A Step-By-Step Plan To Change Your Career To Something You Love

Part of Kathy Caprino's series "Breakthrough To Your Happiest and Best Career"

In serving as a career and leadership coach and trainer for thousands of professionals over the past 16 years, I've heard over and over some version of these key questions below:

“Kathy, I know I need a career change, but what’s the best way to go about it??How do I figure out exactly what field or role I should pursue next? How specifically do I go about making a career shift without risking everything and how do I know this time it will be right? Where do I begin?

To address those questions, I’d like to share a 5-step career change process that I've found instrumental in helping people make successful career changes, that I take my clients through and that I've followed myself to achieve two career reinventions (from corporate VP to marriage and family therapist, then career and leadership coach and writer). This process helps people take the most effective steps to build a happier, more rewarding career that they are proud of and deeply enjoy. And it also helps them bypass costly mistakes that can set us back significantly, in terms of wasting time, money, and energy pursuing one's ultimate goals.??

From my experience, these five steps below (all of which involve some inner work and internal shifting first) are essential to take,?and in the order below,?if you want success, joy and impact in your work.?These steps help us avoid the pain and regret – and lasting negative repercussions – of making a wrong move and ending up as unhappy as we were before deciding that a change was necessary.

Here’s what to do to begin the process of changing or pivoting your career effectively:

1. Step Back for an empowered perspective of who you are and what you have to offer

First, it's essential to understand yourself much more deeply today than you have in the past – with a keener awareness of your true talents, abilities and accomplishments and why they matter. You need to understand what you’ll give up everything for, what you value deeply, and your priorities, standards of integrity, non-negotiables and your preferred action style as well.??

And you need to tease out what makes you stand apart from others. Millions of professionals don’t have a clue who they really are and how their talents and abilities are special (everyone has something inside them that makes them special and stand out).??

Sadly, people spend years trying to figure out what direction to take, without understanding themselves or what they really want.??If you don’t know yourself intimately, you can’t build a successful and enjoyable career.

For a powerful exercise to move you forward to understand "the 20 facts of you," check out my TEDx talk "Time to Brave Up" below and take my free Career Path Self-Assessment .

Secondly, you need to step back and look at your life and career with a different lens than you’re used to.?To connect the dots and make use of everything you are and have learned in your prior years working, you have to get off the hamster wheel and view your life from a higher, more empowered perspective.??Often we need outside help with this – from mentors, advocates and others who can see us much more clearly than we can see ourselves.

As Einstein observed,

“You cannot solve a problem on the level of consciousness that created it.”??

I like to say that we often need help from someone who sees the “future vision of us before it’s hatched.”??You need a mentor, friend, coaching buddy, or other type of supporter who can help you understand more clearly what you’re what capable of, and how everything you've learned to date can be leveraged in new, more rewarding ways. Each one of us has tremendous talents, gifts, and passions that can be tapped and utilized in service of others and the world. If you doubt that fact, then a bit more internal work is necessary for you to feel more "worthy" of achieving what you really want to.

2. Let Go – of the thinking, patterns and behaviors that keep you stuck

Typically, when we've been stuck for a long while in our job or a career that's unfulfilling (or worse), there’s something blocking us from making a move, and from creating more success and reward in our professional lives, or we would already have it.

The first place to look for clues about what might be holding you back is to examine where there are repeating negative patterns in your life – for instance, terrible bosses, toxic environments, being passed over continually, back-stabbing colleagues, mistreatment in your work culture, managers that don't support you, draining responsibilities that you don't enjoy, etc.??Look at the patterns that repeat over and over in your life, attempt to identify how you may be potentially participating in sustaining (or attracting) these negative situations, and do something concrete to shift that dynamic.?Be accountable now - take action to generate change.?

These challenges might be one of the 7 damaging power gaps that negatively impact a staggering 98% of professional women and 90% of men today. If you have any of these gaps, they are most likely preventing you from reaching your highest and happiest potential.

You may also be harboring limiting beliefs and mindsets (which often emerge from our childhood and families of origin) about money, success, power, ego, your worth, etc., that keep you locked in a cycle of repeated actions that hold you back from the next level of success.??

For many people, it’s a problem with their boundaries – an inability to advocate for themselves and honor and stand up for their values and priorities.?For others, their communication style hurts them , and pushes away any kind of positive support or help.??For others still, it’s a lack of confidence or a belief that they’re “less than” and not worthy of advancing or experiencing great joy and satisfaction in their work.??

Here's more -- from my podcast Finding Brave – about how so many people have lost sight of the thrilling dream they once had for their lives and careers, and what to do about it:

Until you let go of what you’re doing, thinking and communicating that keeps you stuck and confused, you can’t build a happier, more rewarding career.?Your limitations will follow you in the new directions you pursue until you proactively address them.

3. Say Yes! to your most compelling visions of the future

Thirdly, you need a vision for the next chapter, but not just any vision or fantasy – you need a “just-right" vision. So often, we dream in a very expansive way about where we think we’d love to go and be, but that vision is sometimes just that – a fantasy – one that you haven't vetted or researched to make sure it's what you really want.

