Breaking Free from Golden Handcuffs: Reclaim Your Career and Life

Lisa Marie Bobby:

Okay. So this one, I don’t, I don’t have a presentation done, so we’re going to do it without it, but I’ll try to do different camera angles and things. And, um, thank you for your help in adding any words or visuals just to make it so people can, can follow with the content. All right. So we’re talking about golden handcuffs.

Do you feel like you’re trading your freedom for a paycheck?

Are you deeply unsatisfied with your career, but feel like you make too much money to walk away?

If any of this is feeling familiar, you may if any of this is sounding familiar, you may be shackled by golden handcuffs, my friend, but today we’re talking about how you can break free.

If this is your first time on Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Dr. Lisa Marie, Bobbi, your host. My background, I’m a psychologist, I’m a marriage and family therapist, a board certified coach and the founder of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. And this is Love, Happiness and Success.

Where every week we’re talking about how to grow and do the work that will help you attain everything that you want, better relationships, feeling good about yourself and your life, and achieving your definition of success.

And it’s that success part that we’re diving into today. Why we’re talking about this phenomenon of golden handcuffs, meaning that it is real easy to get trapped into a job or in a career that pays well, but that is basically slowly killing you because

this is not a place that you want to stay, but it can be hard to break free unless you know what’s going on and how to extract yourself.

So today we’ll be learning about a number of things together. First, the false beliefs that trap you into situations like this, and then how to change the mindset and also the things to do differently that will make it feel like you have more options than maybe you feel right now. We will also be discussing the all important piece of how to not blow up your life and like spiral down into financial ruin when you’re making a big career change.

And then I’m going to be loading you up with all kinds of free resources and some activities to do outside of this episode that you can do some of this work that will help you feel more confident in pivoting. If that is in your future,

So to jump right into this golden handcuffs, like what does that even mean? And it’s, it’s very evocative, isn’t it? It’s like alluring, like golden, but also ominous with the handcuffs part, like what’s happening here? But this is perfect. I mean, it really creates a picture of what this is like for people.

We have luxury. We have success. success, oftentimes financial success, but this other experience, like you’re being held captive, like you’re trapped by this prosperity and financial success, uh, the golden links of the chain are these reminders that yes, maybe financial security is. there, but that you, you can never leave, right?

It feels like you are now beholden to the situation. And if you have been lucky enough to fall into a career path that you enjoy, that feels great. It is not a problem. But where it is a problem is if you are really unhappy, you think, I don’t want to do this anymore. Maybe what seemed like a dream job is now starting to feel like a nightmare.

, you’re exchanging your freedom for this paycheck. You feel like, um, on the one hand you’re miserable, but on the other, you’re scared of leaving because of the money. So it’s like, your life is okay, but you are scared. slowly suffocating, maybe becoming burnt out, maybe becoming depressed.

Maybe the job that you’re in is impacting your relationships in a negative way. Maybe it is a nightmare in terms of work life balance. You know, uh, you’d never see your kids like traveling all the time. There could be so many different things that could make your job really not a good fit for you, but the money.

I love it when my listeners get in touch with me and like share what’s going on in their lives. That’s why I started doing these live streams with you every Thursday. In case you didn’t know this on Monday I release a podcast episode or a video and then on Thursdays we talk about it and I sent out a link for people to ask questions in advance if you want to ask a question in advance it’s growingself.

com forward slash deer. Hyphen Lisa, but I got the best question slash comment from a listener lately related to feeling super trapped in their job. We’ll call him Alex. And what he shared, um, I’ll read it to you. I was working in this really high paying tech job and the salary was incredible and there were benefits. And there were bonuses and, you know, that was fantastic, but every day I would wake up and feel like I could not even get out of bed because I did not want to get up and go do that again.

