If you’ve found yourself unemployed due to the company downsizing or you’ve become disillusioned by your profession and trying to decide whether a different type of career would be better for you, you’ll undoubtedly face challenges. It might make it easier to know that you aren’t the first to make a change. In fact, career transitions happen more often than you might think. Here are a few famous career transitions, some of which came about at a later age.
- Julia Child- If you are a fan of cooking shows, you’ve more than likely watched a few from this celebrity chef and famous cookbook author. She didn’t begin in that career, however. She actually had several careers, including secret intelligence, media, and advertising. It wasn’t until she was 50 that she wrote her first cookbook.
- John Glenn- As an astronaut, John orbited the Earth in 1962 as the first man to do so and he also did a nine-day mission on the Discovery space shuttle in 1998. Between those excursions to space, he spent 24 years as a US senator in Ohio.
- Martha Stewart- This is another case of a career transition into cooking from other professions. In this case, her career transitions were from being a model to a stockbroker before turning to television and gourmet cooking.
- Dwayne Johnson- Career transitions are something that “The Rock” is quite familiar with as he went from being a backup linebacker with a football career to joining the WWF and then transitioning into movies and television.
- Ronald Reagan- Not all presidents were lifelong politicians. In this case, the career transition was from being an actor to becoming the 40th president.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger- Here is another case of transitioning into politics, as well as having more than two careers. He started as a world champion bodybuilder, went into acting, and then become the Governor of California.
- Harland Sanders, aka Colonel Sanders- Not all famous people that had career transitions had some sort of fame established before making a change in late life. He had all sorts of positions before coming up with Kentucky Fried Chicken at the age of 62, including operating a gas station, working on the railroad, and being a country attorney.
Now that you have a better understanding of how career transitions are nothing new and totally possible, you can move forward regardless of your age and choose a career that interests you instead of one you perhaps fell into accidentally yet never quite fit you. It can be helpful to have a consultation with a trusted expert that can help you navigate through your transition so you can achieve the success you envision.
