Embark on an Adventure to Re-Design Your Career

I can still vividly remember the time when I set out to explore the relationship between human beings and their ‘work’. I was young, in my early twenties, with two covetable degrees (electrical engineering from IIT Madras and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad), and a heart as disillusioned as ever. I had experienced relatively short unsatisfying stints in 3 companies (all good well paying MNCs), and was left with a sense of dejection that extended beyond the common monday morning blues into a deep existential void where I was questioning the purpose of my life itself. 

Why did I need to work, if it was not for the money? Was I condemned to work at jobs I did not like just to do justice to my degrees and the time and money and sacrifices I had made to accumulate them? Was I actually the real owner of my time and my life? Was I allowed to make choices for myself? Who did I need permission from? What exactly was this monster called ‘work’ that was suddenly supposed to play a key role in my existence - and could I decide what role it could and would play?

Fast Forward a few years and I took the exploration of these questions as my own personal quest, little knowing that this very quest would actually grow into my life’s work. I explored these questions as a scientist (getting a PhD in Organizational Behaviour from London Business School en-route), as a philosopher (immersing myself in the study and understanding of the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist Philosophy), and as an artist (painting and sculpting on the canvas of my life itself). I designed and taught a course called ‘Personal Values, Goals and Career Options’ which was one of the most popular courses at IIM Bangalore for ten years and was recognized as being one of the top 15 innovations in higher education in India by the MHRD. In fact I still teach this course at IIM Bangalore. I created an online course called ?rafting Realities - Work, Happiness and Meaning’ which is offered on EdX which has been taken by over 12,000 students worldwide already. You can enrol in this course at this link https://www.edx.org/course/crafting-realities-work-happiness-and-meaning

Today, I am a career coach and I help people redesign their careers (and through that their lives itself) so that they too can experience their work as a truly uplifting and contributive activity that it has the potential to be. It is not necessary for work to be experienced as the chore, the drudgery or the inevitable prison that we are often told it has to be. I am not denying that the latter might be the experience of a majority of people on the planet today. All I am proposing is that there is there is no law or rule, either in nature or in society that it has to be this way. 

There is an alternate possibility indeed and there are several people who have chosen to explore it (although they might be in the minority at this point in time). Based on my explorations and experience I can assert this much to you with confidence that no matter who you are, and no matter what your current ‘job’ or ‘work’ it is never too late to re-design your career. In fact the older you are and the richer the portfolio of your experiences so far, the more colours and shades you have to paint and sculpt your future with. I have had people over 60 in my workshops and they have found the redesign process as fun and exciting as those who are younger. 

I am only too familiar with the many excuses that our mind can (and often will create) to stop us from change (even when the change might be really good for us). In psychology, these are often offshoots of what is known as the status quo bias. I am also very familiar with the typical beliefs that keep us from even mentally playing with the possibility that we too can redesign our career such that it is meaningful, enjoyable and income generating. ‘I really need the money from my current job’, is one such belief. ‘I have too many family commitments now’ is another. There are other beliefs as well. The thing with such beliefs however is that they keep us trapped in what is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thanks to a combination of bounded awareness and confirmation bias, our beliefs about things actually land up influencing the way we experience reality - which in turn then just solidifies those beliefs further. Once you let go of the beliefs, you can actually pave the way for life to show you possibilities to experience various permutations and combinations of variables that your brain had earlier assumed to be mutually exclusive - like fun and usefulness, or money and love, or happiness and productivity. If you’d like to know more about the great leverage we can get by working with beliefs (or mental models) you can look up my free online course “Managing Our Inner Worlds”, which is hosted on the IIMB Youtube channel. Follow this link - https://craftingourlives.com/online-courses/managing-our-inner-worlds/

The journey of redesigning your career can be a fun and collaborative one. While you can do this alone by yourself, or with the help of a career coach (someone like me), you can also do this with a group of people - who are all engaging on a similar quest. While your quest is similar, your experiences, perspectives, networks, contacts and ideas are diverse - and this can be a huge contribution to your experience of redesign. If you would like to join the next batch of brave-hearted adventurers who will be embarking on a quest to re-design their careers then look up my next online group program that starts on Nov 27’th. In order to facilitate optimum dialogue, discussions and feedback the batch size is limited and enrollments will be processed on first cum basis. Enrol here https://craftingourlives.com/redesign-your-career/ or write to [email protected] for more information.