I felt like I was dying inside were his words. Um, he said, I, this was so poignant to me. I feel like I traded my passion for profit and I couldn’t see a way out. He actually used that term golden handcuffs and, um, went on to say it felt like it crushed my ambition. It crushed my dreams. I used to be this big go getter and now I just feel completely dead. I feel burnt out. I feel trapped. I feel hopeless and I don’t know what to do. I would love to make a change, but I don’t know what I could do that would pay me as well as what I’m doing now.

My family depends on me. Um, can you help? So this, this is a big question, but I mean, this is exactly what the experience is like. Alex’s story is not unique.

I’ve talked to so many people over the years. Um, you know, so my, my background, I’m a psychologist. I’m a marriage and family therapist. I’m also though a coach. And a lot of times with clients, you know, um, work life is very salient, right? Because it impacts everyone. everything else. If you’re unhappy in your career, it is going to impact the way that you feel mentally, emotionally, sometimes physically, it will often impact your relationships.

And so all of these things are interconnected. And also doing growth work for the benefit of your career will often improve your life in many other areas. So I am frequently talking to my clients about their careers and what’s going on. And I have had some So many clients who have found themselves in exactly this position of really feeling trapped.

You know, they got seduced into a certain job or career path that looked good from the outside. Uh, and, and a big piece of it was this, this promise of financial security only to realize once they got in. into it that they, they’re feeling really trapped partially by their own success. It’s like this gilded cage, you know, it’s beautiful, but it’s still a prison.

And let’s just talk for a second. I’m going to put my psychologist hat on right here about why we have got to do some work if you’re having this experience. And primarily, it’s because of the emotional toll this can take. And this can come from a lot of different directions. Maybe you feel a lot of stress and anxiety and pressure around maintaining a certain lifestyle or perhaps it’s a lot of anxious catastrophic thoughts related to fears of losing your financial security but on the other side Lots of dark emotions coming up, namely regret, right?

Like regret if you are sacrificing your true passions and what could have been, on the altar, of this paycheck. Or for many people sacrificing things that are even closer to home again, going back to that example of like traveling all the time or work in crazy hours or have an extremely demanding job that makes it so that you have very little time with your family.

Um, that can be very, very difficult. Or if this job is taking so long. such a toll on you mentally and emotionally, even though you’re physically present with your family, you’re not okay. You’re snapping at people. You’re irritable. You’re withdrawn. You’re kind of cranky or you’re checked out. Like you’re so exhausted.

I see this with people a lot of times when, um, They’re, they’re feeling burnt out. Like one of the primary symptoms of this can be just shut down. So like your kids are trying to talk to you and like, look, I drew a picture. And you’re like, just on your phone, not looking at anything interesting, but like, uh, and because it’s like, you just cannot focus on one more thing.

It’s just this total shutdown, but that really impacts the way that people feel. Um, and so. This is a very difficult life space to be in.

I think you would agree with me when I say this, that something needs to change

we’ll talk about how to do some of the internal work related to breaking free, but first we need to talk about some of the realities that you might be facing because this is an important part of the equation. I mean, they are golden handcuffs, right? So there are for a lot of people here, high salaries, bonuses, stock options that you might not have access to unless you.

Stay a certain amount of time or other financial incentives. I mean, health insurance, if you’re, if you’re an American, like this is a real thing for us. It creates a sense of financial security, um, and not even a sense of financial security. I mean, actual financial security that can be really hard to give up, particularly if you don’t have something equivalent to, to go to.

And this is real. I mean, particularly if you have a family that you’re supporting or kids that are getting ready to go to college soon. I mean that those things are very, very real and they have to be factored into the equation. I mean, you might have a mortgage, student loan debt, like dependents. There’s, there’s a lot of stuff.

Additionally, nobody is going to blame you if you enjoy your certain lifestyle that you might have right now. It is fun to go on vacations and maybe, all things considered, that’s like the best thing in your life. Especially if you hate your job. And so if you are thinking about things that you might have to give up, like would we still afford, be able to afford to go to Japan for two weeks or whatever it is now, if I left this position, the answer might be no.

