Many people still work 9-to-5 jobs wishing for something better. But be careful what you wish for: you could easily get it! Trading up or changing career paths can be done at any time or any age.
The Scene
It’s Monday morning. Ten-ish. You have been at your office already four hours, scrambling to sort out the Pensky file, and you never really understood it all that well in the first place. The phones are buzzing and ringing all around, people walking urgently from here to there.
And you find yourself wondering whether you could open a bookshop.
In the meantime, Pensky is at your cubicle entrance, fingers drumming and foot tapping in impatience. You have been an employee at VDL for as long as you can remember, starting in the junior roles and moving into your own accounts.
It is assumed that with continued work and effort you could one day become a Deputy Senior Mid-Level Associate Manager in Charge of Non-Specific Coordination and Sub-Corporate Liaisons.
Or not.
The Good Part
The Good Part is that you can always stand up, say goodbye to Mr. Pensky, and leave your cubicle forever. You CAN open a bookshop anytime you like. It will take a lot of work, some ingenuity, most of your time, and might not work right away, but you can do it. It is how many entrepreneurs begin.
We are often blocked by what we perceive as immovable barriers. We believe that it would be impossible to walk away from a stable salary and job and into the great unknown. We think we could not afford to fail, and therefore it would not be worth trying.
A number of years ago, I was advising a client to run for president of the country where he was living. He had wide acceptance from other parties, was as reasonable person, and could adapt to the needs of the many in order to strike a deal. In doing so, I believe he stood a good chance of uniting a fractious opposition and winning, or at least make a good showing.
A good showing?!?
The conversation ended after several days of his being unable to get around the idea that he might lose, even though I reminded him that people lose in politics all the time and still can end up winning. No. He could not take the chance of losing.
This could be you (or Milton from Office Space) in the cubicle above. After all, if you are worried about having a stable income because you have responsibilities to meet, bills to pay, and people to feed and lodge, the downside of not making it work is daunting. Fear of losing what you already have is a powerful motivator.
However…
Looking at the job market today, stability is in short supply. Companies are being merged and taken over, bankruptcies are high, the number of people working steady 9-to-5 kinds of jobs is being whittled away by people on remote time, telecommuting, and digital nomading. This is to say nothing about the number of services and departments that are being replaced by outsourced or independent companies working under sub-contracts. Among the most likely candidates are customer service, marketing, or even sales.
And let’s not forget the robots. People in sectors such as copywriting, editing, and translating are facing challenges from ChatGpT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.
In short, the world of work has changed drastically while we were busy working. Staying with your job only because of fear of loss is no longer a good strategy. Losses happen more and more as the nature of what we call Work evolves.
Stability is not as stable as it used to was.
The Better Part
If none of that seemed like the Good Part to you, it gets better. All of the changes in the job market around the world make it much easier for you to make a change yourself.
What you need to ask yourself, and quite seriously so, is what you really want to do. Do you want to start up a business of your own? Do you want to make something? Do you want to propose a service? Do you already have an idea in mind of what it might be? Are you ready to work twice as hard for half the money or less (at first)?
Just like anything else worth doing, making changes in your life can be scary. We don’t know and we cannot know how the world will look from the other side. This applies to meeting new people, to moving to a new neighborhood – or city, or country – or starting a new career.
In this, once you have established that this is what you really want to do, the most important next stage is the planning. “Plans are of little importance,” said Sir Winston Churchill, “but planning is essential.” Having the idea is the first essential part, but the second is to plan to make it real. Moving from idea to business plan to reality will be the subject of a further blog, but for now suffice to say that you can.
The Hard Part
The hard part in deciding to make a change is not simply doing it, as you may imagine. The hardest part for many people, myself included, is making the decision and standing by it. Once you have done it, you can march down to HR and hand in your resignation. You can step through the company doors and realize that now it is all up to you. That part is easy because it is what you wanted, and you have made that decision.
There are people who can help you arrive at your decision and feel good about it. As a Life Coach, I work with many people in similar situations. We talk about what they would like to do and why they want to do it.
In more than one case, the notion of changing careers has turned out to be linked to some fixable problems in the workplace. Getting the perspective of someone who has a great deal of experience and has an objective point of view can be very useful to help solidify your resolve or discover that maybe you wanted something else.
The New Scene
It is Monday morning. You stand in the doorway and survey your new office and know what work awaits you. And it is all yours!
Pensky be damned!
