Is Changing Careers Worth It? Only You Can Answer That

Episode 36: Your brain is always going to tell you that changing careers is too hard, too risky, too much effort. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens asks a different question. Not how would you do it, but is it actually worth it, and only you can answer that. If you have been waiting for a plan before you let yourself want something different, this episode will help you start with the wanting instead.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why knowing if it's worth it matters more than knowing the how, especially at the start
• A guided visualisation to help you picture what a different working life could actually feel like
• The unexpected benefits of proactively changing careers, beyond just the new job itself

Book a free Coaching Consultation:

https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Connect with Dana:

Website: https://www.danastevens.com/workwithme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_stevens_coach/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danastevens1/

If this episode resonated, follow The Career Change Studio and share it with someone who’s feeling stuck in their career.

And if you’re ready to design a working life that truly fits your needs and lifestyle, book a free consultation call at https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Special thanks to @Lou_Greenaway_Music for the piano composition and performance.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:51

Hello and welcome. So, what you'll probably notice is when you start thinking seriously about changing your career, your brain is going to offer you all the reasons why you shouldn't. Now I just want to reassure you that this happens to pretty much everyone, and it's just what brains do. Your brains don't love change, right? It's actually hardwired to like efficiency, which mostly means doing things it's familiar with, habitual things, doing things it's done before, sticking with what it already knows how to navigate. So it's going to tell you that this is going to be hard. Anything different, any change is going to be hard because it's going to assume that any change involves some sort of effort. And it can be really easy to believe that cautious, habitual voice in our head. But that doesn't mean that our brain is actually always telling the truth. And what if it is worth it? What if changing careers so that you can live in a way that genuinely fits you, that makes you happier and healthier and more like yourself again is completely worth whatever effort it takes to get there? That is what today's episode is about. Is changing careers worth it? Now, spoiler alert, as a career change coach, it will come as no surprise to you that I think the answer is yes, a hundred times yes, maybe a thousand percent yes. But what I actually want to help you with today is to answer that question for yourself, because the only opinion that really matters here is yours. Your brain might already be saying, Well, I don't know, how would I even know that? And you can start by asking the right questions. Why would changing careers really be worth it for you personally? What do you actually want and need that's different from the way you're living and working now? What are you not getting right now? And importantly, could you genuinely stay exactly where you are now for the next 20 or 25 years? If you stay, what's the impact going to be? And I have actually talked in other episodes about what staying stuck might cost you, the impact it might have on your mental health, your physical health, even your confidence. But today I want to flip that around and look at what you stand to gain because honestly, it's a lot, right? You gain a lot. You can gain so much by making changes. And before we get into that, I just want to remind you of something I've said before on the podcast, but I'm going to say it again. You don't need to know how you're going to do this yet. You don't need to know how you're going to change careers yet. If you're waiting until you have a clear plan, a specific job title, a step-by-step route mapped out before you even let yourself consider whether change is worth it, you've got the order backwards, right? The how comes later. What comes first is the why and the making sure it feels worth it for you. Because once you know it's worth it, the how becomes a problem that you're motivated to solve rather than a reason to stop before you've even started. So that's where we're going today. Not the how, but the worth it question. Every single person's reasons for wanting to change careers are different. And that's as it should be. Okay? Every single one is valid. It does not have to be about following a passion. I actually did a whole separate podcast about that because I get asked that a lot. You can go back and listen to episode 33 if that's something that you're getting stuck with. But it's okay if your reason is financial. Maybe you want more money. Simple as that. The ability to stop worrying every month, to say yes to things without working out if you can afford it first, to feel some real security under your feet, that's a great reason to change careers. Or you might want to feel more fulfilled. That might be it for you, to use more of what you're actually capable of rather than just a fraction of it. You might want to finish a working day with a sense of accomplishment that you did something that mattered rather than just survived it. Or you might have felt stagnant for so long that what you're really craving is to feel excited again, to look forward to going to work. Maybe it's about learning something new for you, to feel yourself growing rather than just repeating the same year, the same month over and over again. You might want to feel proud