This time last year, I was nine month’s pregnant, and about to give birth to my first child. 2019, then, was a year of massive change for me, including stopping work for most of the year, and moving out of London for more space and to live by the sea.
But life doesn’t usually work that way. So often, we start the year hoping for and expecting big shifts in our lives, energised by the symbolic new beginnings and countless magazine (and blog…) articles around at this time of year, promising ‘New Year, New You’. We make resolutions we fail to keep and intentions that we’ve forgotten about by February. We decide that THIS is the year that the career change will happen, but then the same distractions and habits and fears that got in the way last year stop us in our tracks once again.
If you really want to make sure that this is the year that everything changes for you, you’re going to need a bigger and more fundamental shift in how you are approaching your career change. You need a rocket up the proverbial backside as big as the one I had when I became a mother last year - one that completely shifts your priorities and your beliefs about what’s possible.
One way of doing this would be to work with a coach who can guide you through the process and give you the loving kick up the bum you need whenever you’re stuck or falling back into old habits. However, not everyone has the means to hire a coach, so here are some other suggestions for how you can make sure this year is the year you really make progress with your career change…
Reflect. Take a little time to review last year and what helped or held you back in your career change so that you can apply the learnings to this year. Every New Year, some friends and I complete this fantastic journal called the Year Compass, which guides you through a detailed review of the year just gone and helps you to set intentions for the coming year. By first considering what happened last year, you can avoid repeating mistakes and can make a better strategy for the coming year.
Be really clear on what you want. You might not know yet what career you want to move into, but you can probably lay out how you want to be feeling in your new career, what the elements of it might be (e.g. flexibility, the chance to work outside more, having fun, intelligent colleagues). Too often we focus on what we’re trying to get away from rather than what we really want. Are you spending time and energy ruminating on everything that’s wrong in your current work, rather than directing that energy towards your shift? Writing out a career change wish list will give you a positive reminder of what it is you’re moving towards and help energise you for your career change.
Get help. Set medium/short term goals and find an accountability buddy - someone who you can check in with regularly to tell them how are you are getting on towards those goals. This could be a friend/partner/coach, or perhaps even better, someone else who is embarking on a career change so that you can be accountable to each other. Set a time in your calendars for weekly calls or meet-ups so that are creating artificial deadlines for the things you want to get done, and so that you have someone to give you support or ideas and to cheer you on when you hit a roadblock.
Change your approach. If you’ve doing lots of job applications that go nowhere or spending hours down a Google vortex, it’s time to STOP and take a different strategy. There are loads of great articles about more effective ways to make a career change on the Careershifters website. This one in particular outlines the Careershifters principles for making a successful career change, made through years of working with people in career transition. You could also book in for a free 30 minute consultation with me and we can talk about what you’ve been doing so far and how you could change it up to make your approach to career change more effective.
Carve out time. Career change takes time, and we’re all busy people, but you can make sure you’re continually making progress by setting a bit of time aside every day or every week to work on your career change. Even if all the time you have to allocate is 30 minutes in your lunch break, Monday to Friday, that’s 2.5 hours a week, 10 hours a month, that you wouldn’t have spent on it otherwise. And that’s not even counting time at the weekend! The only way you’ll see progress is to make time for your career change and to start taking action on a regular basis, however small.
Some of this advice may seem obvious, but unless you actually DO it, you could end up at the end of 2020 in pretty much the same place you are now, and finding yourself making the same old resolutions in January next year. Make this year count, people! And if you need any help along the way, do get in touch. With a baby to care for, my time is limited these days, but I always have time for a call and can offer initial guidance and help point you in the way of another coach if need be.
Feel free to get in touch with me for a free 30 minute career consultation: contact@annalevycoaching.com