The force of career movement

Back when I was learning how to do options trading, my mentor would often talk about market movement by comparing it to a dog chained to an elephant.

The dog could run around all it wants and go in any direction. But it could only go as far as the length of chain would allow, and there was nothing the dog could do to make the elephant budge.

But if the elephant decided to move, it was taking the dog with it. The elephant could walk faster, cover more distance, and the only way the elephant would stop was if it decided to stop.

The dog would be helpless to do anything about it.

The story was told to compare daily and hourly charts versus weekly and monthly charts. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this story as it relates to career movement and the impact our decisions can have on our future.

Decisions about accepting a job offer that guarantees a complete lifestyle change.

Decisions about taking a major pay cut in order to join a new industry.

These are all elephants. They’re big and powerful decisions, and once they’re made, they move with tremendous force.

But I don’t believe we see this at the moment we make the decision.

We’re tired, overworked, and ground down to our core. We need a quick solution to make the hurt and discomfort go away.

Our brains jump at the idea of escaping our situations, and we cling to the first thing that feels good and promises respite.

We don’t realize that we’ve just initiated a major career movement - a complete upheaval of our destinies. In one decision, we’ve shut doors, opened doors, and changed the course of our lives.

It’s very difficult to stop once it’s started moving. And to go back to where you began will take a force equal to the one we’ve just made.

But we think of these movements like a dog on a chain. A small force, easy to control, and easy to move where you want it to move.

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