12 surprising things I’ve learned about career change (from 8 years of helping midlife professionals change career)
Researching my book X Change - How to torch your work treadmill, I met professionals who’d lived on average 600 months, before they decided to make changes in their career for the better.
They’d decided to design work that mattered more to them, and to others around them. In less than an hour, I fell in love with each of them, just a little.
They offered me lessons in career change that impacted my outlook, my work...and my life.
I can barely remember how I was before I met them.
In 2017, I interviewed 100 professionals who redesigned their careers in their 40s, 50s and 60s who described themselves as “happier” for having done so.
In my book, I release the secret patterns that helped me design more joy at work personally, and create methods to train others on how to do that.
I learned many lessons along the way.
Surprising career design lessons I’ve discovered - that might help you too.
We generation X-ers are in our 40s or 50s now and we need to work (more about this in my book).
It’s where we hone our self-esteem and our self-worth.
It’s how we create our funds to enjoy life, in our own way.
For better or worse, we’re going to be working for a very long time.
There are many partners in law or accountancy firms, who “can’t afford to retire”.
Even though they earn £750,000+ per annum!
Did they wake up one day and decide that status and ‘stuff’ were more important than freedom and fun?
Or, maybe they just got stuck on a work treadmill and didn’t know how to get off?
“Safe” doesn’t exist in corporates - especially after a 50th birthday.
So, we need to design a career that could last a long time, because it needs to.
Especially if we have dependants - old or young. (Here are some big birthday attempts at wisdom)
Fear is everywhere, but we can train ourselves to squish it long enough to try something.
A little experiment that won’t change the world.
But, it might just change your world.
Security is as addictive, but it’s a habit that can be broken, with no need to go cold turkey.
We don’t need to risk it all to be happy.
But we do need to take the blinkers off!
So many of us successfully sleep-walk into a career cul-de-sac, which ends in a frightening career coma (yep…that was me and here’s my Tedx talk where I share my career coma story.
The only way out, is to switch off autopilot and put your hands on the steering wheel to pilot your way out.
No matter how scary it seems.
No one values you, or your career, beyond what you (or your work) can do for them.
No one owes you anything.
So, you’re going to have to rely on yourself if you want, or need, to work for the next decade or so
If your job is eroding you, your mind will tell you in a whispered warning.
If you don’t listen, it will begin to shout from weird parts of your body.
And if you still don’t listen, it’ll scream at you, all the way to the hospital - read a client’s story of burnout.
An ever present urge to escape, usually means you’re not thinking straight.
You start to believe the only way, is to run for the hills…to throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s not!
But, we sometimes need help to differentiate the baby from the bath water.
Confidence grows with action.
And shrinks with inactivity.
This inactivity keeps us stuck.
Everyone wants the fast train to career happiness.
Not so many are prepared to do the deep work to that destination.
Hop on a tourist bus to a better destination, then hop off and see how it feels.
Small steps. Low bar. Ace it. Then bigger steps. Raise the bar…
There’s a way to use design thinking and the psychology of successful change to tweak work with life.
To test reactions.
Test your reaction first.
Then those around you.
Then test reactions commercially.
This vastly reduces the ever-present fear of failure that surrounds career change - at our age.
Time is more precious than anything else.
Since we don’t know when it’s going to end for us, what if we started to count time in months, or days, or even hours?
The decision to stay or go would be a lighter decision, wouldn’t it?
We might not waste another hour doing work that didn’t matter enough to us.
When there is another way.
Not an easy way - the easy way is to stay where you are. In your familiar territory.
And down-grade your expectations of (work) life.
But come to mention it, that doesn’t sound too easy either…I know which I chose.
In 2017, I met 100 people, who had lived at least 600 months before they decided to change careers, to do work that mattered more. To do work that felt better.
They picked up a pencil and began to learn the craft of career design. To begin to draw a new potential work situation.
Some made big changes. Some made tweaks. All describe themselves as “happier”.
And began their first draft of the next chapter of their work story…
Before another month evaporated.
19 case-studies of career change after 40. Amazon or listen to me reading it on Audible.
Get a copy of X Change: How to torch your work treadmill.
On Amazon and Audible.
If you liked this article you might also like these new case studies:
I worry I’ll be in the same spot in 5 years time - and I’ll just be 5 years older! (Cillian’s story)
When work isn’t good enough - but you can’t escape to the circus (Keira’s story)
I gave early retirement a shot - it didn’t suit me! (Dana’s story)
Book in a free 30 minute Light at the end of the tunnel call - to see if one of my programmes will get you to where you want to go faster than doing it alone.
