Changing Your Career – Action, Now!

Quite often, taking those first, tentative steps towards changing your career can feel a bit wobbly but after all, these are the first steps and just like babies, wobbling is fully acceptable!

The most important for you at the moment is to take an action, now! To begin with, start with one action per day: make a phone call, connect with some old colleagues/friends on LinkedIn or Facebook, find out about local networking events and make a point of attending them. Your actions don’t need to be huge and they donA�t need to make you uncomfortable. Having said that, if any of your actions feel right and yet they are out of your comfort zone, close your eyes and jump, just go for them. Pushing your boundaries is like stretching your muscles, over time, you will notice, how much more flexible you have become.

When it comes to taking actions, there are a few points to remember:

1.) Be persistent. If you meet somebody who wants to introduce you to somebody else but keep forgetting, remind them again and again and again. It is not other peopleA�s responsibility to help you changing your career, it is yours only. So be patient, be organized and be persistent. This is exactly the part where so many people give up; make sure you are not one of them.

2.) Listen to and act on your intuition. If you wake up in the middle of the night, thinking you desperately need to call Sarah, who you havenA�t talked to for 5 years, do exactly that (in the morning, of course!) and tell her about your plan to change your career. Maybe Sarah is exactly the person who can help you and point you in the right direction. Quite often, when we have a goal, the way how to achieve it turns out completely differently from what we had originally planned. Be open to this scenario and go with whichever next step feels the best.

3.) Be open to various outcomes. Sometimes, you set off with the idea of doing “x”, only to discover in the process that actually, you prefer option “y”. It is very possible, that initially you didn’t know that option “y” even existed! However, due to your diligence, creativity, connecting to various people and openness, you might have discovered something far more excited that option “x” you dreamed about! Being focused is important but being open minded is equally important. Remember this is a successful career change will happen to you sooner or later, guaranteed.