5 Ways To Tell If You Need A Career Change
Source: Forbes
if you should change careers, and once you get hip to these signs, you’ll be able to answer for yourself in a heartbeat, “Should I stay or should I go?”
The 5 ways to tell if you should change careers are:
1. You are chronically worn out, exhausted and depleted.
If you experience chronic illness, debilitation, and exhaustion, the first place I’d look is your work. Most of us spend more waking hours working than doing anything else, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that if you don’t like your work, it won’t like you back, and overly-stressful, misaligned work can very easily make your body break down.
Your body tells you what your lips cannot. It may be your specific job or toxic work environment that are breaking you down, but often it’s your entire career that needs a shift.
2. Your skills, responsibilities, and tasks are not you at all.
This can be a shocker for some folks that you might have become very good at work that you hate. For example, I used to be really good at presenting to a board room of senior leaders the facts, data and new marketing strategies about the membership products I managed, but inside it was a horrible struggle. I just couldn’t seem to hold onto the key statistics or data about these products because I couldn’t care less about them.
3. You’ve come to the point where your salary no longer makes up for the boredom and emptiness you feel.
Most people who dislike like their work but are reluctant to change would say it’s their fear about walking away from the money that keeps them stuck. I work with women who are used to making $150,000 a year and more, and they don’t want to part with it. But at some point, many are saying, “Hang on here – I have this money, but I hate how I spend my life making it.” They begin to rethink their priorities and their abilities, and then they open their eyes to new ways they can make the money they need without risking the farm or giving up their lives for it.
4. Despite all the “right” choices you made in your career, the outcome feels very wrong.
So many professionals have made all the “right” choices, done everything that was expected of them, so when they wake up bored to death with their work, they’re shocked and confused. The thing to realize here is that the “right” choices usually had to do with pleasing others, stroking your ego, or taking work or a promotion that fell in your lap, rather than asking yourself the tough questions like “Is this where I belong?”
5. You have the irrepressible feeling that your talents and abilities could/should be used in a totally different way.
I used to say to myself every day in my corporate life, “I know I’m made for better things than this.” But I didn’t listen to myself – I thought I was crazy. If you think, “There’s got to be more in life,” then there IS more to life than what you’re currently doing – no question.
If you’re reading this, I’m rather sure you want career change. Do you fit any of the criteria above? Is so, now is the time
