‘Keep hold of the belief anything is possible’: how having the courage to make a late career change can alter your life for the better
- From banker to baker, IT worker to Irish dancer, radical job switches are daunting, but they have the power to rewire entire careers and lives
- There are ways to help maximise your chances of success. We talk to four people who flourished after stepping into the unknown
A single performance of the Riverdance stage show in Tokyo was all it took to catapult Japanese salaryman Takayuki Hayashi into a different career.
The 27-year-old quit his humdrum IT job and moved to Dublin with his life savings of US$100,000. At first, barely able to speak English, he was unable to find an instructor, so he binge-watched Irish dance videos, doggedly mimicking the action on screen in an effort to learn by himself.
Incredibly, it paid off. After being taken on by a sympathetic teacher, Hayashi won a place on an Asian Riverdance tour in 2005. Nowadays, he heads up the Irish Dance Academy in Tokyo with his wife, Etsuko, and has been teaching individual pupils since the coronavirus crisis brought classes to a temporary halt.
“I’m not exactly sure why I fell head over heels with Irish dancing,” Hayashi says. “It was something to do with the similarities between Irish and Japanese music and musical instruments, and I loved the synchronicity of the music and the tapping feet.
“To anyone contemplating taking a ‘leap in the dark’, I’d say ‘if that is what you want, you cannot miss it’. Dreams may not come true, always, but the time you spend with what you love is everlasting in your heart. Just believe in yourself.”
Hayashi is one of those lucky yet daring people in the Asian workforce who have not just had a light bulb moment but gone on to rewire their entire careers and lives. Stepping off the corporate ladder and giving up a regular salary may be a daunting prospect, but the rewards can outweigh any initial trepidation.
