Stay, Shift, or Leap? How to Choose Your Next Career Path

If you’re questioning what’s next in your career, or sensing you’ve outgrown the path you’re on, this episode will help you find clarity. 

In Stay, Shift, or Leap? How to Choose Your Next Career Path, Jill guides you through a practical, grounding exercise that explores three possible futures: staying where you are, shifting into something new, or leaping into a bold, judgment-free version of your life. In this episode we'll discuss: 

• The three future paths that reveal whether it’s time to stay, shift, or leap
• How to separate fear from desire when choosing your next career move
• Why clarity comes from exploring options—not forcing a single plan

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Career Failure And Control
• 2:24 Introducing Stay, Shift, Or Leap
• 3:52 Why Binary Choices Mislead Us
• 6:16 Stay Path: Truth Of Your Now
• 9:14 Shift Path: Reorientation And Reinvention
• 12:42 Leap Path: Clarity Without Fear

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Friends, welcome back to the Crew of Refresh. I am Jill Griffin, executive coach, creative strategist, career strategist, and someone who believes that clarity in our career isn't found from pushing harder. It's often found from asking more intelligent and more curious questions and finding time to pause and think. And that's what we're talking about today. Today we are going to explore one of the most common and at times most confusing moments in our career. Whether you're wondering, should I stay? Should I shift? Should I leap? Should I leap? Should I go? Should I leap to the new ex opportunity? Should I go someplace else? Most people think about career decisions like a tightrope, right? And they feel like one wrong move and everything falls apart. I just, I refuse to believe that. And someone can argue with me, but I feel like it's much more like shoots and ladders, right? If you're um, if you're working your career and all of a sudden something falls and you're down, right? When you work through that, you're right back where you're exactly supposed to be. How do we know? Because that's where you are, that's where you end up, and that's where you're supposed to be. So some of my philosophy and things, it doesn't mean we don't make plans, we don't strategize, we don't work hard, but I don't really believe in failure. I just believe in like, yeah, you messed up or that sucks, or that wasn't what you wanted. But then you move forward and you decide what to do next. Failure is only when you stop trying. So if you're thinking about your career chapter, the next chapter as being like, I gotta figure this out, I gotta do it right, I can't mess up, right? I'm gonna offer you that your next chapter is probably not a single option, that there's a range of possibilities. And when you can spend time and seeing those possibilities more clearly, decision making becomes a lot easier. You're finding that it's much more aligned to your personal values or the values that you have professionally that align to your company that you're looking at or where you're looking to go, right? So in this episode, I want to guide you through some really thought-provoking areas. Stay what it looks like if you continue the way you are, shift what becomes possible if you make meaningful change. And then leap, what if you moved fear and judgment and money? If that wasn't in the way, what would you choose? All right, so let's dig in. Okay, why this framework works on the the three parts of looking at stay, shift, or leap is because when you're feeling stuck, people are often looking at this thing or this thing. Should I do this? Should I do this? I'm looking at two things, I'm looking at it as a binary answer. I could do this and this would happen, I could do this and this would happen. But they're not apples to apples. You can't, the the opportunities are different, the challenges are different, you are gonna be different based on what which you choose. So it's not comparing it this way. It's looking at, let me look at what happens if I stay, let me investigate that and not look at anything else. What happens if I shift? What does that look like? Not looking at anything else. And then lastly, if I leave. So again, then you're like, well, then what happens? Okay, so once you do that work, then yes, we can compare, but it's not a pro and con list between the two things that we're looking at. All right. So one gives you a choice, you get perspective, you get permission, you get a place to play and sort of uh wallow in a great way into what's possible. This framework will also help you get to name what it is that you want or start to get the feeling for what it is that you want. And then see, are there times in which your fear is masquerading as logic, right? I know I'm guilty of that too at times. And how do you ground your decision in both data and desire? And then identify if you're going to make the shift, what are you actually shifting it into? So let's start to breaking this down. Let's start with staying on the path, right? If nothing changed. So again, this is place. Grab that pen, grab that journal, grab that notes app, whatever your style is, and really think through if you continued exactly where you are now, what would your career and life look like over the next few months or next few years? You can decide. Sometimes we do this as a three-year plan or a five-year plan, but I feel like sometimes that's way too hard to think about it. So I like to look at things in one-year increments. I feel like for the most part, unless there's um, you know, something's causing you physical pain, that you could probably do something for one year and then pause and reflect and decide if you're gonna move on or if you're gonna stay um where you're at. So we're not predicting the future. This is about really thinking through the truth of your now. Does the path you're on feel aligned and steady? Are you growing or do you feel like you're coasting? Does the work you're doing energize or drain you? What are some of the real trade-offs of staying the course? So when we stay on a path, it reveals like whether you're genuinely satisfied, or are you tolerating something you've outgrown? And I recently did an episode about outgrowing your career and how to navigate through that. So you may want to check that one out too. I'll put that in the show notes. The path can feel really grounding if you stay where you are, or it might feel like, oh gosh, no way, this is a way to go call. Right? Both of this, we'll call it data, both of these answers are useful. All right. Second thing is the shift path. What if you made change? If your current situation was no longer an option, and don't go down the doomsday scroll. We're not talking about because anything bad would happen, that's not going to help you be creative and think. We're just talking about what if that job wasn't an option and you were safe? Okay. What would you do next? This is about reorientation, perhaps reinvention. If you couldn't rely on your current role or the team or the people you know, the routines, what would help you rise to the top? What would you naturally do next? What are strengths or passions that you might lean on first, right? Are there parts of your identity