Five ways to make career change easier

Five ways to make career change easier Most of us will change careers at least three times in our lives. And most of us will be nervous at one point or another in the process. Invariably, youre giving up the known to pursue the unknown. So, even if you hate your current career, its still scary to give it up. Five Steps to a New Life I have a lot of experience in this arena. Ive changed careers a lot, going from professional beach volleyball player to software marketer to entrepreneur to freelance writer. While I was doing that, my husband changed careers three times in five years. Each change was different and difficult in its own way for both of us. But Ive learned some tricks along the way to make career changes easier. Here are five ideas to consider in your own career change: 1. Test things out before you make the leap. You dont need to quit your current job to get started in a new career. Give yourself a chance to test things out. Try it on vacation or on the weekend. Try an internship theres no rule that says an intern has to be 19 years old. Its very hard to predict what youll like. Once you admit this and really try things out, youre much more likely to be accurate about what youre well-suited to do next. The most effective way to make the very serious move of changing careers is to try out that career in a not-so-serious way. Ive done this in the past, and I once discovered that  I didnt end up liking the new career. This tactic can save you a lot of large missteps. 2. Talk about your change in a way that will make it happen. When people ask you what you do or, even better, what you want to do you need an effective answer. Tell people what youre aiming to do and why it makes sense. This little speech is what will allow people to help you make that career change. Laura Allen, co-founder of  15 Second Pitch, helps people figure out what to say when they want to make a career change. The key to answering the question what do you do is knowing yourself and knowing why you want to change. Once you know that, the pitch will come more easily. 3. Keep your significant other in the loop. A career change is so emotionally and financially  profound that its practically a joint decision if youre living with a significant other. I learned this the hard way,  when my husband changed careers. As a career advisor, I had a lot of opinions about what he should be doing, but I didnt want to step on his toes so I tried to leave him alone to make the decisions himself. But I started getting nervous about the instability his choices might create. Theres a definite balance you need to strike between wanting to support your partner in chasing his or her career dreams, and wanting to maintain sanity in the relationship while the chase is on. Keeping your partner in the loop, not just about what youre doing but also what youre thinking, can go a long way toward creating a team feeling. 4. Make the change before you go nuts. Most people hold out in a career until its clear that its not for them. All change is hard. We like to be stimulated and interested, but most of us dont like constant change. Its too stressful, so we find ways to avoid it. The problem is that if you put off change for too long you compromise your ability to orchestrate it. I spent a lot of my career with the bad habit of  letting myself bottom out before I made a big change, so take it from me the change is much harder to manage when youre operating from a place of desperation and exhaustion. 5. Downplay financial issues. I write a lot about how you dont need a lot of money to be happy. In fact, research shows that  you only need $40,000 to be happy, and that the rest of the money you earn has little impact on your happiness. But  Tim Ferriss  takes this one step further. In his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, he starts with the idea that time and flexibility are worth more in life than money. So when you think about if you can afford to make the change, think in terms of your net gain in time and flexibility rather than in money. Anticipating the Risk Career change is always risky. But if you have a good understanding of why youre leaving your current career and choosing the new one, the clarity can give you the strength to endure instability and uncertainty. At some point, your self-awareness will make the career change your only viable alternative. Then itll seem like a relatively low-risk move.