Become a Career Shapeshifter: How to be a Career Shapeshifter?

Now that you are familiar with the idea and benefits of career shapeshifting in the previous article, you are probably wondering how to become a career shapeshifter. Here are 5 tips to become a career shapeshifter.

1- Don’t ignore your passion

“One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you.”
-Jeff Bezos

Don’t ignore the passions that you have out of your current career. Dedicate your leisure time to develop your top 3 passions out of your career and read about them, test them and grow them, filter them until they become real in front of you. Don’t just stop there but transfer them to activities so they can also learn and grow. It will help build your professional network. Along with developing passions, learn new skills that will support these passions. For instance, if your passion is to teach about your career, you need to know how to learn content writing, marketing, presenting and public speaking. These new skills will make you more confident. They will open more doors in front of you and empower you to diversify your sources of income. On a positive note, these skills you are learning will also help you in other endeavors. Writing script is itself a job.

2- Build your life vision

“A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more”
-Kanter

Imagine your life ahead and visualize your future dream lifestyle five years from now. It will be like the end destination that you should reach. You need to see which careers can help you in achieving your vision for your dream lifestyle. Any career that you are in right now should lead you to dream life style, and if it doesn’t, then it is time to plan a safe exit and start doing something else. It may be a side-hustle that you can easily manage. Some people sell handmade decorative items as they spent their leisure time making these pieces. Others are more into digital products such as selling logos worth 1000 dollars. Others love to do some side hustles while they enjoy their times by the sea. Imagine and visualize your dream lifestyle and start running toward it now.

3- Build an open mindset

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.
-Albert Einstein

Change is hard and everyone cannot get used to it. Although humans are at the top tier of evolution they are even more resistant to the change in their surroundings. The status quo gives them safety, stability, and protection. While living in the same conditions, they do not learn to deal with changes. To embrace the change happening around, people need to build an open mindset. That is why it is essential to be mindful of the changes happening in their surroundings.

Here are few strategies that can help in building an open mindset.

• Schedule 30 minutes reflection sessions everyday on your life and identify your new areas of interests.
• Shatter the negative perceptions about the challenges that come your way.
• Condition the uncertainties with a resilient attitude
• Wear the future glasses and learn how to forecast the changes that would happen in the near future and act accordingly.

4- Conquer your Fear

“Beyond fear lies freedom”

To find this freedom you need to understand a typical non-shapeshifter’s mindset. It is full of fear and irrational thoughts. These thoughts and beliefs create panic and anxiety that stops you from thinking further. There are many ways to conquer your fear but the best way is to confront it. While you have decided to be a career shapeshifter and feeling anxious about it, grab a paper
and pencil. Write all your anxious thoughts attached to your fear. Begin questioning these thoughts and try to justify them without any bias. Feeding your faith in yourself and allowing yourself to explore the boundaries of your comfort zone will empower you to conquer your fears.

5- Build a Career Hedge Fund

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”

When you work towards your top passions, you learn different skills. As it is mentioned before, these skills help you in building a side hustle or more that can provide significant revenue side by side. These side hustles would be the foundations of a career hedge fund that is built on multiple sources of income that minimize any risk associated with leaving your current job, even if you are in your dream career. You will become an ultimate career shapeshifter with multiple revenue streams and move towards financial freedom. In short, your learning and adaptation to career shapeshifting will open multiple streams of opportunities that would lead to a life with no financial restrictions. You just need to build the courage, the vision and the wisdom to start.