I want to help others. I want to go into the public sector.
I want to be doing something creative.
Does your mind go blank when you know that you need a career change and you're
thinking about what that next step is?
Sometimes while you do have a firm grasp of the kind of work that you want to be
doing or the industry that you want to be in,
or the company that you might want to work for,
but the idea is vague and difficult to create action steps for.
When I was working in the corporate world,
and this was one of the first jobs I had after graduation from college,
after my PhD I was in the corporate world,
and a couple of years in I really started
to feel like this was not for me and of course every day I pain myself with the
question of what should I do next?
I need to make a change because this isn't matching with my values.
This isn't what I want to be doing. I don't see myself here anytime much longer,
but it was difficult for me to figure out "what do I do next" without some
framework
on how to make that decision and what steps do I need to make that decision?
How do I figure out what I want to do?
And so it really felt like I was at this crossroads of
"I know I can't continue along this career path".
Generally I know what my background is, up until now,
I know what I'm capable of doing. I know what I have done in my career,
but how do I use all of that and decide what to do next?
If you feel stuck at a level where things feel vague and too general,
there are five simple things that you can do to get more clarity on the next
step of your career.
The First Step is to Allow Yourself to Dream Again,
because this feeling of being at a crossroads
could be an indication that you've lost sight of your vision,
that you've lost sight of your goal.
It could be that you don't find yourself doing something pleasurable,
or that you don't know what you will find pleasurable,
and so maybe you remained at this career path for one of four reasons.
Maybe you had some financial stability reason to be there,
providing for loved ones.
Maybe it was morals that you know that you want to complete what you started,
or maybe you've had the responsibility to provide for someone, for loved ones,
for your family, or maybe you just haven't found a better career path.
Go back to that dream.
Reconnect with your vision and allow yourself to dream again.
If money wasn't an issue, if time wasn't an issue,
what would you really want to be doing?
What is truly important to you?
Allow yourself and give yourself that permission to dream again.
The Second Step is to Channel Your Envy.
Envy is a useful tool.
It points to the idea that someone else is enjoying something in their life that
you perceive is missing in your life.
It reveals areas that are important to you.
Think back to the relationships that you have in your life,
to the people around you, family, friends, extended family, friends of friends.
Where did you meet someone where, when you heard about their career journey,
when you heard about the things that they were involved in,
the contributions they're making,
and at that point you felt a little bit of envy.
You felt a little bit of jealousy. Who were they? What were they doing?
What is it about their life?
What is it about what they're doing that you feel is missing in yours?
So channel that envy. Don't,
don't feel that jealousy or envy is a negative feeling.
Use it instead as a tool,
as your body and your emotion pointing you towards something that you need to
pay more attention to. Does this resonate with you? What have you learned?
Comment below. Where are you at with your career decision?
What have you implemented? How far along are you? Comment below.
The Third Step is to just Tell Others About It. Declare it to the world.
Tell your friends, tell your family,
tell a trusted colleague about the plans to make another step in your career.
Share with others vulnerably about your situation that something needs to
happen, that you wanted to make a major change in your career.
Because when you share that with somebody,
what you're doing is you're making yourself accountable
and that accountability goes a long ways to make sure that you're not
procrastinating
to make sure that your goals are something that's serious to you and you're
committed to it.
Because once you tell someone,
you're declaring that this is what you're committing to,
you're declaring that this is what's important to you.
Otherwise you wouldn't have spent the time to share that with someone.
So tell someone about it and hold yourself accountable.
The Fourth Step is just to Make a Decision that this is going to happen.
Decide for yourself,
set the intent that I'm deciding that I'm going to make this career change.
It has to happen now.
It's going to happen now and I'm deciding that I'm going to make a career change.
Something's got to change and make a decision,
just like you're making decision about where to go for dinner,
and not to undermine the choice of a career is equal to choosing which
restaurant to go to, but the process of decision making,
if you equate the two, it doesn't feel so insurmountable.
So just decide and make a decision that this is time for my career change.
And finally,
the Fifth Point is to Plan Out your first year and Reverse Engineer it to today.
So plan out that first year of a career change.
Once you've made a decision that you're going to change your career,
then the first year is mission critical. This is where the changes are initiated.
This is where your mindset needs to be in the right place.
This is where you need to make a plan to change or to move out of that company,
to move out of that industry.
Whatever that change is that you made a decision that is what's changing.
So plan the first year and write out that big goal,
the big goal at the end of that first year, what you want to happen,
what does that change look like?
What does it feel like? Where are, who are you working with,
all the specifics of that and then work backwards.
What do I need to do in that first year to make it happen?
What do I need to do in the first month to make it happen?
What do I need to do this first week to make it happen?
And then what do I need to do today to make it happen?
So once you first reverse engineered that, and this process is critical as well,
because if you don't reverse engineer and you look at the whole year as a whole,
then it sounds very,
very difficult to get to that end goal because one whole year,
as opposed to "what do I need to do today" is a very different reframe.
So it's very difficult for you to think about "what do I need to do this year to
make that change happen?" But it's easier to say, "what do I need to do today?"
And every small step will lead to huge actions towards the end of the year,
and by the end of the year, 365 action steps later,
you will have a career change. If you like the content,
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