Whether you are at a career crossroads, unhappy at work or stuck in a dead-end job, many of us have faced moments in our careers where we know we need to make a change but don’t know where to go next.  It’s one of the most common reasons people will seek out a life coach, so we spoke to South Wales life coach Jason Bishop of Contented Life Coaching, to ask what advice he offers to clients in this situation.

Jason says:

“I mainly work with men who are aged 25-35 and haven’t quite found contentment yet – they can relate to my life experience, and I love helping them create a life that works for them.  However, the advice works for anyone, it makes sense to do something you enjoy, that you are good at and that you can realistically make a living at.”

These are the steps Jason takes his clients through:

Changing Career – you have two initial options

If your existing career is not fulfilling you, you basically have two options:

• Changing attitudes, expectations and behaviour so you can be happy where you are, or
• Choose or create a different career

Here are some of the considerations you will need to think about if you decide a new career:

• You could look to move roles within within your existing organisation.
• You could remaining in the current sector, changing organisations.
• You can retrain completely and move into something new.
• You could launch your own business.
• You could take a sabbatical.
• You could move to undertake Charitable work.

Whichever option you choose, before you can move forward, you must take some positive action. A life coach can support you to take these steps and will present you with options so you can make your decision – though the choice will still be yours.

Become more happy where you are

Mindfulness techniques are great for giving you choices and can help you be more comfortable where you are right now, even if you plan on moving.

These techniques, often used by life coaches, allow you to change your thinking, learn new ways to deal with your triggers and take your emotions out of the equation, allowing you to make an objective judgement about your job and it’s suitability for you. This involves asking yourself, what is causing the emotional reaction you are experiencing? What is it about the personalities, or the environment itself, you don’t like? By creating a new method of working, where you feel that you are comfortable and productive, could reframe your current role and find you happy there – but if you still really want to change career, these techniques will also help you find the work you really want to do, making your decision more clear.

Tackling Personalities and Learning Confidence in the Workplace

Often we can struggle in a workplace because we encounter personality clashes or suffer from lack of confidence, meaning we don’t ask about development and training opportunities or we suffer from impostor syndrome, feeling like we aren’t good enough.  In these cases, it’s important to learn skills that help us to overcome these so we can thrive in any role – even if you decide to move on, these skills will also help us improve our future career, and having clear goals will help.

Doing this self-development work will increase the chances of future success – because there is nothing more depressing than leaving an unhappy job, thinking you have fixed the problem then finding yourself in the same situation with a new employer.

Choosing a different career

If choosing a different employer or career, or starting a new business, then it’s important to look at your existing skills and hobbies to help identify that your new chosen career will for work you.  I find this diagram really helps to get my clients thinking about the career they can create for themselves, it starts at looking what skills you have, what someone is willing to pay for and what you enjoy doing.  The ‘sweet spot’ is where those things collide, and finding a career that incorporates anything that lands in that sweet spot is like to be a good career choice for the client.

As a Life Coach, I see it as my job to support the client to make their own decisions, and there is no greater feeling than seeing a client move from a state of unhappiness to success and contentment, my job is to help them understand and explore the myriad of options available to them and present them with the information they need to make choices that will best suit their future goals.  If they succeed, I’ve done my job!

To learn more about Jason Bishop, visit: https://contentedlifecoaching.com/career-advice/