KEY POINTS:
January is traditionally a time for reflection about life and work.
How do you go about making changes if you feel you're at a crossroads in your career?
No matter how stuck you may feel, you have options, says Canadian career consultant Gray Poehnell.
The co-author of Career Crossroads, A Personal Career Positioning System, visited New Zealand in November to deliver a series of workshops.
Once you realise you're living in a world that is constantly changing, it becomes easier to accept you can make change, says Poehnell.
"Just by looking in the mirror every day you know change is continual. Who you are and what you do at 18 is different from who you are and what you do at 40."
To move from crossroads, you have to make an informed decision and say "yes" to one thing and "no" to others, he says.
He believes many people struggle with having to make a choice because they want it all.
"Well you can't. There is no one single perfect option or solution."
It is important to make an informed decision from a position of self-knowledge and understanding. Knowing where you are is the first step to knowing where you could be, he says.
A common refrain from people at career crossroads is that they feel boxed in, says Poehnell.
He challenges those people to have a close look at that "box".
Are all of the walls of the box really made out of rigid material that can't be moved? He suggests not.
While concrete walls represent rigid rules that cannot be broken or bent, such as a particular job needing a specific qualification, there are other walls that may not be so rigid.
One wall could be glass; breakable if hit in the right place.
Then there are rubber walls that are thick and strong, but will give when pushed hard enough.
If a manager is saying no to something, is there a way to get some movement on that?
Finally, there are the vapour walls that don't really exist.
"They are a creation of our beliefs, assumptions and perceptions about rules," says Poehnell.
"So if you are thinking, 'I can't do this', ask yourself why not? Who told you that you can't?"
Identification of the values you want to follow also helps you become a lot clearer about what you want from your career and life, says Poehnell.
"[Values] reflect what is really important to you and what you really want in a career. A misfit of values in the workplace can often cause a lot of dissatisfaction."
He says a sign that you are violating your values is feeling guilty.
When others violate your values, you feel angry.
Poehnell says the days are long gone when there were homogenous cultures with relatively stable sets of values.
Studies show that people who have an overload of unconscious values systems often shut down and their decision making processes become clogged, Poehnell says. This leads to what he calls the "chameleon effect".
"You don't choose, but fit in with the dominant values. So you get situations where a young person does something terrible, yet their parents talk about what a great son or daughter they are at home. What is happening is that they absorb the values around them, whether home, school or in a gang context, without making a choice about their own value system."
If you have made a choice based on your own value system you can find satisfaction, fitting your career into your life. It may be that a lower-level job fits best with your roles outside work.
"You need to think about balancing ways to express yourself in different parts of your life," suggests Poehnell, adding many indigenous cultures consider their community roles to be as important or more important than their work roles.
A career is more than a succession of jobs, he says. It is a sum total of all life roles, including hobbies, family, spirituality, friendships and sports.
"Most people don't find the perfect job. It is a mixed bag, and people become dissatisfied because they've been led to believe that the job has to be everything."
Poehnell suggests people are at career crossroads when they:
* Are dissatisfied with their position or company
* Experience a lot of changes in life
* See their career field or company undergoing rapid change
* Want faster career opportunities
* Need to learn new skills
* Need to gain new experience
* Are frustrated at work
* Feel burned out
* Are continually complaining
* Are struggling with managers or co-workers
* Feel they're stagnating at work
* Are often bored
* Feel like the job is demanding more than they can give
* Experience health problems which may be stress-related.
Sourced from Career Crossroads: A personal career positioning system by Gray Poehnell and Norman E Amundson.
