How do you put yourself in the driving seat for that mid-career change?
How many of you are stuck in a career rut? You can’t get the wheels on the road or be open to the idea that a mid-career move is possible.
The fact is many people who are midway through their careers are very unhappy in their jobs. They are balancing the prospect of promotions with family demands or working from pay cheque to pay cheque without any real purpose or long-term vision.
A healthy career pit stop to revisit the route planner, change the oil, pump up the tyres and consider your journey alternatives is something everyone should be doing at key milestones in their lives. The exercise may reconfirm that you are on the right track but may also tell you to shift course. If you realise that you are in the wrong space – that in itself is an achievement. Many people do not have the courage to admit that something is not working for them or that a change is needed to get them back on track.
If you are in this situation, there are three little words I would propose to kick-start the journey of lifting yourself up and daring to start over again – see, believe, achieve.
This will help you embark on the most thrilling journey of your life by really getting to know yourself and “see” your strengths before having the courage to “believe” in yourself to finally “achieve” your goals.
The starting point lies in focusing on your strengths – to “see” what you are good at and what you enjoy doing. We programme our whole lives to focus on improving our weaknesses when really what we should have been doing is following our bliss to become great at what we are good at. The hidden personal challenge is having the honesty to admit what you are not good at or do not enjoy. What is clear is you need to stop trying to be something or someone you are not because of social and work norms.
To find out what your strengths are: think about what advice, tasks or activities other people are always asking of you or recall the times when you were in “the zone” and time seemed to pass effortlessly by. From there, start forming the patterns of activities to determine what you enjoy doing. Keep an open mind as the results may show you something you might not have expected.
The next step is rebranding yourself. This is not always easy and requires honest insight on who you want to be – first personally and then professionally. This could be as simple as buying a new outfit to getting a great new hair cut to taking private coaching sessions on how you communicate your message when meeting new people or during interviews.
This brings me to shifting gears from a reactive to a proactive state on how you see the world around you. Goal-setting is something I only took seriously at the age of 30 when my company at the time sent me on leadership training. That simple assignment we were asked to do on setting goals was the catalyst to the journey of change I took over the next seven years of my life and which led me to doing what I am doing today in Singapore. The best part is that I’m continuing the journey.
But the problem with goal setting is that it’s one thing to write your goals down, it’s another to avoid procrastination and have the guts to get out there implementing them. This is where the word “believe” plays a role. Once you have taken an honest look at yourself and finished setting those goals, you have to believe 150% that you can achieve them.
You also have to believe that you are in the driving seat in creating the opportunities versus waiting for them to fall in your lap. It’s nice when the latter happens but more often than not, you have to make it happen. Believe that you are in charge of your universe and not the other way around.
Lastly, something that I only fully understood in recent years is you do not have all the answers and the plan is only a plan. You are allowed to change the route without changing the destination. So whilst the mood of the current recession may have you making excuses or avoiding hard decisions, it is an ideal time to create first mover advantage, shift gears and be in pole position to achieving that mid-career change. You know you want to!
Gwendy Krijger
Founder and mid-career switcher
SavvyBizz
gwendy@savvybizz.com
