Are you trying to find your ideal career?
If you’re just starting out in your career, or feeling ready for a career change you might be wondering what on earth you could, should, or want to do.
Work might be leaving you feeling uninspired and deeply unfulfilled but not having a clue about what else you could do. Furthermore, trying to find your ideal career alone can feel daunting and isolating and taking risks can feel uncomfortable and precarious.
How do you make a good choice when facing the complexity of the options? Evaluating every possible career choice, one by one as if from a dinner menu, and then selecting the best alternative, does not typically apply! Equally, decision-making can feel impossible when there are so many available alternatives that you can’t figure out the potential of each option.
Spending time trying to analyse what you could do by reading career change books and trawling through job sites can leave you feeling even more confused and deflated. Above all, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, how are you going to find it? Continuous analysis with the hope that one day you’ll have a lightbulb moment will have you going round and round in circles.
So, with the vast array of possibilities, how do you predict what the right decision will be for you?
First, it’s beneficial to stop thinking about it as being a single decision and begin to think about it as an exploration. Exploration removes the burden of decision-making and allows you to be playful and curious. In addition, as you explore, you can gather the data you need to make informed choices. With each informed choice, you’ll make another step towards work that you’ll find fulfilling.
Exploration enables new ways of approaching the problem and this will help you achieve outcomes you’d never have thought of. Here’s how to begin:
1. Embrace your curiosity.
Try new things! Even small changes to your usual routine will engage your brain to notice things you’ve never noticed before. If you follow your curiosity, you naturally adopt a learning mindset, expand your interests, and become motivated by an intrinsic desire to learn. This will help you overcome the fear of what you don’t yet know. Curiosity leads to discovery which leads to learning at a deeper level and an ability to solve problems. You don’t know where your curiosity will lead, and that uncertainty in itself is energising!
2. Become an expert on yourself!
Consider what drives you and ask yourself; What energises you? What are you drawn towards doing in your free time? In which parts of your work or your life do you feel most tolerant of challenges? How would you like to be remembered?
3. The domino effect.
Carry out mini experiments to test different hyphotheses. Try out different