The question a lot of my clients battle with is around what kind of change to make to their work.

Do they:

🪂 Change the role, keep the company

🪂 Keep the role and the industry, change the company

🪂 Change the industry, keep the role

🚀 CHANGE EVERYTHING

And maybe you’ve landed here, because you’re in the same boat (or parachute).

Well then, let’s explore this choice. Let’s start off with where you are right now.

You’re currently in employment

Is this you?

You’re unhappy in your current work. Maybe it’s because….

☔ The job is unfulfilling – somewhere in the last year or so things have changed and you’re not as challenged or engaged as before and there’s a hollowness growing inside you begging you to fill it with something meaningful.

☔ Or maybe you’re unhappy because the company culture is toxic.

☔ Or because you have an unsupportive boss, you’re overworked, stressed and nearing burnout (again).

☔ Or you were mis-sold the job. You had a certain idea of what it would entail, but as soon as you were through the door, it suddenly morphed into something else. Perhaps due to an internal restructure, redundancies, or because the manager who hired you (and you were eager to learn from) left abruptly as soon as you started.

You’re NOT in employment at the moment

Or is this more like you?

Perhaps you were the one in that toxic job example I mentioned, and you quit to save your mental health. Well done! No job is worth losing your sanity for. 

Perhaps you were made redundant.

Or you’re returning from maternity leave (I’m getting a lot of mums returning from having their second child at the moment!). 

Whatever position you’re starting from, I’m sure you’ve done some work to try to solve that problem.

What you’ve tried

Before you even thought about calling a coach, you’ve obviously tried to sort the problem out yourself.

You’ve browsed LinkedIn and have fired off a few applications. Maybe a few dozen.

But you haven’t got ANY replies.

You start wondering

➡️ Am I energetically blocking these positions?

➡️ Are they picking up on me not actually wanting these jobs?

➡️ Do I want these jobs?

➡️ Maybe I don’t. Maybe this is an opportunity to change careers, do something different!

➡️ Oh, but what?! What can I do with my skills?

➡️ I’ve always wanted something more creative/ fulfilling/ flexible/ impactful….but what can that be?

➡️ And will I have to start at the bottom?

➡️ How long will it take me to match my current salary? Another 6, 8, 10 years?

➡️ Maybe I should retrain? That will get my foot in the door and prevent a salary drop.

➡️ Oh but which course is best?

➡️ And it’s quite expensive – is this really a good idea? Is it not too late for me?

And all these questions inevitably lead to confusion, stuckness and paralysis by analysis….

What you think the problem is

These thoughts always lead you to the conclusion that the problems you need to solve are :

🐙 Lack of clarity 🐙

You’re not clear on what job you’d be good at or what would make you feel fulfilled. 

🐙 Fear of failure or rejection 🐙

And if you do find a job you think you want, you’re you’re scared they won’t even give your CV a chance if you don’t have the relevant experience.

🐙 Lack of confidence 🐙

You also don’t know how to position yourself or sell your transferrable skills. Especially as you’re not feeling all that confident after your recent experiences at work. 

What you think the solution is

So what you want is confidence, clarity and a plan of action. 

💡 Clarity on what job you should do. 

🗺️ A plan for how to get there. 

💪 And the confidence to go get it and sell yourself. 

That’s what you WANT.

And for sure, I work with my clients on these three. 

But I also give them what they NEED.

And that is these 4 life skills. 

The 4 magic skills for life and career change

Once you learn these 4 skills, you will be able to waltz through big life decisions, glide through major transitions, and give you the ability to open doors you thought were closed to you. 

So they’re worth learning! Here they are:

💎 Self-awareness 

💎 Self-belief

💎 Decisiveness

💎 Resourcefulness

Get solid on those and you’re laughing. 

Let me demonstrate how these can make career decisions easier. 

What happens when you don’t have those skills

❌ No self-awareness

You don’t know what you like, you’re not sure about your strengths or what uniqueness you bring to situations and companies.

❌ No self-belief

You assume you’ll fail before you even try

❌ No decisiveness

You flip flop between your options unable to decide, leading you to a standstill aka ‘paralysis by analysis’

❌ No resourcefulness

You don’t ask for help, you only have one or two strategies for getting work (eg. via a jobs board or recruiters), and you don’t look for alternative solutions or options when you hit a mental dead end.

