new job in the first place. It's that feeling of I actually really need to get out of here, because if I don't do it now, maybe I'll never leave. I'm just going to fade away. I'm going to be, you know, another fly on the wall at this workplace. And it's the feeling, the anxious feeling that tells you it's really time to move on to something else, you know. I think another word for it is restless, feat like it's survival. It's like we've you know, we've exhausted this resource. It's time to move on. So when your survival anxiety becomes a stronger force than you're learning anxiety, when your desire to kind of move on and move upward is stronger than that fear of failing and that fear of trying something new and maybe not getting it right. I think that's when you're in the right place where you are probably ready to move on. It's time to look for a new job or consider a career shift. And this example of that feeling of the push and pull of staying or leaving an an unhappy workplace or an unsatisfy, dying job is such an important cross words. I think we all experience at some point. I'm sure most of you. You know foremost of you, it is an experience you probably may have had. I don't think I can think of anyone who has stayed in their job, you know, their first job, for their entire life, unless you're like a nun or something, and even if you're technically performing the same role like you're a barista or a doctor. We all need a change in environment. You know, humans get bored really easily, and our motivations and our desires change just as frequently. So if an environment, or if a job or a career path even isn't suiting you right now, what's stopping you from changing? You know, there are always going to be financial pressures and other things that we need to consider, but there is also agency. You really are in control, and you get to decide what environments feed your soul, what skills you get to learn, what opportunities you get to have. So I imagine for some of you listening, you are at this very crossroads right now. Maybe you've been at UNI for a couple of years and you're like, fuck, I actually really don't like this course. I don't like this you know what I'm learning. I don't actually think it's for me. That can be really scary. But once that learning anxiety overcome, you know, once the survival anxiety, sorry overcomes your learning anxiety, you're really able to ask yourself, you know, what is the worst case scenario here? You know, do the benefits outweigh the costs? Why am I fearful of this? Change? Is it because it would disappoint others. Is it because I'm worried about not being comfortable? Because if your answer is yes to those last few questions, I think you know the reason why you're staying is perhaps not the right one. So I'm going to take a little break here because i want to talk about our Next Partner the show. Our Next Partner has a product that I've been using quite literally every day for the past few months. So I started taking AG one for a number of reasons. So if you're an avid listener of podcasts, such as myself, you may have heard of this brand. It's called Athletic Grains, and I had been getting recommendations for this constantly and I really wanted to see what the hype was about. I've also been trying to eat better for my body and my mind these past few months. It's been a stressful a few months, and it seemed like a pretty easy way to do it. So, okay, maybe I should explain what it is. What is ag one. It's essentially a nutritional insurance, So you take one little scoop. I normally take mine in the morning before I have breakfast, and you essentially receive all of the vitamins and minerals you might need for the day. It's great for your nervous system, it's great for your immune system, your energy levels, your focus, all things I think we kind of want in our twenties and when we're young, and we want our bodies to be healthy and energized. My housemay is also now really obsessed with it, so I'm going to need to stock up soon. But essentially, it's a great addition for your health. It supports mental clarity, it helps me sleep better, and it's a really kind of easy thing to add to your lifestyle. It's a small micro habit that is one extra thing you can do on your day to take care of yourself, which I imagine is probably a priority for all of us. Also, in keeping with the ethos of this podcast, it is planet friendly, it's people friendly. Athletic Greens is a climate neutral certified company, Thank you very much, and regularly gives back to the community, which I think is important for really any brand that talks about health. We obviously care about our own well being, but it's great to be supported by a company that cares about the world as well. So today I think is a great time to reclaim your health and arm your immut system with a really super convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop mixed with water or juice or whatever milk if you want, I don't know, one scoop every day. That's it. No need for a million different supplements and vitamins to look after your health. And to make it really easy, Athletic Greens It's going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting Vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit Athletic Greens dot com slash Gemma again, that is Athletic Greens dot com slash Gemma with the j to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Now, like many of the topics we discuss on the show, the complexities are vast and it's very hard to touch on everything we might want to discuss. But for the second half of the episode, I really want to talk about that feeling of you know, not being where you think you should be in your career, imposter syndrome, and some of the existential dread that can accompany that that experience where your work doesn't really align with what you perceive as your high mission or your purpose. Not all of us, I think, have the luxury of being able to do what we truly love our passion for our careers. So how can we still have jobs or work that is fulfilling and maintain strong interests, And