"It’s Never too Late to Start Living a Life You Love"
John T. Carlsen, Psy.D., Director Home
773.975.4297 head
"It’s Never too Late to Start Living a Life You
Love"
John T. Carlsen, Psy.D., Director
Home
773.975.4297
head
Dr.
Carlsen's Top 10 Obstacles
to Getting the New Job You Want
Stop thinking of changing careers as "starting over". Instead, try to think of this adventure as taking a trip into a new area that provides you with new and exciting challenges. You will bring all of your skills and qualifications with you into this new arena. Even if you need to take an entry-level position to "get your foot in the door," you can find ways to move up the ranks very quickly. With the breadth of your previous experience, you will not stay new for long. To increase your confidence and reduce your fears, you need to think carefully about ways to re-package your qualifications for a different market. Outside perspectives can help you accomplish this.
What makes you too old? Where did you get this idea? Of course, employers in some industries - particularly trying to capture cutting edge trends of the youth market - might think of age as a hindrance. In their work, youthful perspective and experience are practically an essential job qualification. Other employers, however, view the accumulated wisdom of senior candidates as an asset worth paying for. Also, take some time to find out whether your own fears of age discrimination or ageism in the workplace have a basis in external reality. Or whether they are the product of your own internal fears and assumptions.
Examine your own attitudes: You might find that you are your own worst enemy. Have you simply converted other, more familiar, fears of exclusion into this new version? Do you have rigid expectations about how employers should respond to you or compensate you at this point in your life? Sometimes, as we grow older, we begin to use our age to rationalize and justify many of our disappointments. Yet, if you look closely enough, you might discover more accurate explanations. For example, your difficulties might actually stem from your resistance to change, your attitudes toward your colleagues, or your fear of failure rather than as a direct result of your age.
In the current job market, employees have many reasons for gaps in their work histories. Some have taken time away to pursue other life-long dreams of international travel or other creative pursuits. Others have stayed home to raise children or care for ill relatives. While most employers would want you to justify the time off, few of them actually care very much about what you were doing. They generally want to know whether you would leave their employment to pursue a similar experience in the future. Furthermore, as a parent you have probably gained a number of qualifications and skills that your new employer would find useful.
You need to take some time to analyze what you did specifically to see how you could apply them directly to your next job. And, don’t underestimate the personal qualities you have developed in becoming a successful parent: flexibility, adaptability, responsibility, dedication, perseverance, and financial accountability. Employers can always teach you the skills you need to do any job. They cannot, however, easily instill these qualities in a fully-grown adult.
Stop thinking of your liberal arts education as a liability and start seeing how it is a professional asset. Identify and articulate what your liberal arts study has taught you. Beyond the specific subject areas you have learned, you have developed a number of intangible abilities. These include: how to think crucially, how to analyze and synthesize information from different points of view, how to present your ideas verbally and in writing with clarity and precision, and how to maximize the contributions of people from different backgrounds. Also, take some time to fill in the gaps in your training.
Learn more technical skills by enrolling in workshops our courses at your local community college or adult education training program. Expand your definition of your potential by learning techniques outside your comfort zone. Regularly read technical magazine and newspaper articles. Again, your employer can teach you the technical skills you need to do any job. But, he or she will have a more difficult time teaching you how to learn or put information to use.
If financial obstacles get in the way of pursuing work you love, stop and set aside some time to think. Take stock of your current financial picture. Look for ways to reduce your monthly spending without seriously curbing your current lifestyle and responsibilities. Analyze the specific reasons you have for preserving this belief. Separate the realities of your financial situation from the beliefs that limit your ability to imagine a different future.
Take some time to weigh the importance of career/job satisfaction against the value of items for which you currently spend money. Often, as we reach middle and later stages of our adult lives, we need time to re-think and adjust our priorities to mach more closely with our current values. The reasons you chose your original career path may no longer hold the same meaning for your life. If you pause to reflect, you might realize that gaining fulfillment from your daily work has become more important than buying a larger home, taking more trips, or living a more extravagant lifestyle.