What happens when you’ve honed those skills

💫 Self-awareness 💫

You know your personal brand, you know which companies or clients you A) want to work at, and B) you’re a perfect fit for, and you know how to position yourself to them

💫 Self-belief 💫

You don’t wonder whether your career change will work out or not, you trust yourself to work on making it work out. You also trust yourself to do your best in new situations.

💫 Decisiveness 💫

You don’t sweat decisions, you make choices with ease and stick with them.

💫 Resourcefulness 💫

You will figure out the ‘how’ no matter what.

How to hone the skills

If you don’t have some of those skills finely tuned, there is no judgement here at all. 

I only had one of those four when I was making a career change – resourcefulness.

The rest I acquired and sharpened through coaching, therapy, books, deep and thorough chats with role models/ those who had the life or work I wanted, and practice. 

And I have good news for you, if I could hone those skills, you can too. 

Self-Awareness

Work with a coach. That’s the shortcut. 

Coaching is literally ALL about raising your awareness on your strengths, your limiting beliefs and your habits of thinking that are keeping you stuck or unhappy. 

I dig into a bit more detail on how a career coach can help you with career change in this blog if you’re interested.

If you’re not in a position to do so, my Career Clarity Course is a good place to start.

But if you’re not ready yet, no problem. What you can do right now to help you raise your self-awareness is ask your friends, family and old colleagues to give you feedback on you.

The ‘self’ part in ‘self-awareness’ is actually misleading. 

We need others to help us see all of us. 

Self-Belief

Self-belief, self-esteem and confidence are all tied together.

We’re all born having healthy self-esteem, but we may lose it along the way.

It may be trodden on by family, bruised during school or taken away just in the last year at that horrible job.

The path to rebuilding it will be different for everyone. Therapy and coaching is a guaranteed way to build yours up, but they’re not the only way.

A combination of eye-opening, mind-expanding personal development books (eg. Overcoming low self-esteem), a good support network or community and trying something outside your comfort zone also works that confidence muscle.

Getting out your comfort zone could look like pushing yourself physically (eg. Running a marathon) or learning a new skill (eg. French or rollerblading) or putting yourself in a new environment with new people (eg. Going to a talk alone or travelling alone).

Decisiveness

Getting clear on your values will help a lot with this.

But also, making some rules for yourself.

You can borrow one of my rules for deciding whether to buy a course or sign up to a degree.

To mitigate the risk and make sure I’m not half-arsing it, if there’s a course I’ve been eyeing up, my rule is this – buy the course and make sure you make the money back using the skill you learnt (this obviously doesn’t apply to ALL courses).

So if you’re wondering whether to do that pastry chef course – do it.

Then commit to baking enough pastries to make your money back.

If you make that rule for yourself, you not only mitigate the risk by making sure you never lose the invested money, but you deepen your learning. After all, you only truly learn by doing.

Resourcefulness

I find the less money you have, the more resourceful you get. It’s a wonderful reward.

I was born in communist Russia where you couldn’t just throw money at any problems you had, you had to think of other ways to solve it.

Whilst I moved to the UK quite young, I was raised by family members who had the most resourceful minds. So when I came to them with any problems, they modelled creative, persistent problem-solving to me.

Here’s what I learnt from them:

🔮 Never give up

🔮 There’s always a way

🔮 If you don’t know the way, someone else does

🔮 Ask for help

I often hear my clients say that they know they have a good network that they could theoretically ask for help from, but they don’t want to be a burden, so they don’t ask.

They fear they will put them out unnecessarily or waste their time.

In reality, people love being helpful. And if you ask them for help, then you open the door for them to do the same, so then you won’t be a burden. You’ll help them too.

Conclusion

I know I haven’t told you whether you should change careers or not, but that’s because my belief is, if you’ve been flirting with the idea that you should do something different, then DO IT.

Ideas come to you for a reason. They’re a glimpse into your unmet needs or your desires.

You have to realise them.

But of course, you want to make sure you’re making the right decision.

If you work through the skills I outlined, then not only will you know the right decision to make, you’ll lower the risk of failure, and you’ll become a person who can do anything they set their mind to.

If you’re ready to work 1-on-1 with a coach, then simply book a free Breakthrough call to get a personalised coaching plan for your situation.
If you’d rather do some self-inquiry first, then Career Clarity Course is a good place to start as it a self-guided course that takes you through the most important aspects of getting to know what you want.