Do What You Love for the Rest of Your Life: A Practical Guide to Career Change and Personal Renewal

Book by Griffiths Bob

WHY NOT YOU?

A job should not become a life sentence. —Ronald L. Krannich

We spend too much time at work not to be happy with the work we do. —Ed. C, age 62 EE

Dan’s Story

It’s difficult to highlight the most challenging, difficult aspects of my career change because so many issues have been part of my decision.

I left the corporate world because there was not enough flexibility to allow me to be more involved with my family. An extremely long commute and frequent travel had combined to convince me that I was literally losing my soul—some essential part of me and my life that was vital to who I am. So it was not just the fraying of the connections with my wife and daughter that prompted this leap of faith, but a fraying of something inside me. And I was no longer willing to simply accept the belief that “that is just the way life is.” I saw no viable alternative but to start out on my own, on my own terms.

The emotional side of this has been very difficult for me—the self-doubt, at times the despair, the thinking I was crazy for making this move. Yet somehow I kept finding the courage to move forward and to do what I need to do to get there.

I have never been so acutely aware of running up against my own personal shortcomings, and the fear that those shortcomings will do me in. And yet I have characteristics that I’ve used to compensate for some of those shortcomings, such as tenacity and resilience. And I have reached out to people like yourself who have been willing to help me. In some ways, this has been an exercise in trusting that the combination of my strengths and my shortcomings will balance out so that, on my own terms, I will succeed.

Dan, age 43, married with a 4-year-old daughter, resigned from the human resources department of a Fortune 100 company in the fall of 1997. He started his own employee benefits consulting business in western New Jersey, and works out of his home. This is Dan’s second major career change; at age 27 he left the ministry to enter the corporate world.

You deserve it, you know.

You deserve to be not stressed, frustrated, overworked, underappreciated, exhausted, exploited, and unfulfilled. You deserve more meaningful rewards for work than money. You deserve to be recognized as a vital human being, rather than treated as an expendable commodity. You deserve to succeed in a vocation that fills your soul, not survive in one that fills only your wallet. You deserve to feel better physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Your family deserves it as well.

So . . . why not you?

The only limit to the realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

You can’t steal second with your foot on first.

—Anonymous

Dan’s story is typical of those collected for this book— collected from men and women who, like Dan and me, found that we could no longer remain in a career, no matter how financially rewarding, that didn’t also reward our insides.

Like Dan, most of us experienced the subtle, gradual fraying of family connections, the awareness of losing some essential part of ourselves, the self-doubt, the fears, the gnawing financial concerns. But we also felt that, despite the fear and anxiety, we had no choice—that we had to leave our physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining jobs. As Karen E., 46, remarked: “There must be more to life than this.” Some of us went to work for another employer; some of us went into business for ourselves. Dan quipped, “I started my own business so that I knew at least one person who would hire me.” Some of us had clarity about our new vocation; some of us only knew that we had to quit what we were doing.

Generally, the new vocations we want to get into pay less than the ones we want to leave. Indeed, our career-change survey shows that three-fifths of respondents make less than they did in their former jobs. So the majority of us have had to downshift economically to make our career moves a reality. Dan earns half what he made in his last position; I still earn less than half. The accompanying fear of economic insecurity at first paralyzed us, even in two-income households. It’s far and away the greatest stumbling block in switching careers. We fully empathize with the enormity of such a decision, especially when children are involved. Yet we did it. We faced the fear, we talked openly and honestly with our spouses and families, we worked through it, and then we discovered a glorious paradox: By working through the anxiety, we discovered that we already had more than we needed. That is why, despite the downshifting, 75 percent of us are able to meet our household needs, and a third of us have money left over to spend on luxuries. We found that by letting go of the job, the big income, the title, the status, and even the house, if need be, we received in return the gift of freedom from economic insecurity. It is not easily come by, but it is decidedly worth all the angst we encounter getting it.

As difficult and frightening as downshifting feels at first, the journey leads to rewards on many levels—practical, emotional, and spiritual. Sure, we hit bumps, potholes, and the occasional land mine along the way. But most of us have grown through the process. One bonus is that nearly all of us now are blessed with improved family relationships. Today, we experience happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment in our chosen vocations and in our personal lives that we once only dreamed of. Downshifting wound up making us richer in the things that really count. It is a thread that runs through nearly all our testimonies. So if you are ready to join us on this wondrous, scary, exhilarating, and immensely fulfilling career-change pilgrimage, we offer you a message of hope, the knowledge that you are not alone, and the promise that you can accomplish this successfully. We are all here for you.

So Why Not You?

Hanging on to my own six-figure-income job involved compromise, inauthenticity, and lying (or stretching the truth). Although I worked with many fine people over the years, I frequently had to “make nice” with incompetent, egotistical, and downright brutal bosses, unreasonable clients, and untrustworthy coworkers. Conscientiousness and honesty didn’t much matter; bringing in ever more business did. I traveled and entertained a great deal, so I was away from home at least two nights a week. I watched Wall Street ethics decline from “a handshake is a contract” in the 1960s to the winner-take-all, me-first, ethics-be-damned feeding frenzy of the 1980s. And I was unhappy. I was unhappy with what had happened to my profession, with my seeming inability to extricate myself from it, what was happening to my home life, and what was happening to my soul.

I undertook my career change in 1988, at age 50. In the years since then, working environments have clearly worsened. Men and women now become stressed out, burned out, fed up, and downsized as early as their 30s. Regardless of the career, be it health care, engineering, social services, teaching, or Wall Street, employers demand ever-greater productivity from each worker without commensurate gains in compensation (other than stock options) or improvement in working conditions.

This change is reflected in an informal survey I conducted. I asked men, women, and children to give me a spontaneous, one-sentence definition of work. A sampling of their replies includes these:

“Work is what we do to earn money by using our skills.”

“Work is how I support myself and my family.”

“Work is where we spend most of our waking hours.”

“Work is where Mommy [or Daddy, or Mommy and Daddy] goes every day.”

Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines work as “Bodily or mental effort, exerted to do or to make something; purposeful activity; labor; toil.”

Not one of those surveyed (including the dictionary) defines work as something to be enjoyed, let alone loved. How truly sad. Why shouldn’t work engage us on a deeper, more satisfying and gratifying level? Why shouldn’t we be happy in what we do—look forward to each new day, regardless of the real-life problems that inevitably arise?

What’s your definition of work? Do you enjoy what it is you do? Love your job? What would you like your definition of work to be? Here is the first piece of writing for your notebook: Sit down, think carefully about what you want your career to be like, and write it out. Revise it until it reflects what you’re seeking. Then type it (or print it neatly) and hang it over your desk at home, or by your mirror, and look at it every day. And then have faith that you will someday live your definition—if you are willing to do the necessary footwork and make the necessary trade-offs. I wrote my definition, and today I live it: “Work is what I do to be fulfilled as I earn money.” Please note what takes precedence in the sentence: “Work is what I do to be fulfilled.” The money comes second—but it does come. And please don’t fall into the trap of giving up before you’ve begun, simply because you don’t believe that you can do it or you can’t afford it. You owe it to yourself and to your loved ones to begin the process. It will take you only as far as you believe it will.
From the Hardcover edition.