In previous blog posts we have discussed career change and stagnation, and what to do if you are stagnated in your career. In keeping with that theme, what do you do when you are pigeonholed or stereotyped in a certain role within your chosen profession? You try to do new things, or you may even try to get out of your career field, but people keep putting you back!
This can do two things (the first two of the five): 1) Hold you back by making you afraid (or don’t know how to) to move forward and leave. 2) The second thing it can do is lead to burnout.
Has it happened to you? (Note: This is not a rhetorical question – please share your stories by commenting below!).
Consider these 3 Career Stories:
One of my clients is a CPA. She specializes in audit, which apparently is a very difficult, tedious area of accounting that not many people actually like to do. It is her specialty, and she has tried to “get out of it” and go into other areas at one time or another. The problem is that her employers are aware of her specialized skill and hire her for her expertise in audit! In other words, she has become “known” for that expertise!
Another client of mine is a wonderfully vibrant and dynamic woman who used to be in a marketing role. She changed careers and went to work for a government agency. Sad to say, but over the years she has been working for this organization, she has lost all semblance of that once bright and lively person. She has become suppressed, oppressed, and “bureaucratized” to the point where she has lost her self-confidence and is now scared to leave. She needs a way to get back in touch with the person that she used to be.
And a little bit of my own story – I have worked as a software instructor in a technology field for 15 years. At some point, I became burned out and decided to give coaching a try.
So what can happen when you become stagnated and/or burned out in a career for a long period of time? There are 3 additional drawbacks, in addition to numbers 1 and 2 above:
3) Loss of your creativity and creative spark.
4) Doing the same thing all the time without any change is not a balanced workload and can lead to burnout.
5) Lost opportunities. How? Because you are burned out and no longer looking at things in new ways or from a fresh perspective. As a result you don’t always see new opportunities when they present themselves. (Note: This is precisely why many solo-preneurs in this situation hire a coach!)
I would love to hear from you regarding any of the above questions or comments. Thank you! I appreciate my readers’ stories.
Hello,
I am a trader in capital markets. I find typical jobs with no growth and to be honest I don’t even know what options are out there so I can experiment. I am bored to the core, and my unused creativity is making me unsatisfied and frustrated with the current job situation.
Please help!