Career Changers: Listen To Your Own Advice

If you had juicy apples growing in your back garden, would you go travelling to the shops each week to buy apples..?

If you lived on a farm that produced wholesome milk, would you travel to your local supermarket to buy a pint of milk each week?

Maybe….occasionally.

But most of the time, most people would not. They would instead consume the naturally produced version at home (after all, home produced is always healthier and always sweeter:))

So why is it that when you’re searching for answers to your career dilemma’s you go searching elsewhere when many of the answers are at home – inside you.

I hear many people saying “Oh, I don’t know what to do next…” and constantly searching externally for the answers – they sit on the internet for hours trying to find new careers; they ask friends, family and colleagues for advice.

Now there is nothing wrong with doing any of these things.

But when you really don’t know what it is you want to or can do next  - what’s required is for you to step back and listen to yourself much more than the outside world. When you lose the stress, give yourself some space to think and reflect so that you can tune into your gut  – your intuition starts to guide you. Ideas and inspiration start coming your way. Chance conversations start turning into exciting avenues to explore.

Does all this “listening to yourself stuff” give you the full answer…?

No, not really. In fact rarely will you have the whole thing figured out. Instead what you will get from yourself are clues.

But when you’re making a career change and don’t know what to do – *clues* are exactly what you want.

Clues are the lifeblood for career changers. Clues send you on a journey to review and investigate news roles and new careers to see how well they match your skills and interests. Clues will very often send you down blind alleys initially, but will usually lead to something. A new friend, a new lesson, a lead or an insight. All these may not make sense at the time, but the dots very often join up further down the line when you look back.

So start becoming much more aware of what your own career advice is. Where is your intuition guiding towards? What’s the next step you can take to start fact finding and experimenting..?

Am I suggesting you don’t use the internet or ask advice of others…? Not at all.

In the same way that I wouldn’t say “don’t go to the supermarket” if you lived on a farm, I’m not saying don’t ask others for advice and don’t search on the internet for ideas. (After all, the internet is what brought you to this article!)

Just ensure you don’t go searching externally for the whole solution when very often the clues and solutions are right inside you. And just like life on a farm, it’s worthwhile remembering that home grown advice is often much healthier and much sweeter than going outside…..
 

By Sital Ruparelia, Cross Posted on the 6 Figure Career Management Blog

Comments

[Paul]

Great job Sital, I liked reading this very much. This is so true and the concept is almost universal in its application. So often in my life when problems arise I always try and ifugre out how I can manipulate people, places, and things around me to conform to what I envision to be 'right' when in reality I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world, but what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes. For job seekers, usually the best actions, and coincidentally - the ones that require the least amount of work - are figuring out yourself, your ideas, and your motives - before you begin looking for whatever it is your looking for. Take care out there everyone.