60-second Career Change Myths - the little white lies that keep you stuck (and why not to believe them!)
Here are some of the career change myths I hear all the time. All of them get in the way of professionals of our age designing more purpose, satisfaction and fulfillment into their careers. These myths do nothing but keep midlifers stuck - exactly where they are.
The following myths behind career change after 40, serve no purpose and simply keep professionals stuck - exactly where they are.
Ignore your sticky work problem and it’ll disappear
Head down, bum up, keep on grafting...till what? You’ve got three choices:
Squeeze and squash it deep into your inner being;
Numb it with alcohol (or your substance of choice);
Distract yourself from thinking by endless Facebook scrolling or Netflixing.
But by hook or by crook, ignoring your work problem will come back to bite you on the bum.
I’ve seen too many clients and people I’ve interviewed being bitten in the form of a surprise redundancy, a deep bout of depression, burnout or in one case a serious heart problem. When we ignore or dismiss the problem of work, it continues to seek out different ways to get us to pay attention.
Articles related to this career change myth:
Karen Walker’s career transformation.
Career change is risky - at our age
Our brains see career change not as risky...as down-right dangerous - like a sabre-toothed tiger waiting to pounce. I challenge you to wonder instead about the risks behind NOT changing career. If you’re bored and under-challenged, stressed and burning out, or just under-satisfied and unfulfilled - how long can you keep feeling those things without it negatively impacting the rest of your life?
Our lizard brains want us to stay with the familiar, hiding behind the rock but deep down we know that that isn’t safe in reality. We can take small steps, leaps not tweaks and train our lizard brain that the necessary career changes are not at all risky...done in a certain way.
Articles related to this career change myth:
What’s stopping you from changing career in your 40s, 50s or 60s?
What if you first career isn’t the right one - a story of burnout and recovery
Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life
If there was ever a myth that keeps professionals of our age stuck - this is it!
It comes from a time in the past when work was seen as a necessary evil, not a crucial part of our identity, self-worth and self-esteem.
After interviewing over 100 successful midlife career changers in their 40s, 50s or 60s, I can categorically say that there is no work that you can do that feels like a holiday every day. All of those I interviewed described themselves as happier for having made a career change but their work still felt like work. They worked hard some days and less hard on others. The distinction was that they were doing work that mattered - to them and to others.
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There’s one perfect idea out there for your future career
I see this in almost every first call I have with clients. It manifests itself in what I call A-Z thinking. It goes like this:
I am here (A) and I want to find the perfect idea for my new career (Z). Until I find the perfect idea (Z), I’ll do nothing, I’ll stay stuck here (A). I might do a bit of research on some ideas but I’m not ready to dive into an idea until I know it’s absolutely perfect.
Maybe they’ll dream of a vineyard, a village pub or retraining to be a psychologist? But they never get farther than the idea of change.
They stay stuck at Point A, never even moving to point B or C or H. Stuck at the beginning, while years disappear. My methodologies make sure you understand what’s keeping you stuck at point A and then gives you steps to get off point A, and start moving.
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Career change requires a leap of faith
Nope, it doesn’t! Leaps of faith are downright dangerous at our age. If we still have mortgages to pay, children to get through school or university or lifestyles we’d like to maintain.
Instead, I’m an advocate of tweaks, not leaps. By that I mean, investing energy and resources into figuring out what works and what doesn’t, taking time to learn what we are truly great at and then, over time, evolving your work to include more of those really satisfying elements. It’s a series of very deliberate small changes, never a leap of faith.
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Changing career means you’ve failed in your first career
After interviewing over 100 successful midlife career changers, I recognised that many had difficulty with the idea of leaving their first career behind.
Some didn’t leave their career behind, they made tweaks to make it work better for them. For others who made significant career changes, it took some inner re-framing because they’d invested up to 2 decades of their life in their first career. Initially some felt like a failure leaving it behind.
But after deep consideration, those who made more significant career changes and were happier for doing so, believed that failure lay in carrying on doing work that eroded them or bored them or left them feeling empty. They then redefined what success meant to them - at their age - not some 20 year old’s idea of success.
Articles related to this career change myth:
Elizabeth Thomas’ career change - a tango -dancing, motorcycling grandmother.
5 questions worth asking (and answering) if you’re feeling career stuck
It takes a long time to change career
Based on over 100 interviews with successful career changers, there are three reasons why career change takes a little longer.
1. You are time poor.
Nothing happens without effort and investment in time. If successful career change is your number one priority, then finding time to invest in it needs to be your number one priority. I’ve never met anyone with zero time available. It’s worth taking an analytical eye to how you spend your time. Great things can happen if you can find even a couple of hours to focus exclusively on your career overhaul. Or you could just stay where you are.
2. You are very constrained financially.
A little investment pot will make things move a little quicker. So start today changing your spending habits to create one if you haven’t already got one. But let me reassure you that no matter how much money you have set aside to invest in your future career, picking your first idea (rather than your best idea) because you want to make a quick decision, often turns out to be a very expensive waste of time.
3. You have created very little momentum
Successful career change without momentum can feel so much like dredging through treacle that many give up before they reach their prize. Even if you are only making tweaks to your current situation, the speed with which you make those changes, analyse them and refine them defines how quickly you get to do more satisfying work. Often having a partner-in-design, an accountability partner, a positive cheerleader or an experienced coach, you can move faster and keep focused.
Articles related to this career change myth:
Dan Barker (Time and financial constraints)
Ges Ray (Financial constraints)
Lisa Smith (Momentum)
It’s exhausting changing career
I’ll tell you what’s exhausting - not bringing your whole self into the office, hiding the bits of you that aren’t welcome and doing work that doesn’t fit with your strength or values. Or doing work that doesn’t matter. Now, that’s exhausting.
