Why looking back at your childhood can help you find a career you love...

What did you enjoy spending your time doing as a child?

Were you the kid shut up in your room reading for hours? Were you always around other people making them laugh and putting on performances? Were you often found in front of your house selling homemade lemonade? Did you spend all your time outdoors picking up creepy crawlies and watching how they lived?

As kids we spent time doing what we were naturally drawn to, we didn't have to think about it, we just knew what we enjoyed doing and spent the day doing it as much as we could. As we grow up most of us start to do things for other motives rather than enjoyment - we do things because we should do it, or because we shouldn't do it, because someone else thought we'd enjoy it or because it's expected of us and the list goes on until we find ourselves living lives dictated by 'shoulds' rather what makes us come alive.

I am a strong believer that when you make a career change and are exploring and identifying the interests and activities that really make you come alive, then your childhood activities and interests often hold the key.

Ask someone who loves their job what they used to love doing as a child and the connections will often seem obvious. Believe it or not we don't actually change that much from the age of 6 upwards.

I was reminded of this on the weekend when I was busy scooping delicious icecreams and serving out homemade brownies from a magical chocolate van at the Marylebone festival in London. As a child I spent many a happy hour serving my grandfather imaginary icecreams from the kitchen hatch, busily tallying up his bill on a tiny plastic till.

At other times I was often found outside running my imaginary bakery selling cakes and chatting with my friends that were pretending to be customers with a doll in one hand and a fairy wand in the other.

I was trading and having playful banter with customers in fancy dress from the age of 5.

25 years later and I'm back doing it again and do you know what, when I'm behind the ChocStar counter, serving grinning customers delicious icecreams and brownies, while they hold a kid in one hand and a sparkly fairy wand in the other I am totally and utterly in my element. I couldn't be happier. Every time I clamber into the van I feel that childhood excitement come over me - there is nothing more fulfilling than making a childhood fantasy come true, even at 29.

What has this got to do with career change? Well, I wasn't always enjoying life this much. I went through a fairly uninspiring education and was churned out the other end with a 1^st class BA Hons and expectations of people around me to do something special with it.

Like so many others I wandered blindly into a Marketing job and was soon feeling utterly trapped in a gray office and a routine 9-5.

By 24 I was already feeling like there had to be more to life and in a moment of defiance, decided that I'd quit the office job and set out on a mission to find alternative ways to earn a living that were out of the office and lots of fun.

I had absolutely no idea where to start and quickly found that I was among the many who had forgotten what I enjoyed doing in life. It was the wise words of a friend who'd also gone through a career change that got me looking back to my childhood for inspiration.

A few months later and I stumbled across the ChocStar parked up at a canal festival - it was love at first sight - there it was, my childhood dream come true. I got chatting to Petra, the owner, and a few months later I was getting behind the counter and serving up icecreams and brownies just like I had done in my imaginary games as a child.

So if you are trying to figure out what career will make you happy and bring you alive, then take a trip down memory lane and see what activities you enjoyed doing as a child, then start to find ways to bring those activities back into your life, and start today.

Selina Barker is Content Director of Careershifters, creative and social entrepreneur and some-time icecream and brownie trader on the ChocStar at festivals and weddings.

Read more about Selina's career change journey in her blog:http://www.careershifters.org/shiftlog/selina

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