Twenty years from now, you will be more
disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So
throw off the bowlines and sail away from the safe harbor.
Mark
Twain
Why Midlife Career Changes?
Midlife can be a time of transition for many people.
Children have grown up and left home, parents may be nearing the end of their
lives, 20 or so years in a job may mean boredom. And, of course, there is the
natural movement towards considering the meaning of your life, a review of your
values and possibly a questioning of some decisions you've previously made. The
life you have built for yourself so that you can be comfortable may not
actually be the life of your dreams. Typically at this stage, the idea
of midlife career changes raises its head.
Motivation
Basically, there are two main reasons for men to change
their careers during midlife transition.
1. One is that midlife career changes may be more satisfying
and fulfilling than what's going on right now. Many people think that it would
allow them to be more themselves or express themselves in a different way.
This scenario leads to midlife career changes, and initially
the results of the achieved career changes look very promising. Everything is
new and different. But eventually, usually after pretty short period of time, the
individuals begin to express themselves in the very similar ways in their new
job functions as well. The same patterns begin to emerge and life gets back on
a track which was abandoned by the changes, but not entirely in most cases.
2. The second reason is that the men have experience some
kind of spiritual awakening, or substantial shift in awareness, of who they
actually are. Based on this experience, they look for a possible transition
into doing something that is more aligned with who they are becoming.
In this case, men first tend to develop very strong internal
awareness of themselves. Then they apply adequate decision making process to target
the things and activities to be doing. This approach causes your new career and
activities to lead to the emotional strengthening, great satisfaction, and
spiritual awareness.
Getting Out of the
Comfort Zone
It is said that
people advance their professional and intellectual level when they are out of
the comfort zone. It is important to understand that each day you remain at a
job you don’t love because the money is good you fall farther behind on your
long-term quest for financial freedom.
Making a mid-life career change is a lot harder than making
a career change when you are young. You’ve got a lot more to lose because you
have already worked your way a good bit up the ladder of success at the career
you are in today.
Your financial compensation is only part of the total pay
package you obtain from the work you do. More important in a long-term sense is
what you learn from doing the job. Your paycheck represents your
day-to-day profits. The skills you develop are the result of your long-term
research and development project. If you are missing out on the learning
experience that is part of the typical middle-class worker’s complete pay
package, you are missing out on something of great significance. Most of us are
only in the workforce for 40 to 45 years. So, if you pass up five years of
learning while you stick with a “good enough” job, you are falling behind in a
big way.
Don’t let the financial risks of changing jobs cause you to
stay too long at a job that no longer offers much long-term excitement or
potential. The financial risks of staying at a job where you are not continuing
to learn are often greater than the financial risks of making a well-planned
move to something you enjoy more.
Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow
There is a good bit of wisdom in the “Do What You Love”
maxim. It really is true that the most financially rewarding jobs go to those
doing work that so motivates them that they possess the energy to become the
absolute best at what they do.
All that said, the “Do What You Love” maxim does not address
a critical consideration that you must take into account when planning a
mid-life career change. When will the money follow? If you don’t get a
reliable income stream in place in time, you might not be able to stick it out
long enough at the new career to see the benefits of doing what you love ever
generate real-world financial profits for you.
It is a good idea to aim to do what you love. But knowing
what you love and developing the courage to chase the dream is not enough. You
need to have a plan in place before making a mid-life career change. Not just a
career plan. You need a financial plan to protect you from the downside risks
you take on in making such a dramatic life transition.
Monet is still
Important
There are lots of work issues that need to be taken into
account in putting together a plan for a mid-life career change. You need to
take tests to learn what sorts of things you are best equipped to do. You need
to talk to people now working in the career you hope to enter to see whether
jobs in that field are as enjoyable to those on the inside as they appear to be
to those on the outside. But no matter how much you do of that sort of thing,
you have not done enough to take the risk involved in handing in a resignation
from your current job in pursuit of a mid-life career change.
Doing that sort of thing is not enough because, no matter
how much you plan, you will never be able to anticipate every possible future
development that will affect your job satisfaction years down the road. Jump to
a new career without putting a financial plan into place to smooth out both the
current and future transitions, and there is a good chance that a few years
down the road you will be back in the same sorts of circumstances that caused
you to want to make the first mid-life career change.
