When I was a goal coach at lululemon athletica I had the
opportunity to do a lot of career coaching with people who were in
college, who were committed to taking on new roles in leadership and
one’s who needed to transition to another career.
Knowing how to
set goals during this period is vitally important and I cover that in my
book which you can find by clicking here. For today we are focused on
determining what your ideal career could be.
How many careers
should a person have on average in their lifetime? I have no idea
because all I care about is helping you find the right career for you.
That one career you want to stay at forever because you love it so much
you would do it for free (just don’t tell your boss that).
Career Clogs
My
theory about careers is that if all the people who were unhappy with
their career would just quit it would make room for the people who would
love that career. Then there would be careers open for those that quit
that they would love. Like a career exchange program.
Have you had
the experience before where you would love a certain career and you
know first-hand the person who has it could care less about it? You see I
believe that the right career is out there for everyone and unhappy
people are clogging up the career pipeline for everyone else.
These
career cloggers cost companies millions of dollars a year and potential
employees that could change the face of their organization. Don’t be
hard on them because you care most likely in the same position.
Before
we explore how you can discover the right career for you I want to
address something you may be doing either consciously or unconsciously
and it may not turn out quite how you think it will.
Career Suicide
I
want you to be proactive in determining the career you want to have and
not commit what I call career suicide. My definition of career suicide
is:
The act of consciously choosing to do things that you know
lower your personal performance, and purposefully go against the goals
of the company while blaming everyone else for your unhappiness to the
point where you force your leader to take action and terminate you.
People
who do this usually feel trapped in their career due to the external
obligations they feel they will fail to make if they leave. They believe
they cannot take the risk in quitting yet are setting themselves up to
be fired. Why not keep the control of when and how you leave your
career?
Start setting goals, researching and applying for other
careers. Acknowledge you have been choosing to do things you know could
get you fired. Just because you are unhappy with where you are is no
excuse to not perform with excellence.
Setting goals will honestly
improve your performance because you will start to create a plan on a
way out. This feeling of freedom will reflect on your happiness.
I
want you to control when your career ends so life doesn’t force you
into action by you getting fired before you were “ready” to leave making
you feel like you need to take the first career that comes along so you
can pay the bills. This almost guarantees you will end up in a career
you don’t love all over again.
There is the possibility you are
unconsciously behaving in ways that are not conducive to a long
prosperous career because if you tell yourself you hate your career
every day then you most likely act like you hate your career every day.
Identify What You Love vs. Don’t Love
Before
you decide to tell your employer to take their job and shove it let’s
take some time to discover why exactly you feel the need to do that. If
you don’t take the time to do this step you may find you end up in the
exact same style of career you want to leave.
How do you avoid getting the exact same career you
just left being that is the industry you were trained in? I mean if you
are a nurse just switching hospitals will not mean you won’t see blood
anymore.
You can clarify your ideal career by determining what you
love doing every day and what you don’t love doing every day. This
sounds simple because it is. Grab your journal and make two columns,
love and don’t love.
The key here is to not include your boss or
Negative Nancy on the list because you can’t control the people you work
with every day no matter where you go. Focus only on the details of the
career. If you are a nurse maybe your list looks like: