Why Do You Want To Take A Career Break?

By Sue Hadden

Posted in: How to identify your ideal career
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Career Break coach Sue Hadden shows you why it is important to be clear about why you want to take a career break, and offers ideas for how to spend your time away from work.

If you’ve been thinking about a career break for a while, it’s important to be very clear as to the reason(s) why you want to take one. Having a big why will help keep you focused, motivated and driven to achieve your goal. If you don’t have a strong reason why then you may be disappointed with the results and not achieve what you wanted. Wouldn’t you prefer to spend your time doing something you’ve always wanted to do rather than something you just fell into? You may only do this once in your life so make it count!

So, what is your big why?

  • Travel – you’re looking to experience new cultures, customs, religions, food, languages and meet the local people.
  • Volunteer work – you’ve always wanted to give back to society and do something meaningful such as conservation work, working with animals, build homes and schools or spend time in an orphanage.
  • Learning a new skill - becoming a ski instructor has always been your dream or improving your cooking skills to impress your friends or maybe even acting classes to make your break into TV.
  • Family – it’s been years since you spent any quality time with your family, especially if you’ve been living abroad. How wonderful would it be to see them again and be part of the family.
  • Move abroad and work part time whilst immersing yourself in a new culture.
  • Gain a professional qualification and add something extra to your CV and get that promotion and pay rise you’ve been working towards.
  • Learn a new language like Italian, French or Arabic and impress your friends!
  • Stay at home and renovate your house or do those DIY jobs that never seem to get done. Or, you could just chill out and do nothing.
  • Undertake a degree which may lead to you a new and exciting career.
  • Write that book you've always wanted to! There may be a 'Mills and Boon' author in you yet!

Did any of those resonate with you? Did you feel a ‘pang’ in your chest when you read the list and your mind started spinning with ideas and plans on how to make it happen?

Combining Activities

There are no rules or guidelines for taking a career break and you may even want to combine a few activities listed above if your big why includes a few of them. For example, during my second career break I flew back to Australia to spend quality time with my family as I’d been living in the UK for 10 years. During this time I also gained a professional qualification then spent three months travelling through Asia. I was very lucky to be able to take an extended period of time off to achieve everything I did, in fact, my career break was 18 months. Personal circumstances will determine how long you can take your career break for, in addition to your financial situation and your career/home life. Create your break around your big why and what is comfortable for you.

Reflecting Your Values

Once you’ve identified your big why(s) and become very clear on what you’d like to achieve, the next step is to review your current values and identify new values you that will help you bring your big why(s) into your experience. For example, if your big why is Travel, then you may want to introduce Travel and Adventure into your top values. By consciously changing your values you are bringing the experience you wish to have into your awareness and therefore, will find yourself making decisions and taking actions around this new value such as setting up a travel savings account, attending travel fairs or spending time in travel agents looking through brochures and reviewing flight options.

Share Your Plan With Others

Can’t keep your big why(s) to yourself? Of course you can’t! Share it with friends and family, write it in your journal or create a vision board of the countries you want to visit and experiences you wish to have. This will build momentum and keep you excited, motivated and driven to really make it happen! What are you waiting for?

Leave a comment below: What's your underlying reason for taking a career break?

Sue Hadden is a career break coach focusing predominately on clients wanting to take a career break and helping career break returners transition back into the workplace. Prior to her coaching, Sue worked in the field of graduate and MBA recruitment, training and development and held positions in some of London’s top financial services organisations. www.careerbreakcoach.co.uk


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