And that is important to think about. Um, you know, but your home. Cars, other kinds of material comforts. And there, you know, there’s also, I just want to say out loud, there’s no shame in wanting to have a comfortable life financially. There is nothing wrong with you for wanting that. And I think the goal here is

what can balance look like between having a high quality of life and having a good time, but also not feeling like you’re being tortured every day at your job and being burnt to a crisp and incinerated in this emotional fire of hatred every time you’re at work? That’s not good either.

But there’s also another thing that can trap people into golden handcuffs that doesn’t necessarily equate to a financial value. It actually has more to do with social status and identity. And we need to talk about this because this can be one of those. subconscious things that can, um, go unrecognized, but really have a lot of power and control over your life unless you’re aware of it.

So if you’ve been listening to this and thinking, but I’m a And I don’t really make that much money, you know, like I’m not going to Japan on vacation, but why do I still feel this way? Like, I’m kind of trapped in this thing. Again, it’s potentially like, how is your identity wrapped around this? Or, um, your, your social visibility, how other people see you, that might change if you left this particular job or profession.

Because high paying jobs often come with a certain level of prestige and status. This can be difficult to relinquish, but even, you know, maybe not the best paying jobs, you know, if, if you are in an occupation where you are commanding responsibility. In society, you are a teacher, a, a fireman, a college professor, an attorney.

Like, you know, you’ve talked to people out in the world and I’m like, oh, an attorney. You know, like, uh, it might mean something to you to have to give that up. And I just wanted to say that out loud in case that was part of this like thing that’s chaining you to the situation that is not actually feeling good for you on other dimensions.

But another very real thing that can keep you trapped in situations like this that have nothing to do with finances or social identity is actually just good old fashioned anxiety. Anxiety about finding a new job, uh, that is, uh, even kind of in the ballpark of your current compensation or benefits or, you know, social status.

But many times in my experience, this anxiety comes from not actually having clarity about what else you would really like to do or not seeing a different path forward into something better.

In fact, when it comes to golden handcuffs, a lot of the stuckness and anxiety can come from not having a better plan.

And so the mental narrative here is, I’m not actually having a good time at work. But who does? And, you know, I’m getting paid decently. There are other benefits. So I’m just going to not do anything and ride this out and get through this as best I can. Like when we have a lot of anxiety, particularly if that anxiety is fueled by uncertainty and not having clarity about something different, the response to anxiety is almost always paralysis.

And so, the paralysis that you may feel, the stuckness that you may feel could be related to this unacknowledged anxiety that has not yet been dealt with. And that once you do address that anxiety directly, you might have all kinds of doors opening for you. Not just literally, but also like things may seem more possible and hopeful and safer to you than they do right now.

So, let’s just briefly run through some of these usual suspects when it comes to anxiety so that I can offer you some direction around what to do with these. I’ll just tell you what these are, and you might turn these into, like, journaling questions for yourself, like, that you can be thinking about.

thinking about what’s true for you, maybe writing through these things in your journal. You could also consider connecting with a really good career counselor or career coach who can help you dig a little bit more deeply into these emotional components of this work with the caveat being that almost every career counselor or career coach will not actually be able to work with you on this level of depth, um, very, very, very, Few career counselors, certainly career coaches are also licensed therapists.

And so if you connect with a career coach, they wanna talk to you about your resume, they wanna give you some skills assessments. And if you start talking about anxiety, they wanna write you a referral for a mental health therapist. They don’t want anything to do with that. Uh, and very rarely you will find a career counselor who has.

Specialized degree in education and career counseling specifically, but who has also done the work and has that foundational background as a licensed therapist and who can serve you as a career coach, but also be talking with you about some of these. Personal, mental, emotional kinds of, uh, shifts or spaces that are honestly in my experience where the action really is.

These kinds of professionals are hard to find. I’ll just tell you the career counselors on my team and my practice at Growing Self, they are that. They’re therapists. They’re therapists. who specialize in career counseling and if it would be helpful for you to talk to one of them. You can come to growingself.

com and book a free consultation to talk more about this. I just wanted to offer those to you as resources. So for journaling or for talking to a therapist slash career counselor, the things that you will want to crack into are as follows.

