Have you got to midlife or later in life, with a bit more confidence and life experience, only to begin to wonder if the job you’re doing is what you really want to do?
Transformation coach and host of the podcast The Midlife Entrepreneur, Jo Glynn-Smith – who changed her own career after 25 years in the fashion industry – now helps people at this stage of their lives.
The first issue, she says, is often that people don’t know exactly what they want from their life because they probably haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.
"Particularly women," she says. "We spend a lot of time thinking about other people and what they need and what they want. You do find a lot of female leaders are in service to other people a lot. It's partly how we’ve been brought up; to be caring, to be thoughtful, to be helpful." And then we go into adulthood and careers with this mindset.
In addition, she says, many people go through life moving "through the motions in the system we’re put in to – go to school, get a degree, try and find a job, then we spend a lot of time in that job and we haven’t really thought about whether it’s what we really want to do. Then we get stuck in a career that probably doesn’t resonate for us".
"We're going to be working into our 70s," she says, "We’re living longer, so we’re going to need to earn money for longer" – so it’s a long time to do something you aren’t passionate about.
So if this is the year you want to make a big shift in your career – here’s where to start.
1. Go back to the basics
As a coach, when Glynn-Smith works with clients, she says, "I always start with, what do you like doing? What do you enjoy?
"That could be just breaking apart the job that you do now, yeah, what part of it do you love and which bits of it do you find exhausting? Energetically, what lifts you up and makes your cup full and what drains your cup and makes you feel exhausted? It could be office politics drain me, or being with people drains me, but I found myself, I don’t know, working in hospitality or something.
"If people don’t even know, we’ll go all the way back and say OK, if I’m looking in your eight-year-old bedroom and you’re playing, what are you doing? Are you outside? Are you playing a game? Because that’s generally you at your very core.
She asks: "What are you just naturally good at? Everybody’s got a natural strength somewhere, and they will have built skills through their career."
2. Recognise how much fear plays a part in your decision-making
"We feel safe in the ‘what’s known’, our brain is completely driven by fear," says Glynn-Smith.
"Changing is really hard. Let’s say you’ve been a biochemist for 10 years, and then you suddenly decide that you want to be a garden designer, because that’s your passion – that’s a terrifying transition to go through."
You might not have the time or money to retrain, but "where people really struggle is that they can’t see how they can do it, because our thought process is very ‘black and white’ – I’ll do one thing or I’ll do another thing.
"What you’ll see with Gen Z is that they don’t see things in a linear way like my generation do. Whereas they’ve grown up with the idea of a side hustle, and the beauty of that is it can be a hobby that becomes a business.
"It’s something that you love, therefore it doesn’t feel like work, and you just build it up over time, but at the same time, you’re earning money, so you haven’t got that same fear."
3. Research – it costs nothing
"The thing that you can do that’s not going to cost you anything is research, it just requires effort," she says.
"Could I speak to somebody who’s got the career that I want, or is doing the thing that I love, and see what it took for them to get there? Are there any doors they could open for me?
"Is there an open university course? Is it something I can do part-time? Can I do it in the evenings?
Then start to piece together a pathway of what that transition could look like. "Is there a 10% you could knock back, an effort that you’re making where you can create opportunity to start building something up?"
4. Rediscover your identity and confidence
Whether you are in your 20s, 30s or 40s, having a children or multiple children takes up a chunk of your life where you’ll have the most amount of energy and potential in your career, Glynn-Smith says. "So it’s a very challenging time to also be doing another job, which is motherhood, which is huge. And it’s the most important job you’ll ever do – so herein lies the dilemma.
"By the time we get to a point where we can raise our heads above the parapet, we’re exhausted and our careers have been a little bit stalled, potentially.
"For some people, they’ve lost their identity through that process, but you can also lose your identity through a career you haven’t really enjoyed. There have been so many women I’ve spoken to who have said, ‘I’m part of the furniture, I just do everything because they know I’m capable and I’m a doer, but I’ve got to the point of, what about me? I haven’t been made a partner, I’m not getting the money that a new person who’s 35 just came in and got."
She suggests asking, what are the stories you’re telling yourself? What’s the thing that’s blocking you?
5. Make a financial plan
"If you really see there’s an opportunity, then I would do a financial plan," Glynn-Smith says. "Do you have savings? Do you have a partner who could manage for six months if you had to retrain? Or do you need to do that as night school? Or can you go and be an apprentice?
"You need to work out what’s right for you and the effort that you’re going to have to put in, and how long that effort is going to last.
"If you’ve got two small kids right now, is this the best time for you, or do you need your energy to manage just getting up twice a night, and doing the school run and managing your [current] job to the best of your ability? Could you wait for five years?"
6. Redefine what success means to you
Glynn-Smith says: "One of the things that I’ve noticed, speaking to entrepreneurs, is that for almost all of them, they want to earn a good income, but none of them are going in there to become multi-millionaires. They’re going in there to be able to feel proud and do something that they feel really passionate about, that they’re in control of, and their success looks very different to the success they may have wanted for themselves in their 20s.
"I think enough people have spent enough time working their asses off for organisations that don’t appreciate it, and missing those really key moments in maybe their family’s life."
But she adds: "A lot of people say when you find your purpose it doesn’t feel like working – I don’t believe that’s true, I think it’s a more joyful and fulfilling experience to be working in something that’s your purpose – it’s a joy but you still have to dedicate time and effort to it."
