How to resolve ambivalence
Updated 2024-10-29. Originally published 2016-02-15 on VocationVillage.com
Ambivalence, a psychological condition where you feel simultaneous conflicting feelings, is a risk factor for career unhappiness. For most people, ambivalence is unpleasant, and we prefer clarity and focus over the muddiness of ambivalence.
Psychologist Joshua Hook wrote,
“Have you ever been in a situation where you are trying to make a change in your life, but it just isn’t working? Or maybe you find yourself taking two steps forward, but then two steps backward?
Sometimes when this happens in my own life, I have noticed that there are actually multiple parts of myself that pull me in different directions. There is a part of myself, usually conscious, that pushes me in the direction of my goal. But then there is another part of myself, sometimes unconscious, that pushes me in the opposite direction of my goal.
It’s as if I have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.”
The “one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake” analogy resonates. Psychological ambivalence causes people to freeze, to be stuck, and to avoid action out of fear of making a mistake or causing themselves emotional pain.
Here are some common types of ambivalence:
“I want to be an entrepreneur, but I don’t want to take any risks.”
“I want to be CEO, but I don’t want to deal with corporate politics.”
“I want to be an artist, but I don’t want to think about marketing.”
“I want to be in a helping profession, but I don’t want to deal with challenging people.”
Because so many people ask me how to resolve this, here are some thoughts about what to do about ambivalence, using the examples above:
Move toward goals even when you feel ambivalent. Rewrite the narrative to:
“I want to be an entrepreneur, so I will take reasonable risks.”
“Because an essential part of the job description of a CEO is navigating corporate politics, I will do so with integrity.”
“My art is worth the effort to learn authentic ways to market.”
“So that I can thrive in a helping profession, I will get training and mentoring on how to work with challenging people.”
Because your previous thoughts have created well-worn neural pathways in your brain, it will take many iterations to change your overall thought patterns and feelings, so you will probably have to tell yourself the new version many times before it becomes more automatic.
It is fine to feel sad or frustrated about the reality of your current career situation. For instance, you are free to wish that there were a way to have what you want taking no risks or doing anything you don’t enjoy doing, but since that is not how the world works, give yourself permission to have some feelings about it and then keep going, anyway.
After acknowledging your valid feelings, start taking action that fits the new narrative. Action of any type is helpful because action creates experiences and data to contribute to making the best decisions.
As long as you are making incremental progress toward your goals, you can achieve BIG changes by degrees. Rarely will a significant change occur from one fell swoop.
The formula is: Take action, pay attention to the outcomes and feelings from those actions, re-evaluate, take more action, and repeat.
Also, learn from people ahead of you in their career journey because it is likely they have felt ambivalence at some point and it can be very helpful to hear how others resolved similar feelings as you have. Choose community instead of isolation. Talk to people you admire, read about others’ career paths, and attend conferences or other meetings where people share their experiences. Learn from everyone so that you don’t have to make every mistake yourself.
Sometimes ambivalence means you have feelings to resolve but you are still on the right path, and sometimes ambivalence is a sign that you would be happier changing paths completely.
If you like to write, journal about your ambivalence. Also, motivational interviewing is one of the best self-help processes to work through ambivalence. My favorite resource for this is The Motivational Interviewing Workbook by Angela Wood, Ph.D.
If you have spent years wrestling with ambivalence, consider hiring a counselor or coach who helps people work through conflicting feelings. It’s worth the effort to figure things out.
Have you resolved career-related ambivalence? If so and you’d like to be profiled as a success story, please contact me.
