Career Change

A lot has happened since I last wrote in to AAC… I decided to take a stress leave from work, and I sought out career counselling. I’ve had two sessions with the career counsellor so far – we started with an assessment to look at my strengths/interests/skills etc. and then today we went over my results.

What came up through the career counselling was that she said “It sounds like you really want to start your own business” – and she’s right, all my energy and excitement is wrapped up building my own business right now and I have a lot of motivation and interest for it. All the test results on my strengths/interests/skills aligned with the business – and the skills/interests required in my current job do not align. So the next stage of the career counselling will be to focus on building a business plan and receive small business coaching.

But it’s left me wondering – why do I have so much resistance to the idea of going all in on my business? For a long time I’ve had the idea in the back of my mind that I would eventually stop working in environmental advocacy… I don’t know where this thought comes from exactly, because I identify so strongly with the environment as my cause or issue that I work on. So to think about this field of work not being a part of my life or interest anymore fills me with a lot of resistance… At the same time I am absolutely fascinated by anyone who leaves this line of work and goes on to do something else. Someone I know who has worked in environmental campaigning for decades left recently to become a historic tour guide in their city and for some reason I just absolutely love that. But how can I even think about giving up my thing when it’s been the thing I’ve wanted to do since I was 10 years old? While in many ways I’ve sort of seen this coming for years, in other ways I just feel really perplexed and bewildered that this is where I’m landing and the direction I’m starting to move in… And I’m just wondering if you can help me to unpick some of this bewilderment and start to make sense of it all? How can I reconcile myself with this massive identity shift?

 

 

Answer:

Celebrating you making the choices you needed to make to support yourself!

I would start by questioning these thoughts:

I’m giving up my thing that I’ve wanted since I was 10 years old.

This is a massive identity shift.

Do some exploring around them. Are they true? Do they serve you? Who would you be without these thoughts? How can you zoom out when your brain wants to put you in such a narrow view?

The second part is to be on to your brain. Why does it actually serve you to stay bewildered? What is your brain most afraid of? If you made a list on a page, one side is “staying in environmental advocacy” and the other is “going all in on my business”. Then just free write all your thoughts, feelings and beliefs under each category. (this is not a pro/con list, be much more open than that) See what picture comes into focus. You’ll find your answers there.