Career Success
Most of us choose to get rotten in our current career journey because we don’t believe that we can make a shift. But nothing can be further from the truth. We can. You can. Everybody can. Question is whether we are willing to do or not. This article is a nudge on your shoulder to make you realize that you have the abilities and resources available to you right here, right now to make a switch. It’s not just a list of 10 tips. It’s a list of your work – step by step to get to world-class in the career success you most desire.
There are many people on earth who have given up their lucrative career success to find meaning and fulfillment. What made them tick? Did they believe in themselves in the beginning? Nope! They couldn’t. No-one can. In the beginning, when a person is at a top position, earning a great pay-check and so many people are patting back, it’s very difficult to let that go for the path that will offer fulfillment and meaning to their journey.
Moreover, add some mockery and impossibility thinking (in a negative sense) of near and dear ones. And if the person is like most of us, he would face tremendous resistance to take the path which is less traveled.
But who said you’re ordinary? Who said that you can’t take that first step to begin a new leap of your career development goals? Who said that you can’t make that shift from mediocrity to world-class? You can. And we will show you how.
Top 10 Things for Career Success
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Growth is what you should look for as a Career Success
When you’re the midst of a booming career development goals what makes you stop and think that something is not right? You may realize that everything is working just fine. You’re well appreciated for the work you do. You’re highly compensated for your contribution to your organization. People at your workplace also value you immensely. Still, something doesn’t ring true? What is it? It’s a willingness to grow beyond your current job and to reach your full potential.
If that’s not true, why a Vice President of a great company leaves his job and begins a career journey in writing full time? Why an investment banker of a reputed bank lets go of her job and travels the world as a photographer? What makes them take the decision to leave the known and embrace the unknown? It’s a deep need to grow.
Growth is never one dimensional. Growth is dynamic. If you decide to grow in one dimension, you would naturally grow in other directions as well. So, while reading this if you feel that you too have a deep need to grow and would like to shift to a career success where your values, the person you are and the person you can be are given preference, you should make the switch. You don’t need to wait till everything gets perfect because that never will. You need to be ready right away.
That doesn’t mean you need to leave your job now. What you need to do is to keep your job and start articulating a career plan right now. Spend some time at the weekend to figure out what you like about this job and what you don’t like. And then take one action step, right away, like setting a target to shift to a career success within 2 years. Writing down a deadline may be the first step you can take to make a changeover. The changeover is hard. But if you think from the perspective of growth, it would become significantly easier.
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Make an assessment of yourself
Truth is you’re not good at everything. No-one can be. But you may not know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. Begin a one-page analysis. Take a blank sheet of paper and fold it into four parts. On the top left part, write STRENGTHS. On the bottom, on the left side, write WEAKNESSES. On the top right, write OPPORTUNITIES and on the bottom right, write THREATS. When a company assesses its environment, it scans it by using this
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analysis. It’s called SWOT analysis. If you are on the brink of shifting career journey, doing a SWOT analysis would help immensely. Take an hour or so and sit in a room where you won’t be disturbed. Begin ruminating.
First strengths, then weaknesses, then opportunities and then threats! Write at least 5-6 points in each section and try to figure out real-life examples for each pointer. And keep that with yourself. Once you’re done, you need to do another exercise. It’s to know your core values. Whether you know them or not, every decision you make is based on your current core values. You don’t know that and feel that you’re acting on a default mode. But the default mode was once a new mode. So, you can pick your core values and choose to become a different person.
Make a list of 50 values you admire in people like punctuality, positivity, open-heartedness, kindness, compassion, achievement-mindset, continuous-learning-ability and so on and so forth. Choose the top 10 from the list of 50. Once you’re done, pick top 5-6 among 10 and match your SWOT Analysis. You need to know where those 5-6 values that you have or would like to install belong in your SWOT analysis sheet. Is it from your weaknesses/strengths? Or they’re different? And start working from there.
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Don’t be afraid to make mistakes
Mistakes are part of the equation. Once you’re through with self-assessment and now know what you would like to pursue, it’s time to fire the arrow. You may not know the destination yet. That’s okay. Just be ready and fire. Once you miss the target, aim then and fire again. It’s not a ready-aim-fire approach; rather it’s ready-fire-aim-fire! That’s the reason you need to still keep your current career success. You’re exploring, touching your toes in the new water and understanding new skills you need to master.
You can say you’re starting out a part-time venture to understand whether it can be a full-time gig or not. If you would like to go in sales and currently in an administrative job, begin to enroll yourself in some multi-level-marketing and see for yourself how good you’re in sales and whether you can make a full-time career success doing that. If not, drop that and figure out something else. But if you’re too bogged down with prevention; meaning preventing yourself from making mistakes, it would be difficult for you to learn new skills and to make a successful career-changeover.
