One Career change advice: First look inside!

When contemplating a career change you first want to tune in and listen to self before tuning out and listen to the job market.
You want to get familiar with your insights, your gut feeling. What you really want deep inside.
You want to do that especially if you are someone who discounted your inner knowing self, or did not allow yourself to open up to your inklings or intuitions.
Now by listening to self we do not mean listening to the endless, mindless inner monologue. Nor is it falling prey to your fears and dark side; it’s quite the opposite. Listening to oneself is being open to one’s internal dashboard, to hear the weak signals. Our emotional systems are a very good indicator of the way we are interacting with the world and how it is affecting us. The earlier you respond to your emotional signals, the more emotionally intelligent you get—i.e., if you recognize, understand, use, and manage emotions, you start improving many areas of your life like self-awareness and self-confidence, realistic self-evaluation, self-mastery, regulation, motivation, engagement, and optimism.
Listening to self enables us to understand our operational systems: what makes us give our very best, what makes us resilient, or, to the contrary, what makes us lose interest or give up altogether.
When you are contemplating a career change you really need to tune in and check who you are, what you are capable of, what part of you is longing for expression.
It’s a marvelous opportunity to start digging in your potential: your unrealized strength.
Listening to oneself, or self-reflection, is a key practice. Another practice will be After Action Reflection. Every time you go into a situation with high stakes like a job interview you can basically divide it into three phases: 1) preparation and rehearsal (setting the intention, the goals, and the message), 2) performing (executing your strategy), and 3) getting feedback (self-reflection on what worked and what to do next).
This practice will also help you gain insight into your inner functioning and become more attuned with who you are.
So unlike common wisdom that advise you to have a market and marketing approach to career change, we advise you to first have a look inside. When you are clear about your work-life project you are ready to concentrate on the pathway and look for a match on the market.
Another reason for looking first within before leaping is that sometimes we want to change because we want to escape from a situation, so the career move will be heavily influenced by the situation and not by your life purpose or career objective.
When we are contemplating a change the idea is not only to get the next job, the goal is to succeed at that job and enjoy a better life. In today’s highly competitive job environment those who win are those who are made for that particular job. Beyond competence, they fit the environment like fish in water. In order for you to know if you will thrive in a certain environment you should do the inner work first.
Doing it from the demand side makes you compromise on your life project. A price to dire to pay.

Nad Philips