There are as many reasons to consider a career change after 50 as there are careers. If you’re over 50 now might be the right time to take a good look at your current career and your life situation.
Your working life and beyond is the longest personal project you’ll be involved in. And no matter how hard we try the amount of time we have available in not infinite.
If you take the time after age 50 to review your accomplishments to date, whether your career plan is working for you and what you’ll be doing in the future all are important first steps in a career change after 50.
Regardless of how you reached this point in your life; you lost your job, you were forced to change careers or you’re thinking about doing making a career change voluntarily here are some questions to ask yourself.
Overall, are you personally pleased or displeased with things? Your career? Your employer? Your relationships? Your financial situation?
Additional questions to ask yourself: Are you doing things that please you and you get satisfaction on doing? Generally, are you in a place in your life that you wanted? What in your life would you change if you had a chance? (Please don’t mention finding oil in your back yard. It’s unlikely the government would let you pump it out.) What do you see for the rest of your life and career?
For many in considering the last question about viewing their future life and career they base their answer on what they’ve done in the past. If you only consider your past skills and abilities and create a future based on these experiences it’s no wonder that many are mystified why their life and career does not change or seem much different.
Basically, to make meaningful change in your future career and life you have to consider another way. Your thinking has to move forward. If you start from where are you right now and go to “what would I like to be doing?” you’ve made the first step into the future.
Now in building your career and life plan you take your future dreams and use them to design and build your planned future. You now have created the life and career you want to be living. Don’t you thing as you work the plan that you will be happier and more satisfied? You bet you will.
Unless you do this exercise, and go back to it frequently, any change in your career after 50, will just be more of the same. You’ll be staring at the same results and it’s no secret why nothing has changed even though you’ve changed careers.
Many spend much of their life waiting: waiting for the next promotion, waiting for things to get better, waiting for a relationship to improve, waiting for the working climate to get better but they never seem to get to the point where they can say things are better. Now may be the ideal time to do something about it.
You can’t get where you want to be simply doing the same things over and over and even a bit differently. Even a career change after 50 may just be a career change-other things in your life may not change.
For example, if you are in a financial bind in your current career, you change careers with a greater salary and if you’re still in financial trouble with the same stresses-what have you accomplished? Not much. The key is to overhaul and reexamine all aspects of your life. Do this and a career change after 50 will be more meaningful and closer to your overall life goals.
Bottom line: you need to re-examine how and what you think about yourself. The result will be you will live your life differently and combined with a career change to your dream career; your waiting will be over because things important to you have gotten better.
