By Sally Arnold, Encore Careers

Why do we get to a stage in our career say around the age of 40 and feel that the career path that filled us with excitement and potential many years ago has fallen flat? Its like the life has been sucked out of our path. Instead of keeping on adding more layers, excitement and leveraging our experience its like we have hit a grid lock.

So why does this happen. It is common as we move ahead along a career path and also as we grow older. No different to being in a marriage, we start off with love in our eyes, genuine, passionate and over the years, challenges, mistakes and other problems come up that seem to take away the sparkle and love from our partnership. The same in a job. For many this crucial time can be about leaving the marriage, getting a divorce, the same in a job. But wait for a minute it does not have to be like this. You and only you can change this state of affairs and the answer comes from deep inside. You need to Fall back in love with your Job.

As a high performance coach I do every day, a bit like a Match maker, I help my clients to resurrect their careers and jobs and for most they stay in the profession they first entered but leverage their passion and potential in new structured ways. To get out of a career that you have spent years developing to open a café or a florist on the beach is not smart unless this is something you have always wanted to do. It is hard work, badly paid and the freedom vanishes within the first month. Long hours and low pay. not smart.

So how do you fall back in love with your career path? These are the 3 points that it is important to embrace and they are

1. Voice of Authority, what is the part of yourself deep down that has beliefs, ideas, expertise that you love. And over the past years you have blocked or forgotten about that experience of connecting with your heart and feeling fulfilled when you speak about your expertise and job in a defined stand out way. You are the expert on this area and it shines through you in all that you do, both personally and professionally.
2. Leadership loving it. How do you lead your team and organization at present? Do you find yourself in a space where you doubt your expertise and abilities? In the past you were able to run a great team but now you feel tired and not sure of how to keep the energy going. First of all, you need to go within again and love the Leader that you are within. Don’t let the negative self talk get in the way.  Spend time celebrating and bringing back to the surface the Leader in you that others love, you too!
3. Vision with creative inspiration combining your Voice of Authority with the reignited Leader you are into a definable path forward. Perhaps say that by the end of 2016 you want to be in this place within your career. Look at the Vision path as one that has a Start and Finish, no different than a musician planning a performance, they know that by the end of the year they will have perfected the music they will be playing and during the months practicing the sections that need work to make sure they gave a stand out performance using internal love, passion and purpose. The same with the business world.

The guts and way to turn around career stuckness is to Fall in love with your career again. And firstly to fall in love with the person you were when you embarked upon this path, bring back the excitement and anticipation of a great life ahead. Remember how you approached this early stage of your career. You were going to conquer the world, everything was possible and it was. It is just that as we get older stuff, challenges, brick walls keep coming up in front of us. This is the cycle of life and we can either give up and stay safe and sorry or go within and find the love and passion inside.

In concluding I would like to add that connecting back with our own uniqueness and love is a very healing process. I do this many times when tough stuff happens personally and professionally. As it can be easy to put a band aid over the problem. But to use our own powers of healing which we all have gives us a sense of connection with our true self. It works and this way of connecting inwards can be used constantly to “Fall back in love with our career”.

If you are curious and would like to find out more about how this visualization journey can unfold for you please contact Sally Arnold, e sally@creatingencores.co for a complimentary 15-minute Power coaching session. It is a simple question orientated dialogue to determine your needs regarding Creating your Career Encore. www.creatingencores.co Sally specializes in working with global clients over the age of 40 who have high level careers and heaps of potential.

Sally Arnold is an award winning author, speaker and business coach who specializes in moving individuals and organizations out of “stuckness”.  She is able to turn around challenges towards resolution and success through her innovative business Creating Encores.