Whether you’re feeling excited, apprehensive, or a mixture of both, you may have taken pen to paper and crafted a To Do list to kick off the process. Ideally, you’ll take a holistic approach to your career change by employing a variety of external and internal factors.

External factors—the mechanics of your job search—keep your career change process moving forward. For example:

• Your resume demonstrates your ability and capacity for adding value.
• Networking improves your odds of being referred to hiring managers, who prefer to recruit through networking.
• A successful interview requires careful preparation.

Consider incorporating into your career-change plan internal factors that help you make powerful decisions and bring home the results you seek. This is the InsideOut approach. It begins with the sense that work provides a deep meaning and purpose when you do the work you were born to do. By employing your inherent gifts, you ultimately make the world a better place—and that makes for some really great days at work.

This isn’t about ego or trying to get attention for how great you are. It’s deeper than that – a realization that your soul and your work are interconnected. Internal factors can also be your creativity, natural talent, interests and curiosity, personality, a compelling life experience that inspires you.

These external and internal factors create a force of energy that may work in harmony, or they may confound you. This energy force can inspire and refresh, trigger moods and emotions, rekindle hopes and dreams, and remind you of past successes and failures.

Enduring these ups and downs, which are integral to the career change process, will strengthen your resolve to go the distance. This is the art of finding the work you are meant to do.