When is the right time to seek something new?

Is this the right time to change jobs? Or yet, does it make sense to change your career at this point in time?

So, how do we know when the right time to seek something new is?

In a previous post I had addressed the issue of how long one should stay with the same company (read here).

But sometimes the issue is more complex than that. It might be something that impacts your professional life, but it doesn’t exclusively have to. For example, it might involve following your spouse to another country; or yet giving up a corporate career to become self-employed or open your own business. Such decisions are much more complicated than changing companies.So, how do we know when the right time is? The answer seems obvious, but it came to me when I watched for the second time the play “The Immoral Soul” (with Clarice Niskier) last week.

In the play Clarice says that we should leave behind the narrow path in search of a wider space. She also states, “In certain moments of our lives we face situations that cause us to feel physical or moral discomfort. These spaces that have become narrow—which have helped us evolve and grow—become stifling and limiting.”

And this is very well represented by this Biblical story:

Sometimes we think there’s no way out and ahead of us there’s only the vastness of the insurmountable sea.
Regardless of your religious belief the analogy that sometimes we have to cross a sea in search of a wider space seems to make sense. And like Clarice Niskier says in the play, if we show courage and determination in doing it the universe will conspire in our favor.

And all of us have already overcome a vastness of water from a narrow path toward the wider space, from the womb to the world. And I don’t believe this is an easy thing; all newborns come out crying a lot!

So, when is the right to seek something new? When the place you’re at becomes a narrow space and you’re ready to be born again.

GOOD LUCK!

How to build a successful career

Many executives I talk to ask me, “What do successful professionals you interview have in common?”

Despite always answering that when it comes to someone’s career there’s no right or wrong, or success formulas, there’s is something I think successful professionals have in common.

If competence is a combination of Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes (KSA) part of the answer lies in this concept. The philosopher Ralph Emerson once said, “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

And I truly believe in what Emerson was saying. In essence your career success depends on your attitudes, but it’s also built upon how your attitudes are perceived by others.

And it’s no use thinking, “I don’t care about what others think of me,” or yet, “I’m not here to make friends but to do my job,” because your most important personal marketing is actually done by others, and in this sense it’s possible to say that perception equals reality.

Having a successful career is closely related to how others assess you, so each work day and each step you take in your career is a chapter you write about it, which others will read and tell as stories.

You can’t dissociate one from the other. Your career will be what you make of it. There’s no use blaming it on your boss or company; it’s in your hands.

Yes, I know your company is not perfect, that your boss isn’t nice, that your team is difficult, that nobody sees the world like you do, and that sometimes it REALLY feels impossible, but as Michael Jackson used to sing, it’s about “...starting with the man in the mirror...”

GOOD LUCK!!