Values are so important. If your values aren’t aligned with those of your place of work, you’re going to feel some misalignment. Thinking about what is most important to you will help shape your career path.
If making lots of money is super important – that will take you off on one trajectory. Having freedom and flexibility in your working day – being able to work from home or remotely some or all of the time, might be more important to you. (I know that right now with the pandemic there isn’t much freedom at all about where we work!).
Your time might be of most value to you – having a job where you never have to work evenings or weekends, and can stick to 9.5. The clearer you can get on all of this, the more that’s going to guide you in a career change.
These values become your navigation tool. You’ll know what to explore, and what to cast aside.
When I was on my career change journey, I did an exercise where you had to study in detail various areas of your career. They were:
- Where you want to live?
- What you want your work environment to be – office, home, mixture?
- What kind of people do you want to work with – curious, ambitious, chilled…do they share your values?
- What are your top 3 areas of interest?
- Do you want to travel with work? Where?
All quite basic, obvious stuff. But it’s easy to just look for what you can do based on your skills and experience when you are considering changing careers. You forget about the other factors that are also so important. Lifestyle and how you want to work are as important as they actual work you will be doing.
If you’d like help with your career change, contact me at joaopoku@gmail.com or via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannaopoku/
Photo by Hello I’m Nik 🎞 on Unsplash