It’s a day that so many of my clients tell me they dreaded and I remember it well. You know it’s coming, you wish it wasn’t, but one day you simply wake up in the morning and realize that the job you’re in – which you may have thought was a lifelong career – has to change.
Before that day arrives though, there are the red flags. You catch yourself looking at the clock to see when it’s time to go home, which is something you never did before. Then you start to realize that the little changes that your superiors institute are more frustrating than they once were and you may even start to lose some respect toward them you once held. The pride you carried at first about creativity and problem solving within the parameters of the job just isn’t there anymore, despite the fact you’re doing the same thing. Soon, the snooze alarm becomes a friend of yours because you’re staying up later, not really caring if you get to work half-asleep because that’s the way your mind feels all the time.
And then it hits you like a bolt of lightning: I just can’t do this anymore.
It’s scary because you realize that’s the bottom line. You tell yourself that you worked hard to get where you are. You tell yourself that the money is good and you tell yourself that starting over at Square One is not something you want to do.
But it doesn’t matter. You know you’re in the wrong place.
Some people stay. And in the words of Henry David Thoreau, they experience lives of “quiet desperation.” For whatever excuses they can muster, they make a deal with themselves to have a miserable existence at least 40 hours per week. It’s a tragedy in some ways.
Some people know exactly what they want to do, leave, and transition seamlessly into their new career, and new life.
Most of us, though, end up somewhere in the middle. I was there. Being a public health practitioner in the US Navy was something I worked hard for a decade to achieve and I am proud to say that I helped coordinate the efforts to battle a once-in-100-years-pandemic for our overseas troops at a large base in Japan. I know my work made a difference, but it no longer spoke to me and I had to get out.
I had time when I reached this revelation, because I still was contracted to be with the Navy for another year. But I had no idea what I wanted to do or how to get there. I know in my soul that my mission in life is to help people, but I didn’t know what that meant.
A friend suggested visiting a life coach. I didn’t need any great philosophy change with the way I saw the world and didn’t need to work through childhood trauma, but I needed to figure out this job thing. I found myself wishing we focused more on what I was meant to do so much, I eventually left them and found a career development coach. Much like someone who walks into a temp agency and realizes they want to work at the temp agency, I recognized that my calling was looking right at me: I needed to become a career development coach.
So when a new client sits down and feels like they’re the only person to have ever felt like they made the wrong choice with a career, I can look them in the eye and say I’ve been there, and that you never know where the solution will come from, but it might be looking you in the eyes.
Are you there already? Check out https://form.jotform.com/211381778897473 and take the career satisfaction quiz. Don’t tell yourself you’re just having yet another bad day. Maybe it’s time to consider making a change. Take this quiz and we’ll calculate your score and let you know if you’re satisfied where you are or if it’s time to follow your destiny.