Get back in the driving seat of your career by redefining success
I was asked recently; “If there was just one thing you could tell your clients to help in their careers, what would it be?”
After some deliberation (it’s so hard to think of just one thing!) I responded:
“Define (or redefine) what success looks like for you”.
Here’s why:
When you define what career success looks like for you, you can be more deliberate in your work choices and less likely to be led by other people’s perceptions of what your next career move should be.
It might sound obvious, but with all the pressures of work and family life, it is easy to lose sight of what we would choose if we were intentional about our career moves and if we believed we had a choice.
Too often, people end up on a career path through circumstance rather than choice, do well and rise up through the ranks, until they eventually find themselves doing 60 hour weeks in a job they don’t really love, wondering “How did I get here? This is not the life I would be living if I did it on purpose”.
It’s a trap a lot of people fall into. Most of the clients I see are feeling stuck, exhausted, and completely out of touch with what interests them, energises them, or brings them joy. They feel like they have been running on autopilot so long they don’t know how to change their situation.
But with some help to articulate what success looks like for them - including the type of work environment in which they will thrive and the lifestyle that their work needs to enable them to have - they are better at asserting and maintaining boundaries to protect their work and home life balance. They are also more confident about making choices that are a good fit for them, and are therefore less swayed by other people’s opinions of what they ought to be doing.
For example, one client had been struggling with a decision on whether or not to take up a CEO role he’d been offered in a fairly large company. But once he reflected on his version of success and everything that entailed, including a life that enabled him to have time with his young family, he turned down the role, confident in his decision and with no regrets.
Redefining success from your own perspective of what good looks like at work can give you the courage and motivation you need to regain a sense of control and put yourself back in the driving seat of your career.
If you would like help to define what success looks like for you, get in touch.