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How much money you should make in your new career success?
Most people ignore this advice. They all want to follow their passion. But you need to be practical about certain things. Yes, you need to do what your heart tells you. Yes, you need to play your A-game. Yes, money is secondary and contribution & passion are the most significant parts of your career-changeover. But you need to remember that before making a living, it’s impossible to make a life.
Thus, you need to be smart about your finances. Before making a changeover, you need to save at least a year of savings and you also need to check how scalable your new career journey is. Simply put, how much money you would make in your new career success in the beginning? Would it suffice your expenses? If not how would you manage? Think through all these things before making a leap to new career success.
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Set goals for your Career Success
Most people have issues in setting goals. Spiritual Teacher Marianna Williamson talks about “fearing our own light”. Most people are scared of their own light, their own possibilities and their own achievements. They don’t know what they can be if they take out the time to set goals on their own terms. Yes, the goals wouldn’t be any goals other than personal goals.
Goal setting doesn’t work if you don’t do the work. Success Coach, Robin Sharma talks about “one-page master plan”. He says that if you know what your big fives are for a year then it would be easier for you to make a leap. Now, while making a decision to do a changeover you need to have certain goals – a finance goal, a growth goal, a goal on health and fitness, a goal for mastering the art of your new career journey and a relationship goal. Most of the times, people who are our family members don’t support our decisions to take the leap.
Thus, it’s important to have goals in all areas of our lives. If you have above 5 areas covered and work on it every day, you would be at least reaching 80% of them. And that’s good enough.
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It’s not an opinion, but your skills
There are lots of people who may talk you out of your new plans for making a career development goals-changeover. They may say to you that you’re too old, too weak, too classy, too this and that. But better you pay heed to your daily devotion to skill building. When you’re taking the leap, all you need is skills, not the opinions of good-intentioned people.
It’s your life and only you can decide what the right path is for you at any given moment of your life. If you’re sure about the career development goals shift, build all the skills that are needed to succeed in your new career journey. Make a list of top 10 skills you require to be in the top position of your new career success. And begin with the most important skill. Don’t buy the opinions of others that this or that skill can’t be learned.
Almost anything is learnable if you’re willing to learn. There are books, audios, videos, podcasts, media and a lot of resources available if you are eager. Go out and start learning. Skills are more important than mere opinions and obstacles on your path.
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Remember, life is short
While making this career journey shift there would be a lot of questions that you may need to face. Why you’re leaving the job? How would you make money? How would you take care of your responsibilities? What would be your earning? What would be your possibilities for the future? If you ask yourself these questions, it’s called reflection.
But when people close to you ask these questions, the questions become the reason for your anxiety. Thus, before answering them, always remember, life is short and your contribution to the world is all that matters. Yes, you need to think about your responsibility, your family and how you make a living, but never stop believing in yourself and in your vision of making a new leap into career success.
We regret the things we didn’t do that we did do. So, at your deathbed when you will ask yourself – Should I’ve made this shift at that time? We want you to say – Yes, I have no regrets. Think about making a living, but don’t forget to make a living, because life is much shorter than we think.
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Be a pro
No-one values average. If you’re average, then you would only go so far; but you would never reach your potential if you set to achieve mediocrity. Rather be a pro. Learn all the ground rules that you need to learn to be a pro. Have a mental attitude that you need to work at your highest, live a life that speaks to your deepest beliefs and makes you a champion of the work you do. Remember the words of Comedian, Steve Martin –
“Be so good, they can’t ignore you.”
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Associate with people who did what you want to do
Instead of listening to people who have never made a leap of new career success, talk to people who did. They would be able to tell you how it feels to make a move. Associate with them. Sit with them at dinner. And take notes. Ask them questions that are burning inside your heart and know how they’ve made the transition.
If you see others making the successful change of career journey, you would get the self-belief to do the same. And at the same time, you would have lots of friends who think the way you think. That would become a total game-changer for you.
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Ask yourself – Are you happy?
In the movie “Peaceful Warrior” the hero, Dan was asked by a mysterious garage man (Soc) – “Are you happy?” Dan answered – “What is to do with happiness?” Soc replied – “Everything.” At the end of the day, what matters most is not the fleeting pleasures you get from the heap of cash, nicest homes and comfortable cars.
Yes, they do serve you, but you don’t change career success for them; rather you do want to change career development goals to experience that deepest happiness that only a cause can give you. You need to have a cause before you change your career success. You need to feel that deep drive within you that make it seem easy.
You need to experience that happiness which eludes most of the people in the top positions of their career success. Otherwise, why take such a gigantic effort to do a career development goals changeover? Thus, ask yourself at the end of every day – “Am I happy?” If you know the answer is yes, always, you’re on the right path and striving for your highest potential.
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