|
Articles on Jobseekers Advice
If you would like to submit an article
to Jobseekers Advice, then please feel free to
contact us. We are always looking for a wide range of articles
dealing with career advice, CV advice, interview advice, working abroad,
employment issues, education and training and other recruitment or careers
related topics. The articles can be the result of professional
experience or personal insight - we are looking to offer all points of
view.
|
|
The Mid-Life Challenge:
Make a Plan to Re-ignite Vocational Passion
By Craig Nathanson, The Vocational Coach™
Nobody will stop you in the hallway at work to ask if your career
provides meaning and personal fulfilment. Recognizing that
something’s missing in your vocational life and taking the
initiative to change must come from within.
Serena Williamson found a way to turn her passion — helping writers
hone their skills in order to get published — into the catalyst for
a new, more fulfilling life. Serena now runs her own small
publishing house.
Software engineer Bonnie Vining needed a new career that would value
her warm personality, not suppress it. So she left the high-tech
world and opened Javalina’s Coffee and Friends.
After Anita Flegg lost her engineering job, she embarked on a
program of self-improvement. The journey led to personal discoveries
and her calling: She provides information and support to those who,
like her, suffer from hypoglycaemia.
I have found that many high achievers who lose enthusiasm for their
work share common traits:
- Their work has little connection to the things they really care
about. Work is a barrier rather than a path to fulfilment.
- While they may be doing something they’re good at, it isn’t
something they want to do. Unfulfilled professionals haven’t taken
time to align their abilities with their interests.
- They have never made a long-term plan to guide them toward a more
fulfilling vocational life. They tend to set short-term goals, or
set no goals at all.
- As they reach mid-life and understand the need for meaning, they
turn to their current workplace as a source of what’s missing. Most
organizations, though, are structurally incapable of providing
nourishment for the soul. So the mid-life employee’s frustration
grows.
Mid-lifers like Serena, Bonnie, and Anita take stock of their lives
and careers. They develop a plan to re-ignite their energy and
enthusiasm for work. The process involves a number of steps, but the
common thread involves taking responsibility for making life
changes. Here’s how:
- Identify what’s most important to you, then develop and work a
plan to get there. The plan should involve short-term goals that
lead to a long-term objective. When Bonnie decided that engineering
management was no longer for her, she applied the discipline of the
corporate world to her new career: owning a gourmet coffee shop.
Bonnie learned everything she could about specialty coffees and how
to run a coffeehouse. She made good use of experts in the field. She
then moved quickly toward her goal of opening Javalina’s Coffee and
Friends in Tucson, Ariz. The thorough approach increased her chance
of success.
- Make a list of your abilities and interests, and then see how they
match. You may be doing something you’re good at, but don’t enjoy.
Instead, find something you enjoy and then learn what it takes to
get good at it. Serena was fortunate that her vocational calling was
right under her nose. For years she helped friends and colleagues
improve their writing skills through informal coaching sessions. She
realized that the gift for teaching others how to transform ideas
into prose wasn’t just a hobby. It was a vocational calling. Today,
she runs Book Coach Press, which has launched 13 book titles
(including my own “P is for Perfect: Your Perfect Vocational Day”).
- Don’t be afraid to move toward your goals. Many people understand
the need for change but are frozen in place. There’s fear that we
may be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. When Anita lost
her engineering job, she avoided self-pity and instead grasped the
possibilities of her new freedom. She began a journey of
self-discovery that uncovered a long-undiagnosed illness,
hypoglycaemia and with it a new calling. She soon wrote a book on
hypoglycaemia. Now, she helps others understand and manage the
disease. Anita turned what could have been a series of unfortunate
events into a new calling that has brought vocational passion to her
life.
Remember: No one will pull you aside at work, look you in the eye,
and ask if you’re really happy with your career and your life. The
power to understand what’s missing and do what’s necessary to find
it is yours alone. Take responsibility for change, and change will
happen.
Craig Nathanson is The Vocational Coach™ and the author of the new
book, P Is For Perfect: Your Perfect Vocational Day by Bookcoach
Press and the publisher of the free Ezine, ‘’Vocational passion in
mid-life’’. Craig believes the world works a little better when we
do the work we love. Craig Nathanson helps those in mid-life carry
this out! Visit his on-line community at
http://www.thevocationalcoach.com
|
|
