Here's how you can identify when it's time to change career paths after facing failure.

Failure is part of a successful career or profession. When we shy away from failures, success looks away from us. Truly successful role models in business or athletics have shown time and again, one trait that led to them overcome their loss points was their willingness to absorb learnings from every setback. Then seek guidance from the those ahead, and develop their own strategies to improve. Every systemic attempt to convert the loss points into a win took them closer to greater success. But the most powerful element is the personal connection one has with the purpose behind the career journey. If the values meet the traits required, the combination is rather lethal. That single factor increases the success rate tremendously!

A human engine needs to be stoked with the relentless fire of a mission. It is a simple formula that the most effective humans have achieved and spoken about. When they started feeling jaded in a career, or their goal started fading due to losing relevance - they found another mission that could drive them. Those who floated with dead goals never found a way forward. Miracles and inventions have happened when such individuals rose to a mission with a fire power that made them heroes in their fields of life, business and career.

When was the last time you got a health checkup done? When was the last time you got a career pulse check done? Usually I have found people to say yes to the first question and sound confused to the second question. Career health is very important. It simply means how effective are we doing what we do every day given the change in business environment and demands from the client. It could be possible that our skills of yesterday are not relevant today. Hence, to maintain good career health, it is not a choice, but requirement to keep upgrading our skills repository. In today’s times, doing that is not very hard. A career advisor, executive coach or a useful learning tool can be a great resource for the same.

This is the age of uncertainty. What was good yesterday, may not be good few days from now. This may sound cliched but the fact is that this statement is truer than ever. Executives and mid career professionals who rest on the laurels of the previous years of experience are finding it hard to progress in the current times as they find themselves getting redundant increasingly across industries. What they are not realising is that it’s not them getting redundant, but their skills are getting irrelevant. So what is the silver bullet? Actually, there exists one. It’s called periodic self diagnosis. This is a technique I use a lot in as I coach executives on career crossroads. Anyone can leverage this technique and turnaround a sinking career.