Changing Your Profession After 35 Years Is Not Possible, But Necessary

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

All these questions are relevant for almost any person who has been working for a long time in one place and has crossed the border of adulthood. He often asks them to himself right up to the very retirement. But in vain! After all, there is still time to change your life: to change not only your profession, but also your field of activity. This is not crazy, this is a smart step towards real life. Why it is worth changing your profession at a mature age and how it is possible, you will find out below.

What is the common pattern for choosing a profession? Young people from the institute usually go to work in accordance with their specialty, or where they could get a job due to lack of experience, or they just needed money and went at least somewhere. Thus, the choice of a profession is often compulsory and not always consciously. Accordingly, a career is made from the very beginning where he came.

According to psychological research, it is in adulthood that values are revised. A person begins to think: "What have I achieved? Am I in my place? What would I like from the profession?" The answers to these questions tend to cause sadness and frustration in the professional sphere of life. A person gets bored, wants something new. This is fine. Values and priorities change, you begin to understand that work should bring not only money, but also pleasure. And the latter is closer to the vocation. In principle, any psychologist will confirm that long-term work in one place leads to severe emotional burnout and dissatisfaction with your life. There is nothing strange in the fact that over time, fatigue from long work in one place accumulates, duties are performed mechanically and a person loses in professionalism, despite a lot of experience. It sounds contradictory, but this is a fact confirmed by many psychologists.

Even if the profession has been deliberately chosen, you have become a professional in your field: you have made a career and achieved a high result, there may still be a risk of emotional burnout:

- it gets boring at work.

- you stop developing professionally, nothing is interesting, there is no desire to learn new things.

- growth prospects are lost because you have already reached the "ceiling" professionally

- health deteriorates

- you go to work as if you were going to hard labor.

A person is fully happy only when his professional and personal life is perfectly balanced and well-organized.

Your ideal profession …

The most comfortable and profitable profession can be called only the one that allows you to maximize the strengths of a person, his personal attitudes (values) and motivators. If we talk about motivators, then there are only 6 of them according to B. J. Bonnstetter's system - these are traditional, theoretical, individualistic, utilization, aesthetic, social motivators. More information about them can be found on the Internet, or you can contact a psychologist or coach who will help you determine your main motivators.

It is obvious that when a person successfully realizes himself, through the use of his strengths and talents, life begins to bring him joy and pleasure. Therefore, the profession should be chosen according to how fully it allows you to use your strengths and talents, how much it corresponds to the values and motivators.

Pros of changing profession

Age should not interfere with a change of profession. Scientists have proven that if there is a strong desire in adulthood to master a new profession, then internal reserves are revealed, the soul revives, and health improves.

A person is initially called upon to develop in life, to learn, to learn something new. Leaving your comfort zone is also beneficial - it will help you see new horizons and take a fresh look at life. The new profession provides such an opportunity in the best possible way and fully.

Profitability, of course, falls, but if you do something with love and you do it perfectly, then the work will definitely become profitable over time! I will count this as a plus, because the profit factor is only temporarily in the minus.

You, as a "young" specialist, have excellent qualities, and they will withstand the competition with those who have been "in the subject" for a long time and have extensive work experience. People who have changed their profession, as a rule, take up work with great enthusiasm, they are ready for training, they have not yet developed professional inertness of thinking and templates, their eyes are not "blurred". It is easier to cooperate with them, it is easier to convey the ideas of the company to them. Build on these qualities in your interview. Such employees are also very much needed.

And the cons? There is, of course

The main "minus", which everyone is so afraid of, but it is simply inevitable if you want to live a full and happy life, is getting out of your comfort zone. Development and success cannot be achieved without getting out of your "swamp".

Also, at first, a person often has a lack of confidence in himself and his strength, the so-called "suspended state", which can shake at the first steps and give rise to despondency and fear of failure. These states are quite normal for any person who goes through changes: the old is behind, and the new has not yet arrived. The main thing is to understand whether the fear is justified? Where is he from? What are you afraid of. You should not close in them, you need to work with them. Once again, a trained psychologist or coach will provide excellent support.

The following tricks will also provide excellent support:

Surely someone and your acquaintances have already gone through a similar experience of cardinal changes. They survived it, coped with the unknown and mastered the novelty. Often even these people themselves then say: "It was for the best!"

If you don't know anyone, look at other examples: movies and books, famous people.

In your life, most likely, you had to go through transitional moments, get new experience, "fall out" unexpectedly from the comfort zone due to unexpected circumstances. Remember how you lived those moments? Have lived the same. How did you deal with them? What helped?

I will share my experience with you. I have been the managing director of two auto dealerships for 14 years. The centers were organized by me personally from scratch. It was a deliberate choice. I enjoyed my work immensely, having grown from an assistant director to a center manager. She achieved great professional success and introduced a completely new brand to the Russian market. But later, at the age of 35, the understanding came to me that I gave everything I could to this work. My activity has already become mechanical, self-realization has stopped, there is only making money.

Then I decided to change not only the place of work, but also the field of activity. Now career growth has lost its relevance, work has become a priority, which would bring pleasure and would best suit my main motivators. I went to consulting, organized my own company. Accordingly, I immediately faced all the disadvantages discussed above. For example, leaving your comfort zone. Then I had a fairly large staff of subordinates under my command, where each was responsible for a certain part of the work. But suddenly I found myself completely alone, I had to delve into many little things and details of the business, learn new things. Of course, in the beginning, my income was almost zero. But for this I mentally prepared myself, most importantly, I liked my work, I knew for sure that over time my business would bring profit. My vast experience in consulting, recruiting and much more has allowed me to share with people successful methods and techniques. Today, the new profession is absolutely comfortable for me, because I realize my strengths and talents. It has become profitable because it is done with love and on a professional level. And, moreover, it is also important for me that my activity is aimed not only at consulting and teaching other people, I am developing myself.

So go for it and you will succeed! The main thing is to believe in yourself and your strength, then others will believe in you.