Want to change your job?
4 January 2011
This time of year is classic ‘I need a new job’ time. With people returning from their holidays to face the grey disillusionment of a job and office that hasn’t changed – and seems unlikely to – it’s tempting to fantasise about trying something new.
And changing careers is great! It can be stimulating, exciting, rewarding – especially if you were doing a job that wasn’t really ‘you’ in the first place. Changing careers can also be, however, stressful, financially risky and – maybe worst of all – simply swapping one drudgery for another… A job, after all, no matter how attractive and enjoyable, will never be the same as whatever you’d be doing if you won the lottery and never had to work again!
A recent BBC article ‘Is working with your hands better than just with your head?’ summarises nicely how our fantasies of working with our hands or the country life often don’t live up to reality. Loneliness, accidents and lack of financial security are all factors overlooked in the daydreams. Also missing is the reality of what your day-to-day existence will be – is leaving a job in sales to become a massage therapist, only to then spend all day trying to drum up business really what you dreamed of?
It’s crucial that if you are contemplating changing careers that you think it all through – which is where life coaching is perfect, taking you step-by-step through your options and helping you work towards achieving whatever goal you finally decide on. There are also some great books around to help you understand the reality of changing careers – two I’d recommend are ‘Screw work, let’s play: How to do what you love and get paid for it’ (which offers a wonderfully practical view of portfolio working – having several jobs or ways of earning money, combining passion with paying the bills) and ‘And what do you do? 10 steps to creating a portfolio career’.
The most important thing, though, I believe, is to find meaning in whatever you do. Again, life coaching is a fantastic way of examining the aspects of your job you’re unhappy with, and seeing what you can do about it – maybe changing your career is the perfect option for you; but maybe a few small tweaks in your daily routine or in what you do in your free time will be enough to leave you feeling happier and more inspired – and without all the stress and risk of changing careers!
If you’d like a free, no-obligation 15-minute chat to see how coaching can help you, then email me now at carole@caroleraycoaching.com
