I had a conversation with a client recently that brought an insight about worry that I thought was very powerful, and could apply to a lot of other people and situations.

The client was looking to push forward with new career choices based on what they actually wanted to do and were passionate about, rather than trying to mould themselves to fit into jobs and other work that felt like ‘safer’ options but didn’t give them the motivation, meaning, or other benefits of following their own path.

This client was telling me how excited they were about the prospect of moving forward with this values-led approach, when they mentioned a possible concern, which is a common worry that many people feel when looking to pursue their own path – ‘what if it doesn’t work out, or if I’m not good enough?’. To help them overcome these doubts, we could have explored these questions and challenged the assumptions behind them to help set the client’s mind at rest, but we came up with a quicker and, what I thought was very effective, response to these worries.

This was to see the worrying simply as a response to the path they had chosen, not a valid alternative to it. The path the client had chosen was thought out, consistent with their values, and aligned to their skills. Their worry was not. It didn’t offer an alternative, considered path for the future – it wasn’t even a path – it was just a reaction of ‘what if that doesn’t work?’. We often, however, allow our desired paths for the future to be derailed by our worries, by somehow seeing them as comparable, equally valid, alternative paths forward for the future. As the client identified, however, they are not. The worries are simply a distraction from the chosen path to the future, not a valid alternative, as they don’t offer us a path forward.

So, in the absence of an alternative path, the client felt motivated and confident again to push forward with the future they actually wanted. Perhaps the rest of us could do the same!