You want to make a change in your life. You’ve got some ideas, or maybe you’ve just had it with your present job and need a change. How do you start to feel better \?
You need to feel like you’re taking control. Time and again, I see clients feel better when they start to take actions, no matter how small, on their own behalf. They get in motion.
But if you’re stuck, how do you get in motion? What if you come home exhausted and get nothing done, even though you’ve thought about changing your job all day long?
Treat a job hunt or a career change like any other change in your life. Treat it like a habit. If you want to lose weight, you look at what you’re eating and how you’re exercising. The same goes for a career change. You need to make it part of your daily life.
I love a good quiz. Gretchen Rubin’s bestselling book Better Than Before is packed with insights on habit development, and I highly recommend it. But just taking Rubin’s quiz (and I love a good quiz!) will help you see how you can best develop the habit of changing your work life.
The quiz will tell you your style for developing habits. I’m a questioner. I need to know why I’m doing something before I do it. This helps when I find myself resisting something, like eating better, ahem, during a national holiday when people fill tables with red, white, and blue desserts. When I want to eat better, I read an article or a book about why it’s good for me, and the next thing I know I have a fridge full of vegetables.
Rubin lists loopholes that people rely on time and again for avoiding a habit. The one I hear most often? The false choice loophole, as she describes it: “I pose two activities in opposition, as though I have to make an either /or decision, when in fact, the two aren’t necessarily in conflict.” People have to wait until the kids are older, the company hires someone to help them, or even until the end of summer, before they start to work on their careers, they tell me. But does one really prevent the other?
So try the quiz. And if you want help planning your habits for your career change, email me at meredith@mltcareers.com.
