What the $%&# am I doing with my life?!
Posted on August 01, 2020 by S A, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
How female professionals can center themselves in their career experience.
It’s Monday morning. Again. The start of a new week. Again. It’s another opportunity to do, be, and feel great! Right?! And yet…somehow, someway it’s still feeling like the same old, same old thing.
Perhaps you woke up today with a strong sense of hope and renewal and thought:
Today is the day I’m going to make my career what I always wanted it to be!
Then you check your emails, look at your calendar, and the dread begins to set in. You are reminded this job, this company, this career isn’t quite fitting. You don’t know why (or maybe you do!), and you tell yourself you should feel grateful you even have a job during all of this economic and job market upheaval.
As female professionals, we spend a tremendous amount of time prioritizing other people over ourselves: kids, partners, families, and communities. Which, in essence, is excellent! It shows our commitment to love and humanity. It’s what makes us awesome. The problem is…
Our careers are no exception to that sense of selflessness, and let’s face it: that ain’t good.
How many times have you found yourself prioritizing an employer’s need over your individual career goals and objectives?
How many times have you sacrificed your ideas and solutions for the “good of the group”?
That brings us back to: What $%&# am I doing with my life?!
Well, if you’re like me and countless other female professionals, you’re prioritizing the needs of others over your own and sacrificing career happiness in the process. If you want to feel more in control of your career destiny and experience more joy and excitement about your work, you’re going to have to employ a couple of critical characteristics I’m sure you possess (or can build!) – courage, vulnerability, and confidence. Let me explain:
The courage to admit things aren’t quite right with your professional life and specifically identify areas in which investment in your own professional success is lacking. Next step:
Create a career checklist with all of your previous and current professional goals. What have you achieved? What haven’t you achieved, and why?
What are your top career management and development priorities right now?
The vulnerability to consider all of the possibilities for your professional future and actively commit to seeking experiences to develop and improve upon your unique set of skills and talents. Next step:
What are immediate and tangible ways to invest in your professional success? Learn a new skill? Expand your network? Find a work sponsor to partner on getting to the next level of your career?
Who in your network can you count on for ideas and support to leverage your talent and create opportunities to increase your professional impact?
The confidence to embrace your professional abilities and move through your career life with the knowledge that you are capable, that you do add professional value, and you deserve to enjoy and thrive in your career.
There’s no magic answer or pill to take. There’s something better: YOU. All of your experience, talent, and skills have culminated at this moment and prepared you to make the type of professional impact you are capable of. All you have to do is decide it’s time.
Sounds nice, but not necessarily easy? Please visit my website to learn more about how I partner with female professionals like you to teach you the tools to center yourself in your career experience, gain clarity in your work, and create your own career success.
