Career Choice is a Process…It doesn’t happen overnight

Many of us may have thought (or still think) – “if I could just find my calling”.  Wouldn’t that be nice??  One day (ideally before we invest in education or training beyond high school), we get a phone call from the universe and a sweet voice whispers to us the ideal, attainable career.  The one that makes us happy, contributes to others, earns us great money, and allows us all the free time we desire.  As we all know, it just doesn’t work that way for most of us.  Plus – we are deceived by thinking there is that one great job and we just need to figure out what it is.  The truth is there are many great jobs and careers for each of us.  The way you discover your potential career journey is by obtaining the “3 C’s” – Clarity, Confidence and Conviction.

Clarity – Is understanding – what your natural talents and abilities are, where they are needed, why they are needed, and why you encountered past successes and obstacles.

It all begins with understanding yourself first.  Highly successful people know what they do best, find ways to incorporate what they do best into their life and careers, and keep on learning.  It’s a continuous journey.

Confidence – Is owning – your choice to use your natural talents and abilities or to cultivate new talents and abilities with or without concerted effort.

By studying and assimilating the clarity of who you, you can confidently move forward with a career choice process.  Knowing career choices, work environments and fields of endeavor that can be positive choices for you can enable you to most readily realize your greatest potential, and achieve success and happiness.  A wide array of options are available to you based on your natural talents and preferences (and yes, you do have natural talents – we all do!  Some of us just recognize them more easily in ourselves than others).

Conviction – Is acting – continuously to pursue roles that utilize your natural talents and abilities and communicating your aspirations in a manner that earns respect.

It is important to integrate the experiences you have already had and identify those you may need in the future.  You do this by identifying what elicits interest or excitement in you from a career perspective, tracking key talents and creating a skills inventory based on past, current and future job or career experiences. These steps can help you narrow down your near-term and long-term career options and take action to manifest your aspirations and speak your career choices with conviction.

Over the next 4 weeks, I am going to share with you 4 key distinctions that matter for finding career happiness after you obtain the “3C’s”.

The first distinction is getting comfortable making choices.

Choices for your next job, a job you want to aspire to in the near future and a job/career/level of expertise you want to achieve in the far distant future.  Making choices and accepting your choices is a key distinction to be in touch with – is it easy or difficult for you to make choices?  Does making one choice mean not having any other choices, or does it energize you and make you feel like you are on your way to something you want for your life?  Getting in touch with this distinction can be a significant breakthrough that may hold you back from finding happiness in a career choice.  Getting clear about a career path (both short-term and long-term planning), can ease “choice discomfort” .  It can help you obtain clarity about the various roles you would like to experience along your career journey and distinguish how you can incorporate various roles into a particular vocation.  For example, an Entrepreneur can also be a Marketing Executive, Philanthropist, Sales Executive, etc.  Get the idea?  The trick is to distinguish primary from secondary roles, make choices and “choose your choices”.

Next week – why courage matters and how to get courageous…

Get on a path that utilizes your natural talents and satisfies your preferences – transition from the workforce to the indigoforce.