Making change in your career is inevitable.

Professional career and lifestyle counselling helps facilitate personal readiness to initiate and respond to career transitions. Career counselling is often used to assist in the process of formulating appropriate career goals and to help overcome specific barriers to career growth and change.

This is a link to an interesting article published in the Harvard Business Review - July 13, 2012. It talks about making a significant change in career direction and the processes that some people go through in order to assess and prepare for the change.  I think there are some useful ideas here.  I also think it is important to note that with mid career change, the transition most often occurs over time and results from intentional and purposeful activity.  The activity can provide you with the occasions to learn about occupational roles, help you develop skills, expand your network, and expose you to opportunities. 

Here is another article that I found quite interesting.  "Why follow your passion is bad advice"  was published on line in the CNN Opinion - August 29, 2012. In the article Cal Newport asserts that passion is developed through factors such as autonomy respect, competence, creativity and impact.  He seems to especially focus on developing skills, seeing these as the foundation for developing the capacity to leverge and realize the other factors.  The implication of this is that the solution to finding work where you feel passionate may not be in the "career" but in the "person in the career".  I think this is worth a read.  I will certainly be picking up his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You:  Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for the Work You Love". It's is available through the Calgary Public Library.

This link will take you to a Ted talk by Angela Duckworth.  She is speaking about her research that focuses on Grit.  Grit is a combination of consistency of interest and perseverance of effort. Her research suggests that tenacious persuit of a goal is what differentiates top achievers from others. Grit is viewed as an enduring but not unalterable personality characteristic. Without grit, a career change may not result in increased success. It really causes one to pause when planning a change in career.  Am I desiring change because what I am doing is really not a good fit for me or am I desiring change because things are tough and I have not developed sufficient skill to feel on top of my game. Do I need to develop sufficient grit to pursue and master what I am doing?  Can I develop more grit without making myself miserable, or worse, sick?  These are important questions when contemplating career change.  This suggests that seeking counselling for career change is not just about what are my skills or options, but also, what is the problem that I am trying to solve and is making a career change the best way to go about solving it.