“I know I’m sick of my career,” said my friend Karen. “I just don’t know what’s next. It’s maddening!”
When we’re in career reinvention mode, we can get antsy waiting for our next chapter to pop into clear view. It’s too bad for us: reinvention doesn’t work that way. Scouring job ads and reading through graduate-school recruiting websites may only confuse you more. So what’s to be done?
What’s Reinvention?
Let’s start with the question, what is reinvention? What is it for? Reinvention is a process of stopping the action (whether by choice, or because life threw you a curve ball) to look at what you’re doing and whether your path feels like the best one for you now. Career reinvention is often a big part of the exercise. Lots of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers fell into some career or other and never had a spare moment to stop and ponder the question “Is this my life’s work?”
Reinvention by choice or thanks to the whimsy of the universe is a chance to stop and reflect. It’s a listening process. Reinvention forces us to do something we don’t do very often, and that is to get off the usual daily treadmill (up! breakfast! shower! kids! work! hustle! bustle! sleep!) long enough to look at where we’ve been and where we’re going, and to choose whatever course we’re on, or make a change.
Crawling Out of the Desert
One of the hardest parts of reinvention for most people is navigating the piece of the trek I call The Desert. That’s the place you arrive at when you know that you don’t love what you’ve been doing, and know that there’s another career direction for you — but you have no idea what that career direction might be. That’s the tough part, because you’re frantically researching career options and certificate programs in search the Perfect Job for You. That’s folly — what looks like a dream job in a job ad is less likely to be all that dreamy when you examine it more closely. Most dream jobs don’t look so plummy in the job ad — you have to get into the role and make it yours before the dream-job possibilities emerge.
What Do I Do Now?
So, while you’re wandering around in the desert, waiting for inspiration to strike, what can you do with yourself? Here are five activities we recommend to keep the reinvention energy moving:
Journal. Writing down what you’re thinking about, stories from last week or twenty years ago, and your musings, dreams, and random thoughts is a wonderful way to rev up your reinvention engine. Writing down what you’re feeling, what you’re nervous about, and career-or-life-direction ideas that pop into your head will help you organize your thoughts and get you clearer on what’s important to you in your next career. Talk. Get together with friends, one-on-one or in groups, and toss around ideas. No one person or single conversation is likely to give you the perfect career solution, and that’s okay. Dozens or hundreds of suggestions, off-the-cuff references, stories and observations will drip on you and eventually (it doesn’t take forever, I promise!) meld together to give you a clearer picture of where your gifts lie — and how to use and monetize them in your next career. Mentor. Helping someone else, whether that’s a young person or a mid-career reinventionist, is probably the most dramatic way to move your own reinvention along. It’s so easy to give career advice to other people, isn’t it? You’ll spark ideas for your own journey advising another person. Walk. Walk, bike, hike, or take a run around the lake. Physical activity is the greatest thing for people in a mulling and musing mode. As you move, ideas will come flying at you — you may want to bring a voice-recorder along! Be open. Reinvention is not a sudoku puzzle with one correct solution. You’re letting ideas come in from all sources, and that’s much harder for many of us than sitting down to solve that dang puzzle ourselves!
When you’re stressed about the pace of reinvention, or the uncertainty in it, remember who you are. Remember how far you’ve come already and what you’ve already been through. You are more than up to the reinvention task — it’s a gift to you from the universe, and God knows you deserve it.