Is change or a new perspective required?

Do you feel like your job has control of you rather than the other way around?

When you’ve had a bad day at the office it can be a real release to go home and download to your other half about your frustrations. The question is though, do you want them to listen, sympathise or give advice or any combination of these? If you don’t know, they probably don’t know either, so don’t be surprised if you don’t get quite what you bargained for. Added to which, your partner may find it difficult to stay neutral when the potential impact of your discord may affect the whole family.

For some, it can be hard to hear you downloading the misery of your frustrating day at the office without wanting to go beyond the sympathy you may appreciate and instead start to come up with solutions to your predicament.

It isn’t uncommon in our forties to question the job or career we’re in and whether it is what we want to do for the rest of our working life or not. You may feel that you’re in the wrong job or that the job hasn’t panned out the way you anticipated when you started out.

What can also make some uncomfortable over time is when they feel like they’re drifting along and that the job has more control of them than the other way around. Added to which, we usually have major family commitments, financial and otherwise, which mean we need to be in control of our destiny even if we don’t feel we can be as fleet of foot when it comes to jumping from one career to another without a backward glance. 

A major career overhaul may be in order to find career satisfaction and financial security for the future, however, often just the act of establishing what is most important to us and the role work can play as part of our overall ambitions can give us back control and clarity of purpose. What we’re doing right now may not need to change dramatically, although a few tweaks and a change of perspective may be in order. Added to this, we may decide that some of the things that can’t be delivered within work can be pursued separately. 

You may be considering a complete change of career, a change of employer or a change of industry, or any combination of the three!  Alternatively, a few changes to your current role, clarity on a way forward and validation that this is a choice and not a foregone conclusion, may be all that is needed to make all the difference to how you see the world and your place in it. 

Here are 12 questions to get you started: 

1. What will happen if things at work stay the same?

2. What needs to change?

3. What do you like most about your job?

4. Assuming there were no obstacles, what would you change to make your job better?

5. How will you remove any obstacle?

6. Who can help you?

7. What is the first thing you will do to make these changes?

8. Who can help you?

9. Where else can you look? Do you need any training?

10. How will you know that the changes have delivered for you?

11. By what date does change need to happen?

12. How will making these changes positively affect other areas of your life?

Life coaching can a provide a neutral and confidential sounding board and work with you to break down your challenges and barriers, create meaningful goals and take the steps towards living the fulfilling, purposeful life you want, your way.