Career Change
After 40

Where to?

A career change after 40 can be a tricky situation. Do you continue along the same track because it is comfortable familiar and secure? Or do you do what you've always dreamed of, but just haven't dared to up to now?

It's very easy and tempting to continue doing what you have been doing. You have the skills and the abilities, you have a fairly good idea how it will all pan out. You know what to expect. And therein lies the dilemma. You know what to expect so it will be comfortable and familiar.

But it may also be boring, dull, and unsatisfying.

Exciting times

And at the same time, a career change after forty can mean that there are lots of options available to you and you're undecided as to which road to take.

The question is do you have a framework in place for making decisions of this nature? How do you even begin to consider a career change after 40?

The usual thing...

Much of the advice available is to make a list of your skills and previous jobs and divide them into those you like and those you do not.

Some career change advice suggests that you ought to organize your career change after 40 around the best you that you can be, to find what you are passionate about, but don't tell you how exactly to do this.

But wait...!

But what if you take a step back for a moment, and consider you.

You're not the same person you were 20 or 30 years ago. How much of that change has occurred because of external circumstances? How much, if any, occurred because of a deliberate intention on your part?

For many people what occurs is that external circumstances seems to guide them in a particular direction. The experiences they then have begin to mould their character. And at some point along the way, they realize that they are not actually living their own lives any more.

The easiest thing is to begin to do different things in an attempt to make your life different. Consideration of a career change at 40 is a very common phenomenon for this reason.

Who's life do you want?

What if you could actually work it the other way around? What if you knew how to establish a very strong sense of yourself, first and foremost? A position that generated a sense of satisfaction, contentment and success just by its very nature... then you could make decisions about what to be doing so that you could keep this sense of yourself intact. Then a career change at 40 would not just be an attempt to have your life be different. Your career change after 40 would occur as a result of who you are and allow you to have the life that you want!

The trick

It means of course, that you have to be able to establish who you are, and then to make decisions based on this.

And what happens is that your career change after forty allows you to create a certain loop. A loop where who you are determines what you do and what you do strengthens who you are.

So you find yourself living a life that is both challenging and fulfilling at the same time. A life within which you do what you love and love what you do...

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