Career Change - What you should know

Many of us reach mid-life and feel that we're missing something.?Or we realise our priorities have changed.

We feel like a square peg in a round hole.

But what to do about it?

Whilst some people have a pretty clear picture of where they want to get to in their career, many do not and struggle to articulate what they're looking for what would be a good direction for them.?They see either all sorts of possibilities or they see no possibilities at all.

Often, particularly by the time you reach your mid-life, we're seemingly a little way, or a long way, up the ladder with a reasonable salary and the thought of starting something new and having to start at the bottom again with something else feels like a step too far.?Some people can make that leap, others feel that they have too many financial commitments to be able to do that without losing a whole bunch of things they've worked hard for.?

Ring any bells?

So, I ask the question: Do you know where you're starting from? We're all familiar with the idea that to know which path we should take, we need to know where we're aiming to get but it's difficult to navigate a course to your destiny if you don't know where you are now.?Obviously I'm not really talking about a geographical location or even a physical position but have you taken stock of the things that you've learned in your journey to date??Do you know what your skills are??Do you understand your values? Do you have goals for your career??Your Life? Do you know what engages you? What gives you energy? and conversely, what drains you?

Many people have not really explored these questions, other than in a cursory fashion.

The truth is, that for?many of us, our ideal career is not a million miles away from where we are now - and we already have the skills and knowledge we need to be able to do that more fulfilling role.?Most of us know what we enjoy.?Our friends and colleagues certainly know what we're good at and we can look closely at our skills and experiences and figure out what's worth improving on and what's worth accepting.

The chances are that a little structured thought would go a long way to telling us where we are now - what our skill set really is.

Then we can think on what we've learned about ourselves and figure out what would be a good destination.?It is never too late to make change as the rise of these phenomena demonstrate: the mid-life entrepreneur, the portfolio career and the growth of 'encore' careers.

In a post pandemic world of flexible and hybrid working, there has never been more opportunity than now to plan for a career that fits around your personal goals, values, life patterns and needs.?

It's not what's out there, it's what's in here.

There are lots of opportunities for thinking differently about how, where and why we work and what fits in with our ethos and that's great but we're not starting from scratch.?

That's a good thing in some ways because we've got experience and we've learned things that are useful as we look to the future but it's a bad thing in other ways in that we are not a blank slate on which anything can be written - we have a certain amount of 'baggage', even in our career lives, that we bring with us and we all have our comfort zone and a willingness or unwillingness to step outside of it.?So, I'm not suggesting that we jack in our day jobs and become a climbing lead in the Himalayas, nor that we turn our back on all our experiences.

In reality, most of us are merely a 'pivot' away from what would really suit us and a better understanding of ourselves and what we already know and have in our skill set would go a long way to providing us with a direction we can follow towards fulfillment.

In short, what you should know, if you want to embark on a career change is not what might be out there in terms of career options or jobs but what you already have and already know that you can share with the world and add value in your current, or a new place of work.

You need to know yourself and what you can bring to the table. You already have attitude, aptitude and experience. The chances are that you already have everything you need to make a career change.