Perhaps
this article is a little late in offering support to those who have had
tremendous upheavals in life due to health reasons, economic downfalls, and job
instability, but there are new chances out there that can help turn life around
and truly make things better for you than you may have previously imagined.
We are
trained early on to set career goals for ourselves. Children are often asked, “What do you want
to be when you grow up?” Often, they
consider the jobs that their parents have.
Sometimes they fantasize what might be a glamorous job, like acting or
modeling. Rarely do they get in touch
with just what they would like life to look like when they have reached
adulthood. So many people end up in
careers that they don’t like, that don’t really fit who they are as a person,
or just seem tedious and stressful. How
can we avoid this or how can a course correction be made if we find ourselves
in the wrong place lifestyle-wise?
I cannot
stress enough how important it is to be able to visualize exactly what you want
from life. The trouble comes in when you
just don’t know what you want from life.
Part of that is the trouble with our society and the ways we expect
success to look like. We think in terms
of the home we live in, the recreational options at our disposal, the children
we have, the vehicles we drive, and so forth.
When we think about how we look from the perspective of other people,
rather than what we want as individuals, we are treading a path of
failure. We are failing ourselves.
Perhaps one
way to get back to who we are as a person is to consider what we thought we
would be when we were young. Ask
yourself that question: “What do you
want to be when you grow up?” You have
an answer. Think about it. Don’t allow yourself to dismiss any
possibility, just because it is nowhere near what you have done in the past, or
would require retraining, or seems simplistic compared to where you are now. This is your starting point. All you have to do is to make a conscious
choice to turn it into a reality. If you
need to go to school to get a degree or some type of training, take the steps
necessary to make that happen. You can
do whatever you set your mind on.
Something
that happens to artistically-gifted individuals with regularity, is that they
have found deep dissatisfaction with their jobs. They get stressed, depressed, and while they
are on this downward spiral of emotion, they find themselves failing at their
careers. They may just stop going to
work, whether by choice or out of emotional necessity. It is so very important that artistic
individuals have that creative outlet, so they may require a day job to pay the
bills, but they also require the time to express themselves in a creative way.
Some
individuals need to be their own boss.
This is not just because they can’t follow the instruction or
supervision of another person, rather, it is because they have such a unique
perspective on the manner of applying work tasks that they become anxious or
irritated when what they see as an inferior manner of doing things is
presented. These people need to be given
their own reins and allowed freedom to go as far and as fast as they can. More than anything else, they need to learn
how to pace themselves so they don’t burnout from pure exhaustion.
The last
group I would like to address are the people pleasers. Some individuals are willing to work as hard
as they can, doing as much as they can, just to get an attaboy. They want so much to gain the approval of the boss that
they are willing to go above and beyond the expectations put on them, and these
are the ones who eventually cause themselves emotional and sometimes physical
injury in so doing. It’s great to do a
good job, but going to extremes can be harmful.
You may
have heard that the best key to career success is, “Do what you love and the
money will follow.” We would like this
to be true, but it isn’t always the case.
Do what you love and you will be happy with what you are doing, unless
you expect to get rich doing it.
Certainly there is money to be made.
But you need to be reasonable in your expectations. You know your ability to work. You know how much energy you have, what skill
set you have, what your best skills are.
When you can apply these to what you are doing, you are going to be
better off, career-wise, but there may be additional skills that you need to
make yourself a success in your chosen field.
Once you write a book, you have to sell it, for example. There are many variables that affect the
success of that book. You must take all
of those variables into consideration.
Changing
jobs, because you feel that you have a higher calling, and then expecting that
you should make more money doing the latter, just because it is a higher
calling, in your perspective, is not realistic.
Again, greater job satisfaction must be taken into account. All in all, when you go from a trade that
pays you great sums of money, but puts you in a bad place emotionally,
spiritually, or physically, suggests that you are not fulfilled. It is the low road. Choosing to make the change, visualizing and
affirming what you want, will help you to create a career and lifestyle that
you can live with.
May you be
richly blessed.
