Hello and welcome to the career pivot accelerator on your host Peggy McKnight Last week we talked about the sunk cost fallacy about all the baggage we carry around simply because we invested time energy or Identity into something that no longer serves us and something happened after that episode went out My inbox filled up not with people saying great tips, but with people saying I know I need to just let go I just can't seem to move and that really stuck with me because there's a difference between knowing what to do and being able to do it And I think it's important to dig underneath of that gap for a huge number of people right now It has a name. It's called the great freeze It's the feeling of being professionally suspended of knowing springs around the corner But not quite being able to feel it yet or having ambition real ambition that has somehow gone quiet And today I want to give you the psychological language for what's happening because here's what I've learned about human behavior over the years When we can name something we can take power back over it So let's name it. This is the great freeze why ambition went quiet and more importantly how to start the thaw Before we get into the psychology. I want to do something I find deeply interesting We're gonna zoom out and look at the language that's been used to describe collective worker behavior of the last six years Because the words we choose to describe ourselves reveal a lot It started with the great resignation remember that one that started in 2021 coming out of the pandemic with clarity People quit in record numbers because they'd had time to think and what they thought was this isn't it Then there was the great reshuffle not just leaving but reinventing changing industries growing and going into freelance Starting businesses.
It was a season of creative courage Then came quiet quitting or what I'd call the great withdrawal Still showing up but no longer going above and beyond the psychological contract between worker and employer had quietly cracked Then the great stay workers stopped moving at all not from satisfaction But from fear from paralysis the music stopped and nobody wanted to be left without a chair And now now we're in the great freeze a state of professional suspended animation Each of these phrases is a behavioral signal a collective emotional temperature reading and right now the reading says people are cold Cautious and keeping very still So what's actually happening underneath that stillness? That's where the psychology gets fascinating Let's look at what's actually happening in the job market right now because the news is heavy And I think it's important to face it squarely before we work through it January 2026 saw layoff announcements hit their highest levels for any January since 2009 the year of the global financial crisis That's the contacts people are sitting in Amazon cut around 16,000 corporate roles UPS announced up to 30,000 job eliminations Morgan Stanley block MasterCard Nike Pinterest the list runs across tech Finance retail logistics and the reason being cited again and again Well, it's AI apparently now. Here's the nuance that often gets lost in the headlines And this is important research has found that AI is cited as a reason for layoffs far more than its actual cause Many of these cuts are strategic restructuring post-pandemic over-correction or efficiency drives But the AI narrative has taken hold and narratives even partial ones shape collective psychology more powerfully than facts do The result 65% of workers say they have no plans to look for a new job in 2026 Not because they're happy but because the psychology of risk has fundamentally shifted Economists call this the mobility trap and to understand why we fall into it We need to talk about the principle that canman and to versky identified decades ago That was loss aversion. This is the cognitive bias Established by as I mentioned cut common and to versky that describes how the pain of losing something feels roughly twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining Something of equivalent value in career terms the fear of a job search going wrong feels far heavier than the potential gain of a better role So what do we do we stay put?
Loss aversion isn't weakness. It's wiring it kept our ancestors alive But in a modern job market it can keep us frozen long past the point where moving would genuinely serve us and If you listen to last week's episode you'll notice something loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy are cousins Both are rooted in an outsized fear of loss Both keep us tethered to a present. We've outgrown the differences the sunk cost fallacy is about being anchored in the past Lost aversion and the great freeze are being about Paralyzed in the present together. They form a kind of psychological double bind pulled back by what we've already invested and Frozen by the risk of what might not work All right, it's time to go a bit deeper with a psychology of the great freeze We've dipped our toe in the water now.
We're gonna go a little deeper into the psychology of it my absolute favorite topic So we've established that loss aversion is keeping people in their chairs But there's a second psychological force amplifying it and it's called status quo bias. What does that mean? Simply put it's deeply ingrained human preference for the current state of affairs even when a rationale comparison of alternatives would suggest that changing is the better option This was identified by Samuel Sun and Zeckhauser in 1988. It is driven by a combination of loss aversion Uncertainty aversion and simple inertia the familiar feels safe even when it isn't Here's how it shows up in careers even when someone knows intellectually that they are undervalued understimulated or just in the wrong role the familiarity of the current situation always wins You know the old saying better the devil you know than the devil you don't or the grass is not always greener on the other side You can always convince yourself for reasons why not to move forward in fact study show that the more choices people have available to them The stronger the pull of the status quo becomes Paradoxically a job market with more options can actually increase paralysis because the cost of evaluating those options feels so overwhelming So we default to staying not because staying is right, but because it is known.
