This Is Why You Should Choose The Job That Scares You The Most

The only question to ask yourself is ‘who do you want to be?’

I was exactly one-year into my first full-time job post-graduation when I started looking for my next one. Does anyone really love their first job out of college? I don’t think so, and I was no different.

I realized just a few weeks after starting that it was a dead-end job and wouldn’t challenge me long-term, but I managed to stick it out for the obligatory year. 12 months later, I finally had work experience other than internships to list on my resume, and I was ready for whatever would come next.

After a relatively quick job search, I was confident I had found my dream job and was thrilled to get a call from a recruiter asking to schedule a phone screen. I still remember running out to my car on my lunch break and driving less than a block to the parking lot next door to my office building to take that first phone interview.

A few weeks later, I was happily submitting my resignation and preparing to join a different company as a University Relations Recruiter.

The job sounded pretty glamorous as a budding HR professional. I’d be attending career fairs on the hiring side of the table, schmoozing college students at mixers, and traveling to college campuses to host interviews.

Little did I know how not glamorous living in various hotels for 8 weeks each semester would be. By the time the hotel concierge started greeting me by name, the novelty had worn off.

Three months in, I realized that I was in way over my head. It was fall — the height of my first on-campus recruiting season — and I was juggling way more than I could comfortably handle. I had so many balls in the air that it seemed utterly impossible to make it through the semester without dropping at least one or two. I started to think I had made a big mistake and questioned whether this was my dream job after all.

What had I been thinking? I felt like I had to get out.

In a moment of panic between interviews at the University of Minnesota, I shot off a text to a friend who still worked at my last company to see if they were hiring. It turned out they were, and within 24 hours of sending that text message, I had an offer in hand to boomerang back to the place I had been so anxious to get out of.

I was suddenly faced with a stark decision — I could sit with the discomfort and see where this new job could take me, or I could scurry back to a job that underutilized my potential but kept me squarely in my comfort zone.

What’s a 20-something to do?

When I talk to those facing similar career decisions these days, I always tell them that they should choose the opportunity that scares them the most and lies the furthest from their comfort zones. Why?

Well, the short answer is because growth only happens along the edges of our comfort zones, but it’s a little more complex than that.

The long answer lies in the psychological concept of self-signaling.

The concept of self-signaling tells us that “people see their previous actions as signals of who they are and what they care about. Specifically, people infer their own preferences from their own past behavior.”

This means that our actions influence our perceptions of ourselves more than our thoughts or emotions do.

From a career perspective, doing something brave will lead you to view yourself as brave far more than thinking about how to be brave ever will.

Further, getting into the habit of acting in ways that align with who we aspire to be rather than how we feel has a cumulative effect on our lives because “previous actions serve as guides for subsequent decisions.”

This means that the more often we choose a job that moves us closer to who we want to become as humans, the more likely we are to become that person and make similar decisions in the future.

See? Growth really does lie along the edges of our comfort zones.

The temptation to run back to my old job was real. Sure, it was boring and lacking growth opportunities, but it did have a few things going for it. For one, it was a known commodity. I knew exactly what to expect and I knew I could excel at it. Certainty is comfortable, but it didn’t align with who I wanted to be.

In contrast, my new job was the exact opposite. Whether or not I would succeed in the role was yet to be seen, and the uncertainty associated with that freaked me out. But if I could find a way to rise to the occasion, I knew there would be leadership opportunities waiting for me. And that was what I wanted to become.

Between the known and the unknown was a whole slew of messy emotions, the most notable of which was fear. I was afraid of my potential to fail and anxious about what effect that failure might have on my sense of self.

It wasn’t so much the future I was afraid of; It was the transition I would have to endure to get there.

I didn’t know the science of self-signaling by name at the time, but the instinct to make a decision that I would be proud of in the future was strong. I sat with the discomfort and chose the harder thing.

I got comfortable being uncomfortable, and doing so made me a better person. Just because you’ve never done something yet doesn’t mean you can’t do it ever. And once you try it, you’re no longer trying it — you’re doing it.

And guess what? Your brain is always watching and taking notes about who you are for future reference.

Someday you might find yourself faced with a decision similar to mine. Perhaps you’ll be looking at a fork in the road where one opportunity is well within your comfort zone, and the other is far beyond it.

Instead of making the decision based on your fear of failure, or the unknown, or any other emotions uncertainty presents, take a moment to think about what your choice will tell you about yourself.

When you choose the safe thing, you’re signaling to yourself that growth isn’t important to you. When you choose the easy thing, you’re signaling to yourself that a challenge doesn’t interest you. When you choose the known thing, you’re signaling to yourself that certainty matters more than possibility does.

But when you choose the scary thing, you’re signaling to yourself that you’re brave.

When you choose the risky thing, you’re signaling to yourself that you are confident.

When you choose the hard thing, you’re signaling to yourself that you’re strong.

And as you do the scary, uncertain, or hard thing, you actually become braver, more confident, and stronger. Not only that, but you’re setting the stage to amplify those elements of yourself in the future.

So when you come to that fork in the road, the only question left to ask yourself is, “who do you want to be?”

I made my decision, and now it’s time for you to make yours.

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