The 5 Best Ways To Tell If You Need a Career Change

As a writer on career issues and career consultant, I receive scores of emails each month from people with questions about every aspect of their professional lives and aspirations. Some want to quit, others to leap to solopreneurship, others yet want to be promoted, get a raise, move to another country, tell their boss to go to h*ll, and more. And some questions represent a dilemma that thousands of people are facing, like this one I received recently:

“Hi Kathy - I’m 36 and work in a mid-level corporate role. I know I don’t like my work (and haven’t liked it for more than 5 years or so), and things are not going great at the company, but it pays very well, has good benefits and there are some things that are OK about it (mostly that it pays a regular paycheck that feels “secure”). I was promoted recently too, but still I agonize daily whether I should change careers or just leave it alone and stick with it. How can you tell if you should change careers or not?

This question is so important to tackle here because if I can help even one reader a day make the right decision about this, it’s a very good year.

I’ve found that there are 5 critical ways to determine reliably and effectively if you should change careers, and once you get hip to these signs, you’ll be able to answer for yourself in a heartbeat, “Should I stay or should I go?”

The 5 ways to tell if you should change careers are:

1. You are chronically worn out, exhausted and depleted.
If you experience chronic illness, debilitation, and exhaustion, the first place to look is your work. Most of us spend more waking hours working than doing anything else, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that if you don’t like your work, it won’t like you back, and overly-stressful, misaligned work often makes your body break down. I experienced four years of a chronic, painful infection of the trachea that resisted treatment. And guess what - from the moment I was laid off from my corporate role (that I hated) after 9/11, I've never suffered from tracheitis again. Done.

Tip: Your body tells you what your lips cannot. It may be your specific job or toxic work environment, or a cruel boss that are breaking you down, but often it’s your entire career that needs a shift.

2. Your skills, responsibilities, and tasks are not you at all.
This can be a shocker for some folks but you might have become very good at work that you hate. For example, I used to be really good at presenting to a board room of senior leaders the facts, data, financials and new marketing strategies about the membership products I managed, but inside it was a horrible struggle. I just couldn’t seem to hold onto the key statistics or data about these products because I couldn’t care less about them.

Tip: Look at what you're being asked to do every day. If it's a terrible struggle and strain, you're in the wrong work.

3. You’ve come to the point where your salary no longer makes up for the boredom and emptiness you feel.

Most people who dislike like their work but are reluctant to change would say it’s their fear about walking away from the money that keeps them stuck. I work with many women who are used to making $150,000 a year and more, and they don’t want to part with it. But at some point, many are saying, “Hang on here – I have this money, but I hate how I spend my life making it.” They begin to rethink their priorities and their abilities, and then they open their eyes to new ways they can make the money they need without risking the farm or giving up their lives for it. (Millions are doing this. The research shows that by the end of this decade, more than 50% of the private workforce will be independent.)

Tip: I've watched people come to the later stages of their lives with the deepest regret that they didn't live to the fullest, and embrace the work they knew they should've. Think about what you would do today if you knew you wouldn't fail.

4. Despite all the “right” choices you made in your career, the outcome feels very wrong.

So many professionals have made all the “right” choices, done everything that was expected of them, so when they wake up in the wrong field, they’re shocked and confused. The thing to realize here is that the “right” choices usually had to do with pleasing others, stroking your ego, or taking work or a promotion that fell in your lap, rather than asking yourself the tough questions like “Is this where I belong?”

Tip: In our culture, we often define the "right" career moves as actions that crush our soul. The career changers who've done it successfully committed to a new direction that defined "right" as what made them happy and fulfilled (and where they could use their greatest natural talents in service of others).

5. You have the irrepressible feeling that your talents and abilities could/should be used in a totally different (more creative and impactful) way.

I used to say to myself every day in my corporate life, “I know I’m made for different (and better) things than this.” But I didn’t listen to myself – I thought I was crazy. If you think, “There’s got to be more in life,” then there IS more to life than what you’re currently doing – no question.

Now -- 10 years later -- I know that was a true statement, and I'm so grateful I believed in it.

Tip: You don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater and risk everything in order to pursue a career change. You can develop a sound, reasonable transition plan with sound, reasonable steps that will prevent you from what everyone worries about - going broke, and losing everything. Any advice you read that says you'll be broke, burnt out and miserable if you pursue your passion is from people who just didn't do it the right way themselves and can't bear to see you succeed at it.

(For more about changing your career successfully, join me September 17th for my free teleclass The Inner Game of Career Success: How To Dig Deep, Find Your Right Work, and Illuminate the World With It.)