If you have been quietly wishing for a career change, you may have had thoughts like this:
“There must be something wrong with me for feeling restless in a good job like this one. Why can’t I be content with just staying put?”
Unless you come from a highly entrepreneurial or adventurous family, you may have an underlying belief that there is something admirable in not shaking things up. For those of us that have followed more traditional career paths, the moment we start to consider breaking out of the mould and doing something different, especially mid-career, we start to feel embarrassed, perhaps even guilty, for wanting to follow a career that is more exciting and meaningful to us.
I often hear: “It feels selfish. Isn’t it just self-indulgent?”
When you decide to make a career change to do work you love, it means you are putting your dreams and wishes for self-realisation, instead of someone else’s, on your schedule and that may not be a situation you are accustomed to.
Unknowingly, I used to feel this way too. I used to say I didn’t have time to build a full-time coaching practice because I was too tired when I finished my day job, until my first coach challenged me in this way: “When will you stop giving all your energy to someone else’s business instead of your own?”
That hit home. I was mid-career too and I was giving everything I had to my employer instead of finding a way to work less hours. It was the realisation that I had as much a right as anyone else to follow my dream career that allowed me to begin to build my business guilt-free.
When we feel guilt for wanting to take real action steps towards a dream career, what we often really think is: “Who am I to want to follow my dreams? Who am I to do work I really love?”
These negative thoughts we have about ourselves just want to keep us in the safety of our comfort zone but they can stop us from living happier lives. They may have originated from our personal history or if you are a woman, the collective beliefs about what was possible for women until very recently. They are made-up, outdated and not letting you see the truth about the real possibilities available to you.
As Marianne Williamson has famously written: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? ... Your playing small does not serve the world.”
When you do work that is fulfilling and uses your unique talents, you are contributing to your family and your community in your own unique way, because there is only one you. If you do not do everything possible to create a career you LOVE, the rest of us are missing out.
Yes, working towards creating your ideal career may make some people around you feel uncomfortable at first, but once you start radiating the happiness that comes from doing work that is fulfilling, those around you may then also find the courage to do the same for themselves. That has been my experience.
And the job you will eventually leave behind will be open to be done by someone that actually really LOVES it :-)
When you feel restless, constrained, stuck, there is a part of you that knows better. There is a part of you that doesn’t want to be held back anymore, that wants to let your creativity, your brilliance and your true self be expressed in this lifetime.
At this point, the most helpful question to ask yourself is not if you can make your dream career happen, but how can you make it happen so you can still have time for other things that are also important to you, like supporting your loved ones.
This is where I can help. I can walk you through the transition, help you manage the feelings of guilt and plan your days so that you may create the career you truly deserve. Book a call with me here and you will see that creating your dream career is not selfish at all, but an act of contributing your best to those around you, not from a place of tedium and resentfulness but from a place of purpose and fulfilment.
Sources:
Marianne Williamson quotes (2019, 23 October) Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17297.Marianne_Williamson
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