Assessing A Career Change
- Part 2

Here are some more myths, secrets and tips to consider when you are assessing a career change.

Over and Under

A point to consider is that people tend to overestimate the amount of things they will get done in one year. They also underestimate the amount of things that they can do in 10. This goes some way to explaining the failure of up to 80% of small businesses within a year.

After only one year, people simply consider they haven't achieved enough, and that it's not going to work out. So they give up, return to assessing a career change again and change direction once more. Whereas when people stick to one thing, over five or 10 years they achieve much more than they ever thought possible.

Too old?

Think it's too late for a career change? Advice you've received generating a fear that you might have missed the boat and that age is against you?

Colonel Saunders of Kentucky fried chicken fame was 59 years of age when he decided that he had a recipe worth selling. He travelled a hell of a lot of miles over the next four years until he found somebody who was willing to make the decision to endorse his product.

George Eliot might be onto something. "You're never too old to be what you might have been."

Just live longer!

Did you know that people who love what they do for a living, who are following their passion, actually live longer? Research has shown that of the multitude of factors contributing to long life, job satisfaction is a better predictor than healthy living habits or even genetics.

Not all a bed of roses!

Do what you love and the money will follow. Another myth to be aware of when assessing a career change. There are huge numbers of talented people out there who have amazing skills and are not rich from it. There are others who have mediocre skills and know how to generate massive amounts of income with it.

You will need to learn new skills. You will need to learn and do things that you haven't even considered yet. One of them may even be how to make a decision! Many of these particular things you won't find out until you take the steps.

Are you crazy?

When you start out on this path there may be times when you think you've made a mistake. You may have regrets. You may ask yourself are you crazy!

At some point, it could be after one year or it could be after 10 years, you will realize that you would have been crazy not to make that move.

When I think back to when I left my career as a Plastic Surgeon, I decided that I wanted to do personal development work of some sort. There was virtually no consideration on my part of how I would make it work, or how long it would take, or even where I would end up. Not a huge amount of time spent assessing a career change at all.

But I knew that I had found something that fascinated me and I was determined to be good at it. I also knew that if I never compromised myself that I could easily learn to do the things that I needed to do, so that I could have what I wanted. My own life!

The ultimate advice when assessing a career change

If you're assessing a career change, keep these words of Joseph Campbell in mind:

If you find these ideas about assessing a career change useful, and you want to know more about how you may have gotten to where you are today, you can get more career change advice here.

And there are more useful ideas in Part 1.

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