Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search

What do you do when you decide your current job no longer fits your values?

You fill your iPhone with numbers from all of the CEOs you've just made friends with by interviewing them for your blog.

(Obviously)

Wait… What?

That's just one of the many ways that our client and HTYC Podcast listener Eric Murphy used to make a career change to his dream job. (take a listen below!)

Eric Murphy was working 10-14 hour days in his engineering role for the gas company in Las Vegas Nevada. It was going well… except that every single day he was feeling the urge to work with an organization that was giving back to the world. He even thought the solar industry might be how he should be spending his time.

He had no idea that he was so far off.

How do you make a career change when you're burnt out, have no time, and don't know what fits you?

That's exactly what Eric wanted to know too!

Because he wasn't just trying to make a career change, he was also trying to figure out what career and what company really fit him.

For every client we work with we help them go through the same process, and Eric was no exception!

1. Determine your Signature Strengths

2. Create Your Ideal Career Profile (What's most important to you)

3. Target only companies and opportunities that fit

What was incredibly unique to Eric's story?

That he was both seeking jobs AND trying to discover what his ideal role was at the same time.

This might not sound like a big deal, but if you're reading this, I bet you feel like you have to already know exactly what you want to be doing before you go talk to peopl about it!

You don't!

This was the strategy that we helped Eric use.

What is the real goal of having a career anyway?

It's a topic of conversation that comes up time and time again: SUCCESS.

It should be noted that the definition of success is subjective.

There are some people that are perfectly content on that "traditional" path of success, from getting a degree to landing a job that pays for a fairly decent lifestyle. They get promoted and continue working, perfectly content with their progress.

Or maybe they don't even get that promotion, yet are still perfectly content with the life and career path they've chosen.

Then, there are those people that start to lose interest in their work and even with a promotion (and raise!), they still can't help but feel like their career has turned into a J-O-B.

It's become a chore to get out of bed to go and "work" at a place that previously held so much promise, but now holds only daydreams for something better.

What's better? It could be anything, anywhere…anywhere but where they're at right now.

If this sounds familiar, don't sweat it just yet. There is a light at the end of that dark tunnel that you've gone down.

The problem isn't you.

From the day that you started your career, you have continued to learn and grow. You've evolved in your role at the organization. The problem is the organization hasn't shifted the same way you have- the work that you have been doing is no longer aligned with the person you've become as you've grown in your career.

As you pick up new skills and add more years of experience under your belt, you learn more about what you love about your job and what you could really do without. You begin to look for more work that aligns with what you value.

These little micro-pivots in what you look for in the work that you do help you along your career journey. These shifts in your values shouldn't be looked at in a negative light. These little shifts bring you incrementally closer to your career goals.

Look at it as an invitation to a bigger path to get to your north star.

If you're wondering how you're going to get out of your situation when you're not even sure what to do next, take it from Lisa and trust that "leaning towards happiness, leaning towards places where you're already finding flow and satisfaction […] is going to be the best way to start to uncover what direction you're growing in and what can feel really good for that next step."

You owe it to yourself to leave your career pain for your career freedom.

If you need help to follow your breadcrumbs to your dream career, visit our career coaching page. Connect with Lisa and she'd be more than happy to help!

About Lisa Lewis

Lisa Lewis, the new HTYC Career Guru, started her career in digital marketing and contemplated going back to school to get into psychology and counseling before finally following her own career breadcrumbs and doing what came naturally to her, which is career coaching.

Here at HTYC, Lisa is involved in all things career change- from her role in the Figure Out What Fits: Career Change Bootcamp, to resume critiques and mock interviews, and also to helping people put all the pieces of their career change puzzle together through one-on-one career coaching. She specializes not only in honing in on your strengths, but also in positioning those strengths for potential employers.

If you want to learn more about our career coaching and other services, head on over to our career coaching page.

Are you the kind of person who wants a job that aligns with what you value or what you're interested in? Or better yet, do you want to feel like you're meant to do work that has the ability to leave the world a little bit better, and makes you feel fulfilled?

