Sital's Blog

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Career Shifters Career Advice Clinics at the One Life Live event. Taking place at London’s Olympia venue, the event is aimed at anyone looking to make a major career or lifestyle change.

Myself and a group of career coaches have been conducting 15 minute one-to-one career coaching sessions with mixture of people who wanted to make a career change, but felt ’stuck in a rut’ or “at a cross roads” with their careers.  Some people didn’t know what it was they wanted to do next. Others did know – but didn’t know how to make the change and reinvent their career.

One of the individuals I met was a lawyer (let’s call her Helen for now) who had travelled down to London for the day from Yorkshire (for readers outside the UK – that’s in the north of England). She came to London on a day trip just to visit the  event – to get some advice and ideas because she felt ‘stuck’. She didn’t enjoy her life in the legal profession and wanted to make a change, but didn’t know what it was she wanted to do next or how to reinvent her career – especially during a recession when there were likely to be fewer opportunities.

So she travelled more than 6 hours totally by train on a Saturday, on her own and probably paid in the region of £70 just for the train journey. Plus the entry into the event, food, refreshments etc.

I admire people like Helen. I admire them because of their willingness to do the things most people won’t. She stepped outside her comfort zone (travelling to a big careers event in London, on your own is not always easy – especially when you’re not at your confident best due to your existing career).

At the end of our discussion, I gave her some advice on some next steps and then told to be very proud of herself and to give herself a pat on the back. Why? Because she’s in the top 5% as far as I am concerned. 95% of people won’t do what she did. They won’t step outside their comfort zone; they won’t invest time and money on themselves. They will just coast along until they wake up one day thinking “what if I had tried that?” or “….why did I not at least look at what else I could have done..?”

People like Helen are the 5% of people that usually don’t have regrets when they grow older because they start taking more control over their careers and their destiny by doing something.

She may not know what she wants to do next with her career, and indeed, she may not even leave the legal profession ultimately, but she was willing to explore and take a first step to learn about changing careers, explore what’s missing from her existing career, what else is ‘out there’ and get some advice from career experts to help her on her journey.

Just taking those first steps will make her feel much better about her situation simply because she’s taking some action. She is taking the first steps to getting out of a rut and begin taking control of her career.

So what are the lessons here about getting out of a career rut?

1. Look for the clues
I took Helen through a quick analysis of her key strengths, skills, the activities she most enjoyed, her personality and style, along with the things that interested her away from the legal world.  When you do this, the answers start giving you some clues – some areas and ideas to start exploring.

2. Just take the first steps
Stop over thinking and over planning things. Once you have some clues, just focus on breaking things down and taking baby steps. The more planning and thinking you do, the more overwhelmed you become by the uncertainty. When you’re overwhelmed, you get paralysed into taking no action at all – and consequently make no progress.

3. Remember to pat yourself on the back often
Celebrate activities and actions (self evaluation, identifying clues, fact finding interviews, attending career fairs and workshops), rather than results you achieve (meetings, interviews, job offers). It’s the fuel that keeps you going through any transition or career change

4. Invest in yourself
- We reap what we sow. To create the time, money and lifestyle you want, you have to invest it first. Just like Helen did.

At the end of the discussion with Helen, we identified what it was about her legal career than she didn’t enjoy and the elements that were ‘missing.’ But we also identified some things she could do right now to make her happier about still being a lawyer by tapping into her passions away from work (you don’t have to change careers or jobs to get out of a rut and feel better about your situation). So she had some ‘next steps’ to pursue.

That’s what a career change is like. It’s never a straight line – but a journey where the dots join up when you look back rather than planning them ahead of you.