Name: Best Job Ever
Rating: 4 (44 reviews)
Author: C. K. Bray

What’s in it for me? Find your ideal job.

Are you tired of your job? Are you bored, exhausted or dissatisfied with your tasks? Or perhaps you like your tasks, but it’s your office and your colleagues that make you dread going to work.

Today, as we rush to find a job and make a living, we make bad decisions and choose a job that doesn’t meet our expectations or doesn’t fit our strengths. As a result, our discontent grows. We’re hesitant to make a change because we fear we won’t be able to find anything else, let alone something better – and sometimes we don’t even know what we would do instead.

These blinks show you what it takes to make a career change. They’re full of effective strategies to help you overcome your fears, discover your strengths and successfully plan a career transition.

In these blinks, you’ll also learn

why winning the lottery is not a career path;
what scoring a goal, landing on the moon and changing careers have in common; and
how to try out job opportunities like food samples in the supermarket.

Many people have unrealistic expectations about work and are dissatisfied with what they do.

You’ve probably heard this cliche before: Just find a job you like and you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, the reality isn’t that simple. After all, work is called work for a reason. What makes it worse, though, is that lots of people have unrealistic expectations about their jobs.

For instance, when asked to describe their dream career, people tend to say things like, “a job that lets me travel a lot,” or “one where I make twice as much money as I do now.” But such notions are totally off base. Just like winning the lottery, which some people list as their ideal career, the notion of luxurious jobs is a fantasy, with an absurdly low probability of realization.

While some people want the most pampered career they can imagine, others would take virtually anything but their current job. In fact, lots of people are unhappy with their jobs, even though many of them like the field in which they work. Indeed, a 2013 global Gallup survey found that 87 percent of employees weren’t satisfied with their careers.

But while lots of people are left unsatisfied by their work, it’s not the type of work they do that leaves them feeling unfulfilled. The real issues are characteristics of their workplaces; things like bosses, coworkers, salaries or even office politics.

If this is true for you, it might make sense to look for a different position within the same company or the same role at a different one. For example, if you have a family, but your job requires loads of travel, you might prefer a different role within your organization that keeps you closer to home.

Making a career change means overcoming your fears and deciding what should be different.

As you begin thinking about changing careers, you’re likely to have thoughts like “you can’t do it” and “you’ll definitely fail.” So how can you get past these thoughts and into the career you desire?

The thing all these thoughts have in common is fear. So to make your career change, you’ll need to overcome it. Remember, it’s no surprise that your plans are scary – it’s a common human reaction to unknown situations, and a career change is a highly uncertain undertaking.

Develop a five-year plan for your career change to lay out your path and reduce your fears.

Lots of people try to make significant changes in their lives, from quitting smoking to losing weight to stopping nail-biting. But too often, people fail to stick to these plans. That doesn’t mean change is impossible, it just shows that it requires a particular combination of short- and long-term thinking.

So once you know exactly what change you want to make, it’s time to make plans for the near and distant future. Draw three columns on a piece of paper and label them “One Year,” “Three Years” and “Five Years,” respectively. Then, in each column, write your ideal employment situation for that time frame.

You can and should prepare for your career change to ensure it’s done in a carefully calculated manner.

You know how some supermarkets offer free samples that let you try out different foods before buying them? Well, the job market also has free samples on offer.

In fact, there are many ways to find out what a prospective job really involves, and this information can help you make an informed decision about your employment and career prospects. For instance, if you’re considering changing jobs within your company, you might ask to work one day per week in a different role, strictly on a trial basis.

Key ideas in Best Job Ever

About the Author

Dr. C. K. Bray is a career coach who used to work in the corporate world until he realized he was chasing other people’s dreams. Now, he helps people define and achieve their professional goals.