Financial Freedom & Career Changes

Losing Your Job to Live Your Dream

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live your dream

I have never been one to watch the news. This isn’t because I hate it or that I’m depressed by it, although those would both be accurate assumptions. It’s because I don’t need to. Every night, it is my certain destiny to receive a call from my mother, who dictates a new list of Things I Should Know. The list, arriving with the same reliability as the morning sun and post-breakup weight gain, is one that my mother hopes will ignite paranoia – the kind that will keep me securely located inside my house.

Mom: “Have you ever heard of that Craigslist? I don’t even know what it is, but I guess it’s something to do with the internet.”

Me: “Yes, of course I have. So, how was your day?”

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How to Explore New Careers (Without Quitting Your Day Job)

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explore new careers

Ever wonder what it would be like to spend your 40+ hours a week working somewhere else? If so, you’re in good company. In the US alone, 55% of people aren’t happy with their current job. We’ve heard the success stories of people who quit their day job and found something better. Maybe they went back to school, moved to another location, or even started their own business. We admire their tenacity because we too would love to drop our lives and start afresh.

Then reality kicks in. Many of us can’t take the financial risk of quitting our jobs. Our children need a roof over their heads, our house payments keep coming, and our obligations keep us rooted in our current communities. We dream about changing jobs, but looking at our lives, it appears impossible to follow in our career heroes’ footsteps.

Fortunately for us, exploring new career opportunities doesn’t mean you have quit your day job tomorrow. There are more subtle ways of getting where you want to be. Consider these simple ways to start pursuing a new career:

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Career Shifts for Boomers

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A police officer turned music agent. A Navy captain who became a circus manager. A botanist who traded plants for making chocolate. Those are a few stories of major career changes from the baby boomers and retirees I interviewed for my new book, “What’s Next: Follow Your Passion and Find Your Dream Job” (Chronicle Books). Each one faced a different set of challenges. But their stories reveal common threads.

Many of these men and women were spurred to discover what really matters to them and transform their work (and, in turn, personal) lives by a crisis or loss that starkly revealed the fleeting nature of life. No one acted impulsively. They paused. They planned. They bypassed helter-skelter approaches and pursued prudent, well-researched moves.

Each person had flexible time horizons for his or her venture to make it. If necessary, these people added the essential skills and degrees before they made the leap. They often apprenticed or volunteered beforehand. They reached out to their networks of social and professional contacts to ask for help and guidance.

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Are You In the Right Job for You? (& What to Do If Not)

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right job

There I was, sitting in the conference room at one of my former jobs. It was what I call a “B+ job”—a good but not great job; a perfectly nice, challenging, job that fell far short of being meaningful, exciting, of feeling like my right work.

The company was holding a professional development day, during which all employees took a personality test. The idea, of course, was that through the test results, we’d better understand our strengths and weaknesses and those of our colleagues, and that we’d be able to work together more effectively. The usual.

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How to Minimize Fear When Making a Major Career Shift

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The decision to make a major career change can trigger all kinds of nasty anxiety and ruthless paranoia. What if I fail? What if it’s nothing like what I’m expecting? What if I regret leaving my current gig? But, as we all know, you can’t live a fulfilling life if you waste your time and energy focusing on the “what ifs”.

The more effective course of action is to focus on taking productive steps to minimize the fear that inevitably comes with any major career shift.

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10 Steps to Creative Career Changes

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career changes

A percussionist has a way of creating music out of a couple twigs and an iron pot. A dancer can turn an empty room into a mosaic of movement. Why not use your own inherent creative capacities to be the artist of your own life?

We often feel trapped; unable to change directions while on the roads we travel.

But just as a writer can overcome creative blocks when staring at a blank sheet of paper, we can all overcome the blocks that prevent us from seeing creative possibilities for our lives.

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A New Take on Work-Life Balance

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The curse of the 21st century is that we spend our time trying to succeed in everything at once – work, our significant relationship, family, exercise, friendships, keeping the perfect house, the perfect garden…

No matter how hard I try I never succeed at everything. If I work hard I don’t have time to walk my dog. Go out with friends? I need to clean the house. Create some art? It never happens. Is this exhausting perfectionism really what is meant by a work-life balance? Can we really do it all?

When I am busy at work I just don’t have the head space or emotional energy to cope with doing anything else. If I put more effort into my personal life I find being at work such a bore. I want to be out doing all those fun things that matter to me personally, not being stuck at work. Instead of neatly balanced, my work-life scales are swinging wildly.

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Should I Stay or Should I Go? Determining Whether the 9-5 World Is For You.

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9-5 world

If you believe the hype of many of the personal development blogs out there, figuring out your passion, kissing the 9-5 world goodbye and working for yourself is the best way to find happiness.

But is it really?

Self-employment has some serious drawbacks. Even if you put yourself on a schedule, you never really leave work because you carry work around in your head at all times. You don’t get paid vacations, unless you earn well enough to pay yourself to take time off, and if you want retirement savings or a health plan you need to pay for them yourself. And don’t get me started on the non-passion related stuff, such as administration, marketing, sales and customer service!

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The Way of Retreat: How To Get Promoted Without Doing Anything

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do nothing

You leave no cushion unturned. You search the house until you’re in a state, roaring internally (and perhaps externally) with frustration. You waste ten minutes and a load of energy.

Eventually you give up the hunt – that important form you were filling out has disappeared into the ether. Sulking, you put the kettle on and plonk yourself in front of the TV.

Then you finally hear it – that quiet voice inside. It was talking to you all along, telling you that the form was in your back pocket the whole time – right where you put it when that charity collector knocked on the door.

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The End of Wealth

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end wealth

Unless you have been living under a rock, you will know there are some major problems in the world’s financial markets at the moment. Working for a global bank, I guess you could say I have a front row seat for this debacle that in recent days has worsened with the stunning collapse of Bear Stearns (Update: and all the other recent collapses! There are too many to mention now….).

Much of what I have read has blamed Wall Street for turning the problems related to subprime lending into a major global problem. But I also recently read this Newsweek article where a former mortgage broker shares his insights into the fraud and greed that has plagued his former industry:

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