Are you feeling stagnant and uninspired by your current job? No need to despair. This happens to employees across the world, no matter what stage of their career. The good news is that it’s not as daunting as you might imagine to reinvent yourself and start moving in a new direction. Firstly forget the idea that it’ll happen over night in a sexy movie montage. This really only happens in Hollywood and a few super humans, but for us mere ‘muggles’, there are a few steps you need to follow to reinvent yourself.
Find the spark in your past
This step is the most challenging but probably the most rewarding. Take a moment to reflect on what has stimulated you the most, where have you felt most engaged? What are the common threads among various projects that put a spring in your step? Write down your top three career highs and explain to yourself why they were so great. Through narrating this experience to an imaginary audience, it helps to identify the common denominators.
Dream the dream
Imagine your perfect day, starting from the moment you open your eyes, (where are you, what country) to the moment you go to sleep (what was your day like, what were you doing). Visualising your ideal goals will bring you one step closer to achieving them.
Market Research
This simply means talk to people. Explore what’s out there. From emails to Facebook and from parties to networking events, leverage your contacts, meet people and collect information in whatever format that suits. Engage with people in the jobs that you covet. The more you learn about what’s out there, refine your understand, the more get your inspirational juices get going.
Invest In Yourself
This does not mean invest financially. You do not need an expensive degree or certificate (unless you want to become a brain surgeon). Simply put, how can you equip yourself with the skills you need to reinvent yourself. Start an internship or apprenticeship, sign up to an online course, volunteer, find a mentor. There are many ways to invest in yourself and, yes, sometimes a degree is necessary, but do your homework first. Ask an industry insider how they recommend you should improve yourself.
Once you have followed these four easy steps to reinvent yourself, all the remains is to take the final step to realise all that you’ve dreamed of. Don’t give up on yourself. A year from now, you could be doing your dream job, realising the visualisation you thought up today.