It's comfortable Now here's where it gets really psychologically rich and where I want you to lean in in the late 1960s Psychologist Martin Siegelman conducted a series of experiments somewhat uncomfortable to describe that led to one of the most important psychological Discoveries of the 20th century he found that when animals and then humans were repeatedly exposed to outcomes They couldn't control something profound happened They stopped trying to change their circumstances Even when the ability to change them was clearly available They had learned to be helpless and this is termed in the psychological world as learned helplessness I know not exactly the most ingenious statement, but call it what it is Effectively it is a psychological state first identified by Martin Siegelman in which a person comes to believe that their actions cannot affect their outcomes Based on repeated experiences of uncontrollable difficulty even when control is Available the person no longer reaches for it It is one of the most common precursors to depression and one of the most under diagnosis conditions in the modern workplace Think of it like this. Have you ever heard about the elephant being chained and the chain is so small and so fragile and the elephant They are quite a powerful magnificent animal. They could break free, but they choose not to because of their conditions That is learned helplessness Think about the job market for the last two years layoffs that came without warning AI disruption that nobody asked for hiring freezes for roles people were told they were perfect for application black holes sending cvs without hearing anything that is a sustained repeated exposure to outcomes that feel uncontrollable and the Psychological response to that well we stop reaching we stop sending applications We stop asking for promotions. We stop imagining different futures We don't do this consciously we do it because our nervous system quite reasonably concluded that the effort wasn't worth the pain of the outcome and The particular cruelty thing about this learn helplessness is this it persists even after the conditions that created it have changed The market may be warming opportunities may be opening but if your brain learned helplessness in 2024 It will still be operating that way in 2026 unless you actively intervene Now the third layer of the freeze is what psychologists call cognitive entrenchment This simply put is the deepening of fixed mental models over time where our patterns of thinking about ourselves our industry and our Possibilities become so ingrained they literally prevent us from seeing alternatives the longer we stay in one role or industry The more entrenched our cognitive map becomes Expertise can actually increase entrenchment because we become more certain about how things work unless able to imagine how they might be different This is the insidious one because it doesn't feel like a limitation It feels like reality when you say there are no good jobs out there in my field That is in fact or is it a deeply entrenched belief about the repeated disappointment?
When you say I'm too old to pivot is that true or is it a cognitive groove worn so deep you've stopped questioning it? This is the direct Compare companion even to last week's sunk cost episode. We talked about the emotional baggage we carry Cognitive entrenchment is the mental version of that same baggage the fixed story we tell about what's possible for us I want to sit with something for a moment that I think underlies all these psychological forces and it's called identity drift Here's how it works when we apply for role after role and don't hear back when we pitch ideas that go nowhere or when they're poo-pooed When we stay in a job that stopped stimulating us years ago We slowly start to lose the thread of who we are professionally Career researchers describe it this way you stop recognizing who you are outside of the markets response to you and in a culture Particularly here in the West where what you do is so deeply tied to who you are. That is not just a professional problem That is an identity problem Sociologists have found that work is one of the single most important ways people define their worth Which is why the freeze doesn't just produce frustration.
It produces shame quiet Corrosive shame and here's the connection back to the sunk cost fallacy just as last week We talked about how we stay in situations because of what we've already invested Identity drift creates the same anchor but from a different direction. We're not just attached to what we've already done We've become so fused with the frozen version of ourselves that we're afraid to reach for a different one because well What if we reach and it doesn't work? The fear is the freeze and it's most fundamental level Here's the thing I really want to land with you today And it's something I think gets missed in almost every career conversation. I hear Staying put is not the same as being frozen There are very good very rational reasons to stay exactly where you are right now Real fundamental facts of life the bills are real.
They're not going anywhere The uncertainty is real the risk of moving is real and in a cautious market patience is not cowardice It's strategy, but and this is the crucial distinction There is a world of difference between staying put and using the stillness wisely versus staying put and going quietly numb or worse Developing into a zombie Spring doesn't announce itself. It builds under the ground unseen for weeks before a single thing breaks through and that's exactly the model I want to offer you today the thought isn't a leap It's a series of almost invisible movements really tiny movements and underground warming that happens whether or not anyone can see it yet And here's the psychological mechanism that makes this work the antidote to learned helplessness is learned optimism Martin Siegelman's model developed directly from his learned helplessness research showing that optimism is not a fixed trait But a skill that can be deliberately practiced the key is explanatory style how we explain setbacks to ourselves Those who frame difficulties as temporary specific and external rather than permanent pervasive or personal They show dramatically greater resilience and recovery from adversity Alongside learned optimism. There's a concept from skill psychology. I want to bring in here deliberate practice This was developed by the psychologist Anders Erickson Deliberate practice is the finding that expertise is not primarily a product of talent but a focused intentional repetition Specifically targeting the edges of your ability not just doing the same thing more But practicing these specific areas where you need to grow the research shows that even 30 to 60 minutes of deliberate practice per day Sustained over time produces measurable expert level improvement What this tells us is profound you don't have to leap to a new career to be in motion You can be profoundly in motion deliberately purposefully while sitting in the exact same chair or position and Crucially everything that is worth doing requires practice and preparation before the moment of opportunity arrives Think about all the athletes at the Olympics.
