A personal story about career blind spots

Since my career for the last 20+ years has been all about careers, you would think that my career has been a straight rocket ride up. But we all have blind spots, and that’s an appropriate name – since you can’t see them.

Les Brown, motivational speaker, has a great quote:?You can’t see the picture when you’re inside the frame.

So true! When you’re living your life, or in this case working your career, it’s hard to see it objectively. I was several years into my career coaching business, and it had been growing by double-digits each year and I had well exceeded my corporate income while getting more flexibility for myself and focusing on exactly the things that I liked to do. So, by external success markers, it was a great time – and yet, something was missing.

I spent a couple of years (and a lot of angst) tweaking things in my business – launching different services, restructuring how I did my work, changing up my schedule. Still, I was feeling a malaise, and worse, now all my tinkering was stressing me out about what had otherwise been a smooth-running business!

It seems obvious now (though blind spots!) but the change I needed to make wasn’t in my current business. Finally, I kept the business as is and just started experimenting on the side – mostly reading and talking to people, but also some hands-on projects unrelated to my career coaching business. A few years of experimenting on the side, and I had uncovered an additional professional interest (real estate actually — you can read the longer story?here), and I ended up making this an ongoing priority (it has since become its own thriving business).

Sometimes the professional growth you need isn’t a big career move, but something you start on the side. A big career move is quite disruptive so I help my clients make significant forward progress with more subtle moves, like side projects. I call this changing the fringes, rather than pulling out the whole rug.

Caroline Ceniza-Levine helps experienced professionals in tech, media, financial services and other industries make a great living doing work they love, as founder of the Dream Career Club and a speaker, writer, and media personality on career issues.?