Beware the career safety straitjacket.

“Man, you’re so lucky. You got fired. Me, I’m stuck here.”
About 15 years ago, I left a successful freelance practice to take a staff position at an agency. Which lasted about two years before the axeman cameth.
Lucky by being fired? That’s what my buddy at the agency believed. With two kids, a mortgage and all the other bills staring me down each month, I didn’t quite share his exuberance.
I had taken the job mainly for the “safety” of a steady paycheck and benefits (sound familiar?). Then the market tanked, which left me in a pit of political turf wars. Employees battled to fend off layoffs. Friends became competitors. Competitors became cut throat artists.
But it turns out my friend was absolutely right. I couldn’t have been luckier.
My survival instincts had kicked in early, and I had reestablished freelance contacts in advance of being "destaffed. I even turned down a full-time job two weeks later because I was re-invigorated by the rush of freelance work. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared of sacrificing a safe paycheck in a recession.
As I look back on the experience, I recognize the true culprit in my firing: the obsessive search for career safety.
At what price career safety?Career fear has become all-consuming. We are obsessed with doing anything and everything to be safe from that fear.
And the cost can be high. Very high.
Because while career safety is, well, safe, it can also be smothering. It can insulate you from the outside world, and thereby stunt your career growth. It can also erode your survival skills for reality beyond your cocoon.
Here’s what to look out for, and how to protect yourself from, the smothering illusion of career safety:
Five dangers of career safety.

1. It’s addicting. You can easily fall into the trap of assuming career safety is your right. It’s not, and it never will be. You have to earn your pay every day, and build contingency plans if (when?) you lose your safety net.
2. It can make you lazy. No need to rush through that project, right? And why bother learning new skills? Tomorrow’s another day, right? Until there are no more tomorrows, and you’re laid off with fewer transferable skills and accomplishments then you could have had.
3. It can keep you on the sidelines. How many times have you envied someone who started a new business, won an industry award, or changed careers for something they love? They took a risk and put themselves in a position to succeed, while you put yourself in a position to remain safe.
4. It can make you paranoid. Of course you’re safe in your current job … then again, you weren’t invited to the last status meeting. A simple oversight, or a harbinger? When you’re obsessed about staying safe, you can easily start imagining everything as a threat.
5. It can dominate your time. When career safety is your first priority, you’ll do anything — and take down anyone — to protect it. Doing so takes a lot of time from your real work, which is actually your best protection in the long run.

Five practical (and one radical) ways to avoid being smothered by it.

1. Learn a new skill. Take a night class, watch how-to videos, cram online. Learn whatever gets you pumped up and also pumps up your marketability. Doesn’t have to be business related. Even if you take up dramatic writing (me), martial arts (me) or coin collecting (not me), it will make you more well rounded, focused and maybe most importantly, interesting. Because people like working with interesting people.
2. Master an existing skill. Do your job like your career depends on it (it does). Do better at what you do every day; it will not only make your more irreplaceable at work, it will also give you daily goals and milestones. That helps fight complacency.
3. Moonlight. Take on a little outside work, either in your field or another. Or take on some volunteer work. Even if you make little or no money, you’ll make new contacts, learn new skills and feel good about making a difference.
4. Meet new people. That will happen naturally if you do some of the things mentioned here. But it can also happen organically at coffee shops, community events and networking functions.
5. Show off. Get your name out there. Write articles or speak in your industry — or outside of it — on anything you feel passionate and knowledgeable about. You can also mentor younger workers and students, or even teach.
6. Reset (i.e., walk away and start over). This suggestion is the most drastic, and is definitely not for everyone. But a total reset of your career and life can sometimes be the most effective and invigorating way to blast out of the safety straitjacket. It’s kind of like doing a high wire act without a net — yes, you’ll scared, but you’ll also be laser focused on every task you undertake.

Be smart about career safety.By all means, be safe in your career. But more importantly, be smart. Recognize when career safety is good for you, and when it’s smothering and stunting you. A book I found very helpful in this area was Radical Careering, by Sally Hogshead. It’s been around for awhile, but it still hits home.