There’s something I see happening all the time to professionals who are stuck at some sort of career crossroads. It’s especially common with seasoned professionals and ‘wanna-preneurs’. But you can make this mistake at any time.
Here’s what I mean…
People who get stuck struggling for career transformation are attempting to consume a lot of free information and piece the solution together themselves.
They are well-intentioned. They’re successful, highly-competent people. Sometimes they’ve been gathering knowledge and working on themselves for some time.
They are trying to get started on making change happen. They use the logic of ‘I can’t afford…’, or ‘I don’t need outside support’, and work on sorting it out themselves instead.
But they chew through a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how to realign what they do with the life they want to lead because they’re doing it on their own, in a vacuum.
No amount of reading can give you bespoke guidance for your next career step.
Of course, that doesn’t work well. Because the logic is flawed. Why? Because your situation is unique to you. No article can give bespoke guidance for your next career step because action needs to fall from applying that advice to you.
Here’s what happens when you try to make change happen from free information alone:
- Information overload takes hold
- None of what you consume is personalised to you, so if it’s good quality, it provokes thought but then you get stuck again
- It’s free, so you don’t act on it and you have no way to stay accountable even if you do take a first step
- The barrier to investing in proper support grows ever bigger because you’re losing money all the time you try solving your career problem on your own
- You feel less and less aligned because you feel ever more certain it is critical to make change happen, but aren’t acting on that.
Unless you change something, nothing will change. So, in most cases, the people who tell themselves that they can’t justify investing in support are actually the very people who need it most.
As a leadership coach, I’m working with people who are smart and already successful – and still see too often that they fall victim to this mis-step.
Being really candid, if you feel stuck in a cycle of solving your career problem on your own, you can’t afford NOT to get support. Ironically, the tipping point to putting support in place is recognising you haven’t been able to accomplish what you want on your own. And need help to get unstuck.
The only reason I say all this is because I used to be in the same camp. I couldn’t stand to invest in my business idea, my coaching – myself, actually for the longest time. It slowed me down by literally years.
The best investment I ever made was in coaching. And I’d already invested in my 2nd psychology degree, and (rigorous!) leadership coach training after that. Even though it was deeply uncomfortable, scary really. I just knew it was time. Time to put my money where my mouth was. Time to stop trying and do it. So, I pressed play, finally. And then, having accrued lots of knowledge and done much ‘work’, getting the support of my own coach was what helped me get into action and saw that change stick.
Fast forward to today and I know I’m fortunate enough to have a successful business where I get to help people make purposeful career change happen every single day.
That’s why I created my career redesign coaching formula for people who want – and are truly ready – to act on a plan realigning work they love with the things that really matter to them.
What will it take for you to get into action?
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