Making the decision to shift career at some point in your life is a valuable decision to make. It’s important to recognize when you’re not happy doing something and knowing what you can do to make life better for yourself is important. Taking the step to actively change things for the better is one that not everybody would be able to do.
However, when you do make this decision, there are innumerable paths before you. Perhaps you already have a good idea of what you want to do, and that might have been the catalyst behind the career shift. That being said, it could also be that you simply weren’t enjoying your current position and realized you had to make a change, in which case, where do you go from here?
Back to the Drawing Board
If you are unsure about where to go from here, you might find it worthwhile to look at your skills and examine what you could do in order to make yourself a more appealing candidate for the various destinations of your applications. Doing this can go a long way to opening up your options considerably, meaning that this can be a shift that takes you somewhere much more positive than you were before, rather than a simple side-step. There are many ways that you can go about gaining these qualifications, and while to you, it might seem as though you won’t be able to fit it around your lifestyle, some research into this area might start to prove to you just how incorrect that notion is.
So, even if you do decide to go about gaining further qualifications, which doesn’t necessarily answer the question of what you should do. In fact, it just opens up another question regarding the area in which you gain these qualifications. It’s going to be a matter of personal preference, and if there is something that you find yourself wishing you had geared your career more towards in your youth, this is a good time to go back and make those changes. If nothing comes to mind, you can simply explore the range of possible options and see which one appeals to you most. Anything could really be appropriate here; from a degree in one of the many sciences to a broadcasting masters, you can begin to really get into the fine details of what you want your career path to look like.
Change Your Perspective
You may well be someone who has a very negative outlook on the prospect of having to work your whole life. This mentality might have been colored by the kinds of jobs that you’ve had in the past, especially if you find that you’ve never been in a role that you’ve found especially enjoyable. This can also make you start to feel as though your choice of careers are very limited as if you only have a few choices about what you can actually do to make money. For example, you might feel that the only two kinds of routes ahead of you are broadly divided into labour roles and work that takes place in an office, behind a desk. Obviously, you’d be aware of more exotic careers, but perhaps the thought of them feels like something elusive to you like you wouldn’t be able to work in such a role realistically.
Even when looking at jobs that are ‘realistically’ attainable to most people, the choices don’t have to be so bleakly narrow. Perhaps this would be a good time for you to do some research into the kinds of jobs that can take you outside. If, historically, the kind of work that you’ve done has mainly taken place inside (perhaps in an office), you may not have had much time to spend outside. This could be a great time to change that, and you might find that this shift begins to give you a much-needed shift in your perspective. Additionally, spending more time outside, specifically in natural spaces, can hugely positively impact your mental health, which might be something that you need if you find your spirit is crushed by constantly working in jobs that you don’t enjoy.
Examine Overseas Options
Maybe you don’t just feel limited by the content of your professional options, but their location as well. If you’ve been living in the same sort of area for a large portion of your life, you might find this fatigue especially noticeable. Therefore, you have a couple of options that are immediately open to you. First of all, you could consider simply moving further afield within the same country; while this might not provide you with a huge amount of difference, it does allow you to potentially move closer to friends or members of family from whom you’ve drifted in recent years. Alternatively, you also have access to a potentially more drastic option, which could make it more appealing – this option is moving overseas to continue your career. Different paths and careers could be more available in different locations, so this really gives you an opportunity to consider your preferences and strengths, as well as where you would want to go.
This doesn’t have to be the kind of career shift that immediately lands you in your dream career; you don’t need to put that much pressure on it. Instead, you could just think of this as your next life direction. Living in the long term can have its advantages and might prevent you from making decisions that would only benefit you in the short term but taking this to the other extreme might mean that you don’t live in the present moment. If you’ve been in a position where you feel as though you’ve been stuck in a job, you don’t ‘like for a long time, having the chance to simply go somewhere new, experience a different culture, and live differently, might be exactly what you need – regardless of whether or not it necessarily functions as an active step forward in your broader plans for your career. Sometimes it’s just about what makes you happy now.
