What does YOU like to do?
As for the future, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it — Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Clients, new acquaintances as well as many of you, dear readers of my blog, often ask how I uncovered my career path. Here is a snippet of my career journey along with some tips that I hope will help you find your career path.
Starting The Journey
Private practitioner — When I decided to embark on a journey as a solo career management professional, I knew that before I put in the extra hours to ensure my practice takes off, I needed to refine my reasons for starting a business as a solopreneur.
My Reasons
An excerpt of my reasons to help you write your own includes the following:
- My clients are my bosses.
- I am on a mission to prove to myself that I CAN launch my own practice.
- I am empowered by my passion to help others.
- I want my clients to find direction like I did.
- I can envision my future (me helping many clients design their career journey) and all I need to do is to enable it.
- My sense of accomplishment is measurable by the happiness on my clients’ faces.
- I can facilitate the launch of my practice guided by my clients’ needs.
What About Your Reasons?
How do you commence your career journey?
Simply put, you need a detailed action plan that starts with reasons similar to the ones stated above.
Wait! Do NOT rush into creating the plan yet. This is the final step in the launch of your career journey. You have to do some exploratory work to discover your reasons. This can be an engaging experience if you come with the right mindset. Think of it as a bout of intense but continuous reflection.
Reflect, Reflect And Then Reflect Some More
I was not sure what my likes, interests and values were when I started. It can be hard to define them if you have never thought about it.
However, here is what worked for me. Contrary to what many specialists suggest, you CAN start your intense reflection with the activities you dislike and the skills you are certain you do not want to use in your future career rather than with your likes and interests. This is very helpful! I suggest you use this unconventional method if you are uncertain about what you need to do to move forward.
In short, really get to know yourself by dissecting what you hate in order to find what you love.
What Next?
Once you get to know YOU, you are ready to move forward to uncover and develop the skills, abilities and strengths that you love.
What is it that you do best? What is an ability that your parents or friends tell you, “you are so good at this” or “you are so talented!”? What are some of your strengths? Would you describe yourself as creative, determined or resilient? Note your answers somewhere, on a piece of paper, your computer or your phone. Next step is to combine everything you have learned about yourself to start exploring possible careers.
Analyze Your Personal Data
You are now well acquainted with YOU! YAY!!
It is time to decipher the kind of work that makes YOU happy based on your personal data.
My example?
One of my joys was seeing others succeed whether in school or later on in life. Call me silly, but I cry at graduations and other similar work celebrations. I think of all the focus, failures and hard work that led to these special moments that I am overwhelmed with mixed emotions. This data told me that seeing others succeed makes me happy and so my work needs to include such celebratory moments.
What invokes similar emotions for you? It could be a sales pitch, a competition or even crying at weddings. No emotional experience is too silly to explore! This is what it takes to enable your future career vision.
Is It Really That Simple?
It takes some work and as I mentioned earlier a lot of intense bouts of reflection. But think about it, wouldn’t you like to get to know who you are?
Once you have collected all this data, you are ready to design your career action plan. Creating the action plan is for another blog post.
For now, how about you get to know what does “YOU”know really like to do?
