Reverse engineer past career pivots

- Pivots vary in size and scope. Some are dramatic, such as quitting a job to start your own business in a completely different industry, while others are more subtle, such as making changes within your current role. As you go through this course and contemplate next moves and next steps, consider the Riskometer. Your comfort zone is where work's fine, you feel pretty good hanging out there, everything's comfortable and cozy. If you stay there for too long, you're likely to eventually fall into your stagnation zone, where you're getting bored and restless, or maybe even actively dissatisfied with your work. The ideal range for change for impactors is your stretch zone where you feel challenged, excited, definitely a little bit of fear and adrenaline, but it feels mostly manageable, even as it challenges you to grow and stretch in new ways. However, if you try to pivot too sharply too far from what you're doing now, it's likely to send you into your panic zone. where you feel more a sense of paralysis and uncertainty, and you're so concerned with whatever next steps you're contemplating, that you end up doing nothing at all. So again, the ideal range for change is in your stretch zone, and that's going to be different for every person. Think about how your appetite for risk has shown up in the past. When was the last time you made a move that took you from your comfort zone, smack into the outer reaches of your stretch zone? When was the last time that your stagnation zone let you know you were ready to make a change? Can you recall a time that you were even in your panic zone? And what made that move or career stage feel so risky? That brings me to my next important point. Even if you haven't used the exact language of pivoting that I'm sharing with you in this course, you already know how to pivot, and you've done it before. Imagine a pole vaulter, they run, and then slam their pole into the ground to catapult over the high bar. In a pivot, you're leveraging existing strengths, experiences, or contacts in a similar way. Think about it. What has helped you make career changes in the past? In the exercise file that goes with this video, take a moment to reflect on your work history, and reverse engineer how you've already pivoted from one related area to the next, either within your current organization, or the pivot that brought you there. As you go through the exercise, reflect. What did each of the roles when you pivoted from role A to role B have in common? What strengths and interests carried over from one role to the next? How did you know it was time to make a change? And what strategies or people were most helpful to you in navigating that change? None of you are starting from scratch. You are smart, resourceful, and already have so many valuable career experiences under your belt. Next, we're going to look at exactly how to unpack those experiences so that you can accelerate your pivot planning.