It’s the fourth quarter! There’s pressure at work (the majority of companies having chosen Dec. 31 for their fiscal year-end) and stress on the home front with the school year underway and the holidays looming. It’s nice at this time of year to be able to say, “Well, I got all my big goals accomplished in 2013,” but that doesn’t happen for most of us very often. More often, we hit Halloween and think, “Dang, I didn’t get one of my major to-do items off my plate, and it’s almost December.”
It’s supremely easy at any age to look at your workload and the mountain of things to do at home and say, “I’ll have to get to that later.” The problem is that the older we get, the more encrusted our schedules become. Worse, our belief in our own ability to make big changes and knock down barriers shrinks dramatically as we get older, at least in my experience.
A woman came into one of our live workshops and said, “I want to make a career change, but it’s silly. I’m way too old.” She was 57 at the time — a baby, in our book. “What is your crazy idea?” we asked her. “What would you do if you could choose your next career?” “I want to advise college students,” she said. “I’ve already looked into it. It’s impossible. There are all kinds of certifications and requirements necessary to do college advising. You need years of specific schooling. I don’t have the time, and I don’t have the money.”
“What if you went to a local college and volunteered as a counselor for a few hours a week?” we asked. “Try it — what’s the worst that could happen?” The lady didn’t want to start calling colleges and offering her volunteer services. She felt silly and exposed. She didn’t want to be rejected, and who could blame her? Rejection is never easy. She made a plan to make one phone call a week to offer to coach students for free.
The second college on her list was interested, but it took weeks of back-and-forth calls to set up the details. Our client could have bailed on her “crazy” project at any time. After all, she was chasing people down and bending over backward to try and plug in as a part-time counselor, an unpaid position!
She persevered.
Within three months of beginning her volunteer stint, the woman was offered a part-time job in the advising office, and three months later she was hired on full-time. No certification required and no special training, just her life experience used in a new way in a career shift that she herself had dubbed silly and impossible.
How wonderful will it feel to hit Jan. 1 and have your most audacious plan out of the “Someday” category and well on its way to its fruition? It will feel incredible, and you can hit that state if you start your planning process now. Don’t wait until the new year — get a jump-start on your 2014 planning now!
One reason it’s so easy to push our dreams away is that they seem monumental and scary when viewed from a distance. “Sure, I’d love to start my own business, but it’s not practical” is a common strain.
So how come thousands of people are starting their own businesses every year? They didn’t all win the lottery. Lots of them decided, “I don’t have to start my business all at once, or in any particular hurry. I can take one little step and then another step after that.”
They can research the competitive landscape. They can start to think about their new business: What will its range of services be? Who will the customers be, and where will I find them? What will I charge for my products or services, and what sort of revenue stream will that give me?
No matter what you’re shooting for in 2014 — a new job, a new career, a new house or a new professional brand — the first question to answer is “What do I want?”
Do you want to grow in place at your current job, beefing up your résumé and your professional muscles, or finally focus on your network, or start your own business? Do you want to upgrade your professional skills, make a career change or get out of a job that’s sucking away your life force?
Start your 2014 planning by deciding what you want and need in your life, as specifically as possible. Put that dream scenario in writing and talk about it with people you trust. Once you can see the picture clearly, you can start taking steps to bring it first into focus and then into reality.
Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 human-resources executive and the CEO of Human Workplace, an online community and consulting firm focused on reinventing work and career education.
Human Workplace Liz Ryan
