Fifty years ago, we handwrote job applications and mailed them in envelopes. Twenty-five years ago, we emailed Word document résumés to recruitment agencies. Today, we work on our personal brands and instant message hiring managers, sometimes using emojis.

The job search process seems to be changing year by year. And yet there are some career challenges that seem constant and universal. For instance, everyone struggles to get started in their careers. We all occasionally feel trapped at work. And, of course, we all experience the fears of becoming obsolete, of being replaced by automation, or of falling victim to a major recession.

A lot of career advice tends to focus on the transactional aspects of securing a better-paid job. While this advice has value, it is important to understand that tools for navigating job changes are completely different to the tools you need to successfully navigate career changes and crises.

We have spent our professional lives—and focused our research—on helping organizations, teams, and individuals achieve peak performance. In the process, we have concluded that achieving sustained career success requires us to skillfully navigate four common crises. 

Failure to launch

The failure-to-launch crisis can occur when we are faced with the need to confront a major transition in our professional lives. In the absence of a clear, appealing, understandable path forward, we can become paralyzed.

The root of the failure-to-launch crisis is behavioral. Human beings struggle with uncertainty. For instance, a recent study found that most people would choose an electric shock over an uncertain outcome. We are hardwired to avoid ambiguity.

In order to navigate this paralysis, we must first find an appealing path—something we believe we can achieve. This is the key to unfreezing and starting to move forward. Next, we must build our skills and our confidence. By developing our capabilities and confidence, we can move forward and look past the obstacles in our way.

Getting trapped

Peter Gibbons, the central character in the cult movie Office Space, exemplifies what it means to be trapped in an unfulfilling job. Office Space has become so popular because it reflects the real-life frustrations of many workers. For instance, the recent “Great Resignation” underlined just how trapped people felt by their careers. 

So many people become trapped in unfulfilling jobs because it is deceptively easy to get wrapped up in the belief that the next promotion will make us feel fulfilled. Unfortunately, this isn’t often the case. 

The key to escaping an unfulfilling job is to unlock the mentalities that hold you back. A common misconception of those trapped is that they must continue to be unfulfilled because others are counting on them. However, you can better support others when you take care of yourself first. 

The fallacy of blind faith

Every generation experiences the fear of a new technology. Today, many think of artificial intelligence as the first big existential threat to jobs and careers. Of course, it isn’t. For instance, 200 years ago workers feared the advent of steam power and mechanical production. Relentless waves of technological disruption have been and will continue to be a feature of human society. The question is, How do we choose to relate to them—as victims or opportunists?

Choosing a victim’s outlook is what we call the “fallacy of blind faith.” We are often more susceptible to this crisis in the middle and later years of our careers. The reason is that the blind enthusiasm and thirst for validation of our early years slowly erodes due to technological disruption and is replaced by a more cynical fatalism.

The key to navigating the fallacy of blind faith is to sustain enthusiasm for new things. As we get older, this can require some mental gymnastics. A great trick is to persuade ourselves that learning something new is not a work chore but rather a competition with friends or a personal goal. If we can extract joy from learning something new, we stop feeling threatened by it.

Deviating from your morals

The fourth common career crisis many workers feel is the sense that we are deviating from our morals. Regrettably, the list of infamous examples we could cite here is long—organizations like FTX, Theranos, WeWork, Lehman Brothers, and Enron. The trouble with the headline-grabbing cases like these is that they often paint perpetrators as caricatures, like super villains from a Marvel film. The truth is all of us face ethical dilemmas in our careers.

The temptation to deviate from your moral path can be difficult. The critical thing is to stay vigilant. One suggestion for how to do so is to not think of being moral and ethical as sporadic challenges. Instead, commit yourself to thinking about your personal boundaries constantly. You should also nurture relationships with independent, objective advisers, mentors, friends, and family with whom you can discuss your most sensitive career matters.