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Find Your "Authentic" WorkI founded Career Reinventors 40+ because as a career coach and innovator I feel I can offer specialist help to professionals at midlife. The period of midlife can be like a springboard; where you can perch, take stock of all you've achieved in your career to date, before propelling yourself forward to fulfill your outstanding professional dreams.
More than this, midlife can be the time to evolve or even radically change your professional career so that what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it become more authentically you. By unleashing even more of your talents and capabilities, and channeling them into meaningful projects, you can deepen the satisfaction you get from your work for the next phase of your career. |
Deathbed Regrets are RealBronnie Ware a nurse from New Zealand researched* the deathbed regrets of her terminally ill patients and found that the number one regret was “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me.”
When I first came across Bronnie’s research findings I was deeply saddened. During my 20+ years practising in, consulting in and researching the fields of creativity, innovation and change, I’ve learned how human creativity and human potential are vast. Just as only 10% of an iceberg is visible above the water and 90% remains below, we often only tap into 10% of our creativity and capability, and the rest remains hidden from us and from those around us - including employers. I’ve repeatedly been awestruck watching teams and individuals, imagine, create and grow while they worked on vital innovation projects. I’ve seen those teams execute plans that have transformed businesses and people’s lives. Often at the start of those projects many team members told me they were anxious and uncertain at what lay ahead, but time and again those teams went on to achieve so much more than they’d imagined would be possible. Nevertheless, Bronnie Ware’s research shows, even if people realise at some point in their life, that another path would make them happier, many are unable to change. |
The number one death bed regret: 'I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself.'
We are often not aware of 90% of our creativity and capability.
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Discover the Work You Love at Midlife
Midlife is a prime time to make such changes. Sadly however, at midlife, just as twenty plus years of building skills and gaining professional experience coalesce into an impressive career history, the spectre or even the actual form of ageism can appear on the workplace horizon.
Ageism may be illegal in the UK workplace but through my experience coaching midlife professionals whose posts have been made redundant, I’ve heard many accounts of covert, and sometimes fairly overt ageism.
Ageism can cause midlife professionals to lose confidence in their ability to find a new role in their current field. Sometimes people tell me how they’ve edited out of their CVs some of their achievements - to stop themselves appearing ‘overqualified’ for a role. This is heart breaking!
If ageism – covert or overt, real or feared makes it hard for professionals to find a new role in a field in which they’re highly experienced, how much harder it can seem to move into a new field at midlife.
Ageism may be illegal in the UK workplace but through my experience coaching midlife professionals whose posts have been made redundant, I’ve heard many accounts of covert, and sometimes fairly overt ageism.
Ageism can cause midlife professionals to lose confidence in their ability to find a new role in their current field. Sometimes people tell me how they’ve edited out of their CVs some of their achievements - to stop themselves appearing ‘overqualified’ for a role. This is heart breaking!
If ageism – covert or overt, real or feared makes it hard for professionals to find a new role in a field in which they’re highly experienced, how much harder it can seem to move into a new field at midlife.
Carl Jung researched 'the midlife crisis.'
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But think. Unlike the new graduate starting out, as a midlife professional you’re much better placed to be choosing your career path. Whether you’ve had one employer or several you’ll have learned many skills and been exposed to so much of life that you’ll have a greater sense of what appeals and what turns you off. Midlife is the time to ditch what gets you down in your career and grab more of what you love.
Sometimes people tell me they feel they’ve been living an ‘off the shelf’ career path since graduating; one that’s fairly similar to the professional lives of their peers, friends, and family and which offers similar milestones, promotions, ranks and rewards. However, this path is no longer making them happy. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung researched the ‘midlife crisis’ and described it as a yearning at midlife to ‘individuate’, or to follow our own unique path. |
87% of Career Reinventors Happy With Their Changes
You can 'tailor make' your career at midlife.
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87%* of midlife career reinventors were happy with the career reinvention changes they made.
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Midlife career reinventors can find their new more authentic path
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In order to do this we may need to move on from our ‘off the shelf life’ and ‘tailor make’ our future professional life.
Although this may not be easy, research* has shown that the rewards of reinventing your career at midlife can be huge. 82 % percent of midlife career reinventors were successful and 87% were happy with the changes they made to reinvent their career. 70% had the same or increased pay, and 65% said they felt less stress after reinventing their professional career.
Rather than ‘downgrading’ your CV to combat ageism and trying to fit into a workplace or role that let’s face it, you may have outgrown, reinventing you professional career offers you the chance to BUILD on all that you’ve achieved in your career to date.
My offer to you is to help you get clear on all that YOU uniquely, can offer the world NOW, and to help you match that with your unfulfilled dreams. This will mean you can create a satisfying next chapter of your professional life.
Although this may not be easy, research* has shown that the rewards of reinventing your career at midlife can be huge. 82 % percent of midlife career reinventors were successful and 87% were happy with the changes they made to reinvent their career. 70% had the same or increased pay, and 65% said they felt less stress after reinventing their professional career.
Rather than ‘downgrading’ your CV to combat ageism and trying to fit into a workplace or role that let’s face it, you may have outgrown, reinventing you professional career offers you the chance to BUILD on all that you’ve achieved in your career to date.
My offer to you is to help you get clear on all that YOU uniquely, can offer the world NOW, and to help you match that with your unfulfilled dreams. This will mean you can create a satisfying next chapter of your professional life.
* The Top Five Regrets of the Dying : A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. Bronnie Ware
* Source : Time
* Source : Time
