Career Change - Is it Time for Something New?
Dissatisfaction with your career can creep up on you very slowly. One or two things about the job suddenly start to annoy you, but you can put that down to familiarity. After all, no job is interesting all the time, is it? However, over time you may find that aspects of the job which you once found enjoyable have now become mundane. You no longer look forward to Monday morning and you begin to feel that you are just on a treadmill, going nowhere fast.
Either way, you are left feeling trapped and wondering what went wrong.
The first thing to consider
is that it is very difficult to know what you want to do until you've
actually done it! Not many people are born knowing what they want to do
when they grow up and so you are not alone. I realize this may not be much
consolation, but if you can perceive it as usual and possibly even inevitable,
rather than an indication that you have failed or made a mistake, it will
be much easier to think clearly about taking the next step.
As children we are taught not to use our imaginations and so we tend to go for jobs which will bring security, especially in an employment market is becoming increasingly insecure, or we are encouraged to find a job which pays well. We may drift into something because it involves activities or subjects we were good at when at school or university, but for which we have no real interest. Or we may follow a family tradition and enter the same profession as one of our parents or our siblings, which, of course, is absolutely fine - if it's what we really want to do.
But in the end, although money and security are important, they are not as important as job satisfaction. If your ideal job or lifestyle seems impossible, start by taking one small step and you may be surprised to see where it leads.
The first step you can take towards a new career is to decide exactly what job satisfaction means to you. Make a list of everything that you would like to have in your ideal job. Consider things you have really enjoyed doing in the past and wish you could do again. Also things you would like to learn.
If you allow yourself to really imagine an ideal day at work, without censoring anything which seems impossible, you will begin to get a picture of how you would like to spend your time. Don't be too concerned if you find your desired activities don't combine neatly into a job description.
The next step is to take one
of the things you want to learn and sign up for a course, buy a book or
find a teacher. Taking the first step may seem insignificant, but you
can't predict where it might lead and even if this step doesn't lead anywhere,
doing something you want to do will help you feel more positive and this
will make taking further steps a lot easier.
© Waller Jamison 2006
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