How to change career after 50? | How to deal with your fear of change? | DETERMINE A NEW PROFESSION
Do you feel like you're wasting energy and time at work? That you are doing not your own thing?
Today, more and more people are thinking about changing their profession, in the words of Dante, "having passed their earthly way up to half." Forgetting about a boring office and doing creativity, making your favorite hobby your main job is a real dream for many of us. But the older a person becomes, the more difficult it is to decide on such a serious step.
Nowadays the situation has changed radically. A huge number of adults strive to bring more creativity into their professional activities. Of course, creativity does not always mean writing poetry or drawing pictures. This is some kind of activity about which you can say: "I did it myself."
Thus, many for the first time had the opportunity to realize their potential and even make a successful career in a new field. And along the way, the most unexpected turns can happen.
Currently, there is a noticeable trend towards the so-called downshifting. When people who are quite successful in their field at the age of 40-50 suddenly change their field of activity: big businessmen become captains of small boats and ride tourists along exotic routes, bankers go into journalism, lawyers go into social work - in general, Diocletian leaves the imperial sinecure and goes plant cabbage.
However, not everyone is able to find the strength to disrupt the usual course of affairs. Some doubt the advisability of changing their profession, others are afraid of being left without funds - but still feel unhappy at work.
A successful change of profession at any age makes a person more free, creative, and happy. When you really do your own thing, it is never a burden. Therefore, any trials on the way to this state are worth it.
There are common symptoms that your old job no longer suits you:
- while working, you are constantly bored;
- you don't want to read special literature;
- it seems to you that in this area you have already achieved everything possible and there is nowhere to move further;
- you too often catch yourself thinking that at work you think about abstract things;
- your health is deteriorating (in severe cases, neuroses and panic attacks occur);
- you don't want to go to work to the point where you want to cry.
Of course, these feelings can also be caused by extreme fatigue. Therefore, before you quit your job and go on a free creative voyage, try to experiment - go on a long-term vacation, creating all the conditions for yourself to have a good rest.
Also, pay attention to relationships with colleagues and superiors - perhaps the problem lies not in the profession in general, but in your place of work. And only if, after a rest and a change of team, your condition has not returned to normal, it is worth moving on to the next stage.
The later you realize that it's time to change your life, the more difficult it is to take this step. For an already established professional in adulthood, the transition to the status of a beginner can be extremely painful.
Any change always involves some uncertainty, which gives rise to anxiety. Therefore, first, admit to yourself that you are afraid, and try to understand: what you are afraid of the most.
Whatever our dreams are, it's always best to be realistic about the situation. Not every business can be mastered in adulthood, and if, after celebrating your 50th birthday, you want to become a professional theater actor or pilot, you should think twice about this decision.
After all, you don't have to make a profession out of a dream. Life is not limited to work. Fill the activity you are doing with creative content, and implement your addictions as a hobby.
How to deal with your fear of change?
Remember your successful experience of change - how you started something, did something for the first time, how scary it was at the beginning and what helped you cope with the task; Collect positive examples from the life of friends and acquaintances; remember your relatives - a lot of changes fell to their lot, and they coped with them; find inspiration by reading biographies of famous and successful people (for example, the book "The Sailor in the Saddle" by Irving Stone about the life of Jack London); remember that the most dangerous thing is "burnout" in the profession. Once you get to this stage of aversion to your own work, you can never return to it. You need to act gradually, drop by drop: go to study in courses or do what you want to do as your hobby. Gradually absorb a new environment, make acquaintances, study specialized literature.
Indeed, in the process of learning a new case, it may turn out that this is not at all what we need.
DETERMINE A NEW PROFESSION
For some, this part of the path may seem the easiest - at last there is an opportunity to realize their childhood dreams, find an application for hidden talents, turn your favorite hobby into a work of life. But for many, the question is "where to go?" seems like an insurmountable obstacle.
You need to find the right object and the right action with this object. Each of us has a corridor of desires and a corridor of opportunities. And in the place where they intersect, a person finds his calling.
The next step is to take inventory of your own resources. All the skills and abilities that have accumulated over the years of life can be used as keys to mastering a new business.
By the way, today there are many courses and types of additional education that can be combined with the main job.
For a start, it is better to look for something close to the area where you are now. We often overlook the opportunities that lie in the field of our activities. And only when the resources in the nearest circle are exhausted, it is possible to go into "open space".
Below is a list of questions, by answering which you can find a new business in your life.
- If you are bored at work, write down five reasons why you feel bored. Imagine that you are doing the opposite. Do you like it? What do you feel?
- Write down the professions that you know on the sheet. Subtract all jobs you don't like. From the rest, subtract those that are not available to you by age. From the remainder, subtract those that interest you, but are scary to start. Consider the remainder.
- Consider, what would you do if you inherited a billion euros? Schedule your life for one year (twenty important things you would do) after receiving this money. And what would you be wasting your time on if you no longer had to work for money?
- Write what your parents programmed you for (about money, education, career, people around you).
- Who are your real teachers (name three people who taught you something in life, albeit harshly, albeit unwittingly).
- Remember what deeds you accomplished (in what you overcame yourself and your circumstances). How has it changed you?
- Remember your risky actions (physical risk, social, financial), what did it lead to and what did these situations teach you?
- Who are your parents and parents of parents by profession? What outstanding things have they done in their work?
- Have you ever organized something or someone for a business? How did you feel in this capacity of the organizer? Or did you prefer to be an ordinary participant?
- Remember your dreams, which symbolically tell you about your dissatisfaction with life. Or those that show the way.
50 years is an important stage in the life of every person. During this time, people often rethink their lives and discover new perspectives for themselves. Quite often the desire to change profession and do something else overtakes. So find your dream job here today.