“I know I don’t want to be doing this job for the rest of my life.”
I hear that a great deal.
“I just don’t know what else I would do.”
That’s usually the next sentence.
Just recently, I’ve realized that my main job is teaching others HOW to change their career.
I had three recent clients. I’ll call them Peter, Paul and Mary.
Peter was a paralegal from New Haven; Paul was a business development and customer service rep in Fairfield; and Mary was a middle school teacher.
All were in their mid-twenties.
All were struck, not so much because they realized that they were not sure if they should do something else for their careers. They all knew it made no sense to stay miserable for the rest of their work lives. They each echoed some version of “I don’t know HOW to figure out what to do.
If you are unhappy in your career, you already know the WHY. You are unhappy. You want to be be happy. That’s a pretty big WHY.
But, you likely don’t know HOW or otherwise you presumably would have changed your career already.
You don’t need “counseling” in the sense that we need to uncover deep psychological issues related to work. I find all that deep stuff very interesting by the way and would be happy to discuss if it served my client’s interests. But, those issues are not why clients drive great distance to see me. They want to know HOW to find work that would make them happy.
That’s what I do. I teach “HOW”.