Is your career just doing okay, and not really rocketing forward in the way that you would like it to? For some people, this just means that they have to work on their social skills, so that they can network their way into a better job (and possibly with a better company, if this is possible). However, for some people it also means going onward in their educations, so that they can take on some new and valuable skills which they currently lack. After all, if you don’t have the skills to start with, you know getting that dream job is going to be next to impossible.
When you go on into your education, you are obviously going to take in your existing life experiences with you. And while those experiences are doubtless going to help you out in some ways, you are also going to be able to reinforce that “school of hard knocks” learning with something a bit more bookish, which can be backed up with facts that a person can research. After all, your education does need to have both a component of real world experience and a backbone of verifiable skills, which makes going back to school after being in the workforce for awhile a pretty good idea.
Of course, it is not going to be all that easy for you to simply walk back into a class room and learn a bunch of new things. For one thing, the testing could be a pretty stressful experience for you. And in addition to that, there is also the matter of having to fit it into your existing schedule. Just keep telling yourself that this is one of the steps you need.