If you should change your career, that is something only you can answer and nobody else. No one in any forum can answer it for you and my blog also won’t answer that. It’s odd right because the title says so? I tell you why; I don’t know you and answering such an important question without knowing you, sounds completely wrong. Now, of course, I want to help you, even though I don’t know you. So with this blog, I want to make you aware of some factors that may influence you in your decision unconsciously.
Sometimes we have studied and worked in a field for many years. As a result and the older we turn, we become experts in a certain field. Because of that, it can make us feel comfortable to stay and we also enjoy the idea of the perks that often come with growing in a career “a higher salary” for example, or a different position “being a manager instead of an entry-staff”. These are externalities though, and if you don’t like your career, then these externalities won’t compensate for your level of dissatisfaction with the general career. That’s a bit of what keeps you drained when you come home.
Now you could think okay, but well you succeeded in this career and a different career is really new so you don’t know if you succeed there. The reality is that if you succeeded somewhere, a place that even does not seem to fulfill you, then you likely also succeed somewhere different and even more, if that place fulfills you. It’s a bit like not feeling drained of your energy that will be compensated with long hours of TV or shopping, but the energy used may make you feel a bit tired, but in a good way.
Yet, you may still think that you won’t succeed and that the stakes are too high because you would be new to something new. Here, the reality is that you already have certain skill sets that made you be in a career not of liking. Now, when you switch a career these skill sets don’t suddenly vanish into thin air, but they can often be used for a different job or career path as well. It means that often we think there is a clear-cut, a start 0 – a reminder of being a pre-schooler again, when in fact it’s not a start zero. A cashier with a beautiful soul will probably do a fantastic job in another profession in which talking is just as important. Or a chemist might do a great job as a doctor, because of his skill set to understand synergies and systems.
For this paragraph, I randomly forgot what I wanted to write about, which reminds me that we often don’t know what the future will bring, even if we had it planned out well or imagined it to be different. For example, studying Y to become D, but then realizing that D is not what we want and we want to do K instead now. Likewise, we don’t know if K will satisfy us, but at least we know that D does not. So doing the mathematics of staying in D vs K, we likely lose if we stay with D (adding a year of big fat energy – and that year after year until we retire and then die).
Now, should you change your career? I really don’t know that, but it may be suitable to identify factors that make you stay;
- Do you want to stay because of externalities like perks and a position?
- Do these externalities compensate for that feeling of feeling drained?
- What scares you about staying? Is it because of what others think of you, or maybe what you think of yourself? And if you stay, because you don’t want to disappoint anyone (it happens), what about disappointing yourself?
Lastly, oftentimes we think that we have only one life, which makes us want to plan our life. The reality is that we have only one life, which means that if we plan our life and do what we think we should do, or what is expected, or follow how we imagined our career to play out, then we likely have missed out on the opportunity that life has to offer itself. It means, that if you don’t dare to fail, or risk being happy – in a new career – then with certainty you will stay in a career in which you will stay with certainty unhappy.
Of course, there are more factors to career changes or not, which makes me write; I would like to hear and chat with you. What makes you think or not think about changing a career?
AnnJoest 
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