Have you ever found yourself in a job or on a career path which no longer inspires or excites you?
Have you found yourself in a role which is frustrating, or you just cannot connect with anymore? Have you ever thought “what am I still doing here?” swiftly followed by “but I can’t change now, can I?”
The way we work is constantly changing. The Covid19 pandemic created a seismic shift in how people work, and hybrid or flexible working has now become the norm.
However, another shift in the employment status quo is the jobs for life model or rather, lack of.
Throughout history there has been an expectation that when you chose an employment sector or career path, you stayed there for life.
There was an expectation that when you started in a job or got on a career path, that is where you stayed. If you look back through history you will see family businesses taken over by sons and grandsons – occasionally daughters and granddaughters – but the expectation was clear, where you started is where you stayed.
Throughout the industrial revolution when the ‘factory worker’ was born, this set in motion a hierarchy, with management at the top and the ‘worker’ sadly at the bottom. This employment model has continued and flourished with economic progress. The vast multi layered jobs market has become diverse and divisive in equal measure with inequalities rife in every sector.
However, does this mean that a factory worker cannot rise to the upper echelons of management? Does this mean that a baker cannot branch out and create a chain of businesses nationally/internationally? and does this mean that you cannot make that change, that shift away from a job or career which no longer serves you? Of course it doesn’t.
History shows that with determination and a ‘can-do’ attitude in the world of work you can literally achieve anything, as long as you put your mind to it. Let’s leave outliers out of this equation as that is a completely different blog!
I was recently speaking with a woman working on the checkout of my local supermarket.
She was in fine spirits, and I asked her how she was a perfectly normal interaction for me. She explained that it was her last day and that she wasn’t leaving her role because she no longer liked it or the people, but that she was starting a whole new career. The lady in question was leaving her supermarket job of many years and making a move into working in a special educational needs school.She explained how she was excited and daunted in equal measure because it was a role so far removed from anything she had known. However, with her son having just been through the school and her managing his needs as his mother, she felt she had something to offer. I was so happy for her, and it thus inspired this blog.
She is not the only one to make a move away from an established role into a whole new world of work. In early 2018 after nearly ten years as a Secondary School English Teacher I too walked away from my career to work full time in a business I was building with my partner. Teaching was such an incredible joy some of the time, but also and sadly very demoralising too. After too many years of being metaphorically beaten with the Ofsted and ‘Academy’ stick, I walked away with no funds, no savings and no way to generate an income.
My luck changed very quickly when Helena Parrott – Director of Virtually Smart Ltd discovered I had left teaching and offered me some hours in her growing company. Five and a half years down the line here I am telling you about how I made the jump – more like the leap – away from PAYE into self-employment.
I am not the only one to leave a successful career and make a move into something completely different. One of the many inspirational women I have read about over the years is renowned chef Asma Khan.
Asma Khan was the second daughter of a royal Indian family and as such was expected to be married off at eighteen and no longer be a burden to her family. However, Asma rejected this and spent her time working alongside her mother in her food business and spent most of her time playing cricket.
When she did finally marry and end up in the UK with a husband she barely knew, she found herself very lonely and actually unable to cook for herself.
Determined to shake off the stigmas holding her back, Asma not only returned to India to learn how to cook the dishes of her cultural background from the women of her homeland, but upon her return she attended college, became a lawyer and completed a doctorate British Constitutional Law at King’s College, London.
Despite her academic and legal accolades, it was the food of her heritage which captivated her. Asma walked away from her career in Law and from secret supper clubs in her home to a Covent Garden restaurant called the Darjeeling Express, she has shown what can be done if you set your mind to it. Asma’s kitchen is run solely by women, some immigrants and some of the women she learnt from herself.
There are inspirational people all around us all of the time making changes to their lives, moving careers, changing jobs, facing the fear of change and embracing the joy of the new.
Therefore, what is stopping you making the move? Yes it is frightening, it is a concern when you may have relied on the same income for so long and yes the current economic climate is unsettling. However, is there ever a right time to do anything? if the time feels right then maybe that is because it is the right time.
Written by Katy-Jane Mason for and on behalf of Virtually Smart Ltd
