Redrawing my career path during the past months has definitely challenged me to rethink my skills, interests and purpose in life. It has been a search for the crossroads between what I am good at, what I love, what the world needs and what I can be paid for. That sweet spot in the hunt for happiness that the Japanese call ‘Ikigai’. While career coaching is a booming business nowadays, I’m a bit sceptical about finding the ‘dream job’. That job where you walk around in eternal bliss, sipping pina coladas in the sunshine might be a tough thing to aim for. Inspired by reading Mark Manson’s ‘The subtle art of not giving a fuck’, I found several reasons why:

Our brains are wired for dissatisfaction

The truth is that we always strive for more and better: a biological feature to help us survive. This means considering a career switch is a delicate exercise, in which to carefully evaluate the balance between the need for change and the comfort of stability. While we are always choosing, change or no change, simply appreciating our current job and making the most of it can be the way forward. On the other hand, staying too much in our comfort zone might hamper growth and block the road to a fulfilling life.

Our problems can at best be upgraded

Life is an endless series of problems: solving one problem leads to the creation of the next. It sounds a bit depressing at first, but the good news is our happiness levels are very much linked to solving our problems. Finding the right problems can actually invigorate us. While reshaping my career, I have been searching for the problems I want to solve, the struggles I am prepared to face and fight. I am striving to find that upward spiral of problems, keeping in mind I can control what my problems mean and how to react to them.

Don’t wait for inspiration to strike you

Somehow we think we need this genius inspiration to motivate us into action. If there is one thing I have learned in the past months, it is to take action, even without knowing whether or how all the pieces of the puzzle might fit together. Acquiring new skills, meeting up with new people. It all helps to clarify this pretty vague idea we typically have of the professional direction we are heading. I have plunged into books, courses and networking events (sometimes not knowing a single soul). I sent mails asking people who inspire me for coffee or lunch (and they said yes ;-)), applied for a wide range of jobs and tried out new hobbies. Inspiration has become the reward of my action rather than its trigger.

While my engineering degree trained me to solve problems, reshaping my career can not be narrowed down to solving a complex equation. Simply too many variables and boundary conditions to account for. Despite this, I believe I have found my Ikigai: helping organisations to create impactful data stories and visualisations, through workshops and consultancy. Why?

• Strong 💪🏻: From my academic career, I know I am good at translating complex data into an attractive and understandable story.
• Love ❤️: Scientific communication was always a part of my job as a researcher I particularly liked: presentations, graphics, posters, papers…I loved them all.
• Purpose 🚀: I believe clear and transparent communication in our data-driven society makes the world a better place.
• And the money 💶? Well, people have done it before me, so I trust this will follow along as well.

I am ready to explore this new path. I have my boots on and my bag packed, ready to meet the bumps and bends in the road. Ready to meet some resistance, from the outside, but also from my own inner critique. I don’t expect a stress-free job, sipping pina coladas at the beach. Even if that were to happen, my human nature would quickly find a new problem to solve. I hope to find pieces of a puzzle along the road, giving me meaning and purpose in putting them together. Knowing that I should not always trust my conception of positive and negative experiences. As Freud said: ‘the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful’.