Getting hit repeatedly in the face by the scarcity mentality

how to respond to ‘opportunities’

Growing up in an immigrant family, let’s say that scarcity is hardly a stranger in every day life. Teachings of making the best of everything that comes our way and saving for a rainy day were ingrained in me as a kid.

This creeps up quite often as that devil’s advocate voice in my head in that yells at me often during this career exploration period. Like why the hell would I choose to take a massive pay cut just to dick around around somewhere? And of course, it drives that compulsion to look into every ‘opportunity’ that comes up (read: job postings in my first career field). ‘Cause it doesn’t hurt to check it out, right?

Right. If you’re not me.

I am a person that angsts a lot. And the more information, decisions and perceived decisions that come my way = a lot more stress. I also use these new job prospects as additional instances to beat myself up on why I can’t be content with my first career and what am I even doing and maybe I should try interviewing???

Yeah you get the point.

Solution? I set an arbitrary time frame to stop actively looking at the new job postings. Similar to this, I constructed some boundaries to protect my sanity and the period of time I’ve allowed myself to look into this alternate career.

Deliberate ignorance. Is it a smart choice? Dunno. The relatively peace of mind for the time being is worth it though.

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-S