Are you waiting for the world to wake up to just how clueless and ill equipped you really are? If so, impostor syndrome probably has you in its grip.

Sascha talks about facing fears, leaping into the unknown, opening doors and synchronising her remarkable skills to launch a new career as an end of life doula, supporting people who are dying and their families.    

Checking your mindset gives you an insight into how skilfully you’re likely to manage career change. If you find you’re ‘fixed’ but you’re keen to be ‘flexible’, here are three ways to kick start the shift.

How well you navigate your career change has lots to do with your mindset.

Your mindset is the collection of beliefs that shape your habitual ways of thinking and acting. If managing the ‘change’ in career change is giving you grief, taking a look at your mindset may help.

Being laid off is a tough trigger for career change. No matter how you feel about your job, the shock of losing it can unleash a debilitating blast of anger, hurt and confusion.Here are five ways to get to grips with the emotional aftermath of losing your job. 

From its outset, changing careers involves venturing beyond familiar places, people and perspectives. As a client remarked this week, “you have to do uncomfortable things to get where you want to go.”

Career changers are confronted by lots of scary ideas. One of these is the ‘sticky stat’ that 80% of jobs never get advertised. It is certainly true that people ‘in the know’ fill lots of brilliant career openings that never get advertised. However the 80% statistic is a relic of the ‘pre-Internet’ 1980s‘ and is now is seriously dodgy.

Assumptions are rich mix of our past experiences and our exposure to advice and commentary from others.

Are you head down and tackling career change on your own?  Perhaps you’re finding it tough to get the help you need from people around you.

Now I know that Grand Designs is all about the journey, the hold ups the stuff ups and the battles with budgets and weather.  But I just wanted to fast forward to the finished masterpiece. I didn’t want to see the struggle to get there.

Doing the following three big things, which are actually nine smaller things, lead me to career change coaching. They helped me create and test a successful career change process that’s at the heart of how I work with my clients.

The first thing I tell them is that you can’t change careers sitting behind a desk.

Then we talk about ways to switch your search technique to ‘finding people not jobs’. This conversation is about how to get out of your head and into action.

If you’re stuck for ways to start talking to real people working in jobs or areas you‘re keen to explore, here’s what I suggest. 

Looking for an effective career coach? I suggest these steps. They combine investigation and instinct in the hunt to find the person who’ll work with and for you.

Money. Sometimes the scary prospect of managing your finances can stop career change in its tracks. Will I earn less in my new career? If I take time off to figure out what next will I need to eat pot noddles for months?

Every new thing we try reveals something about our abilities and our interests. These insights can be priceless career change clues.

When I was changing careers I wanted to wake up and know exactly what to do. Pretty quickly, I realised that my longed for lightning bolt wasn’t going to strike. I needed to create the right conditions for career change insights. I had to stop waiting expectantly for an epiphany to arrive.  

Transitioning from 9-5 in an office to making my own hours was one of the toughest things about going solo. I’ve learned to balance the competing demands on my time and energy in (mostly) sane ways.

Amidst the many insights my clients have given me, these six things stand out. Each of them says something important and moving about our shared aims and experience at work and in life.

Career change is a prime source of fear and uncertainty. It’s hard to let go, and even harder to trust that what’s coming next won’t bring you unstuck. 

Sparky moments - we all have them. They happen when we cross paths with someone or something that connects us to what matters most. Sparky moments light up our eyes and prick up our ears.