Seeking out your brilliance can be a little tiring and most of my clients leave our deep dive session in the Discover your Superpowers programme feeling drained - but when do you ever get the opportunity talk about you and your work for hours on end?
Using your Superpowers is not draining at all. In fact, you could use your Superpowers all day and have more energy at the end of the day than at the beginning. So, if you know your Superpowers and can point them at your career change, it doesn’t have to be exhausting at all. My clients tend to feel excited about the future and energised by the possibilities.
Articles related to this career change myth:
Starting your next career as a hobby experiment, say hello to Stuart Coupland
4 kids, a giant chunk of debt, a full-time job and a plan, meet Dan Barker.
Freedom and flexibility from keeping is small - Liz Wilson and her micro-bakery.
You need to retrain to change careers
No, you don’t! It’s very expensive and risky retraining to do something that you’ve never done before! Or something that you’ve never even spoken to someone who does that or shadowed them for a day.
I’ve never met someone who retrained to be a surgeon in their 40s or 50s, that’s a big investment of time and resources. But I do see this desire in my new clients to get “properly trained” in something before they know what that something actually is - or even whether they would like it.
I made this mistake! I would have saved myself about £20k and missed earnings of over £100k if I’d not retrained before I knew what I wanted to do. I was escaping and running from something rather than running towards a career that I knew clearly what I wanted to do with my extra qualification. I only advocate retraining when individuals have done enough personal research to KNOW FOR SURE that they are going to LOVE their new career idea.
Articles related to this career change myth:
Top ten reasons midlifers stay in careers - even when the wheels are falling off
A few things I’ve learned from interviewing 100+ midlife career changers
Can starting a business alongside two full-time careers be fun - oh yes it can!
Do it once and you’ll never do it again
If you’re shaking up your work situation, whether that's a big shift or lots of little tweaks, it's seriously unlikely that you're going to make one shift and then never have to shift again.
We're midlifers after all. We have parents who may need more help in the future. We have children who may need more or less help in the future. We have partners who may be fired, made redundant, become ill, or we might even have an even better idea for our work situation. But in our forties, fifties, and beyond, if we want to do work, that feels great and fits our life - we have to learn the skills behind refining, analysing our career and then refining and analysing our career, ad infinitum. And the sooner we learn those skills, the easier our managing our careers will become.
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Learn about how Superpowers transform your career - no matter what career you choose
When the first move isn’t the right one, and the second one is
It’s expensive to change career
I’d like to introduce you to the concept of Investing versus Spending in relation to your career change. All of the 100+ successful career changes (Remember “successful” in this instance means “happier”) invested time, focus, energy and money (but not always) into their career change.
Some research that says that when professionals are either fired or made redundant post-50, they never earn the same salary again. So investing your resources in your future career seems like a very wise investment.
Many of those interviewed had to stop spending unnecessarily on things that were getting in the way of their change - of course, these were different for everyone. Yet, crucially these spending changes were viewed as necessary actions to achieve their goals, never sacrifices. This was an interesting distinction, don’t you think? They were driving towards something that required different investments of the resources available.
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Follow your passion
Sometimes you can marry your passion outside work with your work, but it's not the perfect place to start. In fact, following your passion can sometimes mean that you put your blinkers on and that you miss the wider opportunities that might be available to you.
Over the last 10 years, I interviewed hundreds of people who joined businesses or created businesses around their passion or the passion for the products and services that accompany offered. But naturally over time, those passions ebbed away. What really matters is the quality of work that we do and how that work makes us feel. So marrying those two together allows us to design work that really matters.
Articles related to this career change myth:
Be fearless
One of the secrets of successful career change I discovered while I was researching my book was that you only need huge amounts of bravery for the very first step. Examples of the first step include deciding that this time next year, you're going to be somewhere different. Or deciding that you're going to take a long, hard, look at your unnecessary spending to start your freedom fund or asking a friend of a friend that you know has moved careers or changed companies or done something different and feels happier out for coffee to tell you how they did it.
Once the first brave decision was taken and actioned, it seemed to create a momentum that then required just actions, not bravery.
Work for a charity
There are three components to doing work that feels satisfying and fulfilling. Only one of them relates to a Superproblem that really connects with you. But that’s only part of the equation.
If you’re not doing work that uses your strengths and unique Superpowers that make you feel brilliant, then no matter how connected you are to the mission of your company, there is no way that you’re going to be able to do work that fits you and feels great for very long.
You’re too old and it’s too late
Most of us have this little niggle in the back of our lizard brain that whispers “You’re too old and it’s too late” when we think about shaking up our midlife careers.
For better or for worse, our generation has created this incredibly powerful relationship with our work. It contributes to our sense of identity, our self-worth and our self-esteem. So when we do work that matters, it feels great! And when we do work that matters less, we feel less.
Most of us will be working for at least another decade so why wouldn’t we start now and learn how to design work that could work for us for a long time? To design work that feels great. Work that matters.
If not now, then when?
Figure out which of these myths are getting in the way of your career shake-up and, if you haven’t been able to do it alone, get a coach to help you get there faster. There are lots of people out there who are living exactly the lifestyle they want to live AND also doing work that matters to them and others. We midlifers haven’t got time to waste doing anything else.
Next steps - are you…
Ready for action?
Check out my programmes to see if they might suit you AND book to speak to me now.
Not quite ready - but would like to be in the future?
Read my book with lots of stories of real career change packaged with the secrets behind their successful change spelled out.
Something needs to change - An invitation to join the Midlife Unstuck community