when someone asks you what to do. I hear that a lot, people saying, I just want to feel proud. Imagine that if someone asks you about your job, instead of deflecting or changing the subject, you light up a bit and then you really want to tell them all about it. You might want to take something you love and weave it properly into your working life or build something of your own entirely. Or maybe for you it's about flexibility. If the corporate world has never quite fitted your life or it's restricting how you want to live, you might simply want more autonomy, more control over your day, more flexibility for you or your children, or the life you're trying to build around all of it. These are all real, all valid, and every one of them is worth pausing on for you. Because the more clearly you can name and understand the things you want in your life, the things you want more of in your life, the easier it becomes to answer whether changing careers is going to be worth it for you. And I want to actually do something with you now rather than just talk about it. I want to help you try and picture what a working day that you could really enjoy might be like. So take a minute if you can, and if it's safe to do so, wherever you're listening, you could let your shoulders drop, you could close your eyes if you want to. Obviously, if you're driving or walking, don't do that. But just let yourself soften for a moment and just consider what things could be like in the future, right? On an ordinary working day, sometime in the future, after you've made this change, right? And may maybe like, I don't know, a normal Tuesday, it doesn't have to be a holiday or a special occasion. And just think about this what time would you ideally like to wake up? And how would you like to feel in the morning? Are you rested? Are you still tired? What's the first thing that you go and do? How does the morning go for you? Are you rushing around or is there a certain pace to it? And I want you to picture yourself getting ready for the day. What are you wearing? Where are you going? If anywhere, maybe you're not going anywhere. Now, even though you might not know what you're actually doing, maybe try and picture how you're working. Are you doing something with your hands? Are you using your mind? Are you using your attention? Are you on a laptop? Are you outside? Who are you with? Or maybe you're on your own. But what is the texture of your day? Are you feeling busy or calm? Is it fast or slow? And I really want you to notice as you picture all of this how you feel. Not what you're doing exactly, because that's probably going to be a bit fuzzy for you at the moment, but the feeling underneath it. Are you feeling lighter, calmer, more like yourself? Now picture the end of that day. How do you feel as you finish? What is waiting for you afterwards? Are you exhausted in a way that you might be now these days, or are you tired in a different way, a more satisfied way? Or are you feeling energized? What do you do with your evening? Now just sit with that image for a moment. The whole shape of that day, not the job title, not the logistics, just the feeling of it. Now for some of you, that might have been easy. A picture might have come quickly and quite clearly, but for others it might have felt very difficult. Maybe nothing came up for you. Maybe a voice immediately jumped in and said, This is silly, or this is not realistic, or I don't even know what I'm imagining. So don't panic if that was you, right? Both of these experiences are completely normal. And if a picture came easily, that's useful information, hold on to it. And if it didn't, that is fine too. Visualizing is a skill like any other, and it does get easier each time you practice it. And maybe you've never allowed yourself to kind of daydream like this and imagine how things could be. And the point is not to get it perfect on the first try, the point is to start giving yourself permission to go there at all. Because our natural instinct, especially as grown-ups, right, is to like shut down any of this type of daydreaming, to say it's not realistic, it would never happen, before the daydream has even had a chance to fully form. But if you do that all the time, you'll never be able to connect with what you might really want. You just keep recycling the same small, safe, familiar pictures you already have, rather than just letting your brain go and seeing what happens. So if you noticed yourself doing that just now, well that's worth noticing, right? And next time, just see if you can let the picture stay a few seconds longer before you shut it down. So I just want to tell you a little bit how this type of thing actually really worked for me. Because it didn't just start with a job title either for me when I was thinking of changing careers. When I was working in strategy at an advertising agency, before I had any idea what I was going to do next, right, I started spending more and more time daydreaming, just letting myself imagine a future that felt different to my corporate job. At first it was vague, this general sense of freedom, more control over my own time, nothing specific. But every time I let myself sit in that feeling, even briefly, I kept arriving at the same thought. This feels worth it. And gradually the picture got more specific. Even though I still had no idea what the actual job would be, it became about being able to take those kids to school every day. Maybe taking them to after-school activities that they currently weren't able to do back then because they were with the childminder all the time. Having energy left at the weekend instead of being completely wiped out by Friday night. Being properly present with my family and friends rather than half there mentally still mulling over my to-do list from work. All of that, the