Your Career Belongs To You
How Insight Can Overcome Fear
The question, ‘Is it ever too late to switch careers?’ appears reasonable enough. The idea of switching careers however, rests on the notion that we are defined by what we do. A carpenter is a carpenter and a banker is a banker. Carpenters do not approve loans and bankers do not fabricate houses. If we accept this general view of our relationship with work, the idea of switching careers can seem very daunting indeed. That is because change under this definition of ‘career’ means more than just finding a new job, it means assuming a new identity altogether. When thought about from this perspective, the prospect of switching careers seems risky, perhaps even dangerous. As a result, people who find themselves in this position feel uncertain or, in more extreme cases, threatened. For this reason, it is sometimes easier to shy away from this degree of change in our careers. Perhaps this is also why some of us can feel confined or constrained by our past choices or stuck with a future of endlessly repetitive situations and tasks.
I have encountered many people laboring under the weight of assumptions such as these. My initial reaction was and still is a strong feeling of empathy but for a while now I have also found a genuine passion to see the unnecessary and unhelpful elements of this kind of career-thinking challenged and hopefully changed. To anyone struggling with the notion of late-career change, and to my readers here, I say this: before anything else changes, consider changing your understanding of the word ‘career’.
For me, the best place to start is exploring the idea of what a career is. Given this aim, I am not simply advocating a dictionary correction here, although it would be nice to see the Webster’s and Oxford’s of the world add something new to their canon in this respect. The real change needs to take place in the way we think, feel and behave around our individual relationship with work, especially when we are facing or inviting significant change into our lives. For this new definition, I advocate an expansion of the limiting association between ‘career’ with ‘profession’ to help us realize that no matter what we do for a living, all of us have a career: not just senior people, not just corporate types, but every single one of us. We all have a career and it stays with us every moment of our working lives, from our first job all the way through to retirement. Understood in this way, the word ‘career’ takes on a new relevance that encompasses our entire experience of work, not just the particulars of any given job, industry or profession we adopt over any given period of time.
When ‘career’ has this additional meaning, we can explore the positive potential for change (in our working lives) in very different ways. Because this new definition spans and incorporates all of our experience of work, across all of the years we are working, we only need one career. Thus defined, a career starts when we are introduced to work, and so includes all those jobs we do when we are starting out. Indeed, these formative years are important not because they are an antecedent to our career, but because they are part of it, perhaps even a foundation in some cases. These early experiences combine with those that follow, and continue to shape the way we grow and think about work. With one career, the singular relationship with work that results is also there for us throughout all the climbs, the lessons and setbacks we face. The good, the bad and the ugly of work, along with the twists, turns and all of the changes we go through, all become part of our career.
For most of us, the majority of change within our career takes the form of predictable, expected steps, like being promoted or moving from one role to another. There are also times in every career when the change we experience is bigger. For example, where we face or choose our own transformational leaps across chasms of the unknown, as happens when we move to a new industry or sector. Regardless of whether the changes we encounter are large or small, our career - i.e. our experience of work, including both effort expended and rewards reaped - stays with us. I believe the impact of this knowledge is important and far exceeds a mere difference in semantics. When we only associate ‘career’ with ‘profession’, we put ourselves in a position of vulnerability, since under this definition an external party (for example a company or boss) can strip away our career. When the evolved definition of ‘career’ is embraced, this perceived stripping away or loss is impossible.
Thought of in this new way, all of our careers are single entities. They become vessels within which our experience of work is not only whole but able to be examined, interpreted and validated as whole too. Accepting this definition also makes it irrelevant where or how we gained a particular lesson or set of skills. What matters much more is that the experience is ours. If a carpenter becomes an actor, s/he does not lose the ability to think and act in three dimensions. If a banker becomes an airline pilot, s/he does not forget how to assess and mitigate risk. The people who make this kind of work/life change have broken with old definitions and old ways of thinking. These brave, entrepreneurial souls - and there are a great many of them - prove to the rest of us who follow that we are all far more than our job titles and past activities will ever be able to describe.
Having specialized in career development for a number of years now, I have worked with a wide range of executives, from ‘Captains of Industry’ who rarely show moments of professional doubt, to people who have at times felt powerless to steer their own work lives, and have quite a negative view of work as a result. On the surface, these two ends of the spectrum may seem completely different, but as soon as individuals begin to consider the future of their working lives, the shared experiences start to appear. Even when a successful executive is flying high, s/he may fear for the future of his/her career, unsure of where to seek purpose and find identity after the ‘big job’. Similarly, workers, at their lowest point, may feel separated from the old notion of a career when their job or work changes or goes away. Regardless of level, people in these situations can feel stuck, powerless to navigate, and somewhat anxious when it comes to facing a future filled with uncertainty and doubt.
In my practice, I spend a great deal of time working with diverse career audiences. In every individual situation, my client and I work collaboratively to shift mindsets, unlock new routes forward and explore subsequent actions. The fact we all have one career that encompasses all of our working lives is perhaps the biggest conceptual shift anyone at any level can make, especially if they are stuck with the earlier interpretation. When we consider making a big change in our professional lives, we need not fear we are inevitably leaving value on the table. Instead, we can draw strength from knowing that our careers transcend categorization, that our experiences and learnings are cumulative and transferrable, and that we are the authors of our own work/life satisfaction. A mindset shift like this can turn a negative feeling into something more positive. What we have learned in our professional journey thus far can inform and improve our decision-making, and make us less anxious when we arrive at the inevitable forks in the road.
To anyone thinking about making a shift in their work/life, and especially to those in the second-half of their careers, I offer this insight: rather than changing books, you are moving through chapters in the same story, a story that remains yours whatever direction or changes in direction you take. Whatever circumstances have brought you to this moment of contemplation, no matter how external the forces that shape this moment may seem, the career you have had to this point is not coming to an end. The shape and direction of your future career is in your hands. As you consider different options and opportunities, think about everything you have done to date, even those moments you would rather not repeat, and glean from those memories (as only you can) insight about how you would like to go forward. It can take time and no small investment to undertake this level of career exploration but the journey and the result will feel utterly different. You will no longer necessarily feel lost, or alone, or that your future rests solely in the hands of others.
Some years ago, I worked with an experienced career development professional. When he was counseling a client, wherever there was significant career change, my colleague often gave a piece of advice that still resonates with me today: ‘The best form of career change is one that leverages everything you have gained in the past, and offers new opportunity as far as the eye can see’. When he said this, it always made sense and I think it still makes sense today. This same phrase is also a succinct way to encapsulate my position on the singular career. Every person has a career, every career undergoes change and every career lasts the length of our individual working lives. When you know this, making a switch at any point in your career becomes a different proposition altogether.
Paul Diamond is a career development consultant and author of The Career Explorer’s Journal, a best-selling companion guide to exploring your career.