I<\/span>n an era of increased life expectancy, very few people will have a job for life, and no one will have the same job for life.<\/p>\n Managing career change and navigating the physical, intellectual, and emotional challenges of increased diversity, disruption, and volatility in the modern workplace are the key challenges for life in the 21st century.<\/p>\n Having reached what I call \u201cthe springtime of my senility,\u201d I have been obliged to navigate many such career shifts.<\/p>\n In my 20s and 30s, I worked all over the world as an international conference interpreter for major international institutions and heads of state and government at their World Economic Summits.<\/p>\n My controversial best-selling sportsbook then catapulted me into a new career of writing, broadcasting, and professional public speaking, a portfolio career that saw me through my 30s and 40s.<\/p>\n In my 40s and 50s, the world of business beckoned, and I helped create a high-end residential construction company.<\/p>\n My 50s and 60s were spent expanding a blue-chip business development network. Still, in my mid-60s, the greatest career challenge of all emerged: the offer of a Fellowship at the Distinguished Careers Institute at Stanford University \u2013 the epicenter of Silicon Valley and cradle of advanced technology with its ground-breaking start-ups, including Google and Facebook.<\/p>\n I spent transformative two years working in tandem with multi-generational, multi-cultural, and multi-disciplinary teams, including at Stanford\u2019s world-famous Center on Longevity. And now, I have now distilled the lessons of managing career change and negotiating the associated psychological transitions into my latest book Repotting Your Life: Sense When You\u2019re Stuck. Explore What\u2019s Possible. Claim Room to Grow<\/em>.<\/p>\n After a long career spanning many varied and exciting chapters, it was a daunting prospect to uproot from my comfortable London life to take on a Fellowship across the world at Stanford University.<\/p>\n The challenge of working alongside the brightest and the best, including a generation of thrusting young adults attracted from all over the world to make their mark in Silicon Valley\u2019s celebrated crucible of creativity, was both exhilarating and alarming.<\/p>\n Embarking on a career change is always demanding, but moving countries, absorbing new cultures, and assimilating new disciplines in deep middle age forced me to navigate a whole new ball game of stress.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re considering a career change and feel concerned about the unknowns and upheavals inevitably involved, you may find it helpful to follow an action plan to help you manage the process.<\/p>\n First, if you\u2019re independently electing to move on as opposed to being forced into a career change, be honest about what part of your current job no longer appeals (the people, pay, position, commute, industry).<\/p>\n Suppose you fail to make this preparatory groundwork, a mistake many people make in their personal lives when moving from a break-up into a new relationship. In that case, you may endure the stress of changing careers without necessarily finding the increased fulfillment you seek.<\/p>\n Recognize that career change is emotionally tough, especially when significant amounts of time, effort, and money have been invested in the education, training, and professional development that has propelled you thus far. You\u2019re bound to find career change difficult if you consider these investments as \u201cwasted.\u201d Reframe your thinking and believe everything you\u2019ve ever done as a valuable life experience.<\/p>\n If, however, like a potbound plant, you\u2019re feeling stuck and realize that your environment is no longer encouraging your further growth, then you owe it to your wellbeing to make a \u201crepotting\u201d plan and move on!<\/p>\n Do any of these have a practical\/paid application? What certifiable skills and attributes do you have? Consider the non-certifiable skills you have (people\/team-building\/motivational\/humorous). A combination of these tangible and intangible skills and attributes constitutes your personal brand. What is your brand?<\/p>\n And research how to address the gaps through training, online courses, and workshops. (For example, before my Stanford move, I needed to improve my IT skills)<\/p>\n The legitimate \u201cstakeholders\u201d in your life, including close family and dependents, and discuss your move with them.<\/p>\n Ask yourself what\u2019s stopping you from making the move? Is it fear of failure and looking like a fool? Take it from me. Nobody cares!<\/p>\n Once you make this plan genuinely yours, you will become more enthusiastically invested in implementing it based on your own carefully considered requirements.<\/p>\n Imagine the most important, non-negotiable elements of your life as rocks. Maybe it\u2019s your immediate family and health, perhaps career and fulfillment. Secondary elements like friends and hobbies are pebbles. Finally, nice but non-essential elements like shopping and mini-breaks are sand. Obviously, these elements change accordingly to you and your stage in life. Place the rocks in the jar first, then the pebbles.<\/p>\n Finally, pour in as much sand as possible around the layers of rocks and pebbles. Next, attempt this exercise in reverse order. Sand first, then pebbles, and you\u2019ll soon find that there isn\u2019t sufficient room left for the rocks. In deciding on your career shift, decide which elements in your Jar of Life truly rank as rocks.<\/p>\n Allow yourself to feel disconcerted. Paint vivid pictures of all the positives of a new career and all the negatives of your current career. Keep adding positives to the new and negatives to the old until the positives far outweigh the negatives and you feel sufficiently emotionally charged to take the plunge.<\/p>\n Your close connections tend to know who and what you know and, in some instances, may even have a vested interest in keeping you stuck where you are. Reach out to as wide a range of people as possible to solicit ideas and guidance to help you forge ahead with your new career. Consult widely, but not eternally!<\/p>\n Considering a career change? Tips for moving forward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2022","category-spring-summer-2022-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12377"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12632,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12377\/revisions\/12632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Assess Your Plot<\/h3>\n
Make a list of the things you love doing<\/h3>\n
Establish what missing or new skills you now require<\/h3>\n
Consider your environment<\/h3>\n
Assess your domestic\/work\/health\/financial situation realistically<\/h3>\n
Make your emotions work for you!<\/h3>\n
Create your \u201cJar of Life\u201d<\/h3>\n
Pulling Up the Roots<\/h3>\n
Accept that changing careers is stressful<\/h3>\n
Leverage the power of \u201cloose\u201d connections in your networks<\/h3>\n
Give yourself a deadline.<\/h3>\n
Commit.<\/h3>\n
JUST DO IT!<\/h3>\n
Frances Edmonds<\/a> is a speaker and author of Repotting Your Life: Sense When You\u2019re Stuck. Explore What\u2019s Possible. Claim Room to Grow<\/em><\/a>. She swapped the comfort and security of her London life for a year in California as a fellow at Stanford\u2019s Distinguished Careers Institute, where she researched longevity and related issues at the Center on Longevity. Edmonds divides her time between London and the South of France.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"