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At Midlife, Many Will Find a True Calling

More and more people in midlife will change careers to find job satisfaction – and succeed at it.

By Kathie Neff Ragsdale
Eagle Tribune
Writer

One day in 1992, banker Beverly L. Lindsey, then 40, was driving home from a job interview when a troubling thought crossed her mind. It was "I don´t want to do this anymore"

It was the same thought that Patricia A. Berking had three years ago when, at 42, she suddenly started questioning her nursing career. And that security administrator Robert B. Gibbs, 41 had just last year, when a job loss prompted a reassessment of his life.

It is a thought that occurs to increasing numbers of people in midlife, according to career counselor and career coach Judit Price of Berke and Price Associates in Chelmsford, MA – and increasing numbers of them are doing something about it.

These days, it´s not a poor economy, a lay-off or even a desire for more money that makes 40 something´s to change job paths, she says. Now, "people want job satisfaction" And they are finding it.

Beverly Lindsey the banker is now Rev. Lindsey the pastor, spiritual leader of the Congregational Church in Chester, N.H.

Ex nurse Patricia Berking of Boxford now runs her own fitness studio, Metamorphosis in North Andover.

Former security administrator Robert Gibbs of Salem, N.H. teaches yoga part-time at the Salem Athletic Club, with an eye toward one day opening his own yoga and meditation center.

Things are not the same as in past generations, when people often stuck with jobs their whole lives just for the sake of security. These days, there are no security – so people figure they might as well go for satisfaction according to Judit Price. "The lifetime job is gone," she says. There is no such thing as lifetime employment.

Rev. Lindsey, now 51, agrees. "The concept of (lifelong) vocation or career, I don´t think is still valid," she says. "You´re actually putting yourself perhaps in danger if you take that kind of thing too seriously. If your whole identity is caught up in one role and something drastic happens, you have to have some sense of self to fall back on. "

How can people in midlife make the transition to different employment? Judit Price, career coach and career consultant emphasizes counseling and self-assessment tests to determine which jobs one is best suited for – something the job seeker may never have considered in the past. Without "looking inside" she says, the pattern of unhappiness at work may repeat.

Others like the three people interviewed for this story, talk about a willingness to risk and a sudden awakening that feels spiritual in nature.

For further Information email: Judit Price or call: 978-256-0482