Ever changed careers and felt like you needed to say goodbye to your old career, draw a line under it, or perhaps do something to help mark the occasion in some way?
As you know, I do weddings. I do other types of ceremonies too [See here]. Two weeks ago, my friend Jayne (Find Jayne here) contacted me to ask if I did a “career change / closing ceremony”.
I replied: “let’s chat”!
(Side note: new and diverse types of ceremony excite me… I could not wait, but you can’t be too keen, or can you?)
I have not done one of these ceremonies before, but I was very keen & somewhat excited to get working on it as well as use my creative skills to come up with some ideas – I’ll let you know how it goes, it’s later this month!
As we know, people retire and have retirement parties. Of course, not everyone has a retirement party, but it’s not an unusual occasion to celebrate. ‘Changing careers’, saying ‘goodbye to your old career’, ‘hello to a future one’ ceremonies, now those aren’t really heard of.
Back in the day, career change was not as common an occurrence as it is now, in fact it was probably frowned upon in some circles and certainly in a lot of job interviews...
Imagine the scene: Interviewer: "how many jobs have you had?" Interviewee: "I have changed careers about 3 times now" Interviewer: "Sally, I don't think this interviewee is going to be reliable".
Job interviews aside, it makes sense that these type of ceremonies are almost unheard of! I am very much looking forward to changing that up!
Nowadays changing careers is so much more common. There are so many more opportunities and it’s easier to retrain, study at an older age, or restart again in a completely different career. So why not celebrate closing one career and restarting another?
Humans really do love ceremony, it helps us process, it helps us "move on", it helps us acknowledge and celebrate everything we've achieved in that past career and gives us the tools to move on with a fresh outlook for the new to come in our new ventures.
I am looking forward to working with Jayne to create a ceremony which helps her do just that!
In the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts... would you acknowledge a career change with a ceremony?
(c) T. Ribeiro
I'd love to know your thoughts on today's post, please leave a comment in the box below or come chat with me on Instagram: Ribeiro Ceremonies