Practical Advice for Career Change - Moving to the Positive

Clouds Can Loom Large But Hold Your Ground and Run to Something Positive

For today's post I have chosen to look at a topic that is personal to me - Career Change.

I am in the process of embarking on a new career, transitioning to a creative profession from a career in manufacturing and I wanted to share some of how the decision making process worked for me in the hope that it might assist others.

After a lot of introspection, I concluded that I couldn’t satisfy my ambitions or realise my potential if I continued to follow my original career path. However, I didn’t know this at first. The initial desire for change was driven by personal conflict. Relatively minor conflict but enough to initiate that process of reflection. How could I be sure that if I changed career I wasn’t just running, taking the easy way out of an awkward situation.

It seems clear to me that change is very often driven by conflict. The most obvious example of this is in war zones where once normal citizens flood across borders as refugees, desperate to better their lives and protect their children. As horrifically bleak as their plight is, the choice for them is very often no longer a choice – initiate a change or risk death . With career change this calculation is thankfully not so clear cut.

If your suffering at the hands of an insensitive boss, colleague or demanding circumstances then the temptation is to run; to sprint towards something new because anything will do just to get away. The reason to change in these circumstances is completely valid but a complete change in career may not be necessary. Could you transfer to another department? Could you move to a competitor? Is there somebody you could raise your issues with?

All of these options and more should be explored before a massive career change is made. You need to be as sure as you can be that what you are changing to is going to make you happier than you are now. You should ultimately feel that you are running to something not running from something.

Conflict may be the catalyst but something like a change in career should come from inside you like a thirst that has to be quenched. For me I feel a deep seated desire to try something that I had buried away because I believed it was beyond me. Conflict had uncovered something that I had denied was there. The pull to move towards that path was now stronger than the push to run away. The only question now is can I make the change successfully?