Psychiatrist thinks you should change your life every 10 years
Should YOU change your career every 10 years? Psychiatrist claims switching industries is the key to success
- Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi argues you should change career every 10 years
- Says that once you become successful at something, you just stop progressing
- Read more: This is why you should never make your bed in the morning
A psychiatrist has claimed that changing industry in your career every decade is the key to feeling furfilled.
Nassir Ghaemi, a professor of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, has said he believes ‘the greatest obstacle to success is success.’
Speaking in Psychology Today, the specialist believes that people who get too comfortable in any field of their life can stop progressing and end up feeling unfulfilled.
He added that in order to keep progressing, people need to change a significant part of their life, like a hobby or their job, every ten years.
The psychiatrist argued that making a change could reap greater rewards, and make you happier than what you were doing until then, adding that you will never know if you don’t try to live differently.
Psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi has said he believes ‘the greatest obstacle to success is success’ and people should change career every 10 years (stock image)
‘You should change what you do, or how you live, every ten years,’ he said, adding the span of time can change, depending on whether you are failing or successful.
If things are going badly, he said it could be worth making a change after five years.
Meanwhile if a career is going well, he suggested extending it for a maximum of 15 years.
‘Too often, we think we should make a change only if things aren’t going well or if we are failing in some way.
‘That is so. But what we don’t realize is that we should make changes even when we succeed,’ he added.
Nassir believes that people who get too comfortable in their career stop progressing after a while, and stop being fulfilled by the work that they do
He also said there wasn’t any need to feel stuck in one subject area of expertise – instead suggesting a person only progresses if they constantly challenging themselves.
The psychiatrist said that he had witnessed his own daughter, who just graduated from university, struggling to pick a career because she was looking at a job as something you do for the rest of your life.
Nassir argued no one should be thinking in such terms, but instead, should want to explore all the subject they can be good at, which requires to leave their comfort zone.
He added that some people get stuck in certain fields because they are successful at it, failing to consider they might be even better at something else.
The psychiatrist added that people will never reach their full potential if they don’t explore other areas they could end up being masters at.
Nassir quoted the work of happiness expert Aaron Brookes, who is an advocate for changing your line of work every decade.
Brookes was a musician in his 20s, who later got a Ph.D. in economics and moved to being a lecturer for 15 years.
He then heading the non-profit organization the American Enterprise Institute, and later becoming an author, a Harvard professor and happiness guru.
Nassir argued that with each career changed, Brookes gained more influence, thanks to his multi-faceted career.
He also mentioned, David Sackett, one of the founders of the ‘Evidence-based Medicine’ (EBM), which has been described as ‘the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.’
Sackett believed that if you become an expert in a field, you should quit, because becoming an expert stops you from progressing further.
He argued that people who are experts spend the rest of their lives defending the ideas they came up with earlier in their career.
He also thought that you should move on to master another, perhaps even more important field, to achieve greater things in life.
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