Changing careers means answering some serious questions. Questions around identity (who are you at work and play), purpose (what drives you, what difference do you want to make?), and income (how much do you need and how best to earn it?) will probably top the list.

And answering serious career change questions is a serious business, right?

Well … yes … committing to doing patient, dedicated, structured work is vital …

and no … although it sounds counterintuitive, approaching career change with a light touch and a sense of play and not taking yourself too seriously can really help you move from a worn-out career to an exciting new one.

Take things too seriously, and you risk getting stuck in your head. You can end up playing a very unfun game of loop-de-loop, reworking the same set of possibilities without putting any of them to the test. Your brain is doing a fair impersonation of a hamster on a wheel. You're pedalling like mad, but you're going nowhere. Your career change has stalled in Hamster Head Square.

If stifling seriousness is slowing your career change, try swapping it for a sense of play. Lightening up and being less invested in outcomes gives you room to explore and act. Suddenly, there's brain space for giving things a go and room for surprising stuff to happen.

Becoming a playful career changer is a seriously sound move. But how to begin?

As playfulness is, first and foremost, a state of mind, start by checking your mindset.

Move your mindset towards flexibility and fun

A flexible mindset allows you to be creative and experimental. Creativity (along with curiosity, confidence, and courage) is a mainstay of career change. How else will you move from a career you no longer love into that as-yet-unknown one you adore?

Play can't help being creative. It frees you from focusing on processes and results. It gives you welcome relief from the structured hunt for 'answers' that can overwhelm even the most stalwart career changer. Play gives you permission to pick up those quirky, intriguing options your logical, less adventurous brain is prone to rejecting and ask ... 'hmm... what might I do with one of these?'.

A flexible, adventurous mindset helps you stay open to trying new things, and (perhaps best of all) it helps you stay cool as a cucumber if said things fall flat or go pear-shaped.

In short, if your career change is stuck or sinking, play can propel you into a pressure-free zone that's chock full of clues for finding work you'll love.

Need a refresher on the lifelong benefits of developing a flexible rather than a fixed mindset, here it is.

Schedule some playtime

Provided they've got a safe, supported space to do it, play comes naturally to kids; for (many) grown-ups, not so much. Thankfully, play is a skill we can relearn if we've lost it or ramp up if we're just a bit rusty.

Start small and stay true to yourself. Quietly work out which activities give you energy, calm, contentment, or a sense of flow, and schedule time to do some of those things. Maybe they'll be connected to sparky career change ideas you're keen to explore, maybe not.

Programmed playtime doesn't need to be extensive or expensive. Half an hour's indoor or outdoor gardening, going to an exhibition or a movie, wrangling the Wordle or grooving to music while you bake a cake.

You might find a fun way to track your career change: a scrapbook, a stars and stickers calendar to celebrate your progress or a photo blog.

Scheduling playtime might feel a bit odd at first. But giving yourself the green light to goof off in whatever way works for you is surprisingly powerful. Particularly if you can view playfulness as a state of mind rather than a particular activity.

Make space for 'mad' ideas

… and play with them

Write a wish list of 'if only' careers you'd love to explore if only you felt braver, better qualified, less financially encumbered, or [insert inhibiting factor of your choice].

Cast a sceptical eye over these 5 limiting career change assumptions you need to test.

Then breathe, set your brain to 'play mode,' pick one of your 'if only' careers, and find a low-risk way to explore it. Contact someone you admire in a totally new field you'd like to break into. Tell them in direct, cheese-free terms why they impress you and ask for a chat. Volunteer your time, skills and energy anywhere you've an inkling you might fit.

Pluck up your courage and take a taster class or enrol in a course you've been secretly keen on for yonks. Fancy freediving? Join a club. Is your inner actor struggling to get out? Find a drama group.

Take a playful 'nothing to lose' approach to exploring those mad ideas. They may turn out to be way less mad (or even madder) than you imagined.

Either way, they're a great source of career change clues. You'll be better informed about what you're keen on and capable of doing. And that's why this week you should try something new.

Mind your language

A playful approach can have a powerful, energising impact on your career change, and the words you use to talk about it can be part of that.

Of course, there'll be loads of times when sharing your struggles and venting and gripping are the best ways to get difficult stuff out of your head or off your chest.

Outside of those times, see if you can swap limiting language like 'must,' can't,' won't, 'should,' 'never,' 'but,' and 'impossible' for curious, open 'wondering' words like why not, what if, maybe, who knows, and how about?

Start slowly. Aim for a day without a single 'should' or 'shouldn't'. No dramas if you let one slip. But watch the infectious effect of speaking positively and playfully about the state of your career change (and whatever else you're up to) on your own and others' energy and interest in the conversation.

Add playful people to your cheer squad

Convinced (based on zero 'hands-on' research) that:

• A particularly cool creative job you'd love to try couldn't possibly exist

• The kind of work that brings you joy wouldn't earn you a living wage

• You're too female/male/old/young/inexperienced/over experienced, etc., to do [insert juicy dream career of choice]?

Hang on a sec. How about having a play before you rule out any of those career options?

Seek out astute, open-hearted, adventurous humans who'll set you straight. You'll most likely find these people outside or on the edges of your tight-knit network of career-change cheerleaders.

These people will have your interests at heart, but they won't be constrained by well-meaning fears for your safety that can drive friends and family to nudge you towards more known and conservative choices. As a result, they're well-placed to put things in genuine perspective and prove to your vexed and vacillating brain that one or more of the 'mad' ideas or options you're dismissing out of hand just might be possible.

Light on for a career change cheer squad? How to build one and how it helps.

Reframe play as practice

Because it is. Watching kids 'at play' will confirm this in a nanosecond. Play is the ultimate absorbing, expectation-free way to practice our skills, pursue our interests and prepare to do things differently and better.

Play lets us stumble and stuff up, then giggle and have another go. It makes us humbler, happier humans and clearer, more confident career changers.

You are 100% free to play right up until you sign on the dotted line that commits you to a new job. So why not follow up on any number of mad, marvelous, messy career change ideas just for the fun of finding out where they might take you?

Need help to make playfulness part of your career change? Book a chat.

By Jo Green, Career Change Coach

I know that when you find what you love, heart and soul, your life changes. I work every day with people who are reshaping their current careers, starting new enterprises or searching for a new direction. Basically I help people who don’t like their job to figure out what to do instead!

As a Careershifters and Firework Advanced Certified Coach and experienced career changer myself, I can help you figure out what fulfilling work looks like for you.

Drop me a note to organise a free 20 minute consultation to chat about your career change and how coaching could help.