How to beat the resistance to make a career change
Photo credit to www.aistesaulyte.co.uk
I had countless conversations this past year with brilliant women that wanted to make a change in their career but at the same time they had the belief that “This is not the right time obviously, so I’ll wait for things to get better!”.
Their desire for that change could be traced back a few years, when that seed of change was planted in their soul, but there was always something else more important than making it happen.
Family, money, security and in 2020 ….a pandemic.
I’m not denying the difficulty of these times, the impact on our health including mental health and the economic impact on companies and the job market at large. These things are real but it doesn’t mean we’re powerless now.
This situation puts our lives on hold in many practical ways but it doesn't mean that we have to put our career plans on hold as well!
Waiting energy is when we are handing our power away to an external actor waiting for him to disclose to us our fate.
Think of it as a child waiting in front of the door for his dad to come back home.
In that moment all of his energy is directed towards the dad coming back, so the child can only think about “When is dad home?”; he’s longing for it more than anything else and even forgets he’s hungry or tired, he stops playing with his toys and just sits there waiting.
He has basically forgotten about himself, his interests, his own purpose to wait for his dad to come back home.
When we wait for the government or the job market to create new jobs so we can receive one we’re doing the same time. We’re in waiting energy and this affects our actions and disconnects us from our capability of making things happen.
How to detect that you’re in waiting energy?
You feel paralyzed, passive, your energy is focused on “things to get better” externally so that they can be better internally as well and that’s pretty much all you can think about.
How to shift this resistance into proactivity?
Identify all the things you have control on at the moment : you can control your mindset, your self-care, your imagination and openness to new possibilities, you can control what new information you learn, who you connect with and much more. Once we focus on what we have control on we start to bring back power into ourselves. We start to remember that we’re powerful beings and that we don’t have to wait around for other people to give us the job we need.
What are the small changes that can make you feel better in your current job daily? We always have the impression that there is no point in trying to change the little things in a job we don’t like, but while we can plan and desire a change we can at the same time make the current situation more bearable.
How can you be proactive to start creating your plan B? So even If you’re still in your current not ideal job, it doesn’t mean you have to wait to build something else. Something that you can start doing right away is researching new sectors, having informal chats with inspiring people and even volunteering or taking part in projects connected to the sector you’re interested in during your free time. All of these things will help you build your experience and confidence quickly and show you that your goal is not as far away as you thought.
