Career Change

I actually wanted to start this text with a simple but fundamentally complex question: what does it actually mean to change careers?

For me, it was always a question that needed to be accompanied by a lot of rationality. I am extremely rational (sometimes even too much so), practical, and efficient. And a career change wouldn’t look any different.

I’m currently 32 years old, and I started my professional journey at 16, in education. And I stayed in that field until I was 31. So… what makes you want to change? Oh, but that’s the million-dollar question. There are so many things, but I place my bet that the main one is the desire to learn.

The Desire to Keep Learning

Having a student-like spirit should be the norm for everyone. If you feel like you’re not learning anything or you’ve stagnated in a place and just stay there… then what am I doing with my professional life? That’s what I asked myself and reflected on over the last three years.

It’s actually even a little ironic that after so many years in education, you feel like you’re not learning anymore. Education is about learning, and if we think about it more pragmatically, these two premises shouldn’t be separated. But like every human being, I believe we all reach a limit. And you are the one who determines that limit.

Comfort Can Also Become a Limitation

There is a great deal of comfort and security in developing a career within a single area, a single theme. But in no way am I belittling or demeaning people who have a solid career in a single field. Everyone has their own path, but for me, it worked well up to a certain point.

The great paradox of the field of education, for me, lies in feeling, nowadays very clearly, that it is sometimes a thankless field: the more one learns, the more one unlearns. How so? Imagine, let’s try to conceptualize it in one sentence: education exists to bring human development for the future of others, and that is exactly what exhausts and sickens those who work directly with it—a kind of utopia in the transformation of lives that contrasts with an extremely demanding model of results and performance established in the world.

Realizing this is a little frustrating, I won’t deny it. Frustrating to the point of spending a good few hours of your day, your week, reflecting, “What have I gotten myself into?”

When You Realize You Need Something Different

Don’t get me wrong. I’m incredibly grateful to this field. I built many bridges there, gained a lot of knowledge, of course, made many contacts, gained many different perspectives on the world, and that’s probably what brought me to where I am today. Not to mention this CURIOSITY to keep learning.

But the main reflection, actually, was: I teach, I communicate, I even sell in this field. But what about me? Am I still learning?

And a moment came when I realized I was stumbling over more of the same. Same field, different companies, similar problems.

I needed to learn new things. I needed to feel the discomfort of starting over, of literally NOT KNOWING where to begin, what to do first. Researching things from SCRATCH. Participating in meetings, entering quietly and leaving silently.

Why? Because I’m learning.

Wow!

And when I thought about all this, I got an interesting little thrill. And I finally managed to differentiate that it wasn’t stress, worry, saturation, or anxiety anymore. It was a thrill of enthusiasm. The enthusiasm of seeing a new horizon. Of feeling like a “student” again, but in my thirties.

The Advice I Had Been Giving Others

In one of my professional experiences in education, I spent five years in an industry that embraced the idea of career change. Every day, I spoke with people who needed guidance, reassurance, and that final push of courage to make the decision and begin a new journey. One of the messages I repeated most often was that nothing acquired professionally is ever discarded. Skills are transferable, experiences evolve, and everything transforms.

Ironically, the person who most needed to hear all those conversations I had with others was… me.

And that was the moment I finally made my decision.

Making the Decision Is the Hard Part

Knowing you want to change fields and actually making it happen are two very different things. Turning that decision into reality demands a lot, first emotionally and then in very practical ways.

I found myself asking questions like: Do I have a support system for this decision? Do I have financial reserves in case “everything goes wrong”? Do I have quality time available to apply for jobs and rebuild my network? Where am I going to go? Is moving to another country an option? Am I willing to sit every day with the feeling of taking 40 steps back just to take five steps forward?

There are many more questions that become part of this equation, but I think these were the most important ones at the beginning of my journey.

Starting Over

Fast forward to today, I did a 360-degree turn. How refreshing!

I’m at a company that develops business for small and medium-sized North American (USA and Canada) companies in Europe. And I’m a Project Manager.

I simultaneously manage three projects in COMPLETELY different areas. One is a manufacturer of equipment for music education, another is in the health and biomechanics area, providing a solution for lower back pain, and the other is an innovative way of using silicone for roofing restoration.

Becoming a Student Again

In the last four months of my life, I’ve learned SO MUCH about wood, ergonomics, musical instruments, the human body and the sacroiliac region, the process of oil transformation, and the difference between asphalt and a specific type of roofing material called bitumen.

I’ve also become familiar with terms like MOQ, MOV, MRSP, and concepts related to costs, risk, retail, distribution, and market entry strategy.

I haven’t felt like a student of life again in a long time. It’s been too long since I felt genuinely curious about things I’d never heard of before and became completely fascinated by them. You know that feeling of finding that spark again? Well, that’s exactly what happened.

I rediscovered it, but in a controlled way. Without love bombing, because we all know love bombing has an expiration date. Instead, it came back in a much more mature, stable, and conscious way.

Opening a New Door

The decision to do something different had been maturing, thinking about it, suffering through it, doubting it, wavering… but never giving up on it.

And when you find a place where a door opens, another little light is switched on in your head, validating that you weren’t wrong. Validating that there is still so much out there for you to experience.

If You’re Thinking About Making a Career Change

If you’ve read this far and identified with some of these things, if you also feel that urge to make THAT change, I’ll be the first person to say: do it. Do it even if you’re afraid. Do it even if you’re insecure. Do it even if you don’t have much clarity about where you’re going.

Start slowly. Start from the bottom. But start.

When you allow new things to enter your life, you can be sure that rewards will come from letting those doors remain open.

Enjoy the Journey

A great deal of our lives we actually learn along the way. We focus so much on the result that we forget to enjoy the journey. And it is in the journey that choices are made, that life happens.

I bet you’ll never regret being the protagonist of your own life.