As high performers, people like you and I are always looking for ways to improve ourselves and our situations. We want to take what we've got, maximize it to its full potential, and follow our life's purpose.

That's why I'm excited to share Jessica Williams' story with you today as my guest on the podcast.

Jessica is the founder of the company called The Superwoman Project that does everything from writing, speaking, and coaching to support the advancement of women into positions of power within their careers.

It took her a little bit of adventuring -- and a lotta bit of reflection -- to answer the questions of what she was meant to being doing and how she could make a more meaningful impact with her work.

In the episode, she shares how she discovered her passion and calling to guide women through their professional development.

Whether you are in the midst of following your calling or have no idea what it is yet, take a listen to today's episode, How to Find Your Career Calling and Own Your Purpose with Jessica Williams. We'll get into:

• The step-by-step process to figure out "your calling"
• Actions to take to become clear in the direction of your career and own your path
• Tactical tips on how to transition out of a job to pursue your deeper career calling

If you're ready to align your career with your life's purpose, don't miss this episode.

The art of life crafting.

Ever heard of it?

It's about defining what you want in your life, taking that vision, and prioritizing where you put your energy and effort to achieve those goals.

Simple enough, right?

You'd be surprised how many people don't take advantage of the benefits that life crafting can bring into their lives.

Not only will it open doors to everything that is possible for you, but it will also provide a framework to get to the life you want.

Now, let's take a moment and think about what it is that you would like to have in your life.

Think about it this way, in a perfect world, what does your life look like?

In terms of your career, where would you be working? What would you be doing? How does your work impact your personal life?

Life crafting allows you to design your career goals and manage how your career aligns with your overall life goals.

In order to get comfortable with the idea of life crafting, we'll take a look at what may be holding you back from intentionally designing a life you'd be in love with and how to move forward in achieving your career goals to better fit that life you've designed.

As High-Performers, we like to make sure we have the majority of our bases covered before we dive head-first into the deep-end of our career change. But, sometimes we find challenges where we least expect them. When we look at career change, we know that taking on this big life change requires a great amount of time, energy, financial planning, and a solid support system to lean on when the career change process becomes overwhelming. One of the least-talked about topics of career change is our current and ongoing support system.

Today, we have Rebecca Maddox as a guest on our podcast.

Listen in as she shares her challenges in finding the right way to communicate with her support system as she took on her cross-country career change.

Learn ways you can navigate your relationships in order to remain authentic to yourself and your career goals.

So many questions that plague people that have decided to take the bull by the horns and make a career change for themselves.

The ups and downs that they encounter before they make the official jump to a new job position, organization, industry, or business venture are sometimes glossed over once they find success.

But, people that find that success as they transition to a new stage in their career know all too well the hard work, the endless days and nights they were kept awake at night, and the energy it took to put in the work to get where they are today.

One of those people is Cesar Ponce de Leon.

We had the pleasure of working with him as he took on the challenge to move from his previous job in legal affairs to a role at an organization that spoke more to his heart and true life calling.

Cesar ran into a few stumbling blocks along the way, but with the right tools and resources he was able to find success in his career transition.

His story of hard work and non-stop effort is one to take note of, so we've put together an outline of his biggest challenges and the process that he followed to guide him through to reach his career goals.

Check it out!

In your ideal world, what does your life look like? What kind of work would you be doing?

What is stopping you from achieving that now?

Seriously, what is stopping you?

Here's a hint: NOTHING IS STOPPING US FROM MOVING TOWARD OUR GOALS, VISIONS, LIVES WE DREAM OF… …well, except for ourselves.

There's this interesting concept about "learned permission-seeking."

We've been conditioned by parents, teachers, and society to ask for permission to do things.

Now when it comes to change, as adults, we still wait for that permission to make a change.

