#5 Swapping salary for purpose
Ever heard of the approach Designing your Life? This approached helped a lawyer to become a Managing Director of an impact company - she shares all her learnings with you in this week's newsletter.
Welcome back to another episode of ChangePath 🧡💜
Have you ever been at a point where you just need to acknowledge to yourself: I need to fight for my own happiness if I want to live a good life.
Well, this week’s interview partner knows the struggle. The will and strength you already need to pull through to become a lawyer in the first place is a struggle to begin with. What keeps you going is the financial incentive and a prestigious job ready to reimburse you for all your sweat and tears. However, to then discover that 10 years of study are actually not leading to your dream job but to your worst nightmare is a realisation that comes with a lot of emotions and insecurity. We can say as much - there is light and happiness at the end of the tunnel and again we have all the inspiration, learnings and resources you need to claim your professional and ultimately personal happiness.
C’est parti! 🎈
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Quiz of the week
👀 check out the right answer at the end of the newsletter. If you have great quiz questions - send them our way 😍
3 Questions & Answers about Change with Antonia
Coucou Antonia, can you tell us about your career transition?
After studying law for 10 years, I started as a lawyer in a large law firm - great salary, very prestigious… on paper.
Before I started my job I decided to walk the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago) by myself. Around this time I read the book “Designing your Life” and it says that people are often times doing things that they are good at not because they particularly like it. However, this can be a big trap since just because you are good at something, like me being good at law, does not necessarily mean that I have fun with it.
Nevertheless, I rationally argued that I studied for so many years to become a lawyer, so I started my job at the law firm and it was absolutely horrible from the beginning. It was very hierarchical with outdated role models and management styles while the sole focus was profit maximisation.
I was wondering: was this the dream job, I studied basically 7 years for?
To ensure I would not rush into a wrong decision, I took the time to really look at what was bothering me. I really doubted myself - why am I the only one not liking this job here? So, I compared the motivational factors of my colleagues with my own and discovered a total mismatch. I had completely different drivers that were not at all matching with the ones of my colleagues.
Two things became crystal clear: I needed to quit rather sooner than later (the longer you stay the more difficult it will become to leave due to the high salary) and I need to find a new job with meaning for myself, since this is way more important to me than money and prestige. I quit after 5 months in my trail period.
My new career was an absolute coincidence. I helped my mom with a legal question she had for her company, which offers family services such as elderly and child care to businesses and their employees, and I figured “wow, this company is actually quite cool”. It connects intellectual with practical doings, while really tackling a highly relevant social topic.
Today, I am the Managing Director of our family business and I absolutely love my new career and job.
Lawyer to Managing Director of a family service company what a switch! What challenges did you encounter during your transition?
For me, one of the biggest challenges was really reflecting and challenging my own beliefs and untangling them. This requires quite a lot of introspection which I had already started during my time walking the Camino.
As I already mentioned it before: it can be very hard to recognise that being good at something does not always mean that it makes you happy and that even hard-won paths may still be questioned. “I actually CAN do something completely different, although I am good at what I do and I worked really hard coming here”.
I also felt social pressure to continue pursuing the supposedly more prestigious and promising profession. Talking to family and friends during that time can be particularly challenging as you fear judgement.
This is hard since you need reassurance and support as self-doubt is for sure a challenging component, considering you will have less experience in a new career. Imagine you studied for 10 years, finished with top exams to throw it all away for a job where you aren’t even sure that you will be good at? I was so afraid, regretting a big transition, but then again my fear has already driven me into taking a job that I knew in my gut was the wrong decision in the first place. Really mapping my values definitely helped me to be wiser this time.
Finally, giving up a very high paying job is something that was difficult for me, but since I know my main driver is not having a lot of money - I was ready to swap a high salary for a purpose job that would fulfil me and this holds true until today.
What would you say are your top learnings from your transition?
🦦 Take your time - planning and approaching a transition in a very time-intensive job is extremely difficult because you will never have enough space and time to reflect on what you really want. There is a great risk of choosing a new path out of a rush and agreeing to too many compromises just to get it over with.
🪞Be honest to yourself and really question your motivations very carefully. In that way you can anticipate and also cope with headwinds as you are prepared mentally.
💪🏽 Be courageous. Although you might not see it at first, but there most of the times is a way back and this may take away your fear of taking the first steps. With a Plan B and a clear time horizon, it will be way easier to get your transition going.
🗣️ Talk to people who did a transition or will give you new input since they will help you to reflect your ideas from different view points. Sometimes even professionals like Coaches can help here, although I do believe more in the approach of personality based advice rather than mere career consulting.
At the moment I am also very grateful to experience a new kind of job transition - the unique job of being a mum, but this particular transition needs a separate interview 😜.
If you want to reach out to Antonia to hear more about hear story you can reach her here:
This is the book Antonia read. It’s an approach that helps people to navigate life’s ambiguity and design lives and careers full of joy and meaning through design thinking. You can check it out in detail here.
Quote of the week:
“It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you think you are going, what job or career you have had or think you should have. You are not too late, and you’re not too early.” - Bill Burnett in his book Designing your life
Podcast episode of the week:
This inspiring podcast episode is a little bit older but still very relevant.
In this episode UCLA law lecturer Benjamin Radd shares why self-doubt is perfectly normal and how to get unstuck with practical tips.
Go and listen to the episode here.
Change your now and start your tomorrow with ChangePath. 🧡💜
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A McKinsey study from 2022 showed that 70% of employees say their personal sense of purpose is defined by their work. The study further proposes that purpose or meaning in people’s jobs ultimately means that people perform better, are more committed and are half as likely to go looking for a new job.
always interesting to read how others change path and how important it is to determine its own motivations and not what others expect from you ! congrats Antonia
Thank you so much for your great feedback Constance 😍😍 we are also so inspired by Antonia‘a path change.