Work life change: event or journey?

This is the sixth in The New Work Pioneer Manifesto series. Today we’re talking about the landmark stages navigated on the way to work life freedom.

Many coaches sell seminars and bootcamps where they promise transformational life change for a couple of hundred quid in a weekend.

I’ve often wondered what hopeful planet they live on, because my years of experience of helping people radically change their lives tell me that work life change is not a one off event.

It’s a process. And indeed it needs to be.

The good news, however, is that, although everyone’s journey to living and working on their own terms is unique, there are some typical milestones along the way.

The prompt

The whole thing kicks off when something within us or beyond us causes us to consider that how we’re living and working right now needs to be different. The desire for change can arise by itself, often from a sense of boredom, dissatisfaction, or lack of fulfilment in what we’ve been doing. An inner feeling that there needs to be more. Or that we could be more.

Or, it can come from outside of us, propelled by some force for good or for bad. The arrival of a baby unexpectedly resetting our expectations of what we want from work. The economic downturn resulting in us losing our job or our business, forcing us to question what we really do want from work and from life.

Or a serendipitous happening causing fate to offer us a possibility for change of which we may only have dreamt. A conversation offering freelance work, when we’ve been toying with how to broker an exit from salaried employment.

The prompt needs you to listen, and to not discount it.

Accepting the call

Even if the prompt has come from an exciting life event like a new relationship, or a move to our dream home, it’s often met with uncertainty. We are moving into uncharted territory, and the losing of control that’s associated with letting go of the shore of our existing world view can be as frightening as it is thrilling.

We need, however, to accept the call for change or risk stagnating.

Accepting the call needs you to see the rich choice you have and to make a conscious commitment to moving forward.

Frustration

Assuming we’ve decided that we’re up for change, the next milestone we tend to confront is frustration.

As we change our way of life and work, we’re fundamentally changing our way of being.

It’s unusual to have reached this stage and not to have learned significant new things about ourselves, and our self-awareness begins to shift and open.

Old ways of thinking and behaving feel outgrown. Still, we haven’t yet inhabited what’s right now.

I think of a top lawyer client whose single status had enabled her total dedication to an enormous portfolio and workload. But mid-thirties, a ticking biological clock awakened her desire for relationship and children. Allowing herself this was the first step. Adopting the mindset, skills and behaviour of one who would have a different kind of success took time.

Frustration requires your patience. It needs you to honour the deep learning that you’re doing; to trust that profound life change is afoot.

Stuckness

Many people reach a point where there’s just so much change going on for them, and it’s so unfamiliar, that they feel out of their depth with it all.

You know you’re here when you find yourself asking, “what on earth have I done?” Or, “what have I let myself in for?”

It’s not unusual at this stage to simply feel lost.

One of my friends had been the proverbial “yes” person at work and, having become completely fed up with always being dumped on, decided that she wanted her life back. But, being more assertive with her boss and colleagues didn’t initially go down well. In fact, for a few months, she sat in a frosty environment at work, being berated for daring to say “no” to things. She’d call me in tears about how bad this felt. Still, she couldn’t see how to change it. On the one hand, she could not go back to being a dogsbody. On the other, she didn’t yet have skills in her behavioural vocabulary that allowed her to break out feeling so bad.

Stuckness needs your empathy and understanding. It needs you to constantly remind yourself of your vision and of all the positive reasons you decided to take a different path.

Experimenting

Stuckness is dissolved when you start trying new ways through things.

Typically you get so annoyed with feeling that things aren’t coming together that you explore new different possibilities.

The lawyer moved to this stage when she joined an online dating agency and began putting drinks and dinner dates in her diary. These prompted her to consider new possibilities around how she would focus her work time, and what standards she would be comfortable to set for herself now.

My friend got here when she became so pissed off with her colleagues whinging that she shifted her mindset to seeing that what they thought of her wasn’t her problem. This freed her energy to focus more on proving to them that she could deliver even better results by honouring her own values.

Playfulness is an important factor to experimenting; testing things out without needing them to deliver any particular outcome.

Integration

Finally, the things you’ve been trying out and adopting as new become your norm. They begin to feel natural to you. Indeed, they are “you”.

You can look back and see that you’ve negotiated a big change in yourself. And that it has been for the good.

Integration requires acknowledgement, gratitude and celebration.

Interestingly, as much as that integration is the ending of one major round of change, its also the beginning of another. Next time around, the call will be different, as will the lessons you’ll learn and the integrations you’ll make. But with every round of change come new insights, and new shifts in your growth and development.

Which just adds to the magic of the whole thing!

But what’s your experience? I’d really like to hear. Do you recognise these big milestones? Where are you in your journey? What have you accomplished, and what’s yet to come?

Next Friday, we wrap the series up, talking about the tools New Work Pioneers uniquely use to fuel their success. Make sure you don’t miss out! Subscribe here..

Related posts:

1. Here’s How New Work Pioneers Navigate Their Journey
2. New Work Pioneers Use Crises As Opportunities For Change
3. Split Work-Life Personality? Join The Club!
4. What do you do when your life doesn’t go according to plan?
5. Introducing The Manifesto For New Work Pioneers