When To Stay Put, Change, Or Move On

Your business will tell you which is right for you.

By Beate Chelette

More than three months after Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast, entire neighborhoods are still struggling to overcome the devastation. Homes remain under rubble, many others are uninhabitable, and weary residents debate whether to move or rebuild. A natural disaster zeroes in on the question of when to stay put, when to change or just move on.

Change is great when you have successfully gone through it, but I don’t know anyone who enjoys the usually painful process of growth that change forces on us. Wouldn’t it be easier just to stay put and hunker down, and wait out tough times? Or can we face that our old ways that once worked no longer serve us?

When to stay put

These themes are very pertinent to your career. If you can’t imagine doing anything else and love your work, it doesn’t make sense to leave it. As long as your passion burns brightly and your intuition tells you that you are in it to win it—that’s exciting, and of course you should stay. My career consulting business combines my passion for helping people make money and grow their business with my experience as a successful entrepreneur. Seeing my clients become successful makes me feel incredibly successful. Remember, to build any career, you have to give it 100 percent and do absolutely everything in your power to make it work. Then watch what happens.

When to change

This gets down to the nitty-gritty. Your business will tell you what is and isn’t working. There’s no way around it. Unless you are making money, what you do isn’t working. You need to consistently adjust your methods and ways of doing things. Business changes, so do people. New generations manage new information differently. Find out what it is, learn it and make it yours. Maybe your marketing efforts need a jump-start, or it’s time to shuffle your team in order to produce a better product or service.

Knowing how crucial it is to portray a professional image, in my communications department, I work with an experienced proofreader, an ad copywriter for company direct mail pieces, a hip chick for the snazzy things, and yet another writer, an award-winning journalist, for our blog posts and other special projects. Be sure to make a good first impression with words that are interesting and grammatically correct. You can make only one first impression, so make it a superb one!

When to move on

Here comes the tough love. Let’s face it—everything worthwhile in life is work. A good relationship, raising kids, being successful, all of it takes work. As does looking good and having a fit body. You can either spend your days complaining about how much work it is or you can do something about it. If you’re no longer excited about your work, ask yourself why and then start figuring out what’s next. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing a new career. After all, the average person supposedly has seven careers in their lifetime. Remember, it’s not over until it’s over and we have a long way to go!