Are you Stuck in a job that you don’t want? Are you ready for a career change, but have no idea what else you could do – or where to start? Did you know that by ditching the known career rules and theories, you could radically increase your chances of finding something you love and want to do?
This has happened to me before. Hell! Sometimes it still rings a bell and truth be told, it was one of the most difficult periods of my life.
When you looked at me or when I spoke, I had a very good job in a well-known company. I was living the life, I had reached the promised land, ideal for anyone with a career worth speaking of.
My friends, family, and everyone around me looked at me with a glee of hope, and success.
Inside though, I was deeply unfulfilled. I wasn’t enjoying my work, I felt like I wasn’t using my full potential, and I longed to wake up feeling like my work was making a difference – to someone or something.
Yet, I didn’t have a clue what else I could do or who to turn to – Gramps? Granny? Mummy? My Late Papa? I was lost.
Indeed I’d struggled on and off for years to figure out a way to change, but without making progress. I actually tried other companies doing the same old thing that I thought I loved.
Eventually, as you’ll read below, I came out the other side. But it wasn’t an easy journey. This took years, patience, love from my friends and above all strength.
Here are the lessons I learnt along the way.
What you need to know
If you’re stuck in your career change, there are three main challenges – or paradoxes – that you’re going to come up against.
1. It’s you that wants to make a change, but you are also your biggest obstacle
In the depths of my despair about my job, there were signals from all around me that I wasn’t in the right place. On a day-to-day basis, I just felt numb – uninspired by the meaningless work I was doing, and seemingly stuck in a cycle reality of waking up to the same story every morning, every day, every week, and every month.
Yet, at the same time, I had no idea what else I wanted to do (or if I did, no sense of whether those ideas were feasible) – and no idea where to start.
Looking back, I now realize something I didn’t at the time – that I was blinkered in my view of the world of work. All I knew was the industry I was in. I had surface-level visibility of some other careers, but there were so many fields and roles that were completely off my radar.
Second, I was also scared of taking a cut in salary, scared of what my family and friends would think, and scared of losing the status I’d worked so hard to achieve.
These weren’t obstacles in the outside world; they were obstacles in me. It was me – my lack of knowledge and my fears – that was most holding me back.
2. You can’t figure it out by figuring it out
I was a Creative worker: paid to think, to solve problems, to create solutions, to mitigate situations, to averse crises and to interact with others.
Why couldn’t I figure out what else I wanted to do?
My initial approach was to come home from work, wrap myself in my room, and go round and round in circles in my head analyzing what else I could do.
I didn’t come up with answers. Those midnight thoughts all went to waste.
The simple reality is that if the solution to your career change lay in more analysis – in making more lists, reading more books, taking more psychometric tests, or simply figuring it all out in your head – you’d have found it by now.
But, alas, NO.
3. You won’t find a job by looking for one
When I started to look for something different, recruitment agencies, and people in my circle were my natural first call or thought.
They talked excitedly to me about roles with competitors or other positions in smaller organizations.
You may have spent hours trawling through job sites or job alerts, and just made yourself more miserable by seeing again and again that you don’t have the experience or skills that are being asked for.
These are all functions of a traditional job market that isn’t designed for career changers.
Now, this is what you need to do
There are solutions to each paradox, but they’re likely not what you think they are.
1. Do it with others, not alone
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller.
The biggest challenge I faced in my career change was inertia. I wanted to change, but I didn’t want to risk the security of the job I had.
I was comfortably uncomfortable.
I would have bursts of energy to do something about my career, followed by periods where I’d get swept back into ‘life’, surfacing weeks or months later and realizing nothing had changed.
I only really started to make progress when I deliberately put others around me.
The net effect was different ideas, different connections, and accountability – all of which, finally, led to forward movement.
2. Act it out, don’t figure it out
“Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide.” – Seth Godin.
In my career-change journey, it took me a good number of years to get out of a career that wasn’t right for me.
For most of that time, I was trapped in analysis paralysis.
When I started to act rather than analyze, things started to change. In short, action precedes clarity, not the other way round.
3. Look for people, not for jobs
“Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They’re attached to people. If you’re looking for an opportunity, you’re really looking for a person.” – Ben Casnocha.
Job sites, recruitment consultants, CVs / résumés and Google all have their uses in your career change. But they’re not the place to start.
Focus instead on connecting with people.
The power of being in front of people is that you can present the whole you – something CV or résumé simply can’t do.
Remember: people first, jobs second.
What your next steps should be
“To know and not to do is not yet to know.” – Buddhist proverb.
Making a career change isn’t easy – otherwise everyone would be doing it.
But it is possible.
And remember, this isn’t just about your career; it’s about your life. It’s about how you feel every morning; it’s about how that rubs off on your health and your relationships; and, ultimately, it’s about the impact that you can make on the world through being alive in what you do.
The stakes are high!