Monday, July 5, 2010

6 steps to making a positive career change

By : Career Slave

It’s all too easy to sit at the beginning of your career (or at any point throughout your career) and drown yourself with thoughts of the future. Having a goal is good but procrastinating about how you will reach that goal can end up consuming you.


There are really simple steps you can take to avoid falling into the trap of spending your life wondering “what if” – the key to remember is that no matter how large the obstacles in front of you seem to be, breaking them down into manageable chunks can be easy to do. If you find yourself in a career rut, either not sure what you want to do for a living or just simply if you hate your job, then follow these steps to moving yourself forward…

1. Set your goal. It may be the case that it will take you years to reach it, but you need a starting point. Your goal might be to decide what you want to do for a living by the end of the year or it might be to progress to the highest possible level in your chosen profession. It doesn’t matter at this point – all you need to do is to define your goal.

2. Work backwards and understand your obstacles. Your goal may seem far off but sitting around worrying about that won’t get you anywhere. Write a list of everything you think will stand in your way. Money. Education. Experience. Problems in your personal life. A dodgy knee. Put everything down on paper, no matter how trivial you think they may be or how well you think you can handle the obstacle. Write it all down!

3. Take them on step at a time. Knowing your obstacles puts you in a position to be able to tackle them one by one. That’s half the battle already. Is money a problem? Then check out government grant schemes or look at getting some part time work. For every problem you think you will face you should have an action plan for – a series of notes to yourself that tells you how you will deal with that situation.

4. Ask for some help. After step 3 there may very well be some obstacles that you simply don’t know how to overcome. That’s OK. Everyone goes through this. But now you have isolated those issues and instead of worrying about them alongside other issues, you can look for help on specific topics. Ask friends, families, career advisers, discussion forums and so on. Your goal here is to finish your action plan list.

5. Get started and prioritise. You have a goal. You have a series of objectives to meet in order to achieve that goal. You have an action plan for each of these objectives. What areas will be quick to complete? What areas need other things to be done before you can start them? Do you have any constraints (money for investment / training, time for studying, qualifications for Uni courses)? By the end of this step you should have a clear cut view on how you will go about reaching your goal.

6. Don’t worry about bumps in the road. Things will happen along the way that you didn’t expect. Changes in your personal life might affect how you are able to follow your action plan. Unexpected positive areas may come into your life (children, promotion – maybe even a lottery win!). Don’t let these things halt your plan – instead, pause your plan and adjust it for these new pieces. You might be able to get there quicker, or it might take longer (or you might even completely change your end goal) – but if you take things one piece at a time it will be much more manageable for you.

I know that sounds quite cheesey and most people have read stuff like this a lot – but it really does work. It’s not even the organisational element that helps so much – it’s your attitude change that makes the difference.

People don’t realise just how much stressing over your career can be your worst enemy. Even some small positive changes (perhaps only the fact that you’ve stopped to think about your career and written up a brief action plan) can really make a marked difference on your outlook in life.

Yeh, yeh, the first step can be the hardest one to take, blah blah – but believe me when I say that a positive mindset can really make that difference you are looking for. A lot of people would love for their dream job to be landed right in their lap but it just doesn’t work like that. YOU need to make it work like that and making your own future is by far the best thing you can do for yourself.

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