Do You Fear A Job or Career Change?

Changing your career path part way through your working life can be thwart with challenges and mixed emotions. We know in life ‘change’ is inevitable, yet most of us don’t embrace it, in fact we’re scared of it and do anything to avoid it. Search results on Google suggest we stay in jobs and careers we don’t like due to the fear of change and that there is likely 80 percent of us doing just that.

Our fear of change has inspired many famous quotes over the years. Here is a quote with quite a few variations – all of them equally summing up why risks are worth taking – including the big ones like a job or career move.

“Fortune favours the bold”, “Fortune favours the brave”, “Fortune helps the brave”, and “Fortune favours the strong” – Wikipedia

The business world is forever changing including its resource needs. By way of an example right now New Zealand has a shortage of skilled engineers, IT specialists, and construction specialists and if you have these skills you have the pick of many jobs in various locations on top dollar packages.

My husband recently went through a career change and after 18 months of intensive study and on the job experience he is now – in demand! Making the move was scary but the potential upside proved worth the effort.

Another way of looking at it may be – if you don’t accept the change and continue in the job or career you don’t like or is clearly on a highway to nowhere – what will be the outcome – and that is probably more risky than proactively accepting change.

Fortune really does favour the brave. New opportunities seem to find a way to those of us who are open to them.