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A career change at 50 is a fabulous idea if you are financially sound and bored with your present work. With all the experience you have to offer this could be the start of exciting new pastures and a time to learn new skills to enhance your enjoyment of life.

A career change at 50 will help you to rediscover your potential; it will also give you so much more personal satisfaction when you find the right career for you. Now the best method of selecting a career at this juncture is to find the lost potential in you, and think about the options that are open for you. This is a good age to start what you always wanted to do but could not pursue, because of family and financial responsibilities. Below are some simple steps that will guide you to make a wise decision in your choice.

The first step to a career change at 50 is to focus clearly on what you can do and what you cannot. The key is to list down all your talents and areas for improvement. List down the skills you use in your present job too. You never know when these skills might be of help in your new career. Do not forget to mention the special talents that you possess like customer service skills, your passion for music or dance, understanding human psychology etc. these will help you greatly in your new career. Focus on your core strengths.

Your career changing decision should be based upon the lifestyle you are seeking. Do you want to work as hard as you do now or are you planning a more relaxed life? You might also want to work less hours. These factors will become of prime importance when you have decided on the lifestyle you now seek and will seriously affect what you would truly love to do at this juncture. Remember that you are not a fresher!

Salary may also be a vital aspect of your career change at 50. Budget for the proposed change and be aware of what investment will be required by you to make a success of this new career in the long run. Consider you present salary level and your monthly commitments to family, loans and lifestyle. Make sure you allow sufficient capital to finance this change as there may be extra costs involved with training, new equipment, clothing and travel. Ensure you have researched the salary and your expectations and requirements.

A Career change at 50 is the perfect time to explore those options which have always been close to your heart. If you feel financially secure at this stage of your life then change is ideal and an exciting prospect but it will still have you feeling a little apprehensive and nervous.

You can find your dream if you go for a career change at this age. Don’t be scared, go ahead, accept the challenge and do what you have always wanted to achieve.

Sometimes a career change is an unavoidable phase in life. In some cases, people may shift to a new career by their own choice. But sometimes, when this change has been initiated by a change of business in a company, the experience can be traumatic for the employee. In such cases, it is best to look at the positive side of things. A change in career is a great opportunity to venture into a new field and discover new opportunities for advancement.

Finding A Career Guide

When you are planning a career change, depending on a good career guide can make all the difference between getting a job you are okay with and getting a job you love. A reliable career guide is one that will provide you comprehensive information on all kinds of careers available to you and what jobs would suit you so that you will be able to make a wise decision when it is time to make a choice.

There are lots of good sources – both offline and online – that offer reliable information on changing careers. While certain career guidance reports may be personalized, others may contain general information related to changing careers.

The internet is a great storehouse of career guides and career interest tests. These online tests assess the answers you provide and then determine the most suitable career change option for you. It would be a good idea to take a career interest test to understand what job would fit your talents, skills, personality and education.

After taking the career interest test and understanding the best career options, it is time to get in-depth information about your chosen career field. Try to determine what courses or training sessions you need to attend to excel in the chosen field.

Preparing For A New Career

Here are some things to remember while preparing for a career change:

- Most people harbor talents and interests that are quite different from their chosen career path. While planning a new career, make sure that it provides ample room for developing your innate talents.

- A good financial system is an essential aspect of planning a change in career. Often, a poor financial situation can hinder your decision to switch to a new career. If you are mindful of your spending habits, if you have adequate savings and if you are not too anxious about how badly your finances will be affected by a career change, you will be more confident about making that change.

- Once you have chosen a career, keep updating your skills and adding new skills so that you remain a cut above the competition. When you get an opportunity to specialize in that career, go for it.

Try adopting these tips to help you be better prepared to face a future with a new career. Use career guides and career interest tests not only to aid you in finding the best career change option, but also to help you emerge successful in your new job.

Career Change Tips and Advice

Building a career over years is becoming a rarity in the age of fast forwarded careers. Hardly a decade ago, any bright-eyed, freshly minted graduate had his options cut out for them. You either get into a management school, get into engineering school or med school and pray that you came out in one piece.  Choosing was not much of a problem, because your choices were limited, and in more ways than one, you got chosen by your profession. By luck you would find yourself able to tolerate what you do as a job and live on. Today, we have avenues for jobs springing up in places we never imagined. The choices are endless post the IT revolution. People change jobs by the weekend. The tendency to change one’s career is on the rise. Sensitivities have changed. Everybody has a reason to change jobs, at least an excuse to convince themselves that they made the right choice.

Changing careers is a common sight today. Most of the people are interested to shift their careers and they have different reasons for it. A. Harrison Barnes, the CEO of job portal Employment Crossing says that there are people who switch careers as soon as they have stepped into their “chosen” field in the face of fallen expectations. There is also the breed that discovers A. Hidden talent they can put to use in a much better way in a different career in the middle of their present careers. Though the prospect of changing the decision about their career is at times painful, the average person today has the courage to change their careers for they find themselves suitable for a different job than the one they are presently in. Job satisfaction is a crucial factor today, so much to the extent that we find employers changing the office environment to make their employees feel “happy” coming to work. It is no longer surprising to hear of a person who landed up in a field that had absolutely nothing to do with the choices he made during his/her education or later on, in the beginning of their “planned” career. Today, the possibilities for a career change at any stage in your present career are endless.

A career change has its bounties and benefits, but there is always the risk factor of losing your way if you do not keep your head straight. Though a career change does involve risk, according to A. Harrison Barnes, you will not know unless you take the risk. A career change also allows you to experience different jobs and provide you with enough knowledge about the day-to-day processes involved in a particular profession. It provides them avenues to learn more and more capabilities and areas where they can excel.

