Is Your Career Helping You To Create The Life You Want?
What lifestyle are you looking to create?
A career change involves more than wanting to switch roles, companies, or industries — at its heart, a career change is often driven by a desire to make significant life changes.
Clarifying what these life changes are is key if you're looking to enhance your overall happiness and well-being, while advancing your career.
However, it’s easy to
▶️ overlook what we really want when presented with exciting perks of a new position or
▶️ not consider them in enough detail, before applying and accepting a new position.
⚠️ Cue work/life clashes and frustrations further down the line.
When you find yourself contemplating a new work chapter, take a moment to pause, reflect, and reassess what you truly want in life.
▶️ What lifestyle do you want your career to support?
▶️ What are you looking to change?
▶️ What really matters to you?
There’s every chance your life has changed and evolved since you started your current role.
You may have moved house, changed locations, gone travelling, gotten married, had children, or taken a career break.
As a result, your personal aspirations, life ambitions and general outlook on life would have shifted too.
What once mattered most may no longer be as important—while new wants and wishes have come along and taken their place.
What do I need to do?
Use the questions below to begin clarifying what you want and the direction you’d like your life to take.
What do I want my life outside of work to look like?
Which direction would I like My life to take?
What would I like to Stop doing?
What would I like to Start doing?
What would i like to continue doing?
What memories, experiences and achievements do I want to be able to look back on one day?
What does my next role need to offer to move me closer to the lifestyle I want?
Tips!
Think 'big picture' while doing this exercise – consider the various items on your bucket list that you’d like to tick off (versus what you want day to day, this will come later).
▶️ Be specific.
For example, if you’d like to travel more often, where are the places you’d like to visit? What do you mean by ‘more often’? Could you specify the number of times you'd ideally like to travel each year?
▶️ Write down everything that comes to mind.
▶️ Avoid limiting yourself by what you think is or isn’t possible.
▶️ Put it all down!
Next, use your insights to:
☑️ Set meaningful life goals.
☑️ Identify career opportunities that align with your lifestyle vision.
☑️ Make future career decisions that continue to support/create the lifestyle you want.
❗ Remember, your life goals and career aspirations are flexible, not fixed. As new experiences shape your perspective and drive personal growth, it’s natural to refine them and adjust the action you take along the way.
If you’d like some help with this exercise, please feel free to send me a message to talk it through. Sometimes all it takes is a quick conversation to get the clarity you need to move forward.