Welcome speaker Jill Ozovek to the blog! Jill (CPC, ACC, ELI-MP) is a Certified Professional Coach who works with millennial women on finding their dream job when all signs point to the impossible. Through highly tailored group work and one-on-one coaching sessions, Jill focuses on helping clients uncover what it is they want to do with the rest of their career, even when they walk into their first session with no earthly idea. She then helps them craft a plan to transition to the new career while keeping wellness and sanity top of mind.
As a former hiring manager at a large event production company, she has extensive experience with crafting resumes that will get you noticed, writing targeted cover letters to potential employers that clearly show why you’re the best fit for the position, using LinkedIn to your advantage, and navigating networking events. She also has extensive experience helping clients define, hone and communicate their professional narrative. For more info on your own career change, click here, or read on for her four reasons why wellness is a critical part of a career change.
Let’s be clear: There can be considerable stress in your life when you’re trying to find a new job, and that stress is magnified when you’re trying to change careers altogether! In the case of the latter, you’ve got to figure out what exactly your new career path IS for starters, and then you’ve got to craft a plan to transition yourself into that new career. This takes time, energy and oftentimes funds (through coaching, a resume writer, classes to bridge skill gaps, etc.).
For many of us during stressful times, keeping up with wellness is the first thing that falls by the wayside. Exercise becomes more and more intermittent and sometimes disappears altogether and greasy takeout while at your desk working on your resume becomes the norm. This can lead to more non-restful nights of sleep (salt and added sugar, sistah!), foggy mornings which precipitate needing more and more coffee and an overall heavy feeling as you go throughout your day.
Sound familiar?
While the scenarios I’m describing above are normal, they don’t have to be your normal. In this two part series, we’ll be talking about WHY keeping wellness top of mind is key and then next time, we’ll talk about HOW you can do it with some easy hacks that will make it totally doable for you.
So, why is wellness the critical component in any career change?
1. A Can-Do Mindset. On days when I’m feeling foggy, tired and downright not myself, I don’t have the same ‘world is my oyster’ expansive mindset I would otherwise have. Add in tons of salt and sugar-laced food, missing my daily meditation session and/or not exercising for a couple of days and forget it! How you treat your body- with the food you put in it, how you move it and how you connect with it emotionally- all matter for being in the right mindset to tackle the challenge of completely changing your career.
When I was in the process of changing my career, I felt that full throttle. During one lengthy part of the transition, I worked full time as an events contractor for a company in Manhattan. That meant I only had nights and weekends for my business to put processes in place, attract clients, network, hone my coaching skills and more. I made sure to bring my home-cooked lunch at least 4 days a week and I’d stop on my way home at a 6 p.m. Pilates class to switch my brain from events/logistical mode to biz building/strategy mode, which really helped. That, on top of my homemade lunches, encouraged my nighttime work sessions. It was daunting enough as it was; I didn’t need to feel lethargic and unfocused to boot!
In the midst of this, I injured my back and couldn’t walk for nearly a month. Now I understand it’s largely because of the stress I was putting on myself to ‘get this career change right.’ I had a lot riding on this after all, having left my well-paying corporate job for the unknown. So, as a result of the injury, I also started seeing a Alexander Technique and mindfulness coach, which brought the benefits of meditation and mindfulness into my life.
2. Stamina. The process of career change is a marathon, not a sprint. This can take several months and in some cases, years. Without a wellness plan in place that works for you, it is SO much easier to give up before you’ve really truly started. I help clients develop a wellness plan they can stick to in the beginning of our work together so that they have the building blocks and foundation upon which to grow and learn as they embark on their career change journey. There will be “up” days and “down” days and with your ideal wellness plan in place, the downs will feel less down. And of course no wellness plan is perfect and you may have off days, but because your baseline is wellness, a day ‘off’ every now and then is a treat and doesn’t feel so ‘off the horse’-esque.
3. Boundaries. If you’re working a couple of different jobs like I did while changing your career, wellness can help create boundaries with your day job. Now, I don’t know your specific situation as you’re sitting there reading this and I know some ‘day jobs’ are more demanding than others. What I’m going for is to encourage you to think about the fact that your wellness plan can help you create a boundary from your day job so that you can get to work on your career change. For me, I did those three 6pm pilates classes and on those three nights I did something for my new career after that, whether it was a listening to a webinar, attending an event or doing some quiet work. I made sure to take some nights off because, well, no one is a robot after all! Maybe after you’ve really looked at your day job it’s still tough for you to get out for a 6pm class, so maybe wellness happens in the morning, or maybe the career change stuff happens in the morning before work a couple of days a week! Even if you feel like your schedule is iron-clad and non-movable, there could be some workarounds.
4. The Right Kind of Productivity. A calmer and less frenetic “MUST GET EVERYTHING DONE NOW” frame of mind helps you focus on what’s truly important for your career change. You no longer will feel like you have to do 5 things on the night(s) you’ve set aside for the work, and instead will have a clearer sense for what’s actually important versus what is just ‘busy-work.’
With the clients I’ve worked with over the last few years, I’ve seen it all when it comes to wellness, and these are the four keys I emphasize focusing on when it comes to your career change. Think about how these intersect with your life and current situation and then next time, we’ll chat about HOW to actually do this so you’ve got some actionable advice to go on.
Learn even more about Jill and her tips during her W.E.L.L. Summit session, Working W.E.L.L: How do you know it’s time for a career change?
