Why do you want to make a career change?

I want to make a change because …

What is your biggest obstacle?

• Not feeling fulfilled enough every day, not really knowing what I want to do and not really motivated.

• Not feeling what it is then not really knowing what to do about it or how to change.

• Not knowing

• Fear of making change

• How to take a few steps back financially when I’m used to a certain lifestyle – a primal fear of affording food and living

• Having the confidence to do something different – fear of taking the next step into uncertainty

• I have lots of ideas but stop – blockage and fear of the unknown

• Are my skills going to be enough – will retraining be needed

The career change paradoxes – the vicious circles you get caught in

1 You want to make a career change, but you are the obstacle. Your fears and lack of knowledge. You can’t be what you can’t see, it’s not in your sphere of reference.

What careers are out there that you didn’t know about? You feel like you’re going round in circles.
~What if you make another wrong decision?
~What will a pay cut mean for you?
~What will people think?
~It’s too late – I’m too old. I’ll have to retrain and start again at the bottom.

2 It’s unlikely that you’ll find your ideal job by looking for it online. The job market is designed for upwards (promotion climbing), not sideways moving.

3 Lead by your CV that could show you a list of jobs that you don’t want to do anymore. Or the industry might be right for you, but the company is not.

What can overcome these paradoxes?

Success principles:

• Approach the career change with others – not alone.
  Find enablers in the process, people who could be a mentor to tell you what they have done successfully. Someone who has been through this before and have successfully changed. Use the power of people around you.
• Act it out, don’t figure it out
  Your reality bubble is your routine and everyday life. If this was where your answer was, you would have already found it.What is an example? Your network’s network is equal to around 150 people. That might take you out of your comfort zone to reach out, and that is hard to do. But you have to act and take that step, and just give it a try.

  Take a step into a totally different industry, such as wellness if that’s new for you. You have to break out of your bubble. Ideas will come and be formed when you move outside of what you know.

• Don’t look for jobs, look for people
  It seems quite random but you have to leave the place of your fear behind and just break out. Reportedly 85% of jobs are found through people, not advertising.How to find these opportunities?
  New input = new output. Change the raw materials, data, talk to new people. You don’t have to know the end result yet. As Seth Godin said, “different universes colliding”.

  Planned happenstance can be manufactured into a new result. Start close to home with your contacts, “a friend of a friend” through people you have connected with but are warm connections, and you’ll be surprised that they would be happy to help you.

Aligning with your values

What are the things that are most important to you in your life?

Start with brainstorming your ideas and put them into bubbles that match under main themes. You can then plot you values on a scale of “expressed at work” and “not expressed at work”

For Example: When values don’ get expressed at work the expression comes out somewhere else, such as through your body causing disease, or mind, causing stress or depression. So it is critical to include as many of your important values through your work as possible to maintain health and balanced wellbeing.