A person who wants to change his/her career frequently can hardly expect any of the well-meaning friends and good old colleagues to raise a toast for the potentially life-changing decision. On the contrary, the career changers may have to face a volley of criticism. But the biggest challenge for any individual is whether the career is giving him/her a sense of fulfillment and adding a meaning to his/her life. This article underlines the factors compelling an individual to switch careers, the possible blunders a career-changer commits and the steps to be taken to make a career change seamless.

Changing careers may sound like a very good idea. But the move is fraught with daunting challenges, despairing moments, painful experiences and stressful situations. Let us face the fact as it is. None of us relish the prospects of scouting around for a new job. The search for a new job may entail sizeable investment in terms of time, cost, energy and efforts. Certainly, one may not relish the idea of writing a resume once again. The fact that one may have to spend a better part of a Sunday combing the job vacancy column can make any normal soul go berserk. Imagine a person lurching from one company to another hoping to sell his/her rather encashable virtues as a presumptive employee. One may go blue in the face denying it, but the fact of the matter is that any person worth his/her salt will suffer from the pangs of anxiety and despair, as he/she plods through the rigmarole of changing jobs/career. More so, this feeling of anxiety will get accentuated if a person has been cooling his/her legs in the current job for too long. It is almost impossible to expect a person to prize open the cocoon and come into his/her own.

For any person, wanting to go out there and change tack (or career) is akin to taking a head-long plunge into a `near-freezing' cold river in the wee hours of winter. Changing a career may not be an exciting proposition, but things can get progressively better. For instance, let us draw on the analogy of a cold river. There is no getting away from the fact that the first dip in the river is quite unbearable and takes a lot of conditioning. But once you are in it, the chances that you are likely to stay in and start swimming is quite high. From then on, it only gets better and better. In no time, the feeling of invigoration, freshness and boundless energy washes over your body. For that to happen in life, one may have to step out of the comfort zone and walk straight into the nippy air.

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