Confessions of a Career Changer

I've been wanting to start writing this series for a while. In a world of videos and reels, I still find it incredibly cathartic to write as a way to process my thoughts.

Journaling and writing as a way of processing your thoughts

I'm also planning to push my own comfort zone of vulnerability in these posts, and maybe I'm comforted by the thought that reading an old fashioned blog will naturally keep a limit on how many people end up seeing this!

Increasing Self-Awareness to become a Career Changer

I started journaling over six years ago when I did Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way programme. One of the tasks in that is to write "morning pages", three pages of stream of consciousness writing every day. It's these journals that I am going back to as the source material for these series. Wish me luck!

"You're not perfect therefore you should feel shame fire. I want to stand outside that fire".

This quote stems from a journal entry on 19th December 2020, where I'm talking about my experience of receiving feedback in my performance review during my probation in a new job. Overall the feedback was good, with some constructive suggestions, but my brain fixated on the negatives. It meant a bad night's sleep and ruminating on it in the gym the next morning and overthinking the feedback.

I've always found feedback tough. This is a hard thing to admit.

Learning more about how to take feedback less personally

Why I Was Taking Feedback So Personally at Work

Why do I find it so tough? I think partly because I feel things deeply, but also I feel like if I'm not doing something perfectly, then there must be something wrong with me and that makes me feel ashamed. I was taking the feedback too personally. I also had a really tough work experience in the job just before the one I was writing about in this particular journal entry. In the previous work environment, the constant refrain was "done over perfect". The reality though was if I didn't do something perfectly, it would be criticised, rewritten, or passed over. While the refrain might have been "done over perfect", the working reality was "done and perfect". That affected me deeply in my work, in ways that I only came to realise fully over the coming years.

I then go on to contemplate the idea of changing careers.

"You know what, I've toyed before about getting out of business as I'm not sure that is the love of my life while it provides well and I do get a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment out of it, I hate the non stop ruthlessness and competition of it."

Starting to think about changing careers

I went on to talk about becoming a psychologist or psychotherapist as I was fascinated by people, how I could juggle going back to college part-time, going into project rather than people management or joining a different team in that company that I respected the leaders and liked the team vibe. In the end only one of those things happened (going back to college), and in fact I quit the Psychology course after two years.

Lots of beach walks and support from my husband helped my with my career change ponderings

So as a fully fledged career changer now, let's break this down in a way that benefits you the reader. Please learn from my mistakes and realisations!

1. Spot your wounds and heal them. Have you picked apart the impact of your previous work experience and healed what needs to be healed? Otherwise wherever you go, there you are. For me, this was the complicated interchange of perfectionism and feedback.

2. The career change squiggle. The reality of most people's career changes, like the modern career trajectory, is that they are a squiggle rather than a straight line dictated by SMART goals. It starts like mine, with an admission that you're not really enjoying a career that you've put effort into building. Then that admission turns to ideas, options of what you might do next. At this early stage, it's unlikely to jump straight into commitment or a clear plan, rather it's a collection of fragments of career ideas.

3. Things don't always work out like we think. And that's ok. We are human, not AI, we are not meant to have all the answers (writing that makes me feel old as AI wasn't even a thing back then).

Are you questioning your career?

Are you at that point where you know something needs to change in your career, but you can’t quite figure out what?

You’re stuck between “I can’t stay where I am” but “I don’t know what to do next”.

You're not alone. That in-between space where you’re questioning everything but don’t have a clear direction is exactly where most people struggle with career change.

It’s also where I do my best work.

Career Crossroads is a 6-session career change coaching programme designed to help you move from confusion to clarity, helping you to untangle what’s going on beneath the surface, get clear on what you actually want, and move forward in a way that feels right for you, not just logical on paper.

Get in touch to book a free clarity call if you're interested in finding out more.