Despite years of dedication and hard work, you may not have reached your professional goals. Or, you may have experience great disillusionment and disappointment along your career path. The world of work might differ dramatically from what you had always expected: Your efforts might not have produced the results you wanted. You might have been passed over for a promotion to your dream job. The position you wanted might no longer exist in your company or your industry. Or, maybe, you rose through the ranks only to find that the place at the top leaves you feeling empty and un-fulfilled. Or you realize that the years you have spent moving down the fast track have left you going in the wrong direction.
Take some time and space to begin recovering from your disappointment. Maybe, you need to talk about your disappointment. Or, you need inspiration to re-define your dream and encouragement to pursue it in another environment. Maybe, you need to slow yourself down and revise your expectations so they reflect reality more accurately. As long as you have your health and vitality, you can regain the motivation to go after your dream again. You might simply need to stop long enough to take out your map and plot a new itinerary.
If you feel unhappy about your current job, you might have developed an attitude of continuing pessimism about the future. Immersed in a work environment with problems beyond your control, you might simply have adjusted to the situation and become hopeless about your ability to make changes or improvements. Often, people learn simply to live with the frustrations rather than risking further disappointment and facing the challenges associated with moving beyond the familiar. Fear always accompanies change. It keeps us from moving too quickly into the unknown.
Maybe, you need time to take some small steps and explore what lies outside your current reality. You might need the chance to expose yourself to new ways of thinking about your situation. And, maybe you need some novel experiences that show you what is possible. Be grateful for your fear and learn to use it as a guide in taking reasonable, manageable steps toward success in your new adventure.
If you were always jealous of people who seemed to know where they were going, this might be your biggest challenge. In a society that tells each of us to settle down and focus on a single interest, you end up feeling deprived and unnecessarily limited. Stimulated by too many possibilities, you might have settled on one of several coping strategies. You might have trouble staying focused long enough to lay out plans to explore your options. Or, you might have become stuck in the career exploration phase, too afraid to take steps to bring your dreams into reality. You might have spent the past few years dabbling in several jobs along the way, learning something from each of them but feeling directionless about the future. Or, you might have forced yourself to adapt to a single career path, restricting your options and increasing your feelings of deprivation.
You probably need to start by recognizing your need for creative stimulation and inspiration. Explore jobs that incorporate many of your interests at once. Or, find out which kinds of work offer variety by changing focus throughout the year. At the least, you deserve to start enjoying, rather than suffering from, your numerous areas of interest.
You might have made several attempts to find a career direction. After taking some time to find more about possible jobs, you have found that you have lost interest early in the process. For as long as you can remember, nothing has truly ignited your interest. You have simply settled for continuing down the path you started. Yet, looking around at your peers, you have started to realize that you might have missed something: So many others seem more satisfied and challenged by their work while you see yourself plodding along in your routine. One source of frustration might lie in your passive approach to life. While others have taken action to reach their goals, you have always started by noticing how you would fail if you started. You might need to begin by simply picking a goal and sticking with it. Once you realize you can take action to affect your future, you will have an easier time continuing this new pattern.
Losing your position after a company down-sizing, restructuring or consolidation is always devastating. Whatever the reason, and regardless of how your employer compensates you, the feelings of anger, powerlessness, hopelessness, and fear for the future can become overwhelming. This is especially true if you have invested a great deal of yourself in your work: You cannot help but take the decision personally. Generally, if you do not find some way to come to terms with your emotional reactions, they will prevent you from moving on successfully. And, they might influence your effectiveness in changing directions.
You deserve time and support to express your feelings, analyze your options, and re-group your energy for the next step. And, you need time to develop a plan that allows you to take small, concrete, and realistic steps toward your goals. Continuing to see small successes will enable you to reduce your fears of the future and gradually restore your confidence in your abilities.