If you have been working for over 10 years and hardly taken any vacations or long breaks to reflect on your future, it might be good that you find an opportunity to do so. It need not be an expensive vacation. Just take your mind off your current job and reflect upon yourself. There are some important things you want to know about yourself and sometimes you do not have the opportunity to do so because you are so engrossed into your job. By the way, someone said that the word "JOB" stands for "Just-Over-Broke". It is not my intention to argue about that because there are people who made millions on their "JOB".
Some of the things you want to look out for in your mid career are
symptons of crisis. Here are some of them:
- Motivation - Are you motivated to do your job? If you are not, that is a negative point.
- Negativity - You are always not confident that your companies program will work.
- Interest Level - You don't feel excited about the job assignments. It is boring. But you just do it anyway.
- Initiative - You never try to think of anything to improve your job. Just wait for instructions.
- Concentration - You can't concentrate. You always think about other things and always forget to do something.
- You get tired easily.
- You dragged yourself to work. Always late. You try to find excuses to absent from work.
- You are very sensitive to rumours. You are always trying to find out more about gossips.
- You avoid seeing your clients, business partners, suppliers. You don't join your colleagues for lunch etc.
If you have more than 5 of any of the above
symptoms, you may want to re-think carefully what exactly you want to do. If you really think that your current work place is not right for you, you really need to start to be more active to get in touch with recruitment agencies (secretly). You may also want to actively acquire the skills and knowledge for your next job. Pro-actively preparing your resume and set at least one-hour per day at home to search newspapers or Internet for job openings. Be more active to contact any friends you know and indirectly testing the market. It is easier to switch when you are still holding on to a job.
There is no point to hang around if you have lose interest.
Survival Skill #21:
Always Seek Out New Opportunities
