It’s a simple equation; higher quality careers planning = a higher quality lifestyle. How happy are you right now with your lifestyle? I’m talking about your waking hours, between getting out of bed and getting back in to bed. How do you feel for most of that time? Do you feel happy, energized, and fulfilled with how you use your time, or could you use some major improvements? Whatever your answer, consider the quality of the careers planning process that you went through to get in to this position.
If you’re lucky, you will be earning a living already in your ideal career doing what you love and being good at it. But many people are currently not working in their ideal career. Many people know that there must be some other way to earn a living that brings many more rewards, perhaps higher earnings, more variety, respect or recognition. And these rewards of course impact your lifestyle.
Somewhere out there is a way for you to earn a living without it even feeling like ‘work’. And when you identify and get in to this ideal career, you enter a very positive and life changing cycle. Because generally in life, we tend to get good at the things we enjoy doing. And we tend to enjoy more the things that we get good at. So the better you get at your career, the more you enjoy it and the more you enjoy it the better you get. This of course points to more rewards, be it financial, mental, physical or emotional.
Most people who have not gone through a high quality careers planning process are unfortunately in the opposite negative cycle to this. Many people simply don’t like what they’re doing, or don’t feel that they are very good at their job. If they don’t feel good at it, they are less likely to enjoy it, and if they don’t enjoy it, they are less likely to get good at it (until that is they make an active decision to get better at it).
So which cycle are you in?
If you’re in the positive cycle, great. Why not ramp things up even more by purposefully getting even better at your career in order to enjoy it even more? If you do, you’ll reap more rewards and an even more fulfilling lifestyle. It’s simple cause and effect.
If you are in the negative cycle, then you can enter the positive cycle in 1 of 2 ways. You can either stay in your current career and create a plan to get better at your job. Your first step here which I highly recommend anyone to do is to look into upgrading your learning ability. Most people go about learning new skills, knowledge and behaviors in a very ineffective and inefficient way. If you want to get better at anything fast, look into accelerated learning, learning how to learn fast, and then use this skill of learning fast to get better at your job or career quickly! This should increase the enjoyment of your career significantly.
Alternatively, and I would strongly recommend this entry point to the positive cycle, you must find a way of earning a living doing what you naturally enjoy. Then you can enjoy getting better at it (both naturally and by using accelerated learning techniques). You need some serious dedicated time to the careers planning process. So, if you’re ready to enter the cycle here, where do you start?
When I went through this process about 6 years ago, I studied every resource I could find on the subject of finding your ideal career. I read plenty of books on the subject, until I was confident that I would approach the process in the right way (and I know I got it right because I’m happily working away in my ideal career now!)
There’s plenty of advice online too, but be careful. You can try Googling ‘careers planning’ but check the credibility of what you find. Remember many careers advisors are not in their ideal career themselves! If they haven’t got it right yet and they advise you, you’re open to heading down a similar path. You want to find a proven system – a recipe that works.
Finally, here’s what I did to kick start the process for me. I made the DECISION to identify my ideal career and get into it by a certain date. I set a goal. This is something you can do right now. You can either finish this article and get on with experiencing the same lifestyle that you currently have day in and day out. Or you can grab a pen and paper right now, choose a date to have identified your ideal career by, write your goal down, leave it where you will see it daily, and start planning out some steps to take (with deadlines) that will get you there. This simple step is easy and will set the ball rolling to a more rewarding life style. Remember, it’s simple cause and effect.
Mark Moore – Director of Excelerated Performance International – http://www.epi-learning.com
Visit [http://www.careersplanningkit.com] for more help from Mark on careers planning.
Mark Moore and EPI provide proven systems and programs to help organisations and employees increase their performance, results and enjoyment of their work surprisingly fast. He specialises in helping employees to find a career which they will naturally excel in, and then to learn how to reach the top of their field fast. Mark’s approach is intelligent, professional, straight talking and avoids the common fads and ‘fluff’ that have flooded the internet. He works mainly with smart people who are serious about making a career change and reaching the top of their game through faster learning approaches and better self management.
