Are you feeling trapped, stuck, paralysed and with absolutely no idea what to do next in your career? Are you asking yourself - How do I change career?
Are you looking for that bolt from the blue when all of a sudden, you wake up one morning and know exactly what you want to do and how to do it?
Does the idea of actually finding something that you love to do, pays you what you want it to and makes you feel happy and fulfilled feel a bit like taking on a search for the Loch Ness Monster - you hope its out there, but deep down you’re telling yourself it doesn’t exist and even if it did, you wouldn’t be the one to find it.
Are you saying to yourself, If only I had a good idea about what I want to do, I could start searching for a new job. If only I had an idea about a business I could run, I could start networking or building other skills that would be useful.
The questions you ask yourself and the answers you provide for yourself are what is keeping you suck, paralysed and trapped.
You DO have ideas about what you’d like to do, it’s just that you’ve buried them, or not even acknowledged them as ideas because of the questions you’re asking and the answers you’re giving yourself. “People don’t make money doing that”, “I can’t retrain, I’m too old”, “My lifestyle and responsibilities mean I can’t change what I do”, “I can’t run a business”, “What would people think of me?” “That’s a rubbish idea”, “I should be grateful for what I have”, “No one will employ someone without experience”.
Do any of those sound familiar?
Trying to come up with ideas about what you want to do next, can feel a bit like an all or nothing situation - you might be telling yourself you have to have an all singing, all dancing idea of exactly what you want to do along with a perfectly formed plan of how to achieve it, or you don’t have anything. That keeps you stuck. Trust me, you don’t need a fully formed idea along with a plan of how to get there to make a start. You don’t have to know where you’re going on a journey, before you make a start.
There are lots of different types of ideas
The all singing, all dancing idea and plan. You know exactly what you want to do, you’re excited about it. You can transfer your existing skills, the role will pay what you want and you’ve seen lots of roles advertised so you know there’s a market for what you want to do and you are ready to update your CV and LinkedIn profile and apply for roles.
You know what you want to do and are excited about it. However, this one might require a little more time and perhaps you’ll have to retrain, gain an additional qualification or gain some new skills and work towards it over a period of time building something on the side of your day job perhaps. It might require investment in both time and money and maybe you’ll need to compromise on another aspect of your lifestyle to achieve it. That all feels a bit too scary and big so it gets squashed.
You think you have an idea, it might feel a bit wooly but you keep coming back to it. There’s something floating around in your head. You might be a bit frightened by it, for all of the reasons I talk about above and maybe you’re stopping yourself investigating further. It might be a series of ideas, maybe unrelated, maybe connected and they might just go around in your head, leaving you feeling confused and perhaps a bit stupid for not being able to pin it down into something tangible.
There maybe an idea that you’ve had bubbling around and squashing , that you’ve been put off by what other people have said about it or rumours you’ve heard about it. “You won’t make money in that industry”, “Everyone who is an x is miserable”. You don’t know for sure that what these people are saying is true, and you’ve got a desire to want to find out for yourself, but again, for all the reasons above, you just squash the idea back into a box until it squirms its way out again.
If you have any of these ideas, you’ve got something to work with and you can make a start. That’s the key, make a start. But HOW?! Go and investigate and start on your journey.
Take the intangible floaty, ideas for instance. Just like Dumbledore in Harry Potter with his pensieve (taking memories and thoughts from his mind and bringing them to life) - pull one strand out and take a look at it in the cold light of day. Quite like the idea of working in a charity? Who do you know who works in one? Which charity resonates? Could you approach one and ask to volunteer for a day to see first hand what it feels like, get an idea about what you might like about it, or actually what you might not like about it. You might decide, actually, it’s not for you. In which case you can cross it off your list and take the next strand and go and investigate.
Be brave, take some action today. Just one, small step and you’ll immediately feel less stuck.