632: The Unexpected Triggers Behind Career Change: 16 Life Events That Force a Transition

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:00

Your situation isn't as unique as you think it is. That's not a dig at you, though. It's just the truth. We've been really fortunate actually to work with, you know, people all over the world, thousands of people helping them out of sometimes a good situation that they want to improve and continue to refine and make better, but many times it's also a not so great situation in their career and move to a much, much better, oftentimes, extraordinary new situation. And what we've learned by doing this over the years is that when people come to us, you know, they might be feeling burned out or they might be bored, they may have realized that their values or the life goals just no longer align with the job that they're in.

Sometimes they've outgrown it. And the interesting part here is that many people stay in these situations for a really long time. Really long time. They stay stuck. And then when they reach out to us, it's been sometimes months or years where they've not been... not been feeling it, they've been feeling unhappy, or at the very least, not fulfilled in the ways that they could at work.

And, you know, I've certainly been in that situation before. That's how we ended up with this company, this podcast, this organization. And you might have found yourself in the exact same position, too. You know, whether you're comfortable with where you're at, but you know, scared of risk.

By the way, fear is a huge thing when it comes to career change because it's something that you are initiating. There's no one saying, "You must change. You have to." It's you wanting to make the change, and sometimes that's a not so great motivator. But what we've also found is that the people that we talk with, and this is a bit of a side note, you have to remember every single person that we talk with is someone who has taken initiative to raise their hand and say, "Hey, I'm not super duper happy in my career, and I would love to figure out how to do something about it."

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:06

So, what we found is that when we start to dig in, and we learn what caused every single one of the people that we get to talk with, to finally take an action, to take that action, there's almost always some kind of event that has happened prior, that happens in one way or another, and it causes them to reassess their career and their life.

Okay, so we've actually... The really cool thing here is that since we get to do this every day, and you know, since we've been having conversations with people for, well, basically since 2013, and even just a little bit before, then, that has allowed us to compile a lot of data. A lot of data over the years.

And what we've learned is that there are 16 life events that cause people to reassess their careers. We call those the Career Change Catalysts. These triggers, all 16 of them, are a lot to discuss on a podcast. So what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna go through a few of these, three in particular, and include a specific example for each, and then you can actually get the full list of 16 by looking in the description or the show notes, and we'll have a link directly to it so that you can check out the list and see which one have you gone through, in one way or another. And as a bonus, here's what I would challenge you to do. Take a look at that list. See if we have somehow missed something over the years. We've been putting this together for, wow, yeah, 11, you know, 11 plus years at this point. So we feel it's pretty refined, but your challenge is to figure out, is your situation not on it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:03

All right, so here's number one. The number one thing in this particular episode, not the number one thing overall, that causes people to reassess their career, is that a major motivator for you, that was great in your career, and what's a good thing for you is ripped away. So here's a couple examples.

Your vacation is reduced from five weeks to three weeks, or it's made unusable in one way or another. Or maybe you're 200 plus, you know, a thousand-dollar-a-year pay is reduced to 120 because of how a bonus plans were restructured. You know? Whatever it is, there are a lot of ways that can happen, and this actually happened to Steph as well, and we share her story on episode 508, so you may have heard it, but if you haven't, Steph had what many people believe was a pretty amazing career with Amazon. And in her case, she knew that she should appreciate the opportunity. That's how she felt, especially since she had transitioned out of the military. And so many former service members had trouble finding work. So although she was really very much starting to feel burned out, she grinned and barred it. And it wasn't until she had a chat with her boss. Her boss came to her and said, "You know what, we need you to change your schedule."

And she was gonna have to change her schedule to a schedule overnight that just did not fit her at all. That was sort of the last straw. So this is what caused her, in this case, to reassess. She had already been... The interesting thing here is a lot of times, people have already had these feelings, but it isn't until something happens. In this case, something, a good schedule being ripped away that they often will say, "Okay, I actually need to pay attention to these feelings." It's really interesting that that's how humans work. And without getting into some of the details and research, this is what we find is generally a tendency. We are less motivated by potential gains and more motivated by loss, in one way or another, for right or wrong. It also means that if you want to be motivated by, you know, something moving forward that is actually positive or building the life that you want to, it means that you have to take a different approach. Well, in Steph's situation, she had this dream of being a fitness instructor and really wanted to start her own business.

So she had a lot of interest in pursuing this. So we ended up working with her to, first of all, define that this is actually what she wanted to do. And second of all, we helped her build a platform to where she could then pursue that because that's not an easy thing to make happen.

