6 key life moments to ask: what do I really want?
‘Get your head out of the boat!’
This was a piece of advice I remember from when my sons were learning to sail. Of course what the instructor meant by this was that paying attention to the controls of the boat alone wouldn’t help you get to your destination. For that, you need to scan the horizon, look out for indicators of wind shift, obstacles, and identify where the course marker buoys are.
It’s also a great piece of life advice and one I come back to frequently with my career change clients. It’s an invitation to look at the bigger picture, to gain a wider perspective and answer the deeper questions about your life and your work.
One of these is this:
What do you want your work to do for you?
I suppose the basic answer to this is to pay the bills, maybe save some money and establish financial security for yourself and your family.
But let’s go a step deeper: what else?
· Do you want flexibility that working from home or flexible hours might offer?
· Do you want an environment that suits and supports who you are so that you are enabled to do your best work?
· Do you want to be doing work whose impact is clear and meaningful?
· Do you want values that are most important to you to be honoured in how and where you work – values like autonomy, collaboration, integrity, or creativity?
· Is location important?
· How important are pay and conditions?
When you dig into the question like this, you start to identify your own measures of success. And by this, I mean the opportunity to do work that plays to your strengths, expresses your values, and that feels purposeful – to you.
Are you clear on how you measure success in your career? If you’d like to explore this a little more, just message me for a free copy of my guide: Identify your Career Success Criteria. This is a great starting point if you want to get clearer on what you need from the next stage of your work life.
6 Key Life Moments that offer change
Some moments are clear turning points in your life. If you were looking back at the end of your span on this earth, you would recognize important events where you made choices – and altered the course of your life.
Other significant moments are less identified by events than a shift in your needs, wants or perceptions. These are often the times when people find themselves disenchanted with their work and look for alternatives. Perhaps the organization no longer chimes with you are or you’ve outgrown your role. These are also key moments, but not the ones I’m going to explore in this article.
When big life events strike, it is often a painful and disorientating time. There are many conflicting emotions at play and it’s a challenging period. But when the dust has settled a bit, these big moments can also be an amazing opportunity to reset your direction and ask what you need and want next.
1. Divorce or bereavement
Everything has changed and the loss you are experiencing is like an earthquake. When an important relationship ends, it’s hard to disentangle who you are now from who you were in relation to the person you have lost. The future you expected has also gone and it will take some time (everyone is different in exactly how long it will take) before you are ready to start building a new life with yourself at its centre.
But the time will come when you are ready to ask yourself those big questions: what do I need and what do I want for the next stage of my life?
After my own divorce and following two deeply painful break ups I found what helped me most was to first answer the question: what matters most to me now?
When I understood what my highest values were (and are), I was able to use them as a compass to create a life that truly makes me happy. Here is how I use each value to guide me every day
LOVE – for my sons and their growing families, for my friends, for my clients. I express this love every day through my work as a career change coach, through contact with my sons (two of whom live overseas) – WhatsApp is perfect for this - and planning outings and chats with my friends, many of whom are scattered round the country. Thank you Zoom!
AUTONOMY – as a solo business owner I have been able to create a business that works for me. How I work and how I organize each day, month and year are in my gift. It was a long road to get to this point and I enjoy the freedom to express this value, to make and stand by the choices I make every day
NATURE – being outside in the natural world gives me energy and lifts my spirits. I love being by the ocean, walking along a riverbank or by a lake, and ensure every day has a walk built into it. This keeps me centred and balanced – and gets me out of my head and into motion
CREATIVITY – whether writing, solving a problem for myself, or digging into blocks and challenges with a client, I love diving in and emerging with a way forward. Sometimes it might be a poem, other times it will be about colour and home decor, what I wear or how I shape my day – all express creativity
VITALITY – boosting, generating or guarding my energy, feeling alive and doing things that bring me joy. All these feed my spirit of vitality. Whether it’s my daily walk, a weekly visit to the gym, meeting friends, exploring new places, noticing awe in nature (the humble rainbow!) - all these make me feel joyfully alive
AUTHENTICITY – expressing who I am, making choices that honour my values, saying what matters to me, what I believe in, what I want and sharing these ideas – the very opposite of people-pleasing or living by other people’s values. It’s now become a habit to quietly and honestly express my true self
Identifying and activating your values is a wonderful way to create a different way of living!
