People know me best for only one thing at a time.
Hi, my name is Grace,
founder of Career Revisionist and host of the podcast with the same name.
I help savvy professionals to build careers of significance where they are doing
work they love and expand that into living lives of fulfillment.
Changes in your career are going to be part of the journey,
whether or not you are changing your industry or changing your job function
there. One thing is for certain is that change is inevitable.
So rather than resist it, there are ways that you can embrace it.
There are ways that you can prepare for it and more importantly,
the ways that you could influence change the way that it still inspires you.
So when I was doing my PhD, right after I graduated, changed fields and I
worked in a new field for a couple of years and then I changed industry and I
changed job function all at the same time.
And it was a matter of adjusting at each stage.
So what I'm going to do in this video is give you
three of my best lessons that I learned from my various career changes.
The first lesson I learned.
after my career change is that who I am is more important than what I do.
You know what I do will always be changing.
Modern careers now are no longer these 10 or 20 or 30 year tunnels.
They are more like micro careers. You know,
it's really hard to find people who have worked in the same
company or in the same job function or had the same title for 5 or 10 years or
20 years anymore.
I mean nowadays work is more like project based where people stay and they
experiment different things and they evolve, they move laterally,
they move vertically. So what I do is constantly changing.
Even when I was in the same industry, even when I was in the same company,
you know,
what I was doing was constantly evolving and I had to evolve with it.
And with all the changes happening in my career journey,
there was one common denominator. It was me, right? So who I was, who I was,
meaning who I show up as,
how I show up at work and how I control my perceptions of
my own reality was very important. Right? So that is the first lesson.
The second lesson I learned after a career change is that people know me best
for only one thing at a time.
So it's always in my best interest to keep updating them consistently. Right?
So in my career path,
it was very important to me to network with key individuals who had a real
influence on my professional future.
Right. You know, the saying that it's who you know rather than what you know,
that's more important in
your career path in certain times in situations that is true. In my career path,
it was true. And so for me, when I meet with people, and I'm an extrovert,
I am energized when I'm out there meeting new people,
when I'm talking to new people and I'm helping people,
that is where I am completely energized. So every time I met with an individual,
every time I expanded my network, the most common question
people would ask me is what do you do? So I would tell them,
so I answered the question, what do I do,
for that moment in time and then it changes, right?
But when it changes people will not be able to
keep track of your life or they will not keep track of what you're doing.
So they will have the most updated information which would be the last time you
chatted with them.
So I've found what works best is I continue to update them and I do it often,
which means that you are always keeping in touch with them.
You are sending emails, you are making a phone call,
you are inviting them for coffee with you happen to be in their area,
things like that.
And I've found that when I did that it helps them and it helps me to be in
contact with each other's lives.
And sometimes when you have the conversation of "this is what I'm doing now or
this is what I'm known for now",
and you demonstrate with them your new area of expertise,
they are better able and better positioned to keep you on top of the mind.
The third lesson that I learned after a career change is that one meaningful
contribution that I made was by simply documenting my journey.
When I was beginning my journey, my career began in academia. I was clueless.
I had no direction, I had no focus.
I didn't know what I wanted to be doing in my life and
I didn't know what my purpose was in my life and it was a struggle.
But I documented the journey and when I share that with people,
especially now that I'm in the position helping other professionals,
when I share that journey,
I am able to relate to them and able to resonate with some of the things that
I went through. So documenting my journey,
I've learned it was a great way to make a contribution because
when you document your journey and you share vulnerably and you share truthfully
of your journey and
what it took to overcome those conflicts and those challenges in your life,
it inspires them.
And it gives them permission to do the same and it gives them evidence that they
could do it too.
Right? It's kind of like that story about Roger Bannister,
breaking the four minute mile in 1954 before
he broke the four minute mile, absolutely nobody believed that they can do it.
Not even professionals. You know, there were doctors, there were physicians,
there were kinesiologists and maybe some physicists
in there who did all the calculations. And they said it's not possible.
It's not humanly possible.
It's not physically possible to break the four minute mile until someone did it.
And when Roger Bannister, when Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile,
less than two months later, a second person did it.
And now there are hundreds of other athletes who have broken the four minute
mile. So all it takes is belief. So when you document your journey,
you're creating belief for other people that you did it.
You have become this person who you are today.
You have created this career journey and
it gives them permission that they could do it too, right?
Because when you change your belief, it changes everything, and just like that,
just like in the four minute mile,
when all that's changed was belief, right?
Until someone did it, that's when everybody else believed it.
And other people with that belief were able to break that four minute mile.
So by documenting your journey, by documenting my journey,
I learned that the four minute mile could be broken for other people too.
If you're watching this and you're currently making a career change or going
through these changes in your
career and you want to make sure that your future professional journey is one
that's inspiring to you, I have something for you.
It's a free four day training to help you through this process,
to make the right
decisions and to live a fulfilling life where you're doing work that you love.
So the link to see that, check this out. for you, it's a four day training.
It's completely free. It is on careerrevisionist.com/4daytraining. And
I'll put the link below. So click on the link and I'll see you inside.