BONUS: What Does It Take to Make an Intentional Career Change?

Introduction 00:05

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does, and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:30

Took me a long time to find this data, but piecing together through many different studies, many different sources, as near as I can tell, less than 4% of people on Earth are doing work that they consider to be great work, and even less than 4% are in what they would consider to be incredibly fulfilling careers. It's not that there's something wrong with the other 96%, but it makes the point that finding fulfilling work is hard. It requires intentionality. It requires commitment. As we discussed in the last episode of this three-part bonus episode series on intentional career change, it requires commitment. It requires intentionality. If you're listening to this podcast, you've likely already had something happen that spurred you towards change. Also, what we know typically happens is the excuses come up, even if you don't know that it's an excuse that's whispering from some corner of your mind. Things like, "Hey, sure, it worked for that person, but that's not actually my situation." Or, you know, "This person is in an industry" like you've heard some of the past stories on the podcast, like, "That person doesn't really resonate with me necessarily", or, "I don't have the time to dedicate to making an intentional career change right now." Or, "You know what? My job actually isn't that bad. It feels pretty good right now." Or maybe even you feel like you're being ungrateful for the good parts of your job. Whatever excuse it is that you're telling yourself, we know they pop up. It's part of why people tend to stay in that 96% because it's not just about finding work that is fulfilling. It's about navigating through all of the changes and in some cases, the head junk, to be able to do work that more frequently allows you to feel more fulfilled. It's really easy to get stuck or trapped.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:35

And I'll give you one example of a catch 22 that pops up over and over again. The perpetual lack of energy and time. And here's how my team and I have heard this paradox show up when we talk to people who want to make intentional career changes. Yeah, they say things like, "When I get home from work, it's all I can do to just make dinner. Then on the weekends, I'm just so drained by that time. I spend the whole weekend recovering, and then it's Monday again. And I simply don't have the energy to be able to do the work to make any kind of career change, let alone an intentional one." If you're giving your current role everything that you have to give, and then you're depleted by the end of your work days and weekends, it's no surprise that making a large life change is going to be extra challenging. So it's not actually so much a lack of energy as the obstacle. It's just what many would be career changers think is the obstacle. Here's what I mean. Most people who've had career success got there by working hard. Working hard also usually means working a lot of hours. This is not a completely bad situation by itself. I've certainly benefit... I've had many things benefit in my life by working hard, and certainly been the beneficiary of some of the results that can come from working a lot of hours. There's definitely good things there. But when that same person who has been successful by being able to work many hours in order to produce those good things in their lives, when that person thinks about career change, they might feel depressed and hopeless because they might ask themselves, like, "How on earth am I going to find the time to figure out how to make a career change? I'm barely fitting in all the hours as it is." One of the hardest things for those of us, myself included, who have become successful in some area of our lives through past behaviors, like, working a lot of hours, is that means that I'm no longer going to be able to be successful in the same way. That means, I'm going to have to entirely rethink about not just what I want or the life that I want to create, or the work that I want to be doing, but I'm literally going to have to rethink about and relearn how to be successful in a new and different way that creates a higher level of fulfillment. That is incredibly difficult. But it illustrates the point that to make an extraordinary change, you must first commit to making the change and then do the very difficult work often to make it happen.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:14

So I want to give you just a couple of examples of how some people have navigated through this. We did a podcast a long time ago. This is an old one with Eric. And Eric has actually made a couple of career changes. And at the time that we got to meet Eric, well, he was working 11 to 14 hour days in engineering type of role, and it was intense, and he knew that this was important to him, so he would actually sit in his car during his lunch break to find the time, or dare I say, create the time to be able to do something that was important to him. He got asked all the time, like, where he disappeared to for lunch and everything like that. And another example, Scott Ingham and his wife would make time every single week, to meet weekly, to plan out logistics and scheduling for all the things that they had going on that week, plus the fact that he was trying to make time to support this intentional career change. Linnea prepared for hours and hours and hours and hours, not just for one interview, not just for one interaction, but every single time that she had it along the way, she used an extreme amount of preparation. Her end result, she was able to jump multiple levels. It takes extreme efforts to get extreme results. The extreme result that we're talking about right now is what we call intentional career change. We started out this episode talking about how very, very, very tiny, I would say, almost infinitesimal amount of people have what they would refer to as fulfilling work. And to be able to do so, it's going to require a very different, very abnormal set of efforts to get those results. And part of what that means is that, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There." I don't know exactly who said that quote. I think it might have been Marshall Goldsmith, who's been on our podcast before. However, I think it's a great one, and I try to remember it all the time. Let's agree that even if working long and hard hours has served you well in the past, it's probably not going to help you do this in a much more intentional, much more fulfilling way. You're going to have to take a different type of action. You know what's common about Eric's situation, who I mentioned a minute ago where he was working those 11 to 14 hour days, and Scott who would do planning with his wife and Linnea? What's really common about all of those situations is each of those people committed to making a change for themselves without knowing all the things that they were going to go through, without knowing all the behaviors that they'd have to change, without knowing 100% of what they were doing, without knowing exactly what it was going to mean for them. And they did so because they felt it was important for them to make that type of change, to do life and work much more intentionally, to be able to have the ability to enjoy the type of way that they're spending their time, like, we do and tend to at work. And have that be a part of their life that is providing a different level of contribution, and they're getting to contribute to it in a very different way. I'd invite you to do the same thing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:35

It really does, as strange as it sounds, start with a commitment to yourself that you're going to do something different, even if you don't understand all of the pieces along the way. If we can be a part of that, and we can support you in any way whatsoever, that's what we're here for. That is the reason why we exist as an organization. We want to be able to get more people to work that fits them, so that ultimately, we can change what work is for people in the world. And then when you get there, as you learn how to do this differently, we want you to be able to help others along the way, spread that knowledge, spread that action around. If you'd like our help in doing so, don't hesitate to drop me an email, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com, put 'Conversation' in the subject line. I'll connect you with my team. We have had this wonderful problem over the last six months where now we are filling up very far in advance. That's very different than if you would have asked me seven years ago, but what it means is, we have had to tell a lot of people "No". So I just want to be very transparent about that. If you'd love our help and you want to make a change anytime in the next few months and begin that, then we'd love to support that. Also, the spots are filling up quickly. We're already booked out through all of July and going into August, and now we're beginning to book out for the rest of August and September and October. If you'd like our help, just drop me that email, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com, and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. I hope these super short set of bonus episodes caused you to think just slightly differently about what intentional living and intentional career change can look like. We'll be back with you next Monday, right here on hHappen To Your Career. Until then, I am out. Adios.