Every individual has his or her own reason to change careers says A. Harrison Barnes. Some may have problems dealing with their colleagues or the seniors with whom they spend the whole day at office. In the present scenario, where the average person has a fairly high degree of sensitivity, uncomfortable peer interaction could easily be a factor that governs a career shift. It is seen that in most cases of resignation from a particular organization, the individual leaves his immediate supervisor and not the organization.  Another reason for the shift could be the frequent change in tasks or even in rules that are not allowing you to perform.

Another culprit of a career shift is the lack of concentration or dwindling interest in routine chores at work. It is a possibility that one can lose focus of the big picture and thus fail to perform up to the desired mark. This change in attitude can put the individual in situations where he is pointed out to be incapable of handling his job efficiently and eventually a burden to his working environment. This could easily provoke a job shift. Though this could result in an immediate shift to a different organization in the same field, it is highly likely that such an individual can face a similar pattern of situations, wherever he or she goes, which may eventually result in verifying the decision to embark on this career and the probability of a different career option.

Changing careers is never an easy job. You need to look at all the facts and take them into perspective before you take the plunge. The few aspects that you need to consider are shared with you below by A. Harrison Barnes.

Have a Well Developed Plan

However bright your prospects may appear to be, you need to have a plan chalked out before you take any step towards a career change. You have to make an effective career change strategy that ensures your success in your new career. This plan could consist of managing finances, current qualifications,  prospects of improving upon your qualifications while on the job, the learning curve at your new job, and research on recent market trends. This is of course a time consuming process, but time well spent. You need to remember that it is a decision that will change your career and your life completely and thus cannot take it lightly. Patience is a virtue you need to develop if you don’t already have it, suggests A. Harrison Barnes.

Your Personal Assessment

At this juncture, it is imperative that you analyze the skills, the talents, the strengths, the passions and the experience that you have accumulated till date. Your complete and honest self assessment will help you decide on the career that you can choose for your future step. You have to make a complete list of things that you can do to push yourself in the right direction to a career you can move ahead in swiftly. The result of this analysis will help you get the right career for yourself says A. Harrison Barnes.

Different Career Alternatives

You can know about other career alternatives through career libraries and through online resources. The job search websites online have the career advice section where you can gain the necessary information. Here you can compare the different fields of work that you have an interest in.

Salary Suiting the Lifestyle

Every person has a unique angle on the lifestyle that he or she wishes to have. Your choice of lifestyle can make you travel to different parts of the world or keep you close to the people you have always wished to live with. You need to be stern in setting your priorities and ensure that your new career will help you maintain these priorities. This is never easy. This is because a new career always tends to set new parameters in your day-to-day life. Adapting to these changes, keeping focus of what you need to achieve ultimately and working towards it will keep you motivated in such a situation.

Apart from these you can take career advice from many resources. You can ask for information from the people who have already made career changes in their lives. A. Harrison Barnes says that they are the best guide for you.

What is True Love? A strong attraction for another? Is it unselfish concern for another human being? Is it romantic love or is it more?

Love can be confusing and it is a journey. Love can be hard to express without a basic foundation built from childhood. It starts with the love of self then branches out with expressions of love in every area of ones life.

Love is a source of mystery misunderstood by many. Too often we see in society broken relationships due to the confusion on how to love in a healthy way. How do couples prepare a foundation to ensure in the early years of the relationship that they will be able to deal with conflict, commitment, children, finances and more. Too many are quick to vacate the relationship when problems arise.

Love is the foundation of a happy life. Love has a calming and healing effect even through the tough times. The greatest joy, is love is meant to be shared and expressed everyday in our lives.

Enjoy.

“Sooner or later we begin to understand that love is more than verses on valentines and romance in the movies. We begin to know that love is here and now, real and true, the most important thing in our lives. For love is the creator of our favourite memories and the foundation of our fondest dreams. Love is a promise that is always kept, a fortune that can never be spent, a seed that can flourish in even the most unlikely of places. And this radiance that never fades, this mysterious and magical joy, is the greatest treasure of all – one known only by those who love.”

–Author Unknown

“Love is the seed of all hope. It is the enticement to trust, to risk, to try, to go on.”

–Gloria Gaither

“Love knows no limit to it’s endurance, no ends to its trust,

no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything.

Love still stands when all else has fallen.”

–Author Unknown

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Where there is great love there are always miracles.”

–Willa Cather

“I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.”

–Roy Croft

“Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.”

–Rabindranath Tagore

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”

–Sam Keen

“Life is a journey and it is love that makes that journey worthwhile.”

–Author Unknown

“It is love that makes the impossible possible.”

–Indian Proverb

“The best portion of a good man’s life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts,

Of kindness and of love.”

–William Wordsworth

“Some love lasts a lifetime. True love lasts forever.”

–Unknown Author

“The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvellous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life.”

–Sir Hugh Walpole

“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”

–Henry Drummond

“Where there is love there is life.”

–Mahatma Gandhi

“Love is the doorway through which the human soul

passes from selfishness to service.”

–Author Unknown.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,

what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

–Helen Keller

“He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.”

–H. Jackson Brown Jr

“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a wayas to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins

them by what is deepest in themselves.”

–Pierre Teilhard De Chardin.

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”

–Jimi Hendrix

“Love is the essence of God.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.”

–Mother Theresa

“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.”

–Alexander Smith