They don't just show up going Hey, I fancy doing the luge or doing an ice skating dance and then just going out there and seeing how they perform they have crafted time and time again the practice deliberate purposefully practicing on developing their skills So athletes who win Olympic medals were training in obscurity for years before anyone saw them The musicians who seemed to burst onto the scene practice alone for a decade first Your career is no different the big thing or the next big thing whatever it is We'll go to the person who was preparing for it before they could see it coming Think about all this AI development that was like a little seed of thought and then slowly but surely they kept Applying their practice and her knowledge to test and learn test and learn and develop what is now with us at the moment Who knows where it will take us next? So I have created a thought toolkit for you for specifically for you in mind And these are six practices for intelligent stillness But will help you to come out of that freeze state and into the next big thing that you're ready for So number one name your psychological state precisely is it learned helplessness status quo bias cognitive entrenchment the movement you can name and What's happening in your nervous system? You shift from being inside the feeling to observing it It's like taking a step outside of yourself and naming what's going on Very much like an observer position is where agency lives Spend 10 minutes writing not what you want to do, but what you're afraid of name the fear specifically call it out Number two drop the sunk cost thinking again Linking back to last week ask yourself honestly Am I staying where I am because it's genuinely the right move now or because I've been here so long It feels like who I am the two can look identical from the outside Only you know the difference if it's the latter you're carrying baggage if it's weighing down your capacity to prepare Number three challenge your cognitive entrenchment pick one belief you hold about your career My industry is shrinking for example or nobody values what I do. I missed my window Right it all down then ask when did I first believe this is it actually a fact or a groove worn deep from repetition?
What would I see if I genuinely didn't believe it? This is not toxic positivity. This is cognitive hygiene Number four introduced deliberate practice one small thing Identify one skill that keeps appearing in roles or conversations that excite you or that you could even take up In your current role to make better not a vague resolution a specific Practicable skill one hour a week of focused intentional development Keep a simple log of what you practiced and what you noticed the goal isn't mastery yet The goal is to begin sending a new signal to your nervous system. I am a person in motion Number five reconnect with your explanatory style Learned optimism is built by changing how we explain setbacks when something doesn't work like a job application a project a pitch Ask is this permanent or temporary?
Is it pervasive everything is like this or specific this one thing didn't work is it entirely about me or are there external factors involved? Training yourself to answer these accurately not optimistically, but accurately is how you begin to undo learned helplessness And finally run one small experiment not a major career pivot just an experiment Shadow someone on a different team volunteer your skills for one project outside your usual lane have one coffee with someone in a field that Genuinely interests you give it six weeks measure not results, but energy did this thing lighten something up in you The data from small experiments is more valuable than any career plan made in the abstract or what you think others want you to do I want to close with something I introduced on this show a few years ago a concept I called the great regeneration at the time I used it to describe a shift I was seeing and how people were approaching their careers a move away from reacting scrambling towards something more intentional more rooted Looking at everything we've talked about today the freeze the learned helplessness the identity drift the psychological weight of a market that keeps delivering Uncertainty I think the great regeneration is more relevant now than it has ever been Here's what I mean by it the great regent resignation was about leaving the great stay was about enduring the great freeze is about being suspended Between the two the great regeneration is something different. It's not about the market. It's not about the headlines It's not even about your next job.
It's about deciding quietly privately perhaps invisibly to everyone around you to be a person Who is growing even when the conditions don't reward it yet? Even when nobody can see it even when you stay in exactly the same place Because regeneration like spring happens underground first the roots go down before the shoots come up The warming happens before the green appears. You don't need to make a dramatic leap today You don't need to have it all figured out You don't need to overcome the status quo bias or the loss aversion or the cognitive entrenchment all at once You just need to start the underground warming one small practice one named fear One hour of deliberate practice one belief examined That's the thought and it's always always leads to somewhere I'd love to know what is your one thing this week? What's the one small underground movement?
You're going to make come find me on Facebook I genuinely want to hear it. This has been the great freeze Why ambition went quiet if it resonated with you, please share it because I can promise you There are people in your life right now who are running on empty and need to hear that the thought is possible Until next week take care of yourself and take one step no matter how small Bye for now