Trade control: give up to gain career control

In this episode, we explore how to de-risk your career roadmap by identifying the hidden vulnerabilities that hold your decision-making hostage.

🎧 Episode Notes: De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities

True career growth requires gaining autonomy over your choices. This episode provides a framework for performing a "pre-mortem" of career failure by identifying the sources of power that currently influence your life and limiting their leverage over your future.

• Identify Your Sources of Power: Perform an exercise to list the people, situations, and physical things (like money or debt) that drive your current decision-making and could shift your behavior if they changed.
• Conduct a Career "Pre-mortem": Use this diagnostic approach to recognize what has the power to change your decisions, helping you prepare for potential failures before they occur.
• Understand the "Hostage" Dynamic: Realize that while some leverage is aligned with your values, other factors—like large amounts of debt—can hold your career hostage, forcing you to make decisions you otherwise wouldn't.
• Balance Vulnerability and Autonomy: Distinguish between healthy vulnerability (such as in relationships with family) and unhealthy vulnerability (such as with creditors), and work to de-risk the latter to reclaim your agency.
• The Link Between Debt and Career Risk: Learn how eliminating financial vulnerabilities, like credit card debt, increases your autonomy, potentially allowing you to take "principled" career risks you previously couldn't afford.
• Re-evaluate Your Non-Negotiables: Use introspection to determine which parts of your job are truly essential and which "imagined" risks are preventing you from seeking better alignment with your personal purpose.
• Shift Your Control Systems: Understand that growth often requires giving up control in one area (like spending habits) to gain control and autonomy in your professional path.

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