6 STEPS TO RE INVENTING YOUR
CAREER
By: Patricia Soldati - [work]
Posted 06/14/05
Meaningful work honors the deepest
part of your being. It is the embodiment of your gifts and talents and all that
you value. Finding it in a safe, smart way requires these six steps:
1. Soul Searching. Your journey begins with some intriguing self-examination.
This step goes beyond looking at your work experience and skills. You also
consider your values, interests, and personality preferences. This can be done
informally through the use of specially-designed exercises or it can be done
formally through professional assessment testing. Taken all together, the
soul-search phase allows you to come up with a comprehensive personal profile
that will help you develop future work possibilities.
2. Identifying Options. The key word here is ''options''..not ''answers''. In
this step, you use your profiling ''clues'' from Step 1 to brain- and
heart-storm as many possibilities for future work as possible. This is one of
the most creative parts of the change process - and best done with one or more
friends or colleagues who have a broad view of the business marketplace.
At about this point, it's important to begin to create a compelling future
vision for your work and life. The act of creating your vision is inspiring, and
it can actually help to pull your career change journey forward.
3. Testing. Testing has three purposes. The obvious one is to avoid making a big
mistake by jumping to a solution too fast. The not-so-obvious purposes are to
network more deeply into an area that you think you might like to make a career
of, and to learn as much as you can about it from an inside perspective rather
than from afar. It is experimentation with a purpose - while you keep an open
mind and heart.
4. Crafting Your Transition Plan. Out of your testing comes a clear path - where
you can set a specific new career goal and create the strategy and steps that
will get you there. Your goal may be radically different work, the same work in
a different environment or starting a new business or some combination of these
three.
5. Implementation. During the Implementation phase - which can begin even before
you leave your current employer -- you begin to put pieces of your transition
plan into action. You may begin a course of study, reduce your expenses, if
warranted, and/or even make physical preparations such as relocation or building
a home office. Of course, to minimize your personal and financial risk, you want
to do as much as possible while you are still working.
6. Integration. Seekers often think that once the shift is made, their career
transition is complete. I think it's more accurate to call it the ''beginning of
the end''. A physical transition into new work is one thing - but transitioning
our ''underneath'' layers (like work patterns, assumptions) is another thing
entirely.
Career change typically takes from one to three years. And the tendency is to
just 'jump in' anywhere. It helps to have a big picture view and to know that
there actually is real method to the madness!
Patricia Soldati is a former President and COO of a national finance
organization who re-invented her working life in 1999. As a career change
specialist, she uses business savvy, coaching skills and ''possibility
thinking'' to guide burned out corporate professionals into soul-satisfying
work, safely and smartly. For 5 complimentary Career Change Lessons, visit
www.findworkyouloveandthrive.com/catlibrary/5lessonslandpage.html
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