I love the beginning of the year. After the madness, mayhem and over-indulgence of Christmas, January represents a chance to wipe the slate clean, reflect and plan for what’s ahead. Many of us will set resolutions in important areas of our life such as health, family and career. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have brushed up my CV in January.
But if your goal is to make some serious changes in your career such as breaking out of the corporate world, then you will know that it is going to require a lot more work than simply updating your CV. If you are serious about making your career change happen this year then here are my top-four tips. You should also download my FREE toolkit Six Simple Steps to Get Started on your Career Change so that you really get moving.
Commit
Step number one is that you need to commit to changing career. A lot of us think about changing career for years but until we commit to making it happen it remains a vague idea, a someday task. One way of making this commitment real is by telling others of your intention because this gives you some accountability. You can do this by telling trusted friends and family who you know will support you. The process of putting pen to paper also helps us to feel committed. Take the time to write down what it is that you want. Buy yourself a career change journal and write out your vision for a new career and then commit to making it happen by a certain date. You’ll do further work to refine this, I’m sure, but writing down our dreams makes them much more likely to happen, than keeping them in our heads. And you don’t have to write it down perfectly to begin with, just make a start.
Prioritise
If you are really going to make 2020 your career change year then you are going to have to invest time or money, or both, into making it happen. Successful career changers invest time getting to know themselves and what they want from their future career. They speak to people in careers they are interested in and they may even study or take on voluntary work to get the necessary skills and experience. I find that for most mums the number one thing that they lack is time, closely followed by money. So, you are therefore going to have to treat this venture with the upmost priority throughout the year, not just in January, and you are going to have to schedule time accordingly. Get your partner on side, get your family on side. Work out what you can delegate or give-up in order to make room for this in your life. You cannot expect your career change to just slot in around the edges. The reality of our busy lives is that there are no edges!
For me, my career change started to take shape after investing some money in a coach and using my TV time and commuting time to spend on self-discovery exercises. Once I got used to that I gradually started upping the ante. You can do this too. You just need to ask yourself what is most important in your life and what can you give up.
Have a plan
You’ve committed to changing career this year; you’ve written down your intention and you’re prepared to spend some time on it. Now you need to have an idea of how you are going to spend that time. When I work with my clients on their career change, I work through a process that starts with themselves, who they are, their values, their skills, their interests and what they want from their life and career. I then help them to synthesise this information and test their career hunches by going out into the world and gathering information. Whether that be by interviewing others, learning a new skill, job-shadowing, volunteering, going to events and countless other ways that we can test out our career change ideas before committing.
I suggest that you plan out what you are going to do and when following a similar process. If you’d like to download a diagram of the stages I work through with my clients’ then click here (no opt-in required). And if you want some help brainstorming the things you can do at each stage then contact me for a Working Mum SOS chat. In half an hour I can give you some solid suggestions to get you moving.
Take action
Plan’s are great but action is even better. I used to spend a lot of time planning out how I would make my career change happen … “well in February I’ll research this industry and then in March I’ll do my CV and then blah, blah, blah” but unless I took action in February then I’d never get to March and who knows Februarys actions could change my direction completely. Do you get my drift? Sounds obvious but you can’t plan and think your way to a new career. You need to take action and the sooner the better.
Before I sign off, I want to let you know that this seems like a lot of work and it is, but it is so worth it. Life really is too short to be unhappy at work and I know how much this unhappiness affects the rest of your life. You can keep going as you are, or you can start taking steps to make sure that the rest of your working life is better. My dream is that you don’t even have to think about this next New Years.
For further help contact me for a working mum SOS – a free half an hour call where we strategise solutions to your biggest working mum issues and make sure to download that free worksheet.