Confronting a Career Dead-End

Sometimes our career path seems clear and obvious, the road ahead perpetually widening to accommodate our cherished dreams by loading us with more perks, positions, and huge pay-offs.

Until something happens, totally unexpected, that makes us trip and fall, crashing down to painful reality in what turns out to be a huge wake-up call. It could be an unexpected lay-off, a rival getting a promotion we’ve been working for, the resignation of a mentor, or the cancellation of a project we had given half our lives to. All of a sudden, the road leads to a dead end, and we feel like jumping off the next cliff.

I just read in a magazine how devastated Tintin Bersola-Babao felt when she learned one morning that her morning TV show had been pulled off the plug to give space to a new one, which she was not part of. In that interview, Tintin honestly admitted that she felt like the rug had been pulled off her feet. She said that she had, indeed, given a decade of her life, commitment, and passion to that show. Then one morning, like a bubble, it just vanished.

Tintin hasn’t given up, though. She still feels committed in doing a parenting show – and finding no opportunity as of yet on her home channel, she is thinking of doing an internet program.

That’s one approach in facing a dead end.

Another is to just step back, find the center of peace in your own heart, and then re-assess.

It’s what I’ve been doing the past couple of months. Let’s just say that circumstances beyond my control threw me back into the unsteady world of freelancing again, nine months after I had convinced myself that I had found a corporate job where I could stay for the next 3 years. I’d tired of the whole eternal-raket cycle and just longed for one place where I could work away and leave promptly at 7 p.m. That the corporate job paid more than a couple of consultancies made its loss even harder. I wanted stability but I found myself swimming again in the waters of uncertainty.

I wasn’t totally destitute. Slowly, the projects began trickling in, leaving me with some kind of source of income. But the fight to get back to the corporate world, to find another high-paying steady job, just…vanished like smoke. Instead of getting back into the frontline, like Tintin, I went inward and used this forced vacation to assess my present career position.

And to use a cliché, the break turned out to be a mixed blessing. Here’s how seeming career dead-ends can open up into a detour that just might lead you into an entirely different direction.

ASK YOURSELF: DID I REALLY WANT THIS PARTICULAR GOAL? Is that dream job that we’ve always wanted to reach really truly our own, or is it something planted in us by well-meaning loved ones early on in our career, that we just went on reaching and working for it, without thinking of other options? Did our present career objective become one simply because nothing else was in sight in the company we were working for?

REASSESS THE GIFTS THAT ARE UNIQUE TO US. Sometimes, some people are promoted to management positions because they do have leadership qualities and they are performers, to boot – but in being kicked upstairs, they sometimes lose sight of the passion that has truly made them perform. An excellent writer who was cut off from his beat and his Muse because he became a desk editor. A trainer at heart who really loves dealing with people but who got stuck facing a computer as a training program developer. I really wanted to diversify beyond my admittedly competent writing skills, maybe immerse myself in marketing, learn some kind of skill altogether – but everyone was hammering into my brain that the one thing I excelled at was writing. I mean everyone, from friend to foe, from boss to best friend. Eventually I listened.

Build on your core strength. That word of wisdom from HR practitioners everywhere hasn’t changed. What we need to remember is never let said core strength ever leave our sight.

WHAT DO I HAVE TO LEARN? A break can be good because it gives us the time to catch up on the things we had missed out on. Sometimes, we keep on producing and performing 8 hours a day 24/7 that we end up repeating skills and not learning new ones. Atrophy eventually burns us out. Time alone frees our mind and makes us see the courses that are available to us, and which we want to learn. That’s why some people go back to school; others find a mentor who’ll help them in their career shift.

Look around you. What new thing piques your interest? Given time and money, what would you learn that would energize your every waking moment? What would replace that feeling of same-old same-old with the excitement of a brave new career that you can immerse yourself in?

I’ve been a writer for 20 years but it’s only because of this break that I sat down to seriously study this new thing called blogging.

Sometimes, a seeming dead-end can have side benefits. Don’t rant and rave Step back, look inward, ask yourself those hard honest questions, and see where the answers lead you.

Visualize Your Career Path

Imagining about your career just may help you define it.

That’s what a Career Vision Board is for. It helps us identify roads that we have to take or avoid by the images that awaken inspiration in our soul. Words have their uses, but images through pictures can pack a silent but powerful impact in impressing on our hearts and minds the career dreams that are important to us .

A Career Vision Board is a visual map of what we want out of life. It’s a carefully arranged collage that is actually a wish list of the things we want to achieve. Nothing is too funny, sacred, or impossible. That’s another purpose of the Career Vision Board – it removes our own set limitations and frees us to dream.

An executive management position with a six-figure salary. A posting in a foreign city. Even the kind of corner office we’d like to inhabit. Whatever those dreams may be, we cut out or draw images that represent them and post them on the board. We can even list down the figures that we’d like to earn.

Something stirs in us when we give life to our thoughts via the posting of images, even if they are not drawn by us directly. We connect to – something - inside that in turn slowly lets loose an aspiration that will not be denied. As we see a concrete representation of our dreams, our actions are drawn toward their fulfillment. Our heart changes too, as we start to believe in the possible.

Don’t be afraid. List down your career dreams. Post those images on a board.

And place that board in a central place in your home where you can’t help but see it every single day.