Considering Career Change at 40?

My guess is that you are not considering a career change at 40 merely because you want a pay rise. Whilst money is usually part of the equation, if money were your full motive, you could take the linear route. Aim for promotion and see just how high you can get in your own sector or industry, this is the swiftest route to an increased salary. Hard graft and hard networking will get you better paid.

If you are looking at career change at any age, then you are looking at taking a big risk. You are looking at taking a sideways step. You are considering moving into unknown territory. You are exploring meeting a whole heap of needs that are going unmet right now. Perhaps there is a LOT of unmet need driving this consideration of uprooting from all you know, to begin again.

Here is a link to Daniel Pinks “Drive – The surprising truth about what motivates us”. Once our basic financial needs have been met, none of the three motivators listed is money. We, humans, are more than a Pavlovian example where cash is our real currency. Once we have enough income, what we need are opportunities for ‘Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose‘.

“Nobody else can contribute what you contribute in the way that you contribute it.”

So my guess is that your career-change thoughts arise from a persistent and insistent lack of fulfilment. I would encourage you to honour the seeking of fulfilment in your work because we do all have a unique contribution to make. Nobody else can contribute what you contribute in the way that you contribute it. When you do what makes you happy for a living, you’ll do it well. When you do things well, the rewards, financial and psychological are profoundly marked.
So knowing the reasons for career-change, Knowing the way to decide on your next steps (see this blog career change), I would like to take a look at fear and how to work with it.

“there are a multitude of reasons not to make the change”

I’m guessing you have been thinking of career change for a while. I’m guessing there are a multitude of reasons not to make the change: the kids, the mortgage, all that investment in training. What will people think….. et al. The reasons will be endless Until. You. Can. Take. No. More. This is when the balance tips. Humans rarely readily choose change. We usually wait until we have no other choice, and, even then we will still be scared. That’s OK, The book “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway” shows us exactly how to move swiftly through fears in order to get to the place we seek.

Career Change At 40? What will ‘they’ think???

Something else is worth holding in mind whilst you ‘transition‘ and confront your ‘What If’s’. Fear of career change often lies in losing that which you have invested so much (time, energy, study, money, hope, sleepless nights, talk; all that talking we have done about The Role and Our New Job!). We fear that walking away, will involve leaving a good part of ourselves behind. That we will grieve and have to begin right back at square one. Even worse, we have no proof that the next move will be any better, and we might well earn less money! I’d like to expose that series of misconceptions for what they are: They are your trap door. They are your get-out clause, they are your Internal Saboteur, masquerading as your aide, sabotaging your progress!

Let’s take a reality check. When you leave your old role and start your chosen way, you leave nothing of yourself behind. You take your whole self, AND all you have learned and gained in the last role. You have not wasted all that qualifying. Even the more niche elements of your studies can show up in the most unusual ways (who knew that my studies of iconography in my art history degree in my 20s would show up in my love of the archetypes in coaching in my 40s? Well, of course, they did it’s me who joins the thread and my passions remain the same).You can never be ‘back at square one’.

“You can never be ‘back at square one’”

You will be entering a new sector with all the assurance that you can work very well in another sector. You will bring every one of those skills and capabilities you have from your last role and then add to them. Sure, you might have to remind yourself how to learn more. Yes, people might judge: Who cares? ‘They’ are either not thinking of you at all, or they are envious that you are displaying a courage they have not yet accessed. Yep! You might take a pay cut to do this, but, your past experiences will make a very strong springboard for swift promotion. Nobody will be able to get away with treating you like an eighteen-year-old because you will not let them.

In reading this does it become more clear just how easy it is to talk ourselves out of doing something that could be very, very good for us? When we harness our courage and our positive mental attitude, we can flip it right on its head and create whole new opportunities for ourselves? Who exactly is in charge here? You or your self-destructive saboteur? If you were unhappy enough to have been to have been considering a career change, then what have you got to lose exactly? Take a reality check. Career change at 40 might SO be much more magical than no career change at all.

You Will find Rebecca here at the Daemon Career Coach