To his amazement, his father replied: "I never said it was interesting. When I said it was a good field, I only meant that it was stable and you could make good money. But interesting? I never thought it was interesting."
Too late, he discovered that he and his father had different visions of what a "good field" is.
A 35-year-old banker in Chicago had a similar experience when she consulted her father for career advice. She remembers a little too clearly the day she relinquished her dream of becoming a fashion designer because her father thought banking was a better profession.
By "better" he meant that it was stable and that there were more opportunities opening up in the industry for women. In that regard, he was right. At the time, banking was wide open to women and, as result, his daughter was able to parlay her MBA into an enviable series of raises and promotions that kept her moving steadily upward for several years.
What he didn't anticipate was how banking would change and how those changes would affect his ambitious daughter. Her string of successes ended rather abruptly when the field became more competitive and unstable. Without fantasies of fast-track success to sustain her, she quickly became bored with the work. Often, she found herself doodling cocktail dresses in the margins of yellow legal pads during office meetings.
This kernel of discontent is the first mental step toward a career change. As the seeds of disillusionment with her progress have grown, she's continued to flirt with the idea of changing careers. In fact, she's moved to New York and is taking classes at a prominent fashion design school at night and on weekends, testing her creativity and developing her skills.
Nor is she alone. Some schools estimate that nearly half of all college students are now adults over 25, seeking credentials to switch or advance careers.
"They're returning to the dream they had 10 years ago, with a more realistic perception of what's really possible," says Maureen Brennan, a Loyola University career counselor who advises returning adult students on career options. "They now have their own life experiences to use as a yardstick to measure their own needs and potential. They no longer have to rely on someone else's judgment or perceptions."
Experts such as Harvard sociologist David Riesman believe that the urge to return to school may be a symptom of a more pervasive yearning for greater independence and individualism. Certainly those motivations were uppermost in the mind of one Chicago nurse, whose quest for greater autonomy motivated her to pursue a law degree. Now a medical malpractice attorney, she's part of a growing spectrum of dual-career professionals who are carving out unique niches by combining disciplines.
The days of choosing one career for life are gone. Perhaps they should never have existed at all. Isn't it unrealistic to think that the career choice you made at 20 should automatically suit your needs at 30, 40, 50 or 60? It can (and occasionally does) happen. But should you find that your present career no longer suits your needs (and maybe never did), it's not too late to choose again. My oldest career-change client was age 70 when she decided to retire from medicine and pursue a law degree.
Somewhere along the line, you may have picked up a distorted idea that the need for growth stops in adulthood. But only people with very limited ambitions learn all they need to know in kindergarten.
Keep Experimenting
To lead a fulfilling life, you need to keep growing and challenging yourself at every stage of your life. Frank Mackey exemplifies that philosophy. The 60-something Mackey just gave up a successful law practice in Little Rock, Arkansas, to pursue an acting career in Chicago.
This isn't his first career change, and it may not be his last. His previous vocational hats also include sales, marketing, human resources and business management.
He also preaches what he practices. One of the most liberating career moments for Mackey's son came with his father's recommendation that he "stop trying to choose for life and start thinking in five-year increments." From that day forward, the younger Mackey felt free to pursue careers on the stock exchange, in business management and in real estate.
You may not feel you can afford the luxury of experimenting with a variety of vocations-especially when change involves shedding hard-earned credentials and roles. But, as Heisler says, "You can't put a price tag on loving your work." If you're approaching midlife, don't be surprised to discover that your values and needs may be changing. To help you get in touch with some of those deeper yearnings, do what Englewood, Colorado, career counselor Linda Bougie calls the "epitaph exercise." Ask yourself what, at the end of your life, you'd want to be remembered for.
Don't be surprised if your answer is at odds with how you've been living. Most people who do this exercise talk less about achievements and more about connections with others. "The question is a wake-up call that helps people get in touch with basic or forgotten values," Bougie says.
Another way to determine your values is to try the game my colleague Rick Ehlers likes to play with participants in his outplacement workshops.
"Pretend you won the lottery," he tells them. "You can do anything you want with the money. The one stipulation is that you have to work. What would you choose to do?"
If you're like many of Ehlers's workshop participants, you may discover a latent desire to paint or write or act. You may want to build something beautiful, make a different contribution to our world, perhaps leave an inspirational legacy. Let your imagination roam wild. You might be surprised at what you discover.
Many participants find they want to add something of value to the world: One wanted to build a golf course in the inner city. Another wanted to create a foundation to promote good works. Others go for adventure and travel. In their imaginations, they became tour guides to the Orient, Middle East or Africa. Or, combining adventure and service, they consider becoming a missionary in Peru, a public-health nurse in West Africa or a teacher in Bosnia.
Freedom ranked high on the list of desires. Very few people expressed a desire to work for someone else, although many were interested in public service. Almost no one continued in the same line of work. Muriel and John James, the mother-son team who wrote A Passion For Life (1991, New York: Penguin Books) call these desires "a hunger of the soul searching for more."
However liberating it would be, most of us will never clean up in the lottery. Still, I wonder if it's really necessary, financial considerations notwithstanding, to live so far from the heart of your desires. To put moneymaking above all other needs and goals. To abandon the things you love and care about to make a living.
Hearkening back to Cheryl Heisler's story, her experimentation with a variety of work roles and her willingness to learn from each experience enabled her to make a unique and meaningful career choice. To do the same, you may have to move be yond the things your parents wanted for you (and needed from you).
Self-knowledge can be elusive. But more than any objective inventory of skills and interests, the ability to learn from experience is the key to self-knowledge. Putting a modern-day spin on Plato's famous statement "The unexamined life is not worth living," management theorist Warren Bennis says, "The unexamined life is impossible to live successfully."