First of all, the voice of anxiety might be whispering things to you about it’s been a long time since you were out there on the job market. Can you still compete? Is there somebody younger with more skills? Specialized training, who’s going to be a more competitive for the job. If you leave this job, are you going to be out in the cold and will it be difficult for you to get a new one?

And the way we deal with this kind of anxiety is actually to get more information. And so this could be doing some research on your own. Is this valid? When I look at other roles that I’m interested in, what are the educational requirements? What are the experience levels? What do they actually pay? You might even consider talking to a career counselor who can help you be making reality based decisions.

Because until you do this research, if you’re just listening to that voice in your head with the, you know, the one with a catastrophic, like this, Um, it can be very easy to get paralyzed, whereas when you get more information, you might be like, actually, I’m quite competitive, aren’t I? And that’s a fantastic feeling.

So if you have anxiety in this area, especially if you’ve been with one company for a long time, dig into some of that.

Another thing that causes most people, many people, a lot of anxiety, attached to careers or not, I mean, one of the major wellsprings of anxiety for many of us is simply not having clarity. If we don’t actually know what to do, the options, it’s like walking into a fog, right? It’s like flying blind. I don’t know where I’m going.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. And particularly if you have a certain type of personality style that is a planner that is a think ahead type of person. So specifically what we’re talking about right now, if you’ve ever taken the Myers Briggs personality test, um, uh, the, the last letter could be a P or a J.

P stands for perceiver, meaning that you’re flexible, spontaneous, go with the flow, not a planner, like let’s try it and see what happens. And this is my personality type. I am an I N F. P. Sometimes when I take it, I am an ENFP. I’m supposed to be a therapist, believe it or not. But anyway, so with my personality type, it, I, I am a low anxiety person, generally speaking, because I don’t need to know what’s going to happen next.

I can just go do something really well. That was a bad idea. And like, it’s still okay. But people who have a different personality orientation, so a J at the end, that is a, a kind of a judgment type orientation, which does not mean that they’re judgmental. It just means that they need to have a personality.

plan. They need to know what is going to happen next. And it is very, very, very difficult for people with this type of personality to do different things unless they are pretty sure that they know what is going to happen next. So if this is resonating for you, it’s going to be really, really important for you to have a career path mapped out.

You are going to have to get clarity about what What you really do want to do instead of what you’re doing right now, and that in itself can be a huge growth opportunity, right? Like, what do I want to be when I grow up? It’s not an attorney. What else could it be? And doing some digging into that, but then also taking a lot of time to see what are other possibilities for you.

For me, if I did want to pivot my career entirely, where would I actually need to begin if I needed to get some additional education in order to move into this role? What would that involve? What would that involve? Universities offer that degree program. How much does it cost? How long does it take? And is that a necessary qualification?

Or am I just imagining that that might be a necessary qualification? Like, do the research. Because once you have a roadmap and evidence based information where you can make a decision that is based on this careful thinking process. You will feel much more able to take action than you do right now because the path will be clear.

Before that happens, you’re going to have a really, really hard time and you are going to feel highly anxious when you even think about doing something differently. So you need to Expect that and do the work either with a good career counselor who can help walk you through that process so that you are, yes, I know what to do and have a certain degree of certainty.

Uh, or you can do that on your own. But until you do that, you’re probably gonna feel stuck.

Another super fun type of anxiety that needs to be addressed in these kinds of moments has to do with societal or familial pressure, their expectations of you, or more commonly even, um, Bye. Bye. what you imagine people are expecting of you and what you think people might be thinking about you. It may be true that you do come from a family where literally everybody was a military person, we are military people, we are fighter pilots, and you need to go out there and be a warrior, and so you have all these expectations from family, from friends, from society, to like Stay the course and rise to these expectations when, as a matter of fact, maybe you’re like, on the inside, I’m kind of a hippie.