We look for someone to give us permission or validate our choice to try a new hobby, go back to school, quit a steady job to start our own businesses, flip career paths, or create any type of change within our lives.

Permission stops so many people from moving forward.

Oftentimes, we find ourselves in these situations where we seem stuck because nobody has given us the green light to proceed with our actions — which is crazy, since these are our own lives we are talking about (!).

But, there are ways to create that permission for yourself to be more, do more, and achieve more of your goals.

Check out the episode to hear more about how you can start giving yourself the permission you need to start living a life you love with MJ Fitzpatrick.

Have you noticed any reoccurring themes in your life?

These themes can range from the habits you form, the hobbies you enjoy, the work you choose, the tasks you hate, the type of people you surround yourself with, and so on.

Just stop and think for a moment.

Does anything stand out?

The patterns and themes that appear in your life are little nuggets of gold that you shouldn't hastily push aside when you're looking to make any big life changes, like a career transition.

As much as we emphasize how digging deeper into your own patterns in your career and life is the first piece of research you need to do before you start down the career change road, we know that sometimes it is hard to accept those patterns for what they truly are.

Just ask our guest, Matthew Toy, who avoided accepting what everyone else around him knew about how big of an impact his own passion for practicing yoga had on his life.

Fast forward to now, and you'll find Matt teaching and practicing Man Yoga (yoga for men) at the Berkeley Yoga Center, re-educating people on what the practice of yoga really is through his Instagram, as well as at events. He is also the co-founder of a bakery.

With a full life, yoga practice, and career, Matt is now able to look back, reflect, and share his path on how accepting his own life patterns led him to where he is now.

Whoever said that hard work and perseverance doesn't pay off sure didn't meet Tanya.

What Tanya Malcolm Revell did when she was looking to make her big career change was no easy feat.

Besides being an American looking for work that fit her in London, Tanya is also a Career Change Bootcamp alum and our guest for this installment of our most recent CCB success story.

After experiencing the overwhelm of career burnout from her previous positions and frustration with the job search overseas, Tanya found HTYC, enrolled in Bootcamp, put in the hard work, built strategic relationships, and persevered even after some unanswered phone calls and emails to land her dream job.

Curious how she did it?

Check out the episode and blog to learn: - The steps in the CCB process that will properly position you during your career transition - The unexpected benefits of putting yourself out there and networking - How looking at the positive, rather than getting stuck on the negative, is instrumental in helping you keep perspective on your career goals

When it comes to your career transition, it's not information you're lacking. In fact, it can feel like there's an overabundance of data and research on anything and everything out there, thanks to the interwebs. Here's the trick: it's how you organize and use the information you've collected over your lifetime that matters. Jenny Blake, our guest on today's podcast, figured out how to use her information when she was in a place that you may be able to relate to: she was stuck...trying to figure out what was next in her career. She'd left college to work at a startup, then left the startup to work at Google, and had just left a job at Google to go out on her own as an author. She had become the girl that was known for leaving things. She wondered who she was, how she could have an impact, and what she could build through work that was meaningful. She was struggling to make a breakthrough from all of her career analysis, and she felt completely stuck. For Jenny, as someone scanning the horizon for her next career possibilities, she realized that all she needed to do was ground herself in her strengths and take a look at what was already working for her.

Career change is about making the connection between the strengths you have right where you are -- and the possible paths towards where you want to go. And, like Jenny did, you can design tiny experiments to take the pressure off yourself to get the answer to what your next career could be. Stepping back and looking at all of the information about yourself that you've gathered from past experiences will guide you through your own career exploration process.

Take a moment to listen to today's episode, Successfully Pivot Your Career with Jenny Blake, to learn:

• How you can stop holding yourself back from your career change
• How and why creating an Ideal Day Map for yourself will help you see the success you envision for yourself
• Why you don't always need a mentor...sometimes, you need a "friendtor" (friend + mentor)

Be sure to head over to the blog to learn more about the importance of the "scanning" process during your career change -- and get some new ideas on how you can move forward!