Sometimes after several months of exploring potential career paths, persons who wish to choose or change their careers become discouraged and disappointed that no career path looks appealing. In my career counseling practice, one client recently worried because when considering any career path, she felt that she could find the career's "tragic flaw." Another client lamented that after doing extensive career research, "nothing looks interesting." If you are struggling with chronic pessimism or lack of enthusiasm in regard to choosing a career path to pursue, here are some reasons you may have become stuck:

Fear of disappointment. As long as you don't move in any new direction, you are able to keep the fantasy that there is an ideal career out there for you, but you just haven't found it yet. Once you make a real choice, you are put in the position of grappling with both the good and the bad about your career, which entails facing a certain amount of disappointment.

Fear of making a mistake. Clients often want a guarantee that their decision will be the "right" one. The truth is, there is no way to predict in advance what the effect of moving in a direction will be. After getting additional experience, you may love what you are doing or you may not. The challenge is to keep moving closer and closer to a path that feels right to you. Research shows that many people at the end of their life regret having passed up opportunities out of fear, while people rarely regret the mistakes they made while striving to attain their goals.

Rage against the ordinary. Author and career counselor Barbara Sher describes this as a complete lack of tolerance for life's necessary chores, the day-to-day requirements of living with which even extraordinary people doing extraordinary things must grapple. Clients who rage against the ordinary feel outraged and furious that they must endure anything tedious, routine, boring, or unpleasant. Barbara Sher recommends several strategies to increase frustration tolerance, including devoting time and energy to helping others or learning new skills that require delaying gratification while enjoying progress in incremental steps.

Unwillingness to compromise. If you want a high income, are you willing to pursue training and take the time that it takes to hone a skill that the marketplace values? If you want the autonomy of self-employment, are you willing to accept the responsibility of navigating your own career ship? Unwillingness to compromise happens to clients who either feel they have had to compromise so much in life that they just can't tolerate any addititional compromises, or who have made rigidity work for them in some areas of their life and are trying to replicate this pattern in the career realm. In the career arena, inability to compromise results in paralysis. The solution is to identify what you value the most and to work on letting go of the mutually exclusive alternatives.

Fear of losing love. If you faced a higher than usual amount of disapproval from your family when you were growing up, you may have developed ultra-sensitivity to potential disapproval from your loved ones now. People with unsupportive parents often choose similarly critical partners, replicating the very part of their childhood that hurt them the most. Alternatively, some parents and spouses are supportive, but overly invested in the idea of your becoming a lawyer, or a software entrepreneur, or something else that you may have decided you do not want to do. If you fear that only some types of choices will be accepted by your family, but these aren't the choices you really want, the conflict must be resolved before you can truly feel enthusiastic about options that you would enjoy.

Learned helplessness. If you have been in a bad career situation for quite some time, you may have sunk into a state of belief that you can't make good things happen. From this attitude of defeat and despair, nothing looks possible. The antidote to such feelings is accomplishment, whether within or outside of the career realm. Think of something that you have always wanted to do, and make plans to do it. Movement creates momentum, so simply doing something and seeing the results is therapeutic.

Classic distraction. What would you be thinking about if you weren't stressing out about your career? If your career problems were solved, are there any other major life situations that would demand your attention? Sometimes anxious rumination about your career is really just a way to facing something else that is more important but also more threatening. Examples are wishing you had a love relationship, being in a conflictual marriage, knowing that your relationship with your children is not the best, or failing to come to terms with a poor state of health. If other areas of your life are in major need of attention, perhaps putting a career transition on hold is the wisest strategy for the moment. Address the other life spheres and the career transition may suddenly seem more manageable when you return to it.

Working through any of the above difficulties requires going deeper than taking another career assessment or reading another career help book. These dynamics are deeply personal, complex, and often resistant to change. A career counselor can help you to identify what is stopping you from clarifying and achieving your career goals. With time, energy, and the courage to face the tough stuff, you can succeed.