how can we make sure that the things that are happening in our professional lives and the anxieties that we might be feeling there are things that we can manage and reinforce that idea that we repeat time and time again throughout this episode, that work is not your life. I think that that final point of imposter syndrome and of the idea of comparing success is one that I'm really excited to discuss. For those of you who know this podcast is not my job, at least it's not my full time job. I actually work full time as a health consultant. So that kind of balancing act between feeding myself and feeling confident at work and still feeling feeding my soul is one that I think I've gotten much better out over the years, and then I'm really excited to talk about. I think so often in our twenties, we are young, we're still learning and we're so worried that we're not achieving enough or doing enough, or that we're not on the right path. So how do we overcome that feeling. It's such a messy feeling, it's an uncomfortable feeling, and it really is based in social comparison. I think the main thing I like to remind myself is its success is really relative. It's subjective. You know, it is in our human nature to define ourselves in terms of others. We know who we are by comparing ourselves to what others are doing and seeing the differences, both negative and positive especi role models or people that we see as kind of post to children or post to people of success. And though the negative comparisons are definitely a lot easier to remember, I think it's also important to understand that a lot of us have achieved more than you know, we ever could have fathomed or we're ever capable of giving ourselves credit for. And the truth is that comparing ourselves to others ensures that we never feel successful. We have to instead measure our goals and our progress to the past instead of someone else's present. We aren't actually in the same race. No two people are ever going to be the same. And instead of looking around and being like, Okay, they're further ahead then me, they're further ahead of me. You know, they're doing that, they've got that internship. Am I doing the thing that I love? Why does everyone else seem happier than me? Take a step back, Just sit for a second and realize how far you've come. You know. I always like to picture myself when I was five, Like my five year old self would never imagine that I was doing this, or that I was working at my other job and having a great time and producing things for the community and for society. So I think that's a much better motivator. Think about where you've come from, not where other people are going. I think another way to kind of overcome that sense that our successes, you know, are never going to be big enough, that our career isn't taking off, that we're not doing the right thing is to celebrate our small winds. I think if we stop celebrating the small things, eventually all we see is failure. It's really not that often that big amazing victories kind of come around. And if we wait for those big, amazing, amazing, celebratory moments, it might be a while, it might be a while between those, So it's really important to celebrate the small winds and every step closer you get to whatever dream you have. Every time you do something a little bit better, you have a realizing about what you really want. You you go back to study, you do really well on an essay. And I would really kind of recommend, I think I say this on most of my episodes, like the absolute power of journaling and keeping track of where you were in the past and where you are now and kind of seeing how far that we have come. And it's a really great way to no longer make those comparisons between ourselves and other people when it comes to our work lives and our professional lives. And I think let's link I think really very much linked to this is forgetting to look back and forgetting to understand how our dreams change over time. Yes, obviously we can look back at our younger selves and be like, oh, look how far we've come. But I also want you to think about what did you want to do when you were twelve, or when you were fifteen or sixteen, or seventeen or twenty two, or if you're you know, a bit later in your twenties, about twenty five. Things change, our desires change, and it's totally okay for you to switch around and to try new things. Something a friend said to me once which really stuck with me, is this idea of the paradox of comparison. For someone else, you're actually living their dream life right now. What you have achieved is their idea of success. And whilst you're busy comparing yourself to others, there's someone else who's looking at you thinking you're absolutely amazing. And we've mentioned this with the social comparison theory at the beginning, but we really are hardwired to compare our professional actions and our professional and career accomplishments and successes to others, and that makes sense. It really does make sense. It allows us to understand our place in society. And sometimes we can be very competitive and are only able to appreciate where we are by looking at others. But it actually sometimes helps to understand that there are people who would look up to you just as much as you look up to others. This perspective is actually called downward social comparison, whereby okay, this is a scientific definition, so take it with a grain of salt, but downward. Social comparison occurs when we compare ourselves to others who we perceive as being worse off than us. I don't like that term worse off because I don't think anyone is ever worse off. You know, we're alive, we're breathing, we are loved. How can that be bad? But people who maybe a few steps behind where we are, who want to be where we are. And obviously we want to dispel the idea of social comparison altogether, but sometimes that can be a companying thought. To imagine yourself as someone else's hero, as someone else's inspiration. I also want to talk about imposter syndrome. Okay, so some fun psychology of your twenties trivia