Career Change – Baby Step Into Your New Future
Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by Matt Shelly in Job Search Tips
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By Todd Bavol, The Job Search Ninja.
CEO, Integrity Career Transitions
Whenever we think about a major change in our lives, the temptation is to see the whole thing as so overwhelming that we just put our plans on the back burner…sometimes forever. When we think about a career change, for example, it is not only the direct change in our line of work which is affected, but perhaps our finances, our family situation and our location as well. The prospect of turning our whole lives upside down feels totally unmanageable and so we just continue to rot away in a job that we hate – the paradox being, of course, that if we do just that, it affects all other areas of our lives anyway!
Switching careers is a fairly major step to take in life and it does require you to ‘think big’ at the outset. Once you have a fairly clear idea of your direction, however, it is essential to break it down into baby steps.
Think for a moment about all the people around the world who decide to emigrate. They often have a new language to learn, a new culture to come to terms with, property to buy and sell, employment opportunities and perhaps schools for their children to consider and new laws and regulations to understand. If they were to try and tackle everything at once, most would give up almost immediately. The stress of trying to do it all at the same time would simply be too much for them, so what they do is to deal with the situation one step at a time. They might, for example, start attending evening classes to learn the language, or sell their property in their homeland first and rent somewhere while they look to buy abroad and seek employment. In the course of doing these things, they will naturally be gaining a better understanding of the language and the laws in the new country and everything begins, slowly but surely, to fit into place.
All the time, they still have their vision of living in this foreign land in their minds, but they take small, focused and manageable steps to get them there. Inevitably of course, there comes the day when all hell breaks loose and they are bundling themselves, their children and their pets on to an airplane and finally setting off, but with all the preparations having been made in advance, in reality the moving day is just one more baby step.
Career changes, like emigration plans, cannot realistically take place overnight, but by thinking of them as a transition rather than one almighty and sudden upheaval, they can happen gradually and in a way which helps to remove a lot of the fear. Ways of life and perceptions are allowed to make a gradual adjustment instead of involving a giant leap from one thing to another.
Not having the right skills and qualifications and having to adjust our standard of living are two of the main fears that we face when considering a career change and these are both things that we can tackle up front. We can acquire the relevant skills and qualifications without making any other immediate change to our lives, other than the investment of the time and perhaps a small amount of money. We can take courses and study in the evenings or on weekends, or we can take on part-time or voluntary work which will lead us in the right direction. If we know that our dream job will, initially at least, bring in a lower income, we can downsize now. We can cut out those unnecessary expenses and luxuries. We can even sell our homes and invest in something smaller and cheaper if we know that will ultimately have to happen anyway. But we can do it now in preparation for the other changes that are to come and give ourselves and our families the opportunity to adjust gradually and get used to the idea.
When you look at those emigrants who return to their homelands after only a few years of being abroad, it is interesting to note that many are retired people. In many cases, their new situation does not work out because the move was too sudden and they did not allow themselves a chance to ‘live into their future’. Commonly, they plunge straight from being fully employed in their home country to living abroad within weeks or even days of retirement, without having prepared themselves for being physically removed from their families or considering how they will fill their time. In many of these cases, if they had taken things more slowly and adjusted more gradually, they would have settled more easily.
In career changing too, you can live into the future and experience the transition at a steadier pace, simply by planning, taking baby steps and allowing yourself time to adjust gradually.
For information about career products and services, visit www.integritycareertransitions.com. You can also follow The Job Search Ninja on twitter at, www.twitter.com/jobsearchninja, for great career advice.
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