December 01, 2008
Helping Career Changers Around The World
December 2008
Welcome to the December edition of The 5 Minute Career Coach!
The 5 Minute Career Coach is my way of keeping in touch with aspiring career changers all over the world. I know there are many of you out there who are trying to find the courage and/or the inspiration to take a big step forward in your working lives so I hope you will find this newsletter a useful source of ideas and encouragement to help you get on with your career change plans.
December is a busy time for many of us with preparations for the festive season. It may be one of those months when thinking about a career change just gets pushed onto a back burner as you have so much else on your plate.
That is the reality of life sometimes, but I encourage you to make sure that your plans for a new career do not get pushed so far back that they are forgotten. It is so easy to do, when other people and other activities are making demands on your time. But stop and take the bigger picture view for a moment.
The New Year is not far away. How do you see that year unfolding for you? With you doing more of the same old, same old? Or will it be the year when you step up to the challenge and commit to making a change?
If you do nothing else this month, just work on the positive mindset that will take you forwards in the New Year ready to take action on a new career and a new beginning.
Please don’t keep me a secret! Feel free to share this newsletter and my website with your friends. I wouldn’t mind betting that there will be a few of them who are unhappy with their own careers. Remember that they can get their free copy of 11¾ Ways To Kick Start Your Career Change when they visit the How To Change Careers website.
With very best wishes for a happy festive season. See you in the New Year!
Cherry
Cherry Douglas, Your Career Change Guide
What’s in this issue
- Quote of the day
- Making the Decision to Change Career
- The Career Change Question
- Recommended Resources
- What help do you need?
- Useful Links
Quote of the Day
I love some of the quotes and aphorisms that you find in careers and self help books. So often they seem to encapsulate something I have struggled with in my own life. I hope they can inspire you too.
What will you do next in your career to ensure you are not storing up regrets?
Making the Decision to Change Career
Are you sitting on the fence, thinking about how much you want to change career but somehow not managing to do anything about it? Is it something that you keep promising yourself you will get started on, but you are a bit busy right now, so it will just have to wait till tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow? Have you made a start before, only to find the process grinding to a halt?
One of the main challenges many people face with making the decision (and the commitment) to change career is that their approach is one sided and so is also unbalanced.
Ideally you will approach any decision in a way that allows you use all the potential of your brain – rational and creative. Let me suggest that you try two angles when you are thinking about whether to change career. You will probably find one comes more naturally than the other.
Use your head
- Be logical and objective
- Make a list of pros and cons
- Weigh up the advantages and disadvantages
- Work out what you will gain and what you will lose
- List who will support you and who may discourage you
- Do the plusses outweigh the minuses?
Use your heart
- Let your instincts have the upper hand for a while
- Explore what just ‘feels right’ for you
- Allow yourself to play with career ideas that may seem a bit unlikely at first
- Identify someone who will be a source of inspiration, a mentor or role model and learn from what they do
- Visualise your ideal future – what would it look like?
- Which ideas make you feel excited and enthusiastic?
You probably know from browsing my website, that I believe in the value of treating career change like a project. So go on, get yourself a project file or folder to store your ideas in. (You can read more about this on the How To Change Careers website).
Use this folder to keep the notes you make based on the two approaches listed above. Use your head and your heart. Let them both guide you as you think about career change options.
Are you ready to commit? Will 2009 be the year you make it happen at last?
You will find more tips on decision making at the How To Change Careers website. Why not take a look now?
The Career Change Question
Career change is not easy. It often requires a lot of hard and deep thinking about how you have been living your life up to now and how you would like it to be in the future.
Asking yourself challenging questions can help you with this process.
These are questions where you are not expected to give a quick and glib response, but instead you should let them wander round your mind for a few days, or even weeks and just see what answers unfold for you. They are designed to get you thinking in new ways and hopefully gain insights that may open your mind to new possibilities.
Try this one for size.
Make a note in your Career Change Project File of the thoughts that come up for you as a result of thinking about this question. Then decide what you are going to do about it – and take action.
Recommended Resources
In each edition of The 5 Minute Career Coach, I make a suggestion about a resource I have found helpful and which I would recommend to anyone who may be considering a career change. It may be a book, a website, an e-course – anything that might just help you along the way.
This month it is a book.
Do One Thing Different
Ten Simple Ways to Change Your Life
Bill O’Hanlon
This is not a careers book – it is much broader than that. It is based on a therapeutic technique called Solution Focused Therapy. But don’t let the word therapy put you off! The underlying principles it uses are very simple and they can be applied to all areas of your life including your career.
Bill O’Hanlon encourages you to see the repetitive patterns of behaviour that you have got stuck in (like slogging away at a boring job every day!?) and encourages you to spot the occasions when things are just a little bit better for you. What can you learn from these moments?
You are then asked to make a conscious effort to change what you focus your attention on so that you move away from dwelling on the negatives you see in your current situation to the possibilities of different futures. As the theory suggests you start to look at life – and your career – in a solution focused way, and to make changes in small incremental steps.
This is how many career changes happen. They are not usually dramatic leaps of faith taken on the spur of the moment, but are carefully planned and worked towards step by step.
This book will help you find the courage and the methods to start taking those steps.
What Help Do You Need?
What is your biggest question or concern about changing career?
I am regularly adding to the How To Change Careers website and I would like to be sure it continues to meet your needs and you find it helpful.
I want to be sure that both this newsletter and the website are focused on YOU.
The best way I can do this is by asking for your comments and feedback:
- What are the biggest challenges you face in changing your career?
- What one thing would help you most with your career change?
- What other information and support would you like to see on the How To Change Careers website or as an ebook, ecourse or teleclass?
Do let me know what you think and share with me how you think this newsletter might be improved.
You can post your feedback here.