There’s a particular moment that tends to happen before you tell someone you’re thinking about making a change.
It might be applying for a promotion, moving sideways into a different team, reducing your hours, starting something on the side or even choosing to stay where you are when everyone around you assumes you should be pushing harder.
Before you say it out loud, there’s a steady internal sense that something is shifting. There’s a sense of possibility and opportunity, maybe something about this new direction feels right.
Then you share it…and almost immediately, the tone shifts:
- “Are you sure?”
- “That’s a big risk.”
- “Why would you leave something stable?”
- “Shouldn’t you be aiming higher?”
And what once felt steady inside suddenly starts to feel shaky.
This is the moment I unpack in this week’s podcast episode, Why Other People’s Opinions Shake Your Career Decisions because what’s often happening here isn’t that you're being naïve or impulsive. It’s that you’ve encountered projection from somebody else.
Projection is when someone unconsciously places their own fears, beliefs, or unresolved experiences onto you.
If they equate stability with safety, your plans to change looks dangerous. If they’ve always tolerated environments that didn’t fit, but were predictable, your willingness to move looks irresponsible. If they’ve never stepped into uncertainty, your decision activates something in them that feels deeply uncomfortable.
But their discomfort is information about their internal experience. It is not evidence about yours. And yet, we so easily treat it as evidence.
I’ve seen this pattern gradually erode self-trust over time. Someone starts off feeling aligned with a decision → They share it → They receive doubt → They start gathering more opinions to “sanity check” themselves → And each opinion layers over the original clarity until it’s buried and almost impossible to access.
You tell yourself you’re being sensible, responsible and mature by following their advice, but beneath that can be a sense that you’ve abandoned something that felt true at the time for you.
This is what we need to remember:
Not all opinions are equally informed. Not all caution is constructive.
There is a difference between fear-based projection and thoughtful challenge.
Part of reinforcing self-trust is asking yourself: Whose voice am I listening to here?
Has this person navigated something similar? Do they understand this environment from lived experience? Are they able to challenge me without falling into their own fear?
And sometimes the pressure runs the other way. Sometimes you’re content where you are, and the noise around you is about why you’re not striving for more. If you internalise someone else’s ambition for you, you can end up chasing something that was never aligned in the first place.
The deeper question beneath all of this isn’t “What will they think?” It’s “What actually feels expansive versus contractive when I consider this?”
This week’s episode goes deeper into projection, discernment, and what it takes to reinforce your own self-trust when opinions around you feel loud:
If this topic resonates with you, listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
When you start recognising projection for what it is, something shifts. You stop carrying fear that was never yours to begin with. And decisions start coming from clarity rather than reaction.
– Nat
PS If you’re in the middle of a career shift and finding it difficult to separate your voice from everyone else’s, then you don’t need more opinions, you need clarity around your own. This is the work we do in 1-1 coaching and if that would feel supportive right now, reach out here for a conversation.
PPS I’d love to hear where you’ve noticed these patterns showing up for you, reply to this email and let me know.