or who you're being or how you're showing up that you might actively work on and say, you know what, I'm gonna shed those. You're working on them with a mentor or a therapist or a coach. And are there new possibilities set up here? Really thinking that through. Here you want to think about that the shift often reveals things that maybe you've avoided exploring because they feel inconvenient, not because they're wrong. What I hear a lot is that people love the idea of going back and advancing in upskilling or education. But then when they think about the time, the money, it's gonna take a long time before they get the certification or pass the exams or do the thing, that they feel like I want it now, so they don't shift. All right, welcome to being human. We can work on the mindset around that. But if you really like what the thing is, or what the new path might be, or that new role, or that new contribution to your community or to the workplace, what would you do? What would that look like for you? Right. This is the place that's going to show you what has been waiting in the wings and what maybe needs to come to the forefront. Okay. The next is the leap path. This is if fear lost its power. So, what would you do if money, fear, or other people's opinions did not matter? This isn't fantasy. This is about clarity with intentional constraint, right? We know that when we constrain ourselves, there's an opportunity actually within that to be more creative, to be in that space. So just thinking through, if we remove these external challenges like money, fear, and other people's opinions, I'm not saying they're not real. They totally are. I get it. They really can impact our way of being, our mindset, and the work that we produce. But let's just put those aside for a moment, right? Play with me. Let's put those aside. So if you could put those aside, what do you truly want? What if you pursued it? Could you trust yourself enough to go pursue it? And what would you finally be able to either admit to yourself or would you allow yourself to do? Is there something I hear a lot from people is that maybe they wanted to move, maybe they don't want to be in the city or the town that they're in anymore, but there's so many pressures around money and family and other people's opinions. And I'm just saying, just for a moment, just put that aside and really think through. Where would you want to live? Where would you want what city do you want to work in? What does that look like for you? And what becomes possible for you if fear isn't always there as like the sidekick, right? So when you leap, the path often can hold a really pure desire. And it doesn't mean you're doing it now. Maybe you're doing it in five years from now. Maybe it's a longer term plan. It's not about jumping tomorrow, it's about jumping for what's real. And when you're thinking through the leap path, it contains a truth, your truth, about how you can integrate some of those areas now without blowing everything in your life up. There's a possibility that you can start doing some of that stuff now. Again, it depends on what your truth is. And this is a great opportunity to work with a mentor or a coach to help you figure out what are the smaller incremental steps that you can take in order to get there. So, next, I want you to think so, you've got your stay, you've got your leap, you've got your shift. I want you to give each of these paths a short little title, right? So, some examples could be stay might be steady growth, predictable stability. Fine. Shift might be trading roles for alignment and ease. I hear a lot about people who are either caretaking young children or caretaking older parents that are like, you know what, I want to do good work, I want to be intellectually stimulated, I want to be paid, I want health insurance. If you're in the US, our health insurance is tied to our employment many of the times. You want that, but you really want to just, I don't want to have to work outside of work. And that is an honest answer. There's also a part in the sobriety community where it's called a sober job, right? So that if your if your job is to get well and to get sober and to work on your health and overall well-being, then we don't want to be in a job that's so taxing that it would impact your recovery, right? That's also maybe if you're thinking through shifting, like trading roles for alignment and ease. Those are two examples. And then maybe lastly, um, this the title might be something like the leap might be finally choosing what I want. So I want you to really think through if you were to give them a headline, what would the headline be? No pressure. You don't need to like market and you know, make it a marketing document, just be thinking about like what would the theme and the beat be of that. Now, I want you to next think about the three paths reveal. So this is a framework I use often with clients and thinking through, okay, staying the path where you are right now shows your tolerance level, right? But are you staying because it's aligned or because it's familiar? The shift path shows what you're ready for. And this path is about evolution, reinvention, maybe recalibration, possibility. And the leap path often shows some of your really deep desires, or some of you may call it your deepest truth. And even if it's not the path that you end up choosing, it reveals more of what you want or who you want, um, who you want to be or who you want in your life, right? What is that piece that you want to integrate into aspects of your life if you take the leap path? And then together, you want to really think about like what might be the next move if you look through where which one are you drawn most to? So is it stay, shift, or leap? And you may already know the answer. And it may also feel like, but it's impossible to get there. I'm just gonna ask you to not do that to yourself right now and just hold the possibility because you may feel a gentle tug towards one of these paths, or you may simply feel relief knowing that, you know what, I have more options than I actually realized, and that really feels good right now. I'm not gonna do anything about it right now, but I really like the idea that I have more than one option. So, what I want you to take away is your next move doesn't have to be this dramatic, meaningful, life-changing shift, or it can be, and you know what, go with God. Awesome. But you just want to think through how you're choosing it consciously and making sure that it's aligned towards who you're becoming. I want to hear from you. You know I always want to hear from you. So, did you do some of these prompts and what did you uncover? Email me at hello at JillGriffinCoaching.com. And as always, this worked for you. Share it with somebody else. This career that you're creating is a living system. It's not just about today, it's creating that career, that narrative, and where you want to go next and finding time to pause and ask yourself these questions like this are really what can help uncover some of those truths of what you want to do and what's possible for you. All right, friends. As always, ask yourself really thoughtful questions. Find time for the pause, be intentional and always, always, always be kind. All right. I will see you soon.