{"id":5499,"date":"2025-12-12T21:52:48","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/i-used-to-believe-i-was-stuck-but-my-unconscious-beliefs-were-keeping-me-from-seeing-the-choices-i-had\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T21:52:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:52:48","slug":"i-used-to-believe-i-was-stuck-but-my-unconscious-beliefs-were-keeping-me-from-seeing-the-choices-i-had","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/i-used-to-believe-i-was-stuck-but-my-unconscious-beliefs-were-keeping-me-from-seeing-the-choices-i-had\/","title":{"rendered":"I used to believe I was stuck. But my unconscious beliefs were keeping me from seeing the choices I had.<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to believe I was stuck. But my unconscious beliefs were keeping me from seeing the choices I had.<\/p>\n

I was at Google trying to earn a promotion, working 100+ hour weeks, taking on every task my manager sent my way. My mental and physical health were suffering, but I didn’t see any other options because I had to do what my manager asked of me to earn a promotion. I eventually burned out because I exhausted my body to the point where I didn’t get out of bed for a week after waking up with a 103 degree fever on Christmas Day. <\/p>\n

And that week of enforced reflection over the holidays is when I realized I had a choice.<\/p>\n

What if … I didn’t do everything my manager asked?
\nWhat if … I didn’t need that promotion?
\nWhat if … I said no?<\/p>\n

When I went back to the office, I told my manager I wasn’t willing to work that hard any more. I was ready to be fired on the spot, but instead, they took away half my team (“If you can’t handle the work, I’ll give it to somebody who can”) and slashed my performance rating (“If you’re not doing all the work, you’re not exceeding expectations”). It was tough, but freed me up to search for a job that was a better fit for me, which led to getting hired as the Search Ads Chief of Staff later that year. <\/p>\n

What I learned that day was that my choice had consequences. And I learned that I always had a choice … if I was willing to accept the consequences of that choice.<\/p>\n

Every day you go to work, you are making a choice to keep working at that job, because the consequences of not having that job are worse. But it’s still a choice: you could look for another job, you could move back in with your parents, you could live off your savings, you could ask for help from your friends. <\/p>\n

Each day, we make choices that define our lives: how we show up in our interactions, who we spend time with, what we say yes or no to. <\/p>\n

My book, You Have A Choice: Beyond Hard Work to Meaningful Impact, will guide you to making those daily choices more intentionally so that you choose your life every day. Readers have called it life-changing as the exercises in the book helped them to see how their self-imposed rules were keeping them stuck. <\/p>\n

The holidays are a good time to step back and reflect on whether our lives are aligned with our values and intentions. If somebody in your life could use a new perspective to get them unstuck, the book is on sale now for only $9.99 on Amazon:
\nhttps:\/\/lnkd.in\/gVuHwA4Z<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to believe I was stuck. But my unconscious beliefs were keeping me from seeing the choices I had. I was at Google trying to earn a promotion, working 100+ hour weeks, taking on every task my manager sent my way. My mental and physical health were suffering, but I didn’t see any other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}