Don’t beat yourself up about career choices to date

I find that people beat themselves up about their career choices. If you find that you are mad with yourself for the career choices that you’ve made, then making peace with those choices is important for your own psychological wellbeing and in going forward to make changes to your life.

Things that you are currently doing or have done in the past don’t need to go to waste. You’ve made choices and those choices were right for you at that point in time.

Even if you can’t see it now, there are skills that you have uniquely acquired. That’s why I find it’s really important for you to make peace with where you are.

I heard a story from Bernadette Doyle that I would like to share with you. It is about a Swedish woman who became known as the “angel on the hill” who saved lives in the 2004 Tsunami.

“She noticed the first part of the tsunami – the warning. She observed that the tide went out really quickly and was revealing the seabed. It so happened that years before, she had been working as a journalist and had done a broadcast in Hawaii about the impact of tsunamis.

At that moment, she was one of the few people that recognized and understood what was happening. She was able to warn many people to get off the beach immediately. Who knows how many lives she saved just by that action?

After the two waves subsided, people were in shock, and many badly injured. They assembled for safety on this hill, where this same Swedish woman tended to many injuries. It turned out that she had completed two years of a medical degree a few years earlier.

Though she wasn't a qualified doctor, that two years of training had given her just enough knowledge to save many lives.”

The reason that I’ve shared this story from Bernadette Doyle is because it clearly demonstrates why it’s important to make peace with your career decisions to date.

The Swedish lady had made some career choices that hadn’t worked out for her. She had tried journalism. She tried medicine and quit before becoming a doctor. Possibly she may even have tried other things that didn’t work out for her.

We are all unique, and have not acquired our skills sets and further developed our strengths by mistake. Her skill set from the different career choices she had made saved lives.

So I invite you to make peace with where you are now by starting to acknowledge the skills that you’ve acquired, despite how you feel about your career choices.

If you’re feeling a bit stuck and don’t know where to start with changing your career, I’d invite you if you've not already done so to upgrade your membership to the Next Career Move VIP Level. More details can be found here.