Home > Articles > Work & Career > Love What You Do and Do What You Love!
Love What You Do and Do What You Love!
Since My Brilliant Career course was launched a few weeks ago, many of you have emailed me with questions and comments such as the ones below:
“ I don’t know where I want to go in my career”
“ To have a brilliant career you also need to know what career you want to be in, in the first place”
“ How can I have a brilliant career if I don’t know what my goals are?”
Get to Know Yourself
OK. You agree with the concept of a brilliant career but your issue is what are you going to be brilliant at. Many of you say you don’t know.
Well, actually you do know. All of us know what we love doing. We all know what our innate talents are – the ones we were born with. We all know what skills we have – the ones we have picked up over the years such as great PC skills, the ability to speak a foreign language, brilliant interpersonal skills – some of which we use and others we’ve put away for some reason. What about our values – we all know what they are as they are what make us so unique. And we all know what our motivation is – money, status, security, to make a difference.
To understand what we want from our careers we first need to get to know ourselves again and this means taking time out to focus on ourselves. How many times have you spent at least 3-4 hours just thinking about you and what you want? Most people don’t and that’s why they don’t know what they want from their careers.
The three B’s – Broad, Big, Belief
Once you know yourself you will start to build a picture of the things you are good at, the things you enjoy and what you feel your overall purpose is. These start to lay the foundations of a strong career.
However, what stops people at this point is that they constrain their thinking to what exists in the current world and don’t think big enough.
For example, I coached an accountant who highlighted two skills as being very artistic and great with computers. He kept thinking about his career in his current world of accountancy and finance and couldn’t get excited about it and this became a vicious circle.
When he began to apply the three B’s – think broadly, think big and have the belief to change and he really focussed on his skills he found the thing that excited him was web design. Yes! He saw that he could use his PC and business skills with his artistry and become a web designer. He gradually pursued this until he finally left accountancy and started up his own successful consultancy.
Now I appreciate that not everyone will want to leave their careers and start up their own business. That’s not the point. You may already be in a great career that matches your skills and talents. You may just need to stand back from yourself and refocus to understand where you are going and why. Apply the 3 B’s.
- Where do you really want to get to in your career?
- What if there were no obstacles?
- What do you want to be doing in 10,15,20 years time?
Look around you and study the successful people. Would you want to be like them? Imagine you were doing their job, earning their salaries – I promise you there will be something there that excites you. Once it does, bottle it and focus on it – because that’s your goal!
Within us all we know what we want and what excites us. We rarely invest in quality time to get to know ourselves and really find out what makes us what we are. Furthermore, we don’t get creative. Creativity is the greatest skill you can apply – it’s opens up a world of limitless possibilities because you don’t restrict your thinking… just let your mind flow.
Remember, we all want to and deserve to be doing something that we love. So do something about it now – here’s five things you can do straightaway to get you thinking:
1. Write down all the skills you have – the things you have learnt.
2. Write down all the talents you have – the ones that make you what you are
3. What are 3 values that you will never compromise?
4. Who do you admire and why – what makes them what they are?
5. From these answers write down in no more than 50 words a positive description of yourself – write it in the third person.
And finally. What jobs, careers, businesses do you think the person in point 5 could do? I challenge you to come up with a list of 20!
Good luck and remember the 3 Bs.
I look forward to meeting you and working with you on the 6th,
Best Wishes,
Hetal
