Take a stand. Decide where you want to head, and go for it. You'll be happier because you'll have a goal and you'll work toward it. Work will no longer be "work, " but an activity that brings pleasure, pride, and a sense of accomplishment, and carries out your vision.
When you know yourself and make a commitment, things become clearer. You act more decisively, have less stress, and cope better with the progress of your career and the changes around you. Negative things will not bother you as much. The direction will not be coming from someone else, but from inside you.
Without commitment, we are wanderers without roots in a rapidly changing world. We feel a lack of meaningful goals in our lives. "Commitment" means accepting that you are responsible for your own career direction. It means choosing what you want to do in this changing society without losing your inner bearings.
LOOKING FOR WHERE YOU FIT IN
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
JEREMIAH 29:11
We each fit in. What you're looking for is where you fit in. As you learn more about what is inside you, as well as what is outside, you will progressively change your situation to suit yourself better, and so you will also fit better into the world.
To grow with the world, know what you want and what you want to offer. Knowing yourself, in the context of career development, means knowing how you prefer to operate, what you like to do, and what you can do well. Knowing what you want to offer means stepping outside yourself to see what the world values. Take what you want to offer and market it.
Don't be too specific about what you want. If you are open to new opportunities, surprising things can happen. A large number of jobs are created with a certain person in mind. A job created with you in mind would probably be more satisfying than one in which you would have to mold yourself to fit a rigid job description. You would enjoy your job more and do better because you would be doing what you want.
What are the chances of having a job created to suit you? If you don't know what would suit you, chances are slim. Having definite ideas increases your chances of finding such a job, or even of changing your present job to better suit your goals. Opportunities come along all the time. You won't recognize them unless you know what you are looking for.
We change the world and the world changes us. As we grow, we are developing ourselves in relation to the world. We are each trying to know what we want and how to get it, while we are also trying to understand and fit into a changing world. It is a lifelong process, but a happy one. It is a process of seeing change as an opportunity while accepting the limitations of the world.
The earth is a medium sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million galaxies in the observable universe. STEPHEN M. HAWKING, 4 Brief History of Time
CASE STUDY: HENRY
Aiming too low
Henry, an executive of about forty five, had just been fired, and I was asked to be his counselor. Henry said he already had a clear idea of what he wanted to do next something that was quite in demand loan workouts (when loans go bad, he would try to salvage them). Henry could certainly get a job like that, and quickly, but I felt as though I didn't know him at all, so I asked if we could do a few exercises. If I understood him better, I would be in a better position to coach him.
In his Seven Stories (an exercise you will do in the next chapter), Henry stated that he was proud that he had grown up in a tiny Midwestern town (there were only sixty people in his entire high school), had gotten into Harvard, and graduated very high in his class.
Where was that little boy now? What had caused him to settle for a loan workout position that would have been right for lots of other people? I told Henry that I thought he could do better than that. I asked him to aim to find a job that would make him so proud it would wind up on his future Seven Stories list. Within two and a half months, Henry had landed a job that was better than anything he had ever dreamed possible. At an excellent salary, he became a very senior executive in a major corporation. Henry was so proud, he beamed. He's still there now and doing very well.