I want to be a Montessori school teacher, but, you know, what would my dad think? There can be a lot to unpack here. And so if you have, um, a lot of anxiety related to, to what other people will think of this idea. You know, it could be your partner, like your spouse, having a highly negative reaction to your wanting to be a clog wearing Montessori school teacher instead of a red meat eating fighter pilot.

Like, you know. We could spend a lot of time talking through that in couples counseling, but the first thing to do is to be thinking about, has anybody said anything to me about what their expectations of me are? Like, is this valid or is this coming from my anxious narrative? That’s step number one. You might also consider having conversations with some of these people, particularly if they are important to you once you have attained clarity.

By the way, you don’t want to go into these when you’re like, I don’t know, because they’ll talk you out of it. Um, but once you do have clarity and you’re pretty confident, you’re like, I think this is what I want to do, have conversations with them so that they can understand the why behind your decisions.

Uh, many times from the outside, when people don’t have all the information about what’s been going on with you internally, they really don’t understand you and

they might be having thoughts or opinions that aren’t really connected with your emotional truth, which can make them seem judgmental. Um, and I don’t know, maybe your family actually is really judgmental. That’s a thing, and you will need to deal with that if you decide to break free and become self actualized and individuated and decide that your path is actually something that is different than what they want you to do.

And that would be a reason to get connected to a very good career counselor who can really help you in that intersection between your career path choices, but also how to manage some of these relational obstacles or emotional obstacles, um, in order for you to be able to move forward.

And then lastly, there is yet another flavor of anxiety that we need to be, uh, thinking about when you’re considering making especially a big career change. And the name of that is not actually anxiety. It is fear, legitimate fear. And we want to listen and honor that. Fear. The definition of anxiety is a sense of fear or dread that is not necessarily connected to a real thing.

Anxiety is like a flare up of fear that when you look at it, you’re like, Oh, I’m okay. Fear is different. Fear is your emotional guidance system saying, slow down, danger ahead. This might be a bad idea. Let’s think this through. Fear is trying to protect you and we need to be able to tell the difference between anxiety and fear and honor fear.

and respect fear. And so one of the places that fear can come up with this is when you are afraid about your ability to succeed in a different field or role. And there’s some legitimate basis for this. Like, you know, you have not worked in that profession before you don’t have the education or or the experience or the transferable skills, um, that could be applied to a different industry or job.

If you are thinking about starting a business and you are running into feelings of fear about what ifs, you should be paying attention to those because as a fairly long time business owner, one of the things I know for sure is that whatever you think is going to happen when you go into business for yourself is not what is actually going to happen.

And so take the time, do a business plan, run all of the different projections, not just the one you want, but like, let’s do a few worst case scenarios in there too, just so that you can be making thoughtful, reality based decisions. And that if your fear is trying to tell you something, you’re listening to that because when you do and you are, um, slowing down and making thoughtful decisions that factor in, yeah, what if I can’t actually get my first client, like for six months after I opened the doors, that could be a real thing.

And what would you do in that situation? But if your fear is helping you walk all the way through that too, yeah, you know what, we’d actually be okay. We have funding, we have savings. It would be fine, honestly. Then fear is like, I’ve done my job.

One last thing we need to talk about is investment in the job itself, but also as you’re thinking about choices, the potential investment in time and energy, if you do decide to do something else, because, you know, it might be just leaving one job for a similar job, right? In which case the big anxiety is, can I find another job?

And that is a solvable problem. You can look into that. But if you’re thinking about making a big, bigger pivot, there might be a significant investment of time, effort, money in education, Training, uh, perhaps even a year or two starting out at a lower level position and working your way up again and feeling like that would mean, um, abandoning years of hard work starting over, right?

That might bring up some stuff that would keep you attached to your current position and make it. hard to leave. Um, but additionally, it might be bringing up anxiety around what it would mean to do that work. And I say anxiety because in my experience, I’ve talked to a lot of people who when faced with this big, you know, career pivot, they will say things like, but by the time I get to where I want to be in this new position, I’ll be 45 or whatever it is, I don’t know.

