Is there a whinger in your office? Probably. It could very well be you.
As RedBalloon founding director Naomi Simson told our Women’s Agenda Network breakfast Thursday morning, we’ve become a nation of whingers. There’s a lot we’re not happy about (which is understandable) and yet not a whole lot being invested in the kind of change that can make it better (which is not).
Whinging has become a national pastime.
It’s annoying. And yet many, many of us are prone to spending more time whinging than we do proactively trying to address the issue.
But when it comes to whinging about your career – that you don’t like your job, that you’re in the wrong profession, that you’ve lost or never had any kind of passion for your work – there’s only one thing to do: initiate change.
Simson addressed the issue of ‘career change’ in front of our 120-strong crowd, along with panelists Angela Lovegrove, General Manager with Telstra, and journalist Lisa Pryor. The event was sponsored by Citibank.
For Pryor, the ambition for a big change came while spending an evening in the emergency department of St Vincent’s Hospital for a story she was covering. She found it exhilarating and decided that having studied law and then going on to create a successful career in journalism, she would now study medicine.
She spent little time thinking ‘what if’? and simply got started – first by catching up on the bridging courses and relevant subjects she needed in order to pass the GAMSAT exam. She studied while at home with a baby – whom she admittedly noted was an ‘easy baby’ compared with her first child – passed the exam, and is now a final year medical student.
When Angela Lovegrove decided she wanted to set herself up for a board portfolio career, she approached a career coach who advised her to start working with large corporates, despite the fact she had decades of experience managing start-ups. Lovegrove immediately got a job with Salesforce.com before moving over to Telstra.
Naomi Simson, meanwhile, left a long and successful career in the corporate sector to start her own business from home, RedBalloon. Simson has more recently made another big career change, by joining Channel 10’s Shark Tank as an investor.
As well as sharing their stories of change, the three panelists offered some key points on how to make real change happen.
Change takes energy and commitment so enjoy the journey, said Simson. “The one piece of advice I would leave you with is to enjoy the ride and don’t always focus just on the end goal”
Change requires getting uncomfortable and “asking” for what you want, said Lovegrove. “Go out there and approach the people that can help you in your career and just be brave about pursuing what you want.”
Change means giving yourself permission, the time and space to try new things, said Pryor. “It’s okay to burn bridges that you don’t want to cross back over. It just forces you to move forward … What I tell myself every day is that there is absolutely no harm in trying new things. There is no detriment that can come from new experiences.”
All up, change is about effort, energy and risk. There’s little room for whinging in that.