Career Changes: the Need for Self-Permission

I returned from a conference recently where the participants were discussing various career moves and career choices. For most of the people, they had chosen one major career move that shifted them in a dramatically new decision. Interestingly, the common thread that I observed was that for each person, the biggest bottleneck against pursuing their own path was not knowledge or finances, it was something I’ll call self-permission.

I found this to be the main barrier and worry for me, before shifting from my life in the corporate sector to the one I have now. I found the internal conversation of worrying was much worse than any scrutiny that I faced externally. Interestingly, once I made the decision to ditch my former career, the sense of freedom and empowerment that I felt was amazing. These are some of the characteristics of self-permission.

1) Permission to dream — do you allow yourself to think about really pursuing your passion? Have you granted yourself permission to dream about where you might make an impact? For me, I could not allow myself to really imagine what I really wanted to do until after I had left my corporate career. It was only without the constraints of the existing job were removed that I could allow myself to dream about what I really wanted to do.

2) Permission to think big — are you constraining yourself to thinking only about small incremental changes? Do you allow yourself to extrapolate into the future and really picture a very different future?

3) Permission to step off of the “keeping up with the Joneses” treadmill — are you concerned about your finances if you were to make a career change (including shifting away from formal employment)? Are these real concerns over needs? Lifestyle changes to accommodate substantial changes in circumstances are usually quite manageable when dealt with realistically.

4) Permission to stop worrying about how others will perceive you — One of my biggest worries was that my parents would disapprove of my leaving a secure, high-paying job in the corporate sector. This was probably my most difficult self-permission to grant. Of course, it turned out, my parents were not judgemental about my choices.

see other articles at this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance