The Top Career Road Blocks and How to Hurdle them.

Part 2 of a 10 part series in making your career change happen. Stay tuned to get there...

Road Block Two Perfection Paralysis

The second major roadblock when it comes to changing careers, is the massive and extremely common fear of choosing the wrong thing.  You literally get so paralysed by indecision that you don’t choose anything at all. And the next thing you know another few years have gone by and you’re still stuck in the wrong job.

It might sound something like this to you

1. I have so many different ideas, how do I know which one will be best?
2. Is there something else out there that would be perfect for me?
3. What if I make a mistake and land up not enjoying my job again!

All of these questions and concerns are of course a direct result of Road Block One – i.e trying to do a career change in your head. Though, yes, you need to have an understanding of yourself - your strengths, needs and optimum environments to weigh things against - these do not point only to one profession or solution. The reality is that there may be MANY possibilities that would suit you, that are fundamentally satisfying, each dependent on your situation and needs at the time. And so it is less about the ‘perfect’ choice and more about ‘good’ choices - and to make good choices you need to arm yourself with information.

The trick then, is to follow your ideas through further, so that you can flesh out your understanding of these areas. Otherwise its like trying to decide whether you will actually like a certain wine by looking at the label. You might have a pretty good sense of whether you will or not, but you only know for sure when you taste it. So RESEARCH your options well - ideally by talking to people who do the work, shadowing etc rather than getting overwhelmed and demoralised by an unwieldy Google search.

Doing so achieves a number of things:

• It could confirm a possibility as a good one, arming you with the informed confidence to act.
• You may find that your research takes you to into a whole new arena that you would never have arrived at, had you not started to put out feelers in the first place.
• You might also find you discount ideas that hitherto were appealing, because you find that the reality of these professions is quite different from what you had imagined. And for anyone who has too many ideas to choose from, this is a useful conclusion as it narrows your options and helps you to actually hone in on the rest.

The other possibility of course is that you might not want to do just one thing. It is becoming more and more commonplace for us to have a couple of different work strands, each serving our needs in very different ways; and together adding up to a rich way of living and working. This has the advantage too of taking the huge pressure of choice off your shoulders, allowing you to experiment and let things evolve rather than making a black and white decision that in reality can be a stark, forced and artificial way to move ahead.

With all of these you need to start somewhere though, so pick one idea, ideally starting with the one that appeals the most, and follow it through….you may be surprised where it leads you.

© Sonia Lakshman May 2010