3 Mistakes I Made Early In My Career

Before I began my current career as a Computer science teacher I worked in customer service for 10 years.

And in that time, I’ve gotten to do a lot of cool things:

Train 100s of staff across multiple induction cohorts.

See how multiple large businesses handle customer interactions from the first meeting to high-level complaint management.

Work in South Africa on a temporary assignment to train staff in a new call center.

There isn’t much I would change about my journey. Many of the skills I learned here are transferable to my current career and future plans.

But if I could go back, here are a few of the mistakes I made early on — and what I would have done differently:

1. I waited too long to change careers

As soon as I started training I was reminded that when I left high school my ambition was to get into teaching. Yet I still waited 2 more years until I was made redundant to actually go back into education and pursue this path.

Fear of failure held me back.

2. I waited too long to move jobs within customer service

I moved to a new organization 3 times during this 10-year period. Each time it was due to my old role becoming redundant. Each time I saw this coming, I didn’t make plans to move first.

Again it was fear of failure that held me back, causing me to wait until circumstances forced me to make a change.

3. I didn’t take opportunities to learn new skills

At each of these positions, there were times when I could have applied for training programs. These programs were designed to train staff to do management positions or just other jobs in the organization. Until the secondment to South Africa was offered I never applied for these positions.

Fear or failure again held me back, but it didn’t stop me from applying for the South Africa secondment which was a much more difficult application with more competition.

Why was this different?

It was because I valued the opportunity more than I feared failure, the potential reward was worth the risk. What I didn’t realize until going back into education is the value of learning new skills, so at the time, I could not see the value in these training opportunities.

The lesson I have learned

You will have noticed all 3 times it was fear of failure that held me back.

This was why I dropped out of college after high school and was even in these jobs instead of where I wanted to be in the first place.

I only made changes when outside forces gave me no other options such as being made redundant and needing income.

Now all of these things made me who I am today, and eventually, I was able to find the courage to do what I actually wanted to do.

Now I am doing the same again with writing another thing I have been afraid to start due to fear of failure. I am no longer afraid of failure because I know no matter what, I can learn something from the attempt.

And is failure really a problem if you can learn something from it?

If I had applied for better positions and been told no, I would have been in the same position as before I applied. No matter the outcome, I would have had more interview experience and possibly feedback on how I could improve.

Don’t fear failure. Failure is just an opportunity to learn what not to do next time.