Career change for life – Here I am thinking about the fact that changing your career can completely change the trajectory of your life.
There are some huge psychological barriers that can get in the way of career change which actually affect the direction of our entire lives.
Changing something which is OK – not necessarily optimal but not awful often doesn’t happen. The old adage of ‘better the devil you know’ situation. Consequently we often don’t look to make changes until we are completely entrenched in an unsuitable role. See Career Change Challenges.
Then there is the fear of the unknown – I love the acronym FEAR. False Expectations Appearing Real.
We constantly need to challenge our expectation about making changes in our careers or lives. In my experience most people who are contemplating a change in career rather than just jumping into it are not those to take risks easily.
Because of this, most assumptions about change are negative ‘it will be really difficult’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’ll never be able to find job in that field’, ‘no one will employ me without … experience’, ‘the training will be too expensive’ … and the list goes on.
Identify Assumptions
If you are thinking about making a career change, please capture your assumptions and examine each and every one. I have found that many need additional research to verify or discount. Then you can stop assuming things are too difficult and start to plan how you can make change happen.
There is so much psychology behind our personal barriers that I wouldn’t dare go into it here. If you have done any sort of self-awareness or asked for help from a coach, you probably already understand that we have layers and layers of personal beliefs/boundaries/issues (whatever you want to call them). The old ‘onion skins’ analogy is very apt here and making career change often means you have to peel back fears and objections one at a time to see if they are real or not.
Where does behaviour come from?
How much time do you have here? there are many areas in our lives that create beliefs and behaviour patterns ranging from society, culture, family and personal experience. Personally I have always been a conformist with the desire to be a bit different. While I was still with my family this was reinforced constantly because of the expectations to behave in a certain way. Once I grew up and left home, the need to be more myself began to grow until I had to make some personal decisions about my future direction.
Once acknowledged, the need to change can’t be denied. You can repress it, or ignore your feelings, but you can’t completely shut the lid on it.
The kaleidoscope effect
Career change for life is exactly what it says. Your career is just an element of you life and probably the one which was most consciously followed. Therefore, although it can be very difficult to make changes for all those F.E.A.R. based reasons, it is usually one of the easiest to examine and decide where change is needed.
Once you make one change in your life all sorts of other things start to happen. For example when I first became self-employed I had to rely on my own judgement. Often taking decisions my family would have thought unsafe. Once I implemented this behaviour I noticed it was easier to stand by my beliefs in other areas. I no longer needed to please everyone so could do what I felt was right in other areas of my life.
In Conclusion
If you want to make changes to any area of your life do be aware that it will likely impact all other areas as well. Therefore recognise that any career change will change your life.
If you want to discuss any of these thoughts or are wondering about coaching please feel free to contact me.