school run, the energy, the presence, that helped me keep answering the same question: is a change worth it? And the answer kept being yes. The more time I spent picturing it, the stronger that yes became. And once I knew that I wanted to retrain as a coach, I did something else, right? I really surrounded myself with examples of coaches who had built the kind of businesses that I was imagining for myself. And every time I looked at what they had built, I asked myself the same question. Does that seem worth it? Even though at that point I really had no idea how to actually become a coach or build a business of my own, but the answer I kept coming to was yes, this feels worth it. And that question and finding my own answer to it is what helped me figure out the how. At almost every stage of changing my career, I did not know exactly how I was going to keep moving forward. I just knew it was worth it. It was worth figuring it out, and that was enough to keep me going. And here's what changes once you genuinely know for yourself that this is worth it. Your brain will still try to tell you that the journey is difficult and complicated. That's just what it does. But when you're clear on why this matters to you, when you're properly tuned into your own version of worth it, something shifts in how you experience those obstacles. Instead of every setback feeling like this huge wall, this reason to stop, a sign you should turn back, it starts to feel more like a speed bump. Something to just slow down for, get over, navigate, and keep going. Not nothing, but not catastrophic either. And that shift alone can be really helpful. Because so much of what keeps people stuck is not the actual size of the obstacles, it's the meaning they've attached to them. If you don't know whether this is worth it, every obstacle becomes evidence that maybe you just shouldn't bother. Maybe changing isn't for you. But if you do know when you do know it's worth it, every obstacle becomes just another thing to work through on the way to something you've already decided matters. And there's also something else worth knowing too, because beyond the new job, beyond getting that different way of working, a life that actually fits you, there's so many benefits to being the one that proactively changes your career. I didn't even know they were coming when I started on the journey, but these are things that you experience and learn because you personally were the one decided to embark on a career change. And they make everything even more worth it, right? Because you learn things about yourself, you learn skills. And for me, once I got help and used coaching tools to make the changes, I felt this huge sense of relief. And that is one of the things my clients tell me they experience when we start working together. Because even if you feel stuck and confused at the start, once we start working together and you've got clarity and you decide on a direction, you can put all your energy that used to get used, used up, going round and round in circles in the indecision. That can actually get used into actually moving yourself forward instead. And that gives you mental freedom. That means you can get rid of that constant background hum of decision fatigue and choice noise, right? The should I, shouldn't I? And in its place, there's a clear direction and a path to follow. And for some women I work with, that's the first time. Maybe they've never had that before. Maybe they've never consciously, proactively decided which direction their career is going to go in. Maybe they've just fallen into things or were carried along. So that sense of direction that you personally have decided on, that is worth it as well, right? And you will start to think and feel differently about yourself. You build real belief that you can do this. Now, for you, that might feel far away at the moment, but that is what we work together on, right? When I'm coaching people, that's what I help you do, building up that self-belief. And I want you to just pause for a moment and think how amazing that would be, how different you would feel if you actually believed that you could do this. You could make the changes you want. I can help you create that belief. And when you have it, you've got that, not just for this career change moment, but beyond. You will learn how to handle uncertainty, face into fear and be okay. Learn how to trust yourself, and that is as worth it as any new job is. And when you get into that momentum, taking action for yourself, you'll feel so energized, right? For most people, they tell me that this next stage, when they're in it and they've decided what they're doing, they have this relief and excitement and this momentum, and they feel like they're in a whole new chapter for themselves, and they're excited again, and that is worth it as well. So I want to leave you with that same question that I started with. Is changing careers worth it? Not for anyone else, not in general, but for you specifically. Is changing careers worth it for you? You don't need to know the how yet, you don't need a job title or a plan. You just need to be honest with yourself about what you actually want and let yourself begin to picture it and ask whether it feels worth moving towards. Even if the answer is yes, even a small, quiet, uncertain yes, that is enough to start with. Now, even if you don't believe that you can do it yet, that's enough to work with too, right? That's where I come in. If you want help turning that yes into an actual plan, if you want help turning that tiny bit of belief into proper, fully fledged belief that's going to drive you forwards, come and have a free consultation with me. The link, as ever, is in the show notes. I hope this has got you thinking this week. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.