How to make a career change
A client recently described herself as disillusioned, despondent and depressed. I’m a career coach so it’s not uncommon for my clients to feel this way. And there was a time when I did too. To be honest, part of my becoming a coach came out of my desire to bring all that is unsaid about our interior lives around work out into the open. Or at least into private conversation with others instead of just in my head. For years through school and then after working, I was always asking, “What’s going on here? What are we doing? Does this make any sense to anyone? I’ve been told these jobs are great, I’ve made it, I’m “successful” — but they actually suck and I’m miserable. Am I the only one who feels this way?”
The answer I’ve found is no, but we’re all terrific actors and actresses pretending otherwise. Because what else would we do? And we’d look nuts to walk away from reaching where we’ve spent our life striving to get. I felt trapped wishing each workday to be over before it even began. And I was aware this could go on forever if I didn’t do something to change it.
Change came from reaching a breaking point of exhaustion and burnout like my client. This is the state in which many people come to me. I am the soft landing space for them to grieve the loss (what was all that hard work and pain for?) and move through feelings of shame, anger, sadness, groundlessness, disorientation and enormous fear. The question is “What now? How do I get from here to a life I enjoy and actually want to live?”
The answers I have to offer come from the path that I walked myself, starting in a sobbing mess of tears on my kitchen floor feeling like my life is over because I walked away, through to feeling like my life really only started then.
Examine your motivations
One of the first things I did after I picked myself up off the floor is examine how I got there. I looked at what had been driving my work and career choices to date. If you look deeply, for many of us, what’s underpinning the need to be successful is a need to feel “good enough,” to prove our worth. I have spoken to people all over the world — from South Africa to India to Singapore to Switzerland — and this is a theme worldwide. We all want to stack up to our peers, to get our parents’ approval, to show the world we’re enough, and our professional accomplishments are how we think we’ll do it. But I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s not necessary — none of it. You’re already good enough. Not because of anything you’ve done, but because nothing is required. You’ve been standing at the finish line your whole life. And can have your life back from tirelessly jumping every hoop if you choose to see this.
Find genuine desires
While realizing my inherent worth was tremendously freeing, it actually made me even more disoriented than I already was. The linchpin of my life was pulled out. If not to hustle and prove, what would get me out of bed in the morning now? I had to discover what it felt like to do something from a genuine desire, to do something because I truly want to not because I “should” to earn a gold star.
This is a simple idea, but potentially very challenging in practice. You likely feel you don’t know what you like or who you truly are (if not the one that strives). And why would you? It never really mattered (or at all). All that mattered was hitting the marks and becoming a “success.” So, it may take some time for you to be able to locate what makes you genuinely excited. For me, my inner signal was very weak — bulldozed by decades of “shoulds.”
But, you really don’t need to go on some journey to “discover yourself” out in the world. Just start where you are. Right now looking out of your eyes, underneath all the mental chatter of shoulds and supposed to’s and fear-based arguments etc., is a human with a pulse on what feels good to you or not. And the key word is feel, meaning your body knows the way. Follow your body — not the mental chatter. We’re going for things that you want to do because they make you feel good, not because your mind says you should want to do them or any other mental arguments that will likely lead you off course.
Who you are is not a mystery. Who you are is in those genuine desires. They’re what make you uniquely you. I’d start as I did — with identifying what lights you up as a human. Don’t even think in terms of occupations, job titles or positions off the bat.
Explore and don’t make assumptions about what’s possible
Maybe you have some ideas on how your true interests could translate into an economic equation and something you can package up into what we call a job. Maybe you don’t. Either way, begin to explore the world and see what’s possible around the things you’re drawn to. Research, talk to people, follow your curious intuitive nudges. What kinds of jobs would allow you to be involved in the outdoors or nature conservation? Or allow one to bring out their natural talent and enjoyment for style and pleasing aesthetics? Or love for food? Or teaching others about the world and different cultures?
Most of us have no idea what’s out there, what the possibilities and options truly are for us. There’s no way I could have known I would be where I am now writing this to you when I walked away from my past life. Needing to do only particular “good jobs” to prove myself, I was conditioned to believe my options were very limited.
I get excited by talking about work, and having deeply intimate conversations with others about it. Through some exploration, I discovered coaching as a way to do this. My judgmental inner critic initially told me I can’t be a coach (what would everyone think?!), and that it would be much more acceptable to others if I went back to school to get a psychology degree. But after a lifetime of hoop-jumping I just couldn’t stomach it. And the point of changing my life is to live in allegiance to me, not optics. I have to honor what’s true for me. As I realized once while sitting in an interview for one of those “good jobs,” the interviewer scanning my resume to see only how much I am able to sacrifice, package and perform, if I want a life that feels good to me I actually have to show up here in the world as the real me. An element of courage is required. So have the courage to explore and go “off-script.” Which leads me to my next point.
Own your freedom and be willing to change the narrative of your life
The truth is you are free to do what you want with your life. But we often feel trapped. I am privileged in many ways in my life (I’m a white, highly educated woman). And yet, I felt unbelievably trapped. How wild. I had internalized so many externally imposed ideas of who I need to be and what my life was supposed to look like. And I felt trapped by the life I had built out based on these ideas, terrified to dismantle and change course.
But because I had built from a place of inauthenticity all I had really built was a precarious house of cards and it all came crashing down anyway. If you don’t find the willingness to let go of the life that’s out of alignment but you think you “should” have, the life that’s meant for you will likely force the issue.
What about meeting your financial needs and obligations? Sometimes a realignment and reduction of what those are is necessary, sometimes not. All I’m saying is to look closely and see that there’s a good possibility you can make good money in a way that doesn’t necessitate you to abandon yourself. If you’re at a breaking point now, you’ve played that out and see how simply unsustainable that is. And this is actually a blessing. It opens the door to truly listen to yourself, perhaps for the first time.
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It’s not easy to walk this path alone. In my one-on-one Career Change Clarity Coaching I can help you work through the steps to uncover work that you’d love and is a perfect fit for you. Learn more here