And, you know, So, my thought is always, you’re gonna be 45 anyway. Do you want to be a 45 year old miserable attorney? Or do you want to be a 45 year old happy Montessori school teacher wearing clogs and like knitting fuzzy sweaters with five year olds?

So we have to, like, just walk that back and develop a more reality based path that takes into consideration the fact that time marches on and that the things that we do now create a different trajectory for us in the future, but that you get to design that future through the actions that you take today.

So we just spent some time talking about the different kinds of fears and anxieties that can be factoring into this golden handcuff situation. But now let’s talk about what to do with this in order to break free. Should you want to

the very first step is just to acknowledge this situation and recognize that while financial security is important, it shouldn’t come at the cost of everything else, including your happiness, your mental health, your relationships.

And just to acknowledge that to yourself can be truly step number one in deciding to have a different future from this moment forward.

The second thing, once you have come to terms with the fact that I can’t stay here, change is required, the second thing is to actually diagnose the problem.

And this is super important because in my experience, Many people who are unhappy with their job feel like the only thing to do is binary. It is black or white. I either stay here in this job that I hate and suffer for the rest of my life, or I abandon it, burn it all down and do something completely different.

And that may be a completely false narrative. In my experience, it often is. Before you do anything else, I would strongly encourage you to think specifically, what is it about this job, this situation, this career path that I am not enjoying?

Like, literally, pull out your notebook at the top of a clean page. What is it specifically that I do not like about my job? And do not make any moves until you’re real clear about that answer. Like, so for example, is there a problematic relationship? Do you have a boss that is difficult for you to work with?

Is it a workload? issue? Is it, are you having too much stuff coming at you than there is time to do? Is it the work life balance question? Uh, is it the fact that you feel stressed out a lot at this job? Or is it actually the work itself? Um, as an accountant, you are required to file tax returns for people and you hate doing that.

I mean, like, Is that because that’s a different problem, right? I mean, uh, you could also be in a really toxic company. Culture could be what is happening and why you hate this so much. And so, um, it’s important to really get clarity around what is going on because in my experience, many times. people have a lot more power and control to either change themselves or even change the environment than they think.

And this might be true for you too.

So, for example, if you just hate everything about being a veterinarian or if you are in a super toxic company culture, it’s okay. You can just go ahead and figure out what else to do. That’s fine. However, things that are solvable problems that a lot of people don’t realize, like if you’re feeling super stressed out.

Why is that? Could it be possible that your time management skills are not what they could be and that you procrastinate? You’re not good at organizing your stuff. So deadlines sneak up on you. You can’t find everything. You’re freaking out and running around like a crazy person. Whereas if you had developed some of these competencies, you could manage the workload in a much more effective way.

And so you don’t. actually need to torpedo your entire career, you can work on yourself with the support of ideally a good career counselor who also can serve you as a therapist to be like, yeah, let’s work on your ADHD and how that’s showing up on the job.

Another thing that many people have to work on in a career environment are things like emotional intelligence skills, like how they are regulating their own feelings on the job.

If you don’t know how to do that, you’re not going to have a good time no matter where you are. You will be an extremely stressed out, burnt out Montessori school teacher too. So this is important work to do. Additionally, boundaries. Like if you are being asked to do more things than is legitimately possible to do, are you broaching conversations with your boss, with your supervisor, where you’re like, let me show you my calendar and my project management board and my workload, because you need to see what’s going on here.

We’re going to have to move some things around. You want good work from me. I want to do good work for you. And when you keep throwing stuff at me, I feel like I’m drowning and I’m not doing my best work with anything. I hope that we can change this. Like people have those kinds of conversations with their bosses.

I, as an employer, as a boss, as a business owner, literally have exactly that conversation with employees on a fairly regular basis. Because it’s easy for me as a boss to be like, Oh, do this too, like throw it over my shoulders and walking out the door and somebody on the other side is like, ah, I’m sorry.

