They say it’s never too late to change your career, but what comes with doing that? Is it a way to get back the time you lost typing away at your office computer, slowly counting down the hours ‘til you could go home? Or is it something that you need to do to get your sanity back? We all have reasons for leaving a career, and many people will talk us out of ever jumping ship. They’ll say it’s foolish that you’re doing it, and if you are planning on changing your job when you are in your middle years, it can be perceived as foolhardy because of all the benefits you have. Pension, comfort, security, the list goes on. And we are all told to get life insurance, and to make sure our mortgage is paid off. These are really important things, but are they more important than your happiness?! Some would argue that it is, but those people have never taken a risk in their life. If you really want to make a career change, then you will do it, and the comfort of a safety net won’t deter you otherwise.
We all come at it from a different perspective. The person in the military leaves their barracks behind, and they can get punished for it, by incurring penalties to their FERS and CSRS annuities, but there is an option of buying back military time if they have enough money which will strengthen their retirement income. And while the focus for many people is the prospect of a good amount of money for retirement, this is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to getting a sense of satisfaction in planning for your future. The best thing to really bear in mind is how you can best look after yourself while doing the bare minimum amount of “work.” The book “The Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss talks about the notion of defining what your version of happiness is. And while it may sound like a commercial for laziness, the idea behind it is to understand what you can do to balance your work and life equally, which is very likely the reason you wanted to leave your illustrious career in insurance or accountancy, right? And this is where a lot of us go down the rabbit hole…
We think that we need to work ourselves to the bone in order to gain any semblance of reward, such as money. But the trick to giving yourself a healthy work to life ratio is to find what you can do that feels less like work. It is a fact that we all feel that we have to “work.” Even the Hollywood stars have to do movies they don’t want to do, and this is the one thing that we cannot escape, even by choosing a new career. You can minimize it, sure, but if it means you only feel it for 5 minutes a week instead of 5 days, you are going in the right direction.
Mia Guerra
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