And often, it's so far away from where we are today, that we sabotage any real efforts to get there (because we don’t really think it’s possible or that we're truly worthy of it). As Sir Winston Churchill said,

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be handled one link at a time.”

It’s critical to identify concretely what amazing career success and fulfillment might look and feel like for you specifically, but then break that down into a series of concrete action steps on a path that will get you to that vision.

Taking those brave steps now will set you up to understand more clearly what you want and what is possible, in ways that you can't understand until you start down that "finding brave" path.

As an example, people will often say to me, “Kathy, I see you wrote two books, and I’d really LOVE to write one too. What’s your advice on that?” I’ll then ask, “Cool! So what are you writing about now?” and they’ll often respond, “Uh, well, I'm not writing anything yet.”??

You can’t write a book if you’re not writing anything. If you dream of writing a book, then start on the pathway to being a writer – take a writing workshop, work with a writing coach, start a blog, share an article on LinkedIn, write a chapter online and start your first chapter, or write a paper, a guest post...something. Get moving toward your most compelling vision of tomorrow, so that it doesn’t remain lost in the sphere of the "not yet achieved."

4. Explore it and try it on fully - behaviorally, emotionally and more

Perhaps the most important step in this sequence is to start exploring the top three directions you’re most excited about, by "trying them on" as thoroughly as you can.??For example, if you’re working as a Human Resource Director at a corporation right now, but think you might want to start your own consulting business, then try it on, including:

• Interview people doing what you want to do (and people who failed at it) - learn what they've learned about how to succeed at it
• Research it online -- go to?SCORE ?or an entrepreneurial group in your community for some help developing your business plan,
• Meet with your financial advisor to review your financial plans, and make sure you have a way to fund your transition
• Read everything you can get your hands on about this new business direction
• Search online for folks who'd be your competitors in this new direction, and understand clearly what they're doing and how, and any gaps you see in their services or approach you'd like to fill
• Go to networking meetings with people in the field
• Build your business and marketing plan

Don’t leave one stone unturned.??Try on this new potential professional identity and new direction in any way you can before you commit to it. ?

I’ve lived the pain of not taking this step as thoroughly as I should have.?Back in 2002, after a brutal corporate layoff, I decided quickly to jump into earning a Master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and became a therapist.?While I loved the therapeutic training and it was truly life-changing, and I'm so grateful for it, I discovered later (after earning the degree and serving as a therapist) that the living experience?of the role was very difficult for me. And in the end, not what I ultimately wanted or a true fit with my goals.??

Before I got my degree, I had interviewed therapists, and done a bit of research about the field, but I’d never really explored what it’s like to work from 9 am to 6 pm straight as a therapist or the emotional impact it would have on me -– I didn't understand the "living reality" of it. And helping people overcome or address depression, rape, incest, pedophilia, drug addiction, alcoholism, suicidality and more, was a path that was very challenging for me, and it didn't get easier.??

But then I discovered coaching and studied and trained as a coach, took on some coaching clients, and found that coaching, writing and speaking were endeavors that were most closely aligned with what I loved doing and how I wished to leverage my abilities and talents. I remain extremely grateful, however, that I did train to become a therapist and worked for a time in therapy because everything I learned then is of great use in my current line of work.

The ultimate lesson here is to try on the new direction as deeply and thoroughly as you can, and incorporate what you learn so you can ensure that the new direction is a true match to what you long to do and be.

5. Create it S.M.A.R.T.

Finally, you can’t go from Point A to Point Z of career change in a month.??This process – of identifying who you really are and determining the directions that will align best with your core values, visions and needs – takes time, energy, patience, trust and commitment.??You’ve got to be ready to turn yourself inside and out and stretch and expand yourself if you want great success in your work.??It’s not going to fall in your lap – you have to reach out and grab it, and do the brave inner and outer work of change.

You also need a short- and longer-term plan – 3-month, 6-month and 12-month plan, etc., with specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals. And you'll need support – someone (or a group of helpers) in your corner to help you stay accountable and on track, and not lose hope or momentum.??

As is true of attaining any large vision or goal, it's a process and we need support to make it happen. Very little in life is accomplished when we're attempting to achieve it alone and in a vacuum. Get help, build a plan with milestones that you can measure, and get on the path to expanding yourself so that you can become a true match with the great career you long for.

Is a successful career change possible for you?

I believe it is, but you need to be ready to do the work.?If we stay stuck in the phase of fantasizing about doing more meaningful and rewarding work but we don’t commit ourselves to the actual process and journey of change, we'll never get out of the starting gate.

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Kathy Caprino ?is a global career and leadership coach, speaker, executive trainer and author of?The Most Powerful You . To build a happier, better career and close your power gaps, join Kathy in her upcoming?LIVE 8-week Most Powerful You course beginning in February.?Sign up here ?to join Kathy's weekly newsletter for more information, and for additional career help and resources, visit Kathy's ?Career & Leadership Breakthrough ?coaching programs,?Finding Brave podcast, and career assessments and free trainings .