And I don’t always have visibility into that because I’m not looking at their calendar. I’m not looking at their project management board. We as a team need to be having conversations together where my employee is saying, I feel like I have a lot on my plate right now. So let’s talk about this. And we just have a collaborative conversation about what the priorities really are, what we can defer.

I mean, like, that’s, that’s important. That’s how it’s done. But if you’re not doing that with your boss or not saying to your boss, I can’t keep up with all this, what needs to change? Um, you will never have the opportunity to find out what could be moved around. I mean, you know, yeah, there are legitimately toxic bosses.

And in my experience, most business owners are very caring, reasonable, responsible people who want what is best for the organization, but also legitimately care about the experience that their employees are having and consider it to be, uh, of benefit. a privilege, an honor, as well as a responsibility to make sure that you are okay.

That is part of their job. So some people don’t know that. It feels like a relationship with a boss is a lot more adversarial. This can sometimes come from family of origin messages around power and authority. It could be a lot to unpack there, but it’s just something to consider.

The reason for doing this work is that if you currently feel like you are trapped by golden handcuffs, it means there are good things about this job. There is probably financial, um, rewards, maybe some lifestyle stuff. There are things that are working, but there are other parts that aren’t. It might be worth just looking at those other parts to see.

Hmm. Is, is this, am I trapped in a bad situation or could I do some work here to make the situation better because then I will be having a better time and I will also have a stability and a great paycheck and win win. It’s worth doing this. And so that’s why you need to do that diagnostic step, that step two of what is really going on and what power do I have to potentially change this?

A third step is to go deep into your personal values so that in addition to having, you know, clarity about what you want to do differently, I’ll say you have a lot of clarity around your why and where this is coming from.

What is really most important to you? What are you motivated by? Um, you might find that there is more value, more meaning, joy, purpose in other parts of your life, um, relative to money. And so when you can make this mindset shift into gratitude, like this job is giving me the opportunity to spend more time.

doing volunteer work in Thailand because I’m so well compensated, or I’m able to give money to these charitable organizations that I care a lot about, or I am able to send my kids to a really amazing private school because of this. If you can change your mindset into gratitude, that is actually another area.

exit door for you mentally and emotionally, because when your narrative is, I am getting up at five o’clock in the morning to get on this plane again, and I am so thankful for this job that I am in this situation because it allows me to do X, Y, Z. So you’re not changing the circumstance, but you are changing the story.

story around it in a way that helps you feel better. You are, therefore, unlocking the golden handcuffs. You are not trapped. You can do anything that you want to do. Literally, you are choosing to stay in this position because of all of these other reasons. Again, your circumstances won’t change, but you will not feel trapped anymore.

And that It is a way to get out of the situation mentally, emotionally, and psychologically.

Now, if none of these things are true for you, uh, there is also that step four. If you’ve come to the conclusion that you literally cannot keep doing this, I am dying inside. I hate this. Or if in listening to this, you’ve, you’ve realized that when you think about your values and what you could be doing differently, that the golden handcuffs have, have trapped you into this.

This comfiness, this inertia, maybe nothing horrible is happening, but you are trading your other opportunities for this paycheck, for the security, um, that you are comfortable enough that you’re not motivated to go out in the world and take risks and see what else is possible for you. And you’re not, you know, taking steps to make that happen because this is okay.

It’s, it’s good enough. At least I’m paid well. And, you know, honestly, things that are okay can sometimes be the biggest trap of all because there’s a certain amount of motivation that comes to us when we are in a really bad situation. When things are okay, we might not be motivated enough to leave, but we can still increase our motivation by thinking about, you know, If this is complacency is really robbing you of much better opportunities and the future that you would ultimately really want to have.

So, once you’ve worked through these four pieces of thinking, the fifth is to really consider what it might look like to make a change. Um, and this is where you start planning your exit strategy in a really concrete way. So you might take action steps like building a financial cushion, saving as much money as you possibly can in order to make a change.

