If it’s time for a career change, here are some simple tips to help you slow down and take that next step intentionally. Rather than rushing or running away, take the time to get to know yourself, know what matters, and be mindful in your steps.
As this author expresses, this is ultimately about you, and when you tend to your true needs and desires, everyone benefits – family, friends, and coworkers.
Here are great guidelines to consider as you turn your dream about reinventing yourself into a realistic approach to do just that. Many of the points we work through in Now What?® are part of this process:
Exploring next career moves, doing a job search or starting a new endeavor like your own business are all daunting and often, frustrating propositions.
Many times you’ll come up against a lack of results or clarity that dumps a heap of hopelessness on you in the from of “I want to quit!!” Should you?
To quit or not to quit? What do you think I’m going to say? No! Of course, you don’t quit. Not yet anyway.
I always say: “ Life will tell you if you’re wrong. YOU don’t need to decide”. Roadblocks, a lack of results, obstacles and setbacks—those could all certainly be interpreted as life saying, “give up”. But maybe there’s another message.
If you were running a race or working out at the gym and you experienced pain, you’d have the choice to stop or to work through it. Most athletes work through it being sensitive to the threshold where they’d cause major injury. The smart ones also know to build in recovery time in between the big competitions or work outs.
When it comes to your exploration or ramp-up, ‘pain’ can mean, “Wait!” Just pull back, observe, divert your attention to something else to gain perspective and then
re-engage.
Taking your foot off the accelerator and coasting in ‘neutral’ for a bit can go a long way to knowing whether to proceed and how to do so or whether to redirect your energies to something else altogether.
Maureen is Senior VP in the finance industry and she has been on a campaign to further her career. She knew it wasn’t time to begin a job search but she did feel that strategizing a way to be better known and more valuable in her organization as well as her industry at large, was necessary to her future plans.
She made a Herculean commitment to networking and even cold calling at an ambitious pace of several times a week. She was quite successful and then hit a wall. People weren’t calling back at the same rate, the lunch meetings weren’t happening and the pipeline was drying up.
There was some harsh self-criticism, berating herself for quitting her pace, but we reframed that to allow herself some breathing room. In the open space, an opportunity appeared to be given larger responsibility along with greater exposure within her company. Succeeding at the new task would be a huge boost and resume-building highlight which would poise her for a promotion or better opportunity elsewhere.
Let’s call what happened to Maureen the result of ‘focused in-action’. She wasn’t giving up but she was allowing a break to see what might emerge. In this case, an opportunity came up but you might find inspiration for a different strategy, the idea to call on someone else you may need to talk to or you may find a slight course correction.
The next time you want to quit, take a break instead. Allow some focused in-action and pick up within two to three weeks. If you go longer, it will become unfocused in-action and you could derail. If nothing emerges in your break, you may need to go back to drawing board. It’s OK.
By Ginny Kravitz, Now What?® Facilitator
But You Don’t Know Anything About It
We were seated next to each other at a dinner party for mutual friends who were about to move cross-country. Val, an executive for a large non-
profit organization, asked me a question I’m often asked: How did you make the change? She was familiar with coaching since she and several of her colleagues had worked with an executive coach over the course of their careers. Val wanted to know more about the kind of coaching I do and how I transitioned to the field from my prior work. She stated that for a while now, she has been entertaining the idea of becoming a coach and then she added what stops her: But I don’t know anything about it.
Val was referring to all the questions that arise with any idea: how do you make the change, what would it really be like, how much money can you make, and the list goes on — appropriately so, because the questions are important to ask.
Research, Risk, & Windows of Opportunity
The point of my sharing Val’s story isn’t to say that you should drop everything and go start your own business or to imply that all mid-career professionals secretly want out. The issue I’m raising is: What do you do with those ideas that pique your interest, the ones that keep coming up for you?
full article here
At Now What?® we help you chart your course based on the same principle. Read on to be reminded that ‘ANYTHING is possible!’
“How Kat Cole Went from Hooters Girl to President of Cinnabon by Age 32.”
by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang
Stories make up a big part of who we are. It’s how we relate to our past, it’s how we create our future, it’s how we entertain ourselves and sometimes, how we escape. In coaching, especially career change coaching, stories believed too stubbornly can be exactly what is keeping someone stuck.
How do you know if that’s you? Your life may feel cyclical. Progress followed by setbacks of a familiar nature over and over. Fits and starts.
Also, bumping up against the same obstacles time after time. It’s not bad luck. It’s a belief system that needs to manifest into proof that you are right, giving you more evidence to keep believing the “story”. And if you believe it, you tell it and therefore, perpetuate it.
For example, Joseph could not see himself breaking out of investment banking into teaching which was what he really wanted to do because he believed wholeheartedly, it would be a long process full of rejection. He felt he did not have a long enough list of qualifications and that it would be one hurdle after another if he tried to make a change. Speaking to others who made similar changes gave him examples that it was possible, and having interviews that showed him the certification process would not take long should have also served to break the old story. However, he just could not let it go and start writing a new story.
Another example might be believing everyone is nasty or out for themselves. In turn, this makes you nasty or defensive so they are nasty back and there you go—another story that’s proven over and over again.
To spin a different yarn seems very phony at first. That’s because the new story is not true yet. It’s fiction. It’s not yet entrenched in the fiber of your being resonating through every nook and cranny.
It becomes your job to make it true and unfortunately, waiting to see proof first won’t work. Seeing is not believing. Believing makes you see it! It switches your attention off of everything that could go wrong or that is not working and puts it on the possibilities and the connect-the-dots magic of creating a new path.
Have you ever bought a new car only to notice once you are driving it, how many like it are on the road? That’s the effect we are looking for. What happened was that suddenly your attention was on cars just like yours and you kept seeing them everywhere! Were they there before? Certainly, but you weren’t looking for them.
Creating a new story means looking for the elements that can make it come true until you don’t have to work to find them anymore. That happens once the new story is woven into the tapestry of your life and becomes true.
What’s your story?
Are you broke? Are you lazy? Are you put-upon by circumstances? Are you a victim of corporate greed or a relationship gone sour? Are you so in love with your savings account that you can’t invest in yourself to get on a new course?
Start telling a story of what you CAN create instead of replaying those old eight-track tapes in your head (for youngsters, stop playing cassettes and for really young ones, stop playing those CD’s).
Let us know how we can help rewrite your career story.