Well, how old are you? I say that you are only as old as you let yourself believe you are, AND the answer is no, you are never too old to change jobs. Here are three reasons people may want to change their careers:
1. They chose a career to pay the bills and now that they have the house, the toys, money invested, and they are secretly yearning to do something different. Something more in line with their passions.
2. They feel stagnated and unmotivated. Getting up in the morning to go to work is a daily struggle.
3. They want to get into consulting or start their own business and don’t know where to start.
Whether you need to work past retirement age because of finances or you’re simply not ready to retire, finding more meaningful employment after a long career is a must if you want to live life with purpose and fulfillment. When you are not happy at work, you may reminisce about better times when you were able to enjoy yourself, and this can lead to feeling stuck and depressed. On the other hand, finding work that you are passionate about makes you look at the future and look forward to each day. You will be energized and most importantly, you will feel younger and yes, look younger. Excitement is like a fountain of youth.
Making a Career Change
I coached Sarah, a 60-year-old woman and CEO. Sarah had been laid-off due to restructuring and was struggling with depression, not because she was laid-off, but because everyone around her was telling her to retire. They would tell her that she did not need to work, or that she had plenty of money and her husband was retired. Why would she want to work?
She could not quite put her finger on why she was feeling so depressed. She had this idea of helping CEOs and executives and began to look at the possibilities and opportunities encompassing this idea. All of a sudden, throughout the course of our discussions, she realized that she was not ready for retirement. She did not want to retire just yet, and now she is working as a consultant, helping CEOs and start-ups, four days a week and on her own terms.
Unless you do want to retire and not work another day of your life, it is never too late to change your career, especially if you are motivated to do so and passionate about what you do.
The Future of Work
We are at the beginning of a new age of employment. We had the Industrial Age when everything changed to mass production and the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines. In the mid-twentieth century, the Information Age began. We are now heading into an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is progressing towards Intelligent Automation (IA). This is a combination of artificial intelligence and robotic process automation, or what we can now call, THE FUTURE OF WORK.
In the book: INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION: Learn how to harness Artificial Intelligence to boost business & make our world more human, authors Pascal Bornet, Ian Barkin and Jochen Wirtz, explain intelligent automation, and how leading organizations can harness its full potential. My biggest takeaway, however, is its claim that IA can save 10+ million lives per year, triple our global budget for education, eliminate hunger, help protect our planet, or increase the resilience of society to pandemics and crises.
The profits from this book will be donated to charities that support education about new technologies for people in need.
If you think about it, many of the jobs we don’t like to do will be automated and there will be more jobs out there that are more enjoyable, satisfying and meaningful. Not only could it eliminate boring jobs, it will create more jobs that people will enjoy doing.
I know what you’re thinking. What does this have to do with my career change?
Hang in there, I’m getting there.
Midlife Career Change
First, we are living longer. What are we to do with our time in retirement? Even the Queen has not stopped working, and she’s in her 90s and always has a smile on her face.
What if you don’t know what you want to do? If you’re asking yourself that question, it’s because you don’t know your strengths, accomplishments and your transferable skills.
Let’s take a look at these 3 things:
1. Strengths
Sit down and make a list of the strengths you think you have. A great tool to get you started is one or more personality tests. Here are two that are free and only take 10 minutes to do:
2. Accomplishments
Writing down your accomplishments and writing about ourselves is hard. I get it. You will most likely say things like:
i. I don’t know
ii. I don’t like to brag
iii. I can’t sell myself
If you don’t know yourself and what you want, how can you go for it? How will you recognize it when it’s in front of you? I love helping people identify their accomplishments, especially the things that come naturally to them because they often don’t think of them as accomplishments. After going through my approach, they are amazed at all the things they have done. Finding joy and purpose in work is essentially getting paid for what you love to do.
3. Transferable skills
You have accumulated invaluable skills throughout your career. Skills-based hiring is the wave of the future and the solution to more efficiently and effectively connect talent with opportunity. Can you transfer your skills to a dream job? Hell yeah!
Career change ideas
Change can be uncomfortable and stressful, however, staying in your comfort zone, after a while, can become boring. Doing things outside your comfort zone is a great way to understand yourself on a different level. It’s energizing, exciting and good for your brain. Have I mentioned it can reverse aging?
We are at our very best, and we are happiest when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile. – Earl Nightingale
If you are thinking of changing careers and don’t know where to start, sign-up for my newsletter to get my free pdf of transferable skills on 5 Careers You can Transition Towards.
Please write a comment below, would love to hear from you about your thoughts on a career change.
Are you thinking of changing your career, but feel it’s too late? Book a complimentary
30-minute Coffee Chat to discuss your next career move.