Confused or uncertain about your career?
Lately, I have been fangirling over the incredible Adam Grant, who - as he puts it - "explores the science of making work not suck."
He is an author of multiple books and hosts a podcast where he meets amazing people and visits innovative workplaces. He is a researcher on topics such as motivation, meaning, intelligence and creativity and shares his ideas through talks, workshops and courses.
Sounds pretty badass right?
But the biggest insight hit me when I read what his background, or career "title" is. It turns out that he is an organisational psychologist, otherwise known as an industrial psychologist.
The reason this was such a big insight for me was that I distinctly remember many years ago when learning what an organisational psychologist was, I thought, "That sounds like the most boring job in the world!"
But of course I did. Not only did my exposure to it consist of a few lines (probably in Psych 101 notes), the image it conjured up was someone stuck behind a desk in a boring corporate job they didn't care about. I also had zero interest in business or companies back then. I had not yet experienced the confusion and stuckness in my career, so I had no particular interest in learning about what makes a career fulfilling and impactful.
And this brings me to two of the mistakes you might be making when you're feeling unhappy at work and considering your career journey:
You beat yourself up for choosing the path that you did. If you're like most human beings, you have grown and changed significantly between the time that you chose your career path and where you are now. You've also learned so much about life, work and who you are in this time that you simply could not have known back then. You made decisions differently and you were different. In other words, nothing has gone wrong if you find yourself at a point where you are considering a different path. It doesn't have to mean anything about you, your future success or the direction you choose next. You can both honour and be grateful for the path you chose (and who you were when you chose it) and want something different.
You focus on the name or title of the career. Imagine an organisational psychologist who is that person stuck in a boring corporate job they don't care about and are considering a change. They might immediately diagnose the problem as being in the title of their career, and start considering what else they could become - an artist, lawyer or veterinarian. However, if there was an area of their expertise they were curious and passionate about, they could pull an Adam Grant & create a fulfilling, creative career full of variety and purpose with the exact same career title of "organisational psychologist".
So all this to say, you can create something within your current career field that is exciting and fulfilling (even if you don't see others doing it the way you want to). Just because you are unhappy, doesn't mean that it's just the nature of your chosen career and you either have to suck it up or choose a completely different career.
And you can make a complete change of career without feeling guilty about resources that have been "wasted" in your existing career or feeling resentful of your past self because you feel stuck where you are. You can embrace what you've learned and how you've grown and make a new decision from that place.
I find it heartbreaking when people leave a career or field they could have been so fulfilled in because they just didn't see the incredible options that were available to them. I also find it just as heartbreaking when someone forces themselves to stay stuck in a career they're not fulfilled in because they make pivoting mean something it doesn't have to.
So I'd love to know...
Are you considering some kind of change or next step in your career?