If you’d like to explore your own values and how you can use them to create a life that’s more you have look here: VALUES DISCOVERY
2. Moving overseas
This can be a huge opportunity to reset. A new country, new job, new friends, new ways of living, travelling – everything shouts new, untried and time to explore! But it can also be overwhelming, especially during the settling in phase.
I’ve spent almost a quarter of a century living and working overseas. It has taught me so much about the challenges and excitement of discovering a completely new way of living and working. I’ve changed careers twice while overseas and have made the return to the UK and built a new career in the process.
Being open minded and adopting a growth mindset make a huge difference to grasping the many opportunities that living in a different country can offer. Even moving to a new location within your home country offers the opportunity to reinvent parts of your life or work that maybe could be better, or more ‘you’.
Knowing your values helps, but so does being willing to think laterally and creatively in what you could create for yourself in a new location.
I’ve recently worked with someone who wanted to return to the UK after a period of working overseas. We worked on those big questions, explored the strengths he wanted to use in the next phase of his career, and what kind of impact really mattered to him. With this clarity he was able to open up new possibilities and communicate these to potential employers in a way that was authentic and compelling. And now he’s enjoying the next chapter of his career – one that really excites and energises him!
If you want to read more about ‘being yourself’ at interview - and still succeeding, this blog will help.
3. Empty nest
The children have flown away – what’s next for you?
Many people feel a bit lost at this point – especially if their work life is less than satisfactory or non-existent. But it’s the perfect time to take stock and ask what you need now and what you want.
What would excite you?
What would give you satisfaction?
What were you planning to do when you had a bit more time and freedom?
I know those gremlin voices will also be saying:
‘What have I really got to offer?’
‘It’s too late to change’
‘How could I possibly do something else so late in my life?’
But realizing that these are just fears – not truths – will enable you to try to answer those questions honestly. From a place of hope, not fear.
What makes a huge difference is in knowing WHY a new option is perfect for you:
How it would play to your strengths, feel worthwhile and sit comfortable with your values?
How would it enhance and support your life?
When you have a vision of what life could be with this additional opportunity you’ll feel your belief and motivation grow. And you’re on your way to writing the next chapter of a long life.
You can look at a powerful structure for doing this in my Quickstep Career Change Programme.
4. Big birthdays
I see a lot of clients when a ‘big’ birthday is on the horizon. 40 is the most common age, closely followed by 50. It’s a natural marker to examine what you love about your life and what you want to change.
40 is the age many people say: ‘Is this IT?’ and ‘What else could I do?’
Let’s face it, working lives are going to be lengthy, so changing direction may be an imperative. When you choose for yourself, design a new direction and set off with renewed energy, change is a wonderful impetus. You have skills, experience, plenty of energy and renewed motivation. What employer wouldn’t want a bit of that?
It’s far more appealing than feeling stuck, de-motivated and hopeless. This self-directed change will put wind in your sails.
5. A health scare
When we have a sudden reminder of our mortality, it’s a powerful moment to gain a clear perspective on what really matters in life. Sometimes when a friend or family member dies suddenly it has the same effect.
If we don’t ask those big questions at this point in our lives, when will we?
My mum died when I was 17. It was sudden and profoundly altered my view of life. It made me much more aware that we all have a limited time – and that living well is a choice we can make. Waiting until all your ducks are lined up, for conditions to be perfect is a fool’s game. The perfect time just doesn’t exist, and waiting for it to arrive feeds procrastination and indecision.
Don’t leave it until it’s too late. And while you’re breathing, it’s never too late!
6. Redundancy
This can be a horrendous shock, especially if you loved the work you do or your role and career was all you knew. For anyone facing unforeseen redundancy it can feel like an earthquake. Your power, the security and stability you had built and relied on are suddenly gone.
This is a very emotional and disorientating time for anyone.
And, as many will testify, it can also be a time of opportunity, of starting again, perhaps taking a new direction and building something even more fruitful. If you find yourself suddenly without a job, but have the resources to take stock and evaluate what you want and need for the next stage of your career, it can repay that time of pause and reflection.
How about you?
Is today the day you need to take a long hard look at your life and work and ask: is it serving me well or do I need to make some changes?
If you’d like an impartial perspective to get started, just drop me a message and we can set up a free chat. I’d love to help.