Six Career Change Tips From a Leadership Coach
Five years ago, I quit an interesting, well-paid corporate job to completely change my career and my life. Today, I run a successful coaching business.
And it's MY definition of success. I work about 20-25 hours a week, and earn the same as I did in corporate. I have full autonomy over how and when I work, and I can be as creative as I want. The work I do literally changes peoples’ lives (their words, not mine!).
Along the way, I’ve learnt a fair bit about what it takes to find and follow your own path. It is very hard work and it's certainly not a path to enlightenment.
But change IS possible. And I believe it’s worth it.
I wanted to share some of what I’ve learnt in the last five years about creating change in your life & career.
So if you’re yearning for change (big or small), then grab a cup of coffee / glass of wine / beer and read on. You can take what’s helpful for you and leave the rest.
1/ Do the work.
There is no magic formula for creating a life & career that brings you joy and fulfilment, despite what the internet might sell you. You have to do the work of deepening your understanding of yourself.
You need to get clear on your values and what really matters to you (not to society or your parents/partner).
You need to shine a light on your belief systems and see which ones are helpful and which ones are keeping you trapped.
And you need to learn to distinguish between the voice of your intuition - your wisest, most powerful self - vs the voice of fear or expectation.
2/ Look at your relationship with money.
Change involves risk, stepping into the unknown, and a decrease in security - particularly financial. The most common barrier I hear, particularly for career change, is some version of “I can’t afford it”.
Hope and optimism don’t pay the mortgage, and financial uncertainty is challenging; I still don’t know how much money I’ll earn from month to month. But I am certain that “I can’t afford it” has as much to do with mindset as it does with bank balance.
The most important (and difficult) self-development work I have done has been to change my view of money from something that is scarce and out of my reach, to simply a flow of energy that comes and goes.
Look at your own beliefs about money, and be honest - are they a springboard or a barrier to creating the change you crave?
3/ Connect with a motivation powerful enough to keep you going.
Many of us believe that external motivators - money, status, security, title, others’ opinions of us - are what drive us.
In my experience, an external motivator is NEVER enough to keep you going when things get tough. You need to connect to an internal motivator, something deep inside you that is of your soul. For me, my most powerful motivator is freedom. The desire for personal freedom, and the freedom to be myself, is more powerful than anything else.
Whether it’s something of yourself you want to express in the world, or a value that is at the core of your being, figure out your internal motivator and let it be your guiding light.
4/ Run experiments and release the outcome.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Positive thinking is powerful, but you HAVE to take action in order to create a life or career that brings you joy. And it’s often action that can feel scary, because we tend to believe everything we do has to ‘succeed’, or it’s a ‘failure’.
Try this instead.
Run experiments. Whatever dream you’re harbouring, what one small experiment could you run to give you more information, and maybe take you one step closer to that dream?
Then, release the outcome. We never really know how things are going to turn out, and that’s ok. Remember, some of the world’s greatest inventions (post-its, anyone?) were the result of another experiment going wrong.
5/ Trust in something.
Spoiler alert: nothing is certain in life. If we wait for things to be certain, we will never do ANYTHING. Steve Jobs famously said:
“You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.”
For me, I trust in a higher power. I believe that my higher power is simultaneously God, the universe, and my own intuition. I believe it’s all the same thing, and that’s helped me beyond measure to keep taking action when I don’t really know what I was doing.
6/ Don’t expect anyone else to care, but don’t do it alone.
It’s YOUR life. It’s YOUR career. However much other people care about you - your partner, family, friends, boss, colleagues - please don’t expect anyone to care so much that they’ll create change FOR you.
Whether you want to change your career trajectory, your lifestyle, your relationship or whatever, you need to take responsibility for it yourself. But that doesn’t mean you need to do it alone. Two tips:
A. Have at least one cheerleader. Someone in your life that believes in you even more than you believe in yourself. Check in with them regularly.
B. Work with professionals. Coaches, therapists, mentors - I’m invested in them all and it’s been central to the life and career I’ve built for myself. You will not create change by maintaining the status quo - what’s got you where you are today is not what will take you where you’re headed tomorrow.