Not Sure What to Do Next in Your Career? Career Advice to Get You Started

Inside: Not sure what to do in your career? Feeling lost? You aren’t alone and with career advice from experienced career coach, Becca Carnahan, you can find your direction and chart a path forward. Check out the free training here.

If you’re not sure what to do in your career next, I have two pieces of good news for you.

1) You aren’t alone! As a career coach, I work with clients every day who are feeling unfulfilled or confused or both. Feels a little better knowing it’s not just you, right?

2) You can fix this! With help, you can find your direction, take the steps you need to get there and make a change that will bring you more fulfillment and joy in your career. It’s 100% possible!

Why Am I Feeling Lost in My Career?

Remember how I just said you aren’t alone in feeling lost? I think I should elaborate on that a bit and give you some reasons why you aren’t alone. Feeling lost in your career happens – a lot – and here are some of the reasons why.

Age 30 Transition

The Age 30 Transition is a real psychology thing – occurring between ages 28 and 40 – where our brains start reevaluating our choices and our priorities shift.

It makes sense too. Up until that point in life you’ve been hustling, and learning, and achieving, without a whole lot of time for reflection. But then around the Age 30 Transition, you’re settling into your adult life and realizing that what you have spent years working for may not actually be what you want.

A little scary, huh? But it’s okay. Remember – you aren’t alone and we can fix this!

Mid-Career Crisis

The Age 30 Transition is closely related to a Mid-Career Crisis or Mid-Life Crisis but there are a couple of differences. One, this can happen at any time. And two, there are fewer shiny red convertibles than the Mid-Life Crisis, but lots of resume dusting!

Essentially the Mid-Career Crisis is this. You made a choice at age 18 on what to study, where to start your career at 22 and now you’re thinking – huh, do I actually want to do this for another 30 years?

Laid Off

You may be feeling lost in your career because you were laid off from your job, and that’s a very common scenario.

We all know that 2020 was an incredibly hard year and 2021 is still not sunshine and rainbows. As a result, you may be resetting now because of circumstances outside of your control.

There are things you can control though – starting with spending time determining what you want next for your career so your next job will be the right fit for your goals.

Return to Work

There are likely some of you who are parents who took time out of the paid workforce to care for children or care for your parents and now you’re looking to reenter.

It’s very common to feel a little lost at this stage because you may not know what it is you want to do, or what you even could do.

Engagement Draught

You might also be feeling lost in your career because you’re simply not engaged at work.

Every couple of years there is a Gallup Poll that comes out saying 70% of people on average on not engaged in their work. That may ring true to you, and it’s also really sad! We spend so much time at work, let’s make it something we actually want to use all our beautiful brains for.

So what exactly is that fulfilling and engaging work?

Well, I’ll answer that question with another question. What should you do when you’re lost? You should stop and ask for directions.

Why You Need to Stop and Ask for Directions

If you’re not sure what to do or where to go, stopping and asking for help finding your career direction has to be the next step before going full steam ahead. Has to, has to, has to!

To explain why I’ll reference a great quote from Alice and Wonderland:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” said Alice
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Picking up what I’m putting down here?

You might be thinking you need a change and need to get moving. But starting the car without directions is just going to lead you somewhere. You don’t want to go just somewhere, you want to go where you actually want to be.

Look around. You already are somewhere, and maybe in many ways that somewhere is great. You have people you love, food on the table, and maybe even an objectively great career from the outside looking in.

We’re not worried about the outside looking in though, we’re thinking about you and where you actually want to be, where you’ll be happy and fulfilled, and then you can get the directions for how to get there.

How Do I Figure This Out?

So you could go this alone, or you could ask for help, and that’s exactly where the Career Clarity Program comes in.

As a successful career coach, I work with clients 1:1 to help them determine their career vision and then craft a strategy forward to get there. (Then they DO get there which is just about the best feeling ever!)

I know that not everyone can work with a coach 1:1 though. You’re busy, you’re on a budget, and the time you have to dedicate to your career development might be at 10 pm after a couple of episodes of Netflix to unwind.

But you can access the same resources, tools, and strategies through this self-paced 5 module program designed to help you:

Find the clarity you need to make progress forward.

Save you the time of figuring this all out all by yourself.

Build the confidence you need to make some moves.

Define success on your own terms.

Create a career and life you love.

Plus, to accelerate your progress, you’ll also have access to four small group coaching calls! The next session is kicking off in January – will you be joining us?