Career Switch Podcast: Expert advice for your career change · Lixandra Urresta

55: The hidden blockers keeping you stuck

·30 min·1 clip

Ellen Whitlock-Baker says your brain “doesn’t care if you’re happy,” it cares if you’re safe.

Alexandra frames the episode around a familiar problem: people who want to make a career switch but keep delaying the first step. She asks about the kind of stuckness that turns into next week, then next month, then next year. Ellen answers as an executive coach and leadership consultant who works with midlife professionals. She describes her role as helping people reclaim who they are and what they want to do next. A major theme is that the blocker is often an internal voice built from past experiences. Ellen says that voice can come from a teacher, a boss, a bully, or a supervisor who made someone feel small. She uses the example of people hearing old criticism when they try to begin something new. That criticism can surface as the thought that a blog, a new role, or a different path is simply not for them. Rather than wrestling with the feeling directly, she suggests pausing to notice whose voice is actually in your head. Once that voice is named, the fear gets easier to examine. Ellen then recommends breaking the problem into small experiments. Those experiments are meant to test the assumption instead of treating it like fact. She connects that approach to the immunity to change model by Keegan and Leahy. She notes that model is more complex than the version she uses with clients. Her own version starts simpler and is meant to work in real life. Alexandra helps ground the advice by asking about a client example. Ellen describes people who feel rotten in their jobs and are being told they are not good enough or not doing things the way people want them to. They may also feel stuck because the path they can see does not match what a supervisor wants. In that kind of situation, the work is to slow down, identify the blocker, and try a small next step. The episode stays focused on practical movement rather than abstract reinvention.

As heard by us

Small experiments and a blocker tracker give this career-switch advice real traction.

This episode looks at the stuckness that can keep a career change on hold, and at the practical ways Ellen Whitlock-Baker helps people work through it.

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Why you'd press play

If you keep putting off your next career move, this helps you name what is keeping you stuck.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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