Your first solution to a Quarter Life Crisis may lie in Changing Careers

 
If you are aged in your late 20’s and early 30’s, graduated from university with one or two degrees, worked a number of years, hating your job, and your feeling lost, you may be needing a Quarter Life Crisis Career Change. If left unresolved, it can affect your economic independence, well-being and desired lifestyle in the short term and long term.

Normally, this feeling of being stuck in life can be triggered by an event/s or non-event/s. For example, the experience of being bullied at work, feeling burnout from being overworked, not getting that promotion you wanted, realising the work you are doing does not suit you or you may come to the end of a successful career not knowing what is your next step. To make matters worse many compare themselves with their friends’ career pathways leading to more unhappiness. No matter what is triggering it, feelings of isolation, dread, loss of confidence and feeling paralysed what to do next are common emotions.

Gifted high achievers in this age group can struggle the most. Recent media reports highlight what can happen when elite sportsmen like Grant Hackett and Dan Vickerman lose their way and feel they no longer have a purpose when they have peaked in their early 20s or early 30s. The SBS insight program has lifted the lid on this issue with prominent gifted athletes sharing their despair when career development was not considered after they left the swimming pool or football field http://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/tvepisode/game-over. The ABC Four Corners program has also raised the issue on how lost former athletes feel because there was no career development for them after their respective sporting careers http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2017/05/01/4659870.htm. We are led to believe that gifted high achievers have the world at their feet, they have the drive, goals, and skill to achieve whatever they want. But what happens when they have peaked and they are faced with a transition like a Quarter Life Crisis Career Change? Assets of ambition and drive can quickly disappear waiting dormant until a new purpose is awakened.

To experience transition is normal, in fact, it is necessary if you want to continue your personal development as a human being. Negotiating that transition without the right tools is like driving a car without having had driving lessons as a 17-year-old. The reasons so many are having trouble with this stage is not having a clear and thorough knowledge of themselves, the need to re-evaluate their goals & values and the need to realign their life structure to meaning and purpose. Identifying new meaningful goals into the future brings hope and renewal to a young adult’s career life. There is much to consider when sorting through this renewal process as there are multiple dimensions to a young person’s life.

A Quarter Life Crisis doesn’t need to be a ‘Crisis’, there is always a solution. How to get out of a quarter-life crisis is simple if you get the right support. Whether you are gifted or not, there is one guarantee I can give you, you will continually experience change and you can cope with this change. As a young adult, give yourself the gift of time and give yourself permission to learn the career transition skills needed. You will then be ready for the next career chapter in your long career-life journey.

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