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!

What are you going to be when you grow up?

Remember when they used to ask that question when we were kids? Do you still remember your answer? Remember why you wanted to follow that profession?

Probably most of us didn’t exactly become that we imagined when we were kids but many have been able to fulfill their professional dream. When I say “dream” I’m referring to the original motivation behind the profession we “picked” when we were children—some wanted to help people, hence they wanted to become doctors; others wanted to help animals, hence they aspired to be vets. There were even those who dreamed of being rich and wanted to work in a bank.

As they grew up many professionals discovered that they could fulfill their professional “dreams” even without following the idealized childhood profession, and that different roads lead to the same sense of fulfillment.

The most important thing is to fulfill that dream. Consultant’s BS? Self-help talk? It might even be, but the most fulfilled professionals are usually those boosting best performance and standing out in their fields. If that isn’t enough to convince you, there’s also a mathematical equation to consider. We spend most of our time at work, so nothing more logical than working with something that gives us satisfaction.

I said satisfaction. And satisfaction doesn’t mean that the work is easy; that it’s necessarily the one that pays the best, or has fewer hours. It’s as if each phase in our professional trajectory were a chapter of a major story that you’ll title career a few years later. And satisfaction happens when this story is awesome and you’re proud of it (and sometimes inspires other people!!).

How are you drafting your chapters? Have you taken a moment to think about this?

And claiming that it’s too late and that you’ve done everything wrong in the past won’t cut it! If you need to change remember that the most important thing is the direction of the change and not how fast you do it (Edson Marques).

When you think about a profession don’t get stuck to the idea that you’ll necessarily work for a company, from Monday thru Friday, in a secure job with a boss to report to. Not that this is bad, it’s just that it’s not the only path. Humans have never experienced so many simultaneous changes and so many new needs than in the current globalized world. It sounds like cliché, but if we take a moment we’ll realize that "the world is upside down and no one has noticed it."

Take a chance!! There’re tons of opportunities in the new world being formed.

GOOD LUCK!!

Everyone has a price

This sentence can sound harsh sometimes, right? And there are even those who state with conviction that they “aren’t for sale.”

However, I believe that all of us indeed have a price. When I say price in the professional context I’m referring to the conditions and premises we take into account when we accept or not the offers we come across in our professional lives.

The more or less open we are to such conditions and premises define the “price” each one of us has.

Price doesn’t necessarily have to be financial. Many professionals come to me saying that they would accept less in order to be able to spend more time with their families. Others don’t mind working more than 12 hours and even on weekends for a higher compensation. These are examples of “prices” that professionals can determine for themselves.

All of us have a price. However, not all professionals know that. And for not knowing that, they are open to negotiations or accept proposals without “calculating” all the implications that will result from such decision.

Higher hierarchical positions, promises of accelerated growth or even differentiated compensation packages are reasons that can drive us to consider a new job “without even blinking.”

But many times a decision made without blinking can end up costing a lot.

The reason behind this is that our "price” is also composed of things that are not financial. You can even think that a salary 3 times bigger than yours would help you buy happiness. But if in order to receive such salary you had to do something that made you unhappy, then this extra amount is actually paying for your unhappiness. Like an exchange. And thus the higher salary becomes nothing but a currency in exchange for your unhappiness.

No business can buy you happiness with money, only unhappiness. If you’re in a job you don’t like but you stay because they pay you well, the company is actually paying for your unhappiness. And the unhappier we are at a job the more we tend to think we make little money. Because happiness costs a lot.
The high “price" of happiness includes many other things that are not necessarily financial, think about that. And each one has their own.

What about you? What’s your price?