If You Want to Change, Then Change

I wasted a year talking about it, this is what I learned

Now might seem a terrible time to leave an established job, but the reality is there are very few safe jobs. If you are in a safe job and are loving it, then you shouldn’t be reading this article, the fact that the headline attracted you to start reading says that you are not 100% happy and at least sub-consciously you are thinking that you’d like something to change.

For 12 months I kept telling myself I’d be better off doing a different job(s) and that I could leave at any point. When I eventually left (thanks to my wife's persistence!) it was in the middle of a global pandemic. That should be a sign to the rest of you to crack on and stop messing around. Plan for your exit now and aim to achieve it in early next year. If you don’t pick a time, it will never happen.

Preparation, preparation, preparation

It is important to prepare yourself for leaving, you have this period until early next year, so focus on a number of things to get you ready

1. Prepare your finances
2. Prepare your family
3. Prepare for failures
4. Have a business plan
5. Experiment before you leave

Prepare Your Finances

Depending on what you see as being the vision for the new you (see business plan below), you might need to prepare yourself for a period when you’ll earn less, as you build up your earning potential in a new role/career or a variety of revenue areas. Treat yourself like a business, assess your outgoings and be hard on yourself. What things are totally necessary, what are nice to have, what can be put off for 6 months whilst you settle. Get yourself a baseline that’s needed, then you know what freedom you have with any change, how quickly you need to start earning and what that level of earning needs to be.

Assess your savings. Decide what you are willing to invest in your life/career change. Because that’s what it would be, an investment in yourself. You saved up for just this type of moment, to allow you to do what you want to do. To be in control of life when that life-changing period arrived. Obviously, that’s not a solo decision, which is why this is the time you really need to prepare your family for how your change will affect them.

Prepare Your Family

You will need the full support of your family (or friends) to make this successful. There will be challenges, particularly at first. You might not be able to do the same things for a while. Maybe taking holidays will be different for a while — through lower income or less free time. In some cases, you’ll be around more but be distracted, in other circumstances you might see your family less.

It’s also the less obvious things you’ll need support on, as you’ll likely be different. You need your support systems at times like this. People you can just share frustrations with, that will remind you that this isn’t a short term, quick-fix change. Sometimes you just need reminding that you knew you’d go through bad spells and it’s perfectly ok to be worried, to feel frustrated and generally more stressed than you’d expect.

Prepare For Failure(s)

If you are coming from a stable job, in an area you know well and moving into a different space(s) that is challenging you, chances are it won’t be perfect first time. You’ll have setbacks. You’ll have failures.

And that’s ok. Just be ready for it and train yourself to be ready. One of the biggest challenges I found was despite going into things with open eyes, or so I thought, I struggled to sleep at times because I wasn’t prepared enough.

You will likely have some anxiety, that’s what change often brings. It’s also what failing a few times can bring. You’ve been used to being successful in what you do. You might want change but that doesn’t mean you are not good at what you have been doing. So your brain will often have been trained into a pattern of working and failing isn’t part of that. Learning how to fail, how to accept and how to learn from that — that’s key to successful change.

Have a Business Plan

You might not be planning to set up a business when you leave, I certainly wasn’t, but if your goal is to try different avenues, potentially multiple revenue streams, then have a business plan. This means you want a vision for the new you. You want to be clear on your values. Understand your superpowers. Then write out what makes you special and how this will help you achieve your vision.

These are all things any business should be doing when setting up, so why not do it for yourself. It will help you understand what direction you should go in, long before you actually leave. It will narrow down the areas you could work in. It can give you a list of things to experiment with before you leave.

Experiment Before You Leave

You’ve assessed what you want to do, what you would be good at and enjoy, plus you’ve decided financially what you can afford to do, so you should have narrowed down your future to things that are now worth testing out. A lot of the options will be things that you can experiment with before you need to leave.

• Maybe it’s writing? Start writing in the mornings and evenings, publishing onto sites and build up a following in advance
• Want to consult on the thing you do as a day job? Use something like UpWork to get a few side jobs to see if its something you like and build up a reputation before going into it full time
• Thinking of a non-exec career? Take a pro-bono role like a school trustee where you learn the ropes and improve your CV
• Maybe it’s a complete career change? If that would benefit from qualifications, take a night class, as you’ll get a head start and learn if this is really what you want to do.

It wasn’t meant to be easy

Sounds like a lot of hard work doesn’t it? That’s because it is. You want to change your career/life, then it will take hard work. It will mean taking a risk or two. If it were simple, not only would everyone be doing it, but you’d have done it already, instead of just talking about it!