for you. The psychology of imposter Syndrome was actually the first episode I ever put out on this show, which seemed really fitting at the time. So if this topic is really interesting to you, please feel free to go and listen to that. And you know, also here exact how far this show has come, particularly in audio quality, I will say, but aside from that, imposter syndrome can really go hand in hand with career anxiety in so many ways. The phrase imposter syndrome. It refers to a feeling very similar to social comparison, but I think a lot more severe. It involves feelings of self doubt and incompetence, that we're bad at our jobs, that we don't know what we're doing, that we're failing, that we should have it more together, and this feeling persists despite all the available evidence pointing to the fact that you are indeed very accomplished and very incredible and highly skilled, and the fact that you've made so much progress in the past. You know, I don't know how long, but since you were a child, or since you graduated high school, like, the things that you've done must have been amazing to get you to where you are. Imposter syndrome is such a common experience amongst people I've spoken to, especially as we're starting out in our chosen field and we're trying to get our footing perhaps listening to this and you're in your first full time job or your first internship or your first placement, and it can be a huge source of career anxiety to not really know what you're doing, to not know if this is what you want, and it prompts some of those very extrastential questions of do I belong here? Is this the right choice for me? Do I actually care about this? Can I do this? And the chances are the answer to all of those questions is yes. But our minds have this tricky way of priming us to expect the worst and to tear ourselves down, and imposter syndrome, especially in our professional working lives, has been described as the silent career killer. I'm just gonna say that again. I love this phrase, the silent career killer. Those experiencing imposter syndrome have such an intense sense of inadequacy, even when told otherwise that sometimes we can self sabotage and we can give up on things before we've even given it a go because of that self doubt, because we feel like a fraud, because we feel like, you know, we're not where we should be, that we don't belong here. All of these mental phenomenon we have spoken about when we were talking about career anxiety are such a complicated cocktail of experiences, and it's so hard to break them down because I think whilst all of us might feel a little bit of apprehension about where we are in our professional lives. It can manifest in such a different way for everyone, but all of them can really leave us feeling uneasy, like we're heading down the wrong path. So once again, I want to remind you of that one crucial lesson that I want all of you to take away from this episode. Your job, your career, and what you do for work is not the most important thing about you. Indeed, it's probably not even the top three. Think about all the other things that make you who you are and contribute to a happy, brilliant life. The relationships and love you curate, how you treat others, your family, your health, your hobbies and passions, your mission, your memories, moments of profound happiness. All those things sound a lot more important to me than whether you're ahead of you know Nancy on LinkedIn, or you know whether this job is really what you want. So if you are experiencing career anxiety at the moment and wondering if you are where you should be, take a breath and remind yourself that this is not the end of your story. You can change paths at any point, and the most amazing opportunities they really do show up when we least expect them, and I promise you you're not failing. I promise you that. In fact, I'm sure no one else thinks that either. And if you're having a hard time adapting, maybe this is a learning experience that you will grow from and adapt to until it's time for the next challenge. Society, especially in this day and age, has become so focused on work and our careers and our success over life. But work is not the content of a happy life. It's just an element, and sometimes it can be really useful to take a step back. Like I said, compare where you are now to where you were in the past, Recognize those small successes, think deeply about what your dreams actually are, and put your thoughts down, maybe even a little plan onto the page. Our brains are a lot better at organizing smaller, bite sized thoughts and steps rather than massive complicated problems we feel we're never going to be able to digest. And sometimes career anxiety is exactly that, a massive complicated anxiety that's eating away at us, fed by social comparison and work and anxiety and imposter syndrome. And until we're able to break it down and identify what it is. We're worried about why we don't feel like we belong, why we feel like we're behind, why we feel like we're doing it wrong. We're never really going to be able to overcome that. Promise you it is going to be all right. You're definitely where you need to be. And thank you for listening to this episode. It was such an interesting one to do. Some of that science is so fascinating and definitely something that was worthwhile for me. I also want to again thank our sponsor, Athletic Greens for being able to let me do what I love, which is such a great feeling. And to all of you for listening. You literally make my week every single week. It's just insane how many people want to listen to this and I think, yeah, it really does blow my mind. So I'm so grateful and thank you as always. I'd also invite you to follow the Psychology of your Twenties on Instagram. That is where I decide what episodes to put out at the end of every week. So this one was actually chosen by listeners, and there will be another poll next week, so vote away and I will produce the content and it will be in your feed. And thank you again for listening. I hope you have a lovely, lovely day.