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Enjoy the Journey - Career Selection

Guest post by: Terri Levine

Article Overview: Life's too short to spend your working life doing something you don't like or enjoy and when things are looking grim and the job we have looks like it might be shortlived, rather than be worried, we should look at it as a new beginning.

Enjoy the Journey - Career Selection

Throughout our lives we continue to make many new discoveries about ourselves and the world. We may find that we change and want different things or our view of the world changes or the world may actually have changed. If we are laid off or our hours, salary and benefits cut or if our colleagues are suffering these things, our first reaction may be that our own career is in question. We may sense doors closing against us.

However, instead of being afraid, what if we began to view those doors as doors of opportunity? The door that we can select and choose and that we have complete control of is designing the career that fits who we are now, where we are at now and where we'd honestly like to be and works with the world as it is.

When we begin to see what we really want from ourselves and our careers, then we can explore what the world has to offer. Because so much of our lives is spent at work, or thinking about work, or preparing for work, career decisions are one of the most important decisions for us to make. Take this time of change to begin to discover more about yourself and the world around you. This process of self-discovery can be joyful and relieve the stress you are feeling about not being in control of your destiny.

The first step is to discover who you are and what you really want to do. Begin thinking about the things you do that bring you delight. What are your favorite hobbies? What would you like to do every day even if no one paid you for it? Your true passion lies in this answer. It may be buried down deep by the things you tell yourself like, "I should be a PT forever - that is what I went to school for".

Put these types of myths aside and begin to enjoy finding what you really want to do. So stop telling yourself that your career choice is a life time commitment - it certainly isn't unless you choose it to be. It is also unfair to believe that the career you selected when you were 17 or 20 is the one that fits you and brings you personal fulfillment when you are 30, 40 or 50. What about the message you give yourself when you tell yourself that you should have selected the perfect career that was guaranteed into the future? I don't have a crystal ball and neither do you. You made the best choice at the time, with the information you had. Now you have the opportunity to make another choice if you want to. Not allowing yourself career change options is like saying you have to wear the same hairstyle and clothes for the rest of your life.

The final myth I want you to push aside is the one that says a career is a linear process and an upward process. Is certainly doesn't have to be. What if you were the President of a company and then found you didn't like it? Do you think it is wrong for someone to find it doesn't suit them and take a job further down the ladder? Career satisfaction is personal satisfaction. It is not about moving up the ladder to please others. Begin making yourself happy.

The realities of careers is that opportunity and change is a constant. You can't control it. All you can do is make a long-term commitment to life long learning and understand that change is essential. You can also begin to see that your value and who you are as a person is separate from your career. Paid employment of any type at any level is only one small aspect of your personal fulfillment. It is not your life. Just as there are no guarantees in life there are also no assurances in careers. We are living in a time of tremendous restructuring in the workplace and we can choose to accept this and see our careers as cyclical, sometimes lateral and always evolving but never predictable.

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Article Tags: career planning, job satisfaction, working



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