If you’ve had your fingers burnt in your career before then it’s natural to second guess your career change.
Sometimes my clients will ask me how they can be 100 percent sure that they’re doing the right thing this time around. My answer to them is that there is never 100 percent certainty about anything so why would you expect certainty in your career?
Oftentimes what is needed is just enough certainty to keep going
How do you become more certain?
Talk to others in the field
Talk to as many people as you can who are doing that thing that you’d like to do, or who know enough about it that they can give you informed insights. Ask them what a typical day or week is like. Ask them about the good bits and the bad bits. And ask them if there is anyone else you can talk to.
Get as much real-world experience as you can
When you’re talking to others perhaps you can ask them if you can shadow them in their work. If the nature of that work is highly confidential or difficult for you to shadow, then spending time in that environment doing something else could be enough to see the highs and lows. For example, answering calls as a volunteer for a woman’s refuge centre, would provide some insight into the work, where it might be difficult to shadow somebody working in the centre.
While we’re on the topic of volunteering, this can be a great way to experience a new career and get some experience on your resume at the same time.
Another way to get real world-experience is to see what opportunities there are to work casually in a new field or take on a short-term contract. The uncertainty of casual or contract work is not for everyone, but it can be a fantastic way to get a shoe in if you are able to be more flexible. Perhaps you can reduce your hours in your current job, in the short term, while you try out a new area? I know of some clients who spend their long-service leave doing just this.
Create a well-formed vision
Create as clear a vision as possible of what your life will be like in that career. How are you likely to spend your days and who with? How many days would you work ideally? What would the hours be like and how will your career impact your life outside of work? Don’t get too stuck on the here and now. What will life look like in 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? If you don’t have enough information to develop this vision then perhaps you’ve identified some gaps in your research.
Finally, how does that vision make you feel? It doesn’t need to be a fluffy, happy feeling, nervousness and fear are great emotions that tell us if something is important. But if your overwhelming feeling is apathy then this may be a sign that this vision isn’t ticking enough boxes for you.
Download my 12 week career change planner for other ideas to help you research and get clarity on your career options.
Your brain wants you to stay stuck
Remember your brain doesn’t want you to be happy. It wants you to stay safe – 40,000 years ago that meant running away from a sabre toothed cat, nowadays it means staying in your soul destroying job because you know it’s going to pay the mortgage and put a roof over your head.
So if your brain keeps telling you that this isn’t a good idea, you might need to say thank you brain but I’m just going to try this out and see what happens. Taking some of the steps that I’ve described around talking to others and getting some real-world experience can help here to overcome that fear but you will never overcome it completely and that’s fine. As I said before, fear and nervousness are significant emotions, they tell us that something is important and worth striving for. Apathy is a far more dangerous emotion.
What’s the worst that can happen?
Sometimes you need to ask yourself and that overactive brain of yours, what is the worst thing that can happen? Yes, there is a chance you find will find yourself unhappy again but if that is the case you will have ruled something out and be one step closer to finding a more fulfilling job. It’s not ideal but you’ve been unhappy before, you can handle it and at least you won’t be chased by a sabre-toothed cat!
If your fear is around the financial consequences of the career change then perhaps you need to take steps to have a financial buffer or cut costs or create a side hustle. Whatever your fear is saying you need to ask yourself if it is useful. Can you do something with it? If not, can you choose to accept and move on.
When I first started my career change process, I kept juggling my day job whilst studying and getting coaching experience. When an opportunity came up to switch to another company doing professional services marketing, I was nervous. One part of me thought this could be a pay rise and an opportunity to keep growing in my current career, whilst working on my career change. Another part of me thought it was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Ultimately it was the latter and I found myself even more miserable than I had been before.
Had I made a big mistake?
No, this situation forced mine and my husband’s hand. We accelerated our move away from Sydney and I quit my corporate career. It was earlier than we had initially planned for and a bit bumpy at the start but ultimately we have no regrets and wish we had done it sooner.
The worst that could happen transpired, we dealt with it and we turned it into a favourable situation. You can never know for sure that you’re doing the right thing, but you can get more certainty and know, for sure, that whatever happens you have your own back.