How did I get here? Was it a sequence of intentional choices or unexpected turns in life? A career sounds like a sequence. Something planned. A linear process with clear stepping stones to get to the final stage. This stage. Something we plan and execute, but it can actually be the product of unconscious baggage and bias that we haven’t addressed from our past.
If I look back every 10 years or so “I have changed careers”. That is what I see and tell myself. I have been a university teacher, a ecotourism consultant, a strategic planning facilitator, and many things in between before taking the role of Chief People Officer. Part was planned, looked for and some part just happened.
I have created my work, found work and have been offered work. Some has been paid, some other volunteered, some other turned profitable and some others were things to be done.
I a reviewing a course in the “School of Life” App called “How to Choose a Career”, and have found an interesting perspective on work being such a huge expectation nowadays to have purpose and source of fulfilment. This wasn’t the case in past centuries, to the extent that the words in French “travail” and Spanish “trabajo” have the root in an “instrument” of torture. Work is something that we endure, not that we enjoy. Although I knew about this origin, the other perspectives brought by this course have been the traps of duty, parent, job investment, and perfectionism that hinder, or influence at least, our search of a new job or an entirely new career.
So when looking for the next move, a deep introspection can be very useful to really make a change that gives us more pleasure than pain.
*Text is mine, image AI generated.
The Organisational Gardener 
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