Even at the highest levels of ambition, such as the top positions of political office, the higher echelons of athletic performance, and the pillars of celebrity, it’s easy to see how a career can easily drop off over time. It might be that the politician is voted out, an athlete is injured or dropped from a team, and a celebrity simply loses out on upcoming projects.

This isn’t a message to demoralize anyone, we discuss it because understand that even those who seem “very successful” at the time can also undergo the rigors of a difficult job market as you may have done.

If you’ve had trouble with work, had to prove your case with the San Diego Disability Law Group, APC, or have been otherwise unable to progress your career for some time, you may wonder where the next step is, and how to even begin. These are ample and necessary questions, and always worth considering.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to get started with that approach in mind:

Even if you have a great deal of experience in a particular field, that doesn’t mean you’re locked to that career discipline forever and can never move on, or laterally, from it. In fact, many of those skills could be transferable. It might be that if you have twenty years of management and event planning experience, you’d be a natural fit for a production team in the television industry. In other words, give yourself the flexibility to refocus your field, even if it might be different from the path you walked before. This can inspire you and bring on a new chapter in your professional journey.

If there’s one thing that decades of experience in a given sector teaches you, it’s everything wrong with how that sector operates. You may have endured friction against certain outdated and difficult elements of operation, or perhaps you’re just unhappy with the sustainability drives of a given industry thus far. It may be that setting out to resolve problems can help you position yourself for a gap in the market, even if that means joining a startup with plucky ambitions or launching your own. This might not give you the strongest work security, sure, but there’s nothing quite like purpose to wake you up in the morning.

There’s absolutely no shame in using the networks and connections you’ve found thus far to get a position in a new company. It could be you go to work for an old friend, or perhaps you’re afforded an interview with a brand of someone you used to work alongside. If you’ve been out of the game for a little while, that still doesn’t mean your old connections will have forgotten you. It can’t hurt to reach out to see what the condition of the sector is currently, and if anyone is hiring. If politicians can return to government or find cushy positions due to their past connections, so can you.

With this advice, we hope you can reassert your career path with a renewed sense of ambition.