Order your future, don’t recount your past.
Posted on September 28, 2020 by Karen Collins, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
If you don’t want to keep doing what you’ve done, stop telling people what you’ve done & tell them what you want to do. What does that look like?
When you are ready for a change, it’s easy to reflect back on your past to find happiness from previous experiences and try to replicate that for the future. When searching for what’s next professionally, I challenge you to take a different approach. Before finding a career that inspires you, it may sound simple, but it is important to understand what inspires you.
When researching this topic, I started to really contemplate the difference between seeking happiness vs. seeking joy. The most succinct explanation I found was from Compassion International. Their mission is Christian-based though the explanation of joy vs happiness is applicable to all:
Happiness depends on external factors to exist. Happiness happens to us. Even though we may seek it, desire it, pursue it, etc., feeling happiness is not a choice we make. Joy, on the other hand, is a choice purposefully made. Joy is an attitude of the heart and spirit, present inside of us as an untapped reservoir of potential.
Simply put: Happiness happens to us, Joy is a choice we make.
When pivoting into a career that inspires you: order your future, don’t recount your past. If you don’t want to keep doing what you’ve done, then stop telling people what you’ve done and tell them what you want to do. What does that look like?
Don’t let your resume/LinkedIn be a laundry list of things you have done in the past; highlight how your past represents your desired future.
One idea: write your own job description. For help in writing the actual bullet points here are two tips:
1. Likes/dislikes list of your day-to-day tasks. Commit one week to putting every professional task into two categories: like (want to keep doing) and dislike (would like to stop doing). At the end of the week – what does your likes list reveal?
2. Identify job titles that interest you. Then research those titles and read job descriptions. Group bullet points that are compelling to you and when you get 10-12, see how you can use the language in those points to build your own job description.
When doing this exercise, it helps to be clear about what you want in your future. Having clarity about your core values will support you purposefully choosing joy. This will point you in the right direction to find a career that inspires you and supports experiencing true joy in the workplace, not just fleeting happiness. If you want a partner in navigating what’s next professionally, let’s get started!
