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Taming Your Career Cravings

By on March 19, 2018

Most spouses of expats living in Japan have left behind successful careers to experience the opportunity of living overseas.

It’s possible that something was missing in your last career and you welcomed the opportunity to leave and join your spouse in Japan. More likely it was a combination of the financial opportunity to not have to work for and the promise that travel offers for adventure, excitement and new experiences.

Regardless of the reason you’re here, the first year is full of settling your family, learning the ropes of daily living, exploring the country, learning the language, making friends and generally making a life. By the end of that year, however, your family is into a routine and the excitement and urgency of exploring Japanese culture has dampened. It’s at this point you might start to experience “career cravings” – a subtle (or screaming) longing to do something more with your time.

While the experience of being a “trailing spouse” pretty much guarantees career cravings, everyone gets them. Career cravings appear when the work you are doing or the ways you are spending your time are not fully satisfying you in some way. While everyone has career cravings at some point in their life, most people don’t know how to handle them properly. Just like with food cravings, reaching for the first thing you can think of to satisfy them isn’t always the healthiest choice.

Some people handle career cravings by taking up new hobbies, getting transferred to a different department, working to get promoted, going back to school, or changing from one company to another. These can all be effective, as long as the action addresses the true cause of your dissatisfaction. Getting promoted to a management position isn’t going to address your desire for more control over your work if the CEO is a toxic egomaniac. Taking up new hobbies won’t quell your cravings if the job you spend 40 hours/week at bores you to tears. Going back to school won’t help you long-term if the real reason work frustrates you is linked to your inability to speak up.

If you’re contemplating a change to address your career craving, make sure you think deeply about why you’re not satisfied with the current status quo. It might seem easier to go back to school to train for a new career than to address your fears of speaking up for yourself, but without those skills you’re going to hit the same barriers in any career you choose.

Another common scenario that plays out in response to career cravings is something I call “distraction-inaction”. Distraction-inaction results when you keep yourself so busy helping others, meeting external demands or handling the daily minutae of life that you never make the time to do what needs to be done to make a change. This response to career craving occurs for one or more of the following reasons:
• You don’t know (or are afraid to admit) what isn’t working.
• You know what isn’t working but don’t know how to fix it.
• You have no idea what career or job you would rather do and don’t know how to figure it out.
• You know what you’d love to do but don’t think you can make enough money doing it.
• You’re afraid to make a change for fear it won’t solve the problem.

Reasons 1-3 can sometimes be addressed by reading career transition books or taking courses, but If you’ve been reading books for a year or more and still find yourself too busy to take action on anything you’ve read in them for a long enough period of time to get a result, you probably need a career coach. A good career coach can help you get to the root of why you’re dissatisfied with your current work and how to fix it – sometimes while staying in the same job or career. If a job or career change is necessary, they can help you get clear on what kind of work would be a better fit and help you map out a strategy to get from where you are to your dream job.

Reasons 4 and 5 are at the heart of the surge in chronic career craving that’s running rampant in society today. Everywhere you look there is advice about following your passion, doing what you love, finding your purpose and otherwise making your work more fun and fulfilling, but it’s not having an impact. Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace Poll has collected data on employee engagement levels from over 140 countries for almost a decade, and has consistently shown that only 13% of people are truly passionate about their work. Why? It links back to whether the solution is addressing the root cause of the problem.

Check back next month to learn more about the real root cause of career cravings, the true purpose of work and what you can do to help create a new vision of work that allows people, businesses and the planet to thrive.

About Andrea Jacques

Andrea Jacques is the founder of Kyosei Consulting and the author of Wabi-Sabi Wisdom: Inspiration for an Authentic Life (available on Amazon.com). She has spent more than 30 years developing the potential of people and businesses worldwide, five of which were in Japan. A dynamic speaker, coach, and facilitator, her work integrates spiritual insight with top-tier leadership, wellness and sustainability consulting to help individuals and organizations build thriving, purpose-driven cultures where employees know their work truly matters. She can be contacted through her website at www.kyoseiconsulting.com