How to explore your next career move
How an explorer’s mindset can help you change careers
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In life and career change, anything can (and probably will) happen.
So, how can we handle that? To paraphrase Susan Jeffers, author of, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’ What scares us is not the ’actual anything’; it’s wondering whether or not we can handle it.’
Handling anything and everything you encounter in your career change can be heaps easier and much more fun if you get your explorer’s mindset on.
Right now, there’s a bucketload of buzz around explorer’s mindset in leadership courses and coaching programs. And it can be tricky to tease out the threads of what it is and how it works, so let’s start there.
What is an explorer’s mindset?
Most often, and with good reason, we view legendary explorers as fearless adventurers. We’re awestruck by their forays into faraway places and stunning achievements against seemingly impossible odds.
Rarely do we learn how these hyper-adventurous humans grew and changed because of all that daring and doing. Did they revel in reaching a destination, tick that achievement off their ‘to-do’ list, and line up the next one just for the fun and the ‘hell-why-not’ of it?
Why is this a useful question?
Because something sets explorers apart from pure adrenaline-driven adventurers: the desire to learn everything they can along the way.
Mindset matters
As a career changer, a keen-to-learn, explorer’s mindset helps you get geared up and go for it.
Conversely, a fixed or inflexible mindset can make it tough to cope with quitting your comfort zone. As this is a non-negotiable move for career changers, it’s worth checking where you sit on the mindset spectrum from superglued (totally fixed) to super-supple (explorer).
6 Ways to operate your explorer’s mindset
Explore inside and out
You can’t change careers from behind your desk. Research, reading up, taking online quizzes, and trawling job boards can help to launch the process. But do endless deep dives down Google rabbit holes, and you risk drowning in data and catching analysis paralysis.
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A successful career change happens by exploring ‘what,’ ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘who’, and ‘where’ in the real world. Start by connecting with people, not looking for jobs.
Get good at career change conversations. This is a vital skill for navigating and advancing your career change adventure. Most humans are hardwired to want to help, but finding, fronting, and chatting with people doing things in places and professions you’re keen to explore can feel like setting out to climb Everest.
If you’re feeling freaked about getting off Google or scared stiff, you’ll stuff up and look stupid. Here’s how to get cracking with confident career conversations.
Once you’ve got a feel for where you want to head, there are loads of solidly good, gradual ways to transition to a new career. You might develop a side hustle, negotiate fewer or different hours in your current job or volunteer.
And here’s the thing. While you’re fully immersed in out-and-about experiences, it’s equally important to explore what’s happening on the inside. What do your gut, heart, and head have to tell you?
Activating your explorer mindset involves giving part of your clever, self-aware brain the job of gently and curiously observing each real-world adventure and asking this question: What are you learning here?
Team up
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Most successful expeditions are backed by a fair bit of kit and caboodle, a top team, and a solid set of survival skills.
Start by enlisting your support team. Aim for a mixed bunch of confirmed cheerleaders drawn from your outer and inner circles. Work out what you need regarding perspectives and practical support, then recruit the right people to provide them.
Not sure where to start? Here are 7 Ways support can help you change careers.
Wondering who needs to know that you’re embarking on a career change? Not everyone and not all at once is the answer. How you handle your ‘timing and telling’ can make a massive difference to how your nearest and dearest (and everyone else )react to what may strike them like a big, scary bombshell.
Check these 8 Cool ways to tell friends and family you’re changing careers.
Wander off
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Map out your career change exploration – which careers do you want to explore and how. Make plans and checklists. These are critical tools for navigating new terrain and sifting and sorting intriguing possibilities.
So, plan your trips, but remember mathematician, engineer and philosopher Alfred Korzybski’s famous words, ‘The map is not the territory.’ Apply this excellent reality check to all your maps - physical and mental.
While our mental maps are built on experience and intuition, they can also harbour some ‘backward swimming fish,’ aka untested and often misleading assumptions we make about what is and isn’t possible because we’re too … old/young/inexperienced/overqualified [insert other undermining adjectives of your choice.] Recognise these and put them aside, or better still, put them to the test.
Do that by exploring intriguing careers that feel risky but remotely possible alongside the ‘safer’ ones that look more ‘doable’ and acceptable to those who know, love, and worry about you.
Take yourself less seriously
OK, now you know that as hardwired learners and discoverers, explorers are more than mere adventurers. But maintaining your sense of adventure and focusing on fun stuff can make a world of difference in how you handle your career change.
Why? Making space to play, exploring mad ideas, and generally goofing off are great ways to balance the serious, structured work you’ll do to change careers. Besides that, being playful gives you a free pass to stumble and stuff up. It also helps put the wobbles and wonky bits in perspective.
Here are 5 Seriously good ways to be a playful career changer.
Learn from those not-so-good places
Detours, dead ends, and black holes can be tough to traverse, but come at them with your explorer’s mind on, and they all have something to show you about resilience and tenacity, pluck and possibilities. Any worthwhile career change exploration will take you to a few tricky, sticky places.
Here are 5 Sticking points for career changers and how to get out of them.
Take small steps
Explorers are observers, tasters, musers and questioners. These things are (mostly) slow work. Zoom through unchartered territory intent on arriving at a pre-determined destination, and you’ll miss much of the magic your journey has to offer. You’ll also invite more mishaps, as careless travellers tend to attract.
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Of course, there’ll be bursts of breathless, speedy progress towards your next brilliant career. But between these bursts, taking small, intentional steps will help you stay alert to intriguing possibilities often hiding in plain sight. Making haste slowly is also a huge help in avoiding the overwhelm of stepping out of your comfort zone to discover newer, greener, more productive fields to work and play in.
So why not pace yourself? Find out why small steps are smart moves for career changers.
And now for an end note…
Nana korobi ya oki
This Japanese proverb that translates as, ‘Fall down seven times, get up eight,’ nails the nub of how an explorer’s mindset can help you in career change and life.
Approach your career change as a curious explorer, and you’ll discover that ‘falling down’ isn’t failing. It’s discovering what doesn’t work, what you need to do differently, and where you absolutely don’t want to go.
So go ahead, get your explorer boots on. The Japanese have a phrase for this, too, ‘genchi genbutsu,’ which roughly translates as ‘go out and see for yourself.’
Need help applying your explorer mindset to changing careers? Book a chat.
By Jo Green, Career Change Coach
I know that when you find what you love, heart and soul, your life changes. I work every day with people who are reshaping their current careers, starting new enterprises or searching for a new direction. Basically I help people who don’t like their job to figure out what to do instead!
As a Careershifters and Firework Advanced Certified Coach and experienced career changer myself, I can help you figure out what fulfilling work looks like for you.
Book in a free 20 minute consultation to chat about your career change and how coaching could help.
