Battered and Bruised After Taking a Big Career Risk? How to Recover

Have you taken a significant career risk that hasn’t worked out?  Perhaps you had a dream, followed your heart, invested everything, and have nothing to show for it.  Maybe you even ended up worse off than when you started.

When you have poured your energy, time and money into a dream and it doesn’t work out, it can leave you feeling battered and bruised.  

The wind has been knocked out of your sails; you have moments of complete hopelessness and wonder what on earth to do next.  

But it is possible to recover from a career disappointment and turn a low moment into an opportunity to learn, grow and fuel your future.

Here are three tips to help you recover and turn your breakdown into a breakthrough.

Career Recovery Tip #1
Deal with the emotional disappointment.

When something hasn’t worked out as you expected, it can be excruciating.

What you do with the pain is essential.  You can try to ignore it or bury it, but over time unprocessed feelings become toxic and take on a life of their own.  Keeping them contained gradually erodes your inner resources and, over time, affects your mental health.

Allow yourself to process the disappointment.  You have taken a risk, and it hasn’t worked out.  You might have a few wounds that need to be tended to.  

If you jumped off a high ledge and broke your leg, you would need to bandage your leg and give it time to recover.  It is the same with your emotional breaks and bruises.  

Cry a little. That’s ok.  Scream a lot if you need to (my husband does this in the car).

If you don’t weep, you’ll pay for it later, as disappointment and anger can quickly turn to bitterness.   We all know someone who is bitter because they think life has dealt them a bad hand.  Not fun. 

When you have cried, maybe even celebrate that you took a risk. 

You dared to be brave and live rather than stay safe and coast.

Career Recovery Tip #2
Dig up the hidden gems from your experience.

However bad your experience has been, you will have learnt a great deal.  

My most disastrous jobs taught me so much about what I didn’t want, who I didn’t want to work with, and what I needed to succeed the next time.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What did this experience teach you?
• What would you do differently next time?
• What has it shown you about what you don’t want?
• What new skills have you developed through the experience?

How James’ despair turned into triumph.

My husband James decided to do an MBA in his early thirties to accelerate his career.  He took a considerable financial risk, investing tens of thousands of pounds in a full-time MBA programme.  But when he graduated, the recession had hit, and he couldn’t find a job for toffee.  

He entered the most challenging time of his life.  With debts racking up, he felt lost, confused, and despairing of his situation.  But during this time, he learned the importance of stewarding his finances to get him out of the hole.   He grew in character through learning to dig deep into inner resources he didn’t know he had.  

Not only has this made him an excellent husband, but it set him up to land his ideal job working as a Health Economics Director with an excellent employer, heralded as Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2020.  This employer places a high value on character, the very thing James had developed in the dark times.  

Career Recovery Tip #3
Decide on your response wisely – will you use this experience to break down or break through?

When a human goes through any crisis, whether it is a sudden illness, a relationship breakup, a death in the family, or a failed career change, they are likely to go through the stages of the grief cycle.

Give yourself grace as you go through the shock, denial, anger and bargaining but then choose to turn it into a platform for breakthrough rather than breakdown.

As the old proverb says, ‘as a man thinks, so he is.’  As you begin to move forward, checking your beliefs could mean the difference between turning this life event into an opportunity for growth or a door into depression.  

If you don’t believe there are fish in a lake, you are unlikely to go fishing, so you will never catch a fish.  So it is with your dreams.  If, as a result of this experience, you start believing that your dreams will never be fulfilled, then chances are your belief will be fulfilled.

How my breakdown became a breakthrough

Several years ago, I took a career risk that bombed.  It was a hideous season in my life.  I felt isolated, alone and terrible most of the time.  I cried alot and talked it through with friends, ate a few too many biscuits and eventually began to find my centre.   

When I had dusted myself off from the heartache, I uncovered an even greater determination to give this dream of mine one last shot.  I found myself a coach and asked him to not let me give up until I had given it one last shot.

I decided, ‘I would rather go down in flames knowing that I had tried’.  

That was the beginning of my third attempt at starting a coaching business.  And this one has now been going for seven years and goes from strength to strength.  

As I look back at my journey into the dream, my experience was not wasted; I was being prepared.

You CAN get back on track.

If you feel battered and bruised after taking a big career risk, you can recover.  

Give yourself space to deal with the disappointment, dig out the hidden gems and then choose to turn this breakdown into a breakthrough.

I’ve been through it, my husband too, and many of my clients. It’s not fun while you’re in the process, but we would all say that pushing through is worth it. 

Take a moment to consider the following questions:

• Where are you in the journey of recovery from disappointment? 
• What do you need to do for yourself to process your emotions? Take a road trip? Book a spa treatment? Have a glass of red wine and a long chat with your most encouraging friend?
• What limiting beliefs have you picked up that might need to be changed?
• Are you going to choose to break down or use this as a platform to breakthrough?

I love helping people who have experienced career disappointment to get back on track.  Let me help you break down the journey into bite-sized chunks so that you can recover hope and reach your career goals.

If you are ready to take that first step, why not drop me a line, and let’s work out a plan to get you on the path to your dream career.