And that's the commonality here, too. No matter what you're doing, whether it is building a business or whether it is, you know, pursuing work that actually truly is a fit, it's not easy. It requires different behaviors. It requires paying attention to different things. Okay, so let me give you another example here.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:28

Another example on the list of 16. Number two is your health declines or is impacted in, could be small but often pretty large ways. So here's an example. Burnout is a really common one for people that can cause some pretty significant health issues, so much so. And I've definitely experienced this a couple of times over the years.

It changes everything. Changes how you feel, changes how you interact, changes how you show up, changes your energy levels, changes everything. And when you start getting into it, it's pretty interesting how our environments and what we're experiencing can change the ways that our body biochemically reacts, and we can see that physically show up when we are in that situation and environment sustained for many years.

It ends up eventually showing up with health impacts. Okay. An example of that, Alyssa, who we have had on the podcast before, not my wife Alyssa, but a client named Alyssa. She experienced temporary blindness. She literally went blind for a period of time due to stress. Pretty great wake-up call, right?

Not so great, but definitely caused her to do things differently. I gained almost 50 pounds and eventually realized that I couldn't walk up a set of stairs without being winded. That was pretty crazy, that I will say, got my attention in many different ways. Louis, who is another person, we've shared his story on the podcast as well.

Louis was literally having seizures that were caused by his situation at work. Aaron, we've shared his story on the podcast too. It's episode 524. It's called Taking Control Of Your Career When It's Harming Your Mental Health. Aaron, in his situation, he'd been working in construction management for around 10 years, and he found himself pretty unhappy.

He was contemplating drastic measures. And when I say drastic measures is, you know, considering like, how do I just, you know, remove it all, and it was not a joke in any way whatsoever. And his health was suffering in other ways, too. He was burned out, he was completely depressed.

And leaving felt extremely complicated because at the time, he was working for his family business. So this eventually caused him to realize that, "Wow, I must make a change."

So he realized this actually when he legitimately considered driving into a ditch to get out of work. So fast forward, he eventually left the family business, got a job in the legal industry, was going after his lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer, he had been to, you know, been to law school before, so he was continuing the stream in many different ways. And, you know, became happy and healthy, but, you know, didn't actually make the change. Like went basically along for the ride for 10 years, until he had that situation that was impacting his health.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:00

Okay, number three. This is the third one. The last one that I wanted to share here. This actually, in many ways, is one of the most common, and that's the thing I should point out here, too. Many people will go through multiple, not necessarily just one on the list of the 16 life events that act as the catalyst for you to reevaluate, but sometimes they'll go through multiples.

Now here's the other one. It's when you take a new job that you thought would change everything, and it doesn't. It leaves you right back in the same situation, in one way or another. So this is actually what happened to Edna. And if you go back to episode 574, yes, we have like over 600 plus episodes. You know, if we count our bonus episodes and everything else, we have way over 600 episodes.

And this is called Leaving A Misfit Job In Search Of Career Fulfillment. So Edna wanted a new challenge. She was 19 years at one company, so she took a leap into a similar role at a new company, expecting it to be a massive improvement, expecting it to sort of take care of the issues that she was challenged with at the time, but soon found it to be an even worse fit.

Edna left behind this role where she was bored. And she saw limited growth opportunities in the first company, only to end up in a new position with less autonomy and a very poor fit in terms of values and culture. So the positive change that she had anticipated felt more like this massive step back.

So this caused her to reevaluate everything. And the good news is, within nine months, we started working with Edna transformed her situation. She found this really wonderful role that very well aligned with her values, her goals, relocated to a new country that she loves, received a higher salary than what she even asked for.

Pretty cool, right? It wasn't easy, wasn't necessarily easy, and that's where I want to go back to our list here. I think that if you're listening to this podcast in one way or another, chances are high that you've already gone through one of the events. Like the reason that you found our podcast, the reason you took the time to search it on a, you know, podcast player, or somebody referred it to you, or something else, it's probably because you've already gone through one of these 16 Career Catalyst events.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:32

So what I would encourage you to do is check those out. You can, whatever you're listening to this on podcast player, the web, go into the description, go into the show notes, and then we will include a link here and check those out. And then what I want you to do is pick up your phone now. Go to your email app.

You can email me directly, and you can just put 'Career Catalyst' in the subject line, and then we will look out for it. And I want you to share your reason that you're interested in making a change, or what is the career catalyst. And I can do a step one further, too. If you want help, I can even connect you to the best person on my team that can dig into your situation.

We can have a conversation about how we can help you change your career, transform your career into something truly fulfilling, and discover the very best way that we can help support you, whatever that looks like. So open up that email, pause this, and check out that list Scott@happentoyourcareer.com.