Get ready for a career change

Are you always interested in the larger mosaic of things? Do you prefer to view things as an all-encompassing idea and generate a visualisation that can serve to motivate you to march ahead? But when it comes to placing features of fact in it, do you tend to get dreary; and your concerns and enthusiasm starts spiralling down?

If the above is true, then you are one of those types who grapples with career change. You do visualise a magnificent new career but are unable to look beyond the planning and exploratory actions that go with it to make it a reality. Any plan to affect a career change has to be split into phases. However, in most instances, people need to envision a larger picture before they actually start getting down to conceive and shape each phase.

How can you bring the “larger mosaic outlook” to your career change?

Your career journey, including the new one on which you wish to embark has seven phases. If they are okay with you, then you need to visualise it as a course with landmarks en route to guide you in reaching your last stop. Each phase of the journey entails numerous small but not trivial steps and if you do not lose sight of the larger picture, you will be able to maintain focus. The seven stages are:

· Knowing your outlook: You need to delve into your outlook towards the entire process prior to taking the first step. You will be able to recognise and comprehend your obligations in that whether you are sincerely pledged or whether you are simply moving about doubtingly. In case you are cynic about the whole thing, you are likely to incapacitate your own endeavours anytime during your journey.

· Discerning where you are presently located: Before you start moving, some evaluation is inescapable. You need to query yourself for definite answers on two issues. How did you reach wherever you are today? Are there any lessons that you can learn from the choices that you exercised earlier and the direction your career has taken up to now?

· Knowing precisely who you are: Everybody has his exclusivities that make them who they are. What are yours? You will definitely have to your credit some skills and experience that can be of utility; you need to identify them. You will also subscribe to certain principles and standards in life; the same also have to be enunciated. Over the years, you would have clocked some attainments and which need to be catalogued in a manner that they indicate your primacies at work and in life.

· Determining prospects obtainable to you: You need to be in picture about all the latest developments related to your line of work. And in the light of the foregoing, you must identify specific prospects available to you. Opportunities and openings could be existing, but are you fully qualified for them? So far you would have been confined to a particular career, but now you need to think about widening your horizon. You should try to know more about all such alternatives, what they entail and how you can launch yourself in them.

· Deciding upon the matter: Having acquired an extensive databank pertinent to you and relevant to your field of work, you need to evaluate it in detail. You are required to make a decision employing both your logic and instinct. How do you do that? It is likely that you may unnecessarily dillydally the   possibilities and hence you must plan for initiatives that will preclude you from getting stuck.

· Setting objectives: One you take a decision to go ahead, what then remains is formulating your next moves to make things work. If you harbour a “larger mosaic outlook”, you will need to set a big objective extending into the distant future to keep you going. You are already through with nearly three-fourth of your actions and hence the task will not be difficult. Nevertheless, you will need to split your big objective into smaller goals that can be focussed on for attainment in a progressive manner. It will however, be essential to monitor your progress periodically, even on a day-to-day basis, if necessary.

· Initiating action: This is the final and the most important stage. You simply have to act in harmony with whatever you have deliberated. Your efforts up to setting objectives will go waste if you fail to get into an execution mode. But if you have been serious all along, you will be able to transform your plans for a career change into a certainty.

Remember that you cannot afford to let your guard down at any stage. You will be required to concentrate on what is happening down under by working on minutiae. But your comprehension of the larger mosaic and the long-term plan that you have formulated will facilitate seeing the rationale behind all such minutiae. You will thus be able to keep moving forward and not getting wedged.