Reinventing Your Career: How to Know When It's Time

I have a question for you?

As summer begins to creep up around the corner, are you counting the days until you can get a break from your job? Are you dreaming about the day when you can walk away for good? Have you been wanting to course correct or accelerate a new chapter in your career??

If you answered yes, then you'll want to read through today's newsletter carefully today.

The career path you choose is one of the most important decisions you make in life. After all, most of your waking hours each year are spent at work!

If you struggle to find happiness in your current line of work, you may be experiencing a temporary lack of motivation that will quickly disappear. Or it may be a signal that it's time for a change.

I've often talked about how after 10 years practicing law and another 12 years in academia, I was close to 50-years old when I figured out the question of my career path. While I was good at what I did, evidenced by my frequent promotions, I didn’t love it.⠀
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Don’t get me wrong, I'm grateful for all the training, learning and growth I experienced through those years, but I always harbored a bit of jealousy for those who "whistled while they worked" out of the sheer joy of doing work they loved. For years I wondered what was wrong with me. Why can't I be grateful, happy, or content with my work, job or career? Why couldn't I be one of those people?⠀
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Tired of the mediocrity of my career, I set out to discover not just what I could do, but what I was meant to do.

A career choice is more than just paying the bills and putting food on the table. You deserve to spend your days doing work you enjoy and your career should align with your values and goals. You owe it to yourself to find within you the courage to change your career direction.

While I've made a few pivots in my career, what I do today leverages all of my training, education and experiences. I work with midlife professional women on their careers, but for me it's not so much about helping you "get a job" or sprucing up your CV or prepping for an interview. It's about taking the time to do some self-reflection to reconnect to your authentic nature so that you can find the professional path that allows you to express whole self fully.

I'm clear today about how I want to serve people, but that clarity didn't come overnight. It emerged after I did a few the following things:

1. Mindful Reflection

A career change is an opportunity to think carefully about your values and determine what matters most to you. This takes time. I had to learn to be patient and to give myself permission to take the time I needed to determine what was important to me. So be sure to make the time and space to really consider what matters to you.

2. Asked Questions

As I do with my clients, I had to ask myself some deep questions about my past, present and my future to create a clear path for follow. So be sure you ask yourself some questions to explore your values and find out what's important to you. Why did you choose your career in the first place? What did you like about this line of work? Have those elements of your job disappeared through changes that have taken place, or have you simply forgotten what drew you to this line of work in the first place? What do you wish you were doing instead?