rocket50 Member Stories featuring Volker Lemberg
In this career spotlight, we're featuring Volker Lemberg. His journey provides invaluable insights for individuals contemplating a career change beyond the age of 50, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness, adaptability, leveraging technology for advancement, and embracing mindfulness.
How did you refine your career path after you turned 50 or beyond?
Redefining your career path confronts you with a difficult question: "What is a career to you"? Accumulation of wealth and things? Spending time with family? Learning new skills? Staying healthy? Giving back to others? ... Trying to prioritize the answers guided my choices after turning 50.
How did you identify that you needed to change careers, what was the most helpful resource during this time?
You can identify the need to change jobs or careers simply through mindfulness and honesty with yourself: Do you get excited about the content of your job? Does it give you energy? Do you feel satisfied and fulfilled? Are you staying healthy? Are most of the days "good days" over a week or a month? If not, time to think ...
What was the greatest help to you during your career transition?
There is no single greatest help but a combination of a) a supportive family, b) your desire and conviction, c) physical and mental well-being, and d) a part of Japanese wisdom (read into the concept of IKIGAI).
Looking back, what are you most thankful for regarding your career path and journey?
People who believed in me and supported my choices and the physical and mental stamina to go through the tough parts.
What advice would you give to someone in a career change?
Study the IKIGAI concept, do the MBPI test, and thus get to know yourself. Feed the results into Gemini and ChatGPT and be astonished at how you could utilize your skills in areas you have not even thought about. Learn new skills related to those areas. There are plenty of courses online and no excuse not to do it.
What else would you like to share about your journey?
Being Generation X, I grew up on the rise of the internet and regret not having worked in the tech area. Now web3 and blockchain are the next evolution and I'm fascinated by them. In the last two years, I was completely immersed in the arena, took online courses, and started projects and those projects turned into profitable businesses as a consequence. And, with age, became wiser believing that the "rich are the ones who are happy with what they have" 🙂
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