Caroline Sandford - Love Your Career Forever: A Complete Guide for Your Career Journey

CALICO PUBLISHING

LOVE YOUR CAREER FOREVER

Caroline Sandford has spent over 20 years working as a professional career specialist. She is a regular contributor to newspaper articles and radio interviews on career advice and is an experienced speaker and lecturer. She is CEO of Love Your Career, the company she founded to provide coaching, training and support for clients at every stage of their career journey. She has helped many hundreds of people of all ages create the life they want.

Also by Caroline Sandford

Love Your Career from the Start: Making decisions for your future a guide for young adults

Calico Publishing Ltd

2A Heywood Crescent

Epsom

Auckland 1023

New Zealand

calicopublishing.co.nz

Caroline Sandford 2022

First published 2022

ISBN 978-1-877429-51-4

ISBN ePub 978-1-877429-52-1

ISBN Mobi 978-1-877429-53-8

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the publisher.

The information included in this book is to be used as a guide only. The author, publisher and agents do not take responsibility for the application of this information.

Edited by Brian OFlaherty

Cover, interior design and layout: Julie McDermid/Punaromia Publications

Printed in New Zealand

To my husband, John, and my children,
Jessica and Hamish, and their partners,
who are my greatest cheerleaders.
I am so very proud of you and all
that you have already achieved.

Contents

Preface

LOVE YOUR CAREER FOREVER. That might seem like an audacious goal! Yet it is my belief that you can create the life you want and love your career forever it just might take a little grit, some soul searching and a different way of thinking. This is what this book is about introducing you to how you can make it happen.

Over the last 20-plus years, I have worked with many hundreds of clients, supporting them through change as they transition from where they are to where they would like to be. Often this is not a simple path. Facing change, whether expected or unexpected, can result in a range of both positive and negative reactions. To successfully move through what you are facing, it is crucial to allow the space to process the change, and to then engage the strategies that will work for you to be able to move towards a new beginning.

My background in human resources, coupled with a masters degree in Industrial Psychology and a Graduate Certificate in Career Development, has been a great foundation for the work that I do. My own experiences in dealing with change, both the expected and unexpected, have certainly helped me to understand how important it is to allow the time to process whatever we are facing.

I lost both my parents suddenly in my early twenties, resulting in not only dealing with the predictable grief but also having to pack up and sell my childhood home at a whirlwind rate. I have experienced unexpected redundancy which required me to pick myself up quickly to be able to find a new role, giving little time to properly consider my options. I have moved cities and countries several times, each involving re-establishing myself and my family, building new support networks and hitting the ground running. My return to paid work after spending time raising my two children also involved trying to find a way to effectively encompass paid work, parenthood and the many other life roles we all occupy.

These experiences may not be unique to me, but the learnings I have gained are what I want to share with you. I have needed to rethink my identity, with my confidence in what had worked in the past being challenged and my belief in myself often negatively impacted. Each time I had to figure out how to make this new future work and who I now was within this new future.

I learnt that when facing the unknown, the various emotional, behavioural and physical reactions can sometimes be debilitating. Understanding change and knowing what the common and expected stages and reactions are likely to be have certainly helped to make it less turbulent. With this knowledge, I have been able to engage in appropriate strategies to facilitate a smoother transition into the next phase. I have included an entire part of the book on this very topic to enable you to successfully navigate through what you might face.

This is my second book focused on helping people make decisions that work for them in creating their future. My first book, Love Your Career from the Start, was centred on 15 to 25-year-olds, offering them the tools to make effective career decisions at the beginning of their career journey. I have extensive experience working with this group, but most of my experience is with a wider age range of clients, with my oldest client being 70 years of age what an inspiration! Each person has their own story and journey.

My hope is that this book will support you wherever you are in your career journey. It aims to integrate all your expected and unexpected experiences and roles, and gives you insight into these transitions, along with potential strategies. By working through the chapters and completing the exercises, you will be equipped to create your personalised vision for your career, equipped with the tools to make well-informed decisions, based on who you are, to create the future that you want.

Introduction

AS YOU MOVE THROUGH the various stages of your career journey, you will need to navigate many twists and turns. The goal is to look back over your journey with a sense that you made choices that have been right for you, with minimal regrets. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, asked her patients about any regrets they had or anything that they wished they had done differently with their lives. The most common regret was the wish that they had had the courage to live their lives as they wanted to, on their terms, not as others expected them to.

Throughout your life, with the various junctures that you reach, and the ever-changing events that you face, you are often presented with opportunities to rethink your current situation and reconsider how you would like your life to look. In times of significant upheaval and change, there is never a better time to reflect, question and reassess how you would like your future to look. Changes may be forced upon you, such as through a workplace restructuring or job loss, while for others, the opportunity to make changes may have grown from questioning whether you want to continue in your current role, asking yourself, Is this what I want to be doing with my life? Losing your job unexpectedly, looking for that next role that will excite you, returning to paid work after a break, starting a business, shifting from full to part-time roles or vice versa, being at a stage in your life when you want to fully embrace other aspects outside of paid work, or look for a different model of work these are all opportunities to rethink what and how you would like your life to look.