Career Shift and How to Follow Your Gut
I recently wrote an article about leaving my old 9 – 5 as a corporate attorney, and it really got me thinking…what other career shift tips did I pick up along the way? Well, settle in because I’ve collected some of the best tips and tricks I picked up over the course of my two-year journey and I am sharing each of them with Y-O-U!
Follow Your Heart & Trust Your Gut
Ever heard the sayings, “follow your heart” and “trust your gut”? Well, since leaving the law, I’ve learned to combine them into what I’ve now dubbed the “follow your heart” rule. Basically, it goes a little something like this:
- When deciding to make a career shift, follow your heart from the very beginning and continue that mindset throughout your journey. Listen to your inner wisdom and let those dreams that set your heart on fire lead the way.
- At the same time, trust your gut and don’t take any nonsense along the way. If it seems fishy, it probably is. That goes for potential employers, clients, job opportunities, etc. Trust your gut, and you can almost certainly be sure that you won’t find yourself in an unnecessarily tricky situation!
Embrace Your Failures
Listen, you’re going to mess up. Probably in a seemingly huge way. That’s just how these sorts of life-changing decisions generally go. Instead of beating yourself up for being a living breathing human that makes mistakes, try to embrace these hiccups as the critical piece of the puzzle that they are.
In my own writing career, I’ve made all sorts of crazy mistakes, and I have to say, looking back now, they all made me a better and more professional writer in the end.
Count Your Pennies (and face your financial fears head-on)
Here’s a practical one that everyone can get behind: finances. If you’re debating a career shift, chances are pretty good that you’ve considered the financial impact this transition will have on your livelihood.
Depending on a scale of a difference you’d like to make, that impact could be pretty hefty. Before you up and quit your day job, spend a Saturday genuinely crunching the numbers. Make a budget.
Read more: Freelance Business Ideas to Get You On Your Feet
Figure out how much of your savings you’re willing to dip into during this transitionary period comfortably. Come up with a plan.
Trust me, you (and your wallet!) will be thankful when you aren’t falling behind on rent or going into massive debt…
Kick Your Inner Critic to the Curb
You’re going to feel a lot of self-doubts, probably more than you’ve ever felt in your entire life when deciding on a career shift. I find that it is helpful to give that self-doubt a name and persona (for me, her name is Becky, and she is such a piece of work!) so you can consciously say to yourself, “Okay Becky, whatever” and move on with your life!
Maintain an Open Attitude
There are going to be opportunities and ideas that pop up along your journey that you cannot even fathom right now. Trust me, that’s precisely what happened to me.
If you told me a year ago that I would be living in New York City and working on my first book proposal, I would have probably had you institutionalized. But that’s exactly what happened, and it’s all thanks to a series of crazy opportunities I had along the way.
Instead of trying to figure out the next 20-40 years of your life all at once (which, I mean, let’s be serious…is nearly impossible!), give in a little and see what happens.
Maintain an open attitude and accept cool new opportunities as they present themselves. You might just end up with a career that is such a perfect fit for you that you never even knew it existed!
Try a Bit of Gratitude
And, when all else fails, try incorporating a little gratitude into your day. When I first decided that I wanted to be a writer and make a career shift, I spent a lot of time stressing out about how exactly I was going to become a New York Times bestseller by the time I was 30.
And in the process, I completely missed out on most of the fantastic things that were happening to me every day! When I stopped stressing and, instead started being grateful for the things I did have, my life improved drastically.
In fact, I’ve since realized that this shift in mindset lead to some of the biggest opportunities in my career and paved the way for the new path I am on right now.
Not sure where to start with a gratitude practice? Try thinking of just three things you are grateful for before bed. They can be as simple as your pet, having your favorite cup of coffee in the morning, or even the weather. Whatever you choose, you’ll be surprised how much you have to be grateful for each and every day!
You might also like