Tane your lifestyle or your financial obligations. If your salary was cut in half, like actually do that math. If my salary was cut in half and I like a lifestyle that is dependent on, you know, X amount of dollars a year, how much money would I need to have in the bank to make up that difference? If I was in a.

a 40 or 50, 000 position for a while, literally do the math, um, because having that plan working towards that plan can make that a reality. You can just open that door. You’re not trapped anymore. You can also be doing things like updating your resume, starting networking, starting doing some more research to see what else is out there.

It could be that you could actually. slide into another incredibly amazing thing that is also well paid. As you could also be thinking about, okay, if I want to be here in five years, then where do I need to be in three years? And then what does that mean that I need to be in? in one year. Okay. So in one year, I need to be working through this certification or this credentialing or whatever it is so that you can be taking those action steps to be moving towards a longer term future.

One of the biggest things that can paralyze us the most is when we You know, we want to have long term goals. It’s okay to look far out in the future, but you can’t expect that you’re going to leap from where you are now into this totally new thing. It’s not realistic. And so when you look at that, there’s this, how’s that going to work?

So you got to break it down into the smaller steps. And so make a short term action plan that moves you towards a longer term goal. Um, and then start putting energy into it. And so again, this can feel daunting to do, but this is what professional life coaches do. Um, they help you set a goal, figure out what the obstacles are, figure out what you need to do in order to, you know, overcome these obstacles.

What skills do you need to develop literally? What do you need to be doing in order to create this different outcome? And so to be working with. Um, a good life coach, if it’s more general, like big picture goals, ideally working with a career coach who has that therapy and life coaching background, who can really help you design this holistic life plan so that you can be managing the anxiety, making a reality based plan.

First map forward and then beginning to work this plan. And the plan might be, okay, I want to be in a different career in five years. The plan might be, I want to work on myself so that I am having a better time in my chosen career path. That is a fantastic goal. It will totally change your experience of your career if you do that work.

But so knowing what you need to do and then having a plan to attain it is. is the path forward.

So we’ve talked about so many different things on today’s episode relating to gold and handcuffs, what they are, how people get trapped in them, also the anxieties that can keep you trapped there. Uh, but we also talked about some of the actions. Bye. So, I hope that this discussion was so helpful for you if you’ve been in this situation.

And let’s talk more about this. I love it when you send me questions and I’m always happy to talk about things in general on the podcast. But I really want to talk about this. about you and your situation and what’s going on in your life. And so if you have been feeling trapped by golden handcuffs, why don’t you plan to join me at this Thursday’s live stream, connect with me on the socials, Dr.

Lisa Marie Bobby on Instagram and on YouTube, Dr. Lisa Bobby on Facebook. I always post these in advance so you can just hop right on with me at the time of the call, which is Thursdays at 12 p. m. Mountain 2 p. m. Eastern. Submit your questions and we’ll talk about what’s going on, and hopefully I’ll be able to offer some advice or some perspective that’s helpful for you.

If you can’t make the call or if you want to submit a question privately, use that link that I shared. Come to my website growingself. com forward slash dear lisa and you can submit your question in advance. I’ll address it on Thursday’s live stream. And when you, uh, do, when you submit that form, you’ll have the option to sign up for, uh, an emailed recap.

So you actually will get a reminder of when the live stream is happening, but then also a recap so you can watch me answer your question after the fact if you would like to do that. Okay. Thanks again for spending this time with me today, and I’ll be back in touch next time with another episode of Love, happiness, and Success.

Ah, okay. That went long. So, um, I would love it if we could condense this down to like 30, maybe 45 minutes. Um, also if there are opportunities to break up these videos for now, well, let’s just do a whole video for this, but thank you for, um, helping me make this as a Condensed and straightforward as possible.

Um, I appreciate your help. And thanks for helping me make this look good and interesting too. And making me sound smarter than I actually am. Okay. I’ll, take care.