Why Changing Your Career Completely Could Be The Best Thing You Do For Your Life

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Where are you?

Are you still in your old job—ranting about how miserable your life is with no signs of improvement? Your boss might have overlooked your promotion or your colleagues might be giving you a tough time, may be long hours for a minimal pay is ticking the clock—it could be anything!

Job change is a mind-numbing topic that most of us hesitate to touch.

But a more hesitant question is; what do you actually need—a change of job or a change of career?

There are a few signs that can punch you in your throat and make you re-think your choices.

Here are some

  • You are compromising your Self-esteem
  • You are living paycheck to paycheck
  • Your passion lies on a different career path
  • You are bored and cannot find any motivation to continue

If we are honest with ourselves, the thought that we probably should try to change our career is one of the most anxiety inflicting realizations of all. There are a lot of factors that stop us from doing so; a big drop in salary, we might need to relocate ourselves, harder to explain it to people and starting anything from the scratch is a frightening thought in itself.

The agony from the possibility of what we could become if we just could give it a try is most potent when we’re young. Imagine a man in his twenties who is planning his career in bureaucracy. He is well on a right path. But, now, after exploring a few more professions—he is thinking very seriously to switch his course. Now he is more inclined towards banking and wants to prepare for the Staff Selection Commission. Due to this sudden change in his taste—it might be another two unforeseen years of consistently studying and working equally hard to go for another career. It is mainly because, at 20, 2 years feels like a very long time—10% of your entire life, it does sound like a big commitment. And, analyzing the same period psychologically—it broadens itself—mainly because first 15-18 years of your life you were in this haze, unsure about everything—the obscurity of life veiling all your life’s paths. Keeping that in account—you vividly experienced life for only 5-6 years and, then 2 years become almost the half of your life.

Evidently—it’s a vast commitment.

But, what’s harder to grasp is how things will look in future—when you’ll be a 50 years old man. From there, two years will have a very different meaning. It’ll be around 5% of your entire life. We all need to acknowledge that being 16 and being at the climax of your human life span are the two poles of your entire life. Our time that we would invest in further studies grows relatively small as we move towards the adulthood to an old age, but at the same time—the drawbacks of not undergoing further education grow with us—and after a point—exponentially.

This paradox is what is called ‘Job-Investment-Trap’.

This paradox explains, to much of its extent that why many people, especially young ones, falsely turn down the opportunity of retraining. The present seems too large and the far-far future, which supposedly has a much greater weight looks so unimportant in the present light.

What’s the solution?

To counter this problem, one must force himself to draw timelines to see that the period of 2 years is truly quite short in comparison to the vast life ahead of us. We need to weight up our investments now at our youthful age, not in comparison to our recent experiences but, in the light of a more accurate portrait of our entire life. We need to shift our focus from a temporary illusion to a higher reality—reality of our own future.

And, then, we need to realize the importance of switching track and if it seems valid—YOU MUST!