Even career changes that are successful in the short-term
are often not so successful after a number of years pass by. You must explore
new career options if you are dissatisfied with the career you are in today.
But you must also accumulate the financial resources that will open up options
for future changes. Otherwise, you may find yourself five or ten years from now
as dissatisfied as you are today but also five or ten years older.
True Source of Job
Dissatisfaction
If you look deep enough in yourself and your working
environment, you might discover a surprising fact that it is not actually bad
boss that caused you to abandon your current career. It is also not a bad
corporate culture or frustrating economy. It’s you!
There are of course might be multiple real objective reasons
that may play significant role in causing you to be dissatisfied in your
career. But in most cases those outside forces are not the primary factor in
causing job dissatisfaction, and it is important for you to understand what the
primary factor is if you hope to pull off a successful mid-life career change.
Setting Goals at Mid-Life
While the idea of
midlife career changing sounds appealing and promising, in practice, it is
accompanying with multiple roadblocks and complications. Men, at these years,
still have to be a main family support, financial, psychological, and physical.
You may say that such a role model is not so important in our modern society
anymore. Yes and no, because the psychological, cultural, and societal changes
are not as fast as the technological or economic. Therefore, for most men it is
still an issue in their heads, no matter what their partners think or say, and
how much women add to the family budget.
Being at midlife
stage for people also mean belonging to the so called “sandwich generation”,
when they have to take an active care on children from one side and elderly
parents on another. For many, changing the career for a “dream one” can be an
unachievable goal, adding to the frustration and depression.
For men, dealing with disappointments in their careers can
be considered as one of the most difficult aspects of middle age. In his book The
Male Ego, Willard Gaylin, M.D., says that when men in our culture commit
suicide (which they do almost eight times as frequently as women), in most
cases the reason is “perceived social humiliation” related to business failure.
A “reorganization of life goals” is one of midlife’s
principal tasks, says Gilbert Brim, Ph.D., a social psychologist who heads the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful
Mid-Life Development in Vero Beach, Florida. For anyone who feels frustrated by
his professional progress so far, Dr. Brim recommends a three-step process of
career re-evaluation in his book Ambition: How
We Manage Success and Failure Throughout Our Lives.
1. Extend the
deadline. Many of us set arbitrary deadlines for ourselves, Dr. Brim says, and
then grow despondent when we’ve failed to meet them in the time allotted. The
simple solution is to grant yourself a reasonable extension. “You can tell
yourself, ‘Okay, I didn’t get rich this year. I’ll make it next year,’” says
Dr. Brim.
2. Lower your
aspiration. This is another instance of relieving self-induced pressure.
Shoot for making a hundred thousand dollars instead of ten million, Dr. Brim
says, or buy a cozy cottage on the beach instead of that 12-room Victorian
you’ve always dreamed of. One of the signs of midlife maturity is accepting
limitations.
3. Abandon the goal.
That might sound strange, but when all else fails, Dr. Brim says, give up on a
goal that’s not achievable. Again, an ability to accept reality is key to
successful midlife transitions. The goal is peace of mind, not winning some
sweepstakes you’ve created for yourself.
Similar exercises work, Dr. Brim adds, for those who have
achieved their goals and still feel dissatisfied-a group that is a lot larger
than you probably think. In this case the first alternative would be finding a
new, more ambitious goal to achieve; alternative two would be switching to a
new pursuit entirely. “Linus Pauling is a perfect example of that,” Dr. Brim
says. “After winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry, he switched to being a
world-peace leader.”
What Next?
Making such midlife career changes assessments affects how
you consider the remainder of your life. No longer is growing old associated
with all the so-called negative stuff, the changing body, the slowing down, and
so on. Instead there is a pleasure in simply being alive. You actually get more
creative. Neuroscientific studies show that the right and left sides of the
brain integrate even more fully in midlife. Much research shows that the ageing
brain actually grows stronger from use and challenge. As people age,
many negative emotions seem to be dampened. Many inhibitions are reduced or
disappear altogether.
You get to do those things that you have always dreamed
of... you begin to live the life that you should be living, the one
that is your own...
Sources and Additional
Information:
