Page 119 - Marky Stein - Fearless Career Change_ The Fast Track to Success in a New Field (2004)

Ten Success Stories About People Just Like You

Length of time from career decision to a paid position: 12 weeks
Cost (if any) of transition: $1,900

It can be difficult, coming from a society in which money and
status are deemed to be two of the most important or the only
important goals, to imagine that someone might want to give up
both for a little peace of mind.
Yet, there are those who reach a point in their lives where no
dollar amount on a paycheck can compensate for a feeling that
their work has no meaning and no joy for them anymore.
That was exactly the case for Han. At the early age of 39, she had
already been successful in a corporate law firm and was easily com-
manding a salary of over $350,000 a year. She also suffered from con-
ditions that are sometimes attributed to stress. Chronic migraines
and insomnia, coupled with recurrent depression, kept her from
fully enjoying her ample earnings and a life full of opportunities.
Han said that her job was so consuming that she didn’t even
have time to date. She felt unhappy and isolated.
She had thought about getting out of law before, but she felt
apprehensive because she really didn’t have another plan of action.
This year, she’d come to a breaking point. Somehow, she knew she
had to get out of law and do something new. Han spent a long time
trying to figure out what that was. When she performed the career
fingerprinting process that you did at the beginning of the book,
she came upon a unique talent that was, ironically, the very talent
that attorneys use to win cases—persuasiveness.
Salespeople, teachers, and marketing and advertising execu-
tives use persuasiveness in their careers, but those careers didn’t
interest her. Neither did other forms of law like estate planning,
criminal defense, divorce law, or entertainment law. In fact, noth-
ing from the list of job titles you explored earlier in the book
caught her fancy.
I asked her to make a list of the last five times she could
remember being really happy. Her response went like this:

1. Watching the sunset over the ocean
2. Walking alone in a eucalyptus forest
3. Reading a great novel and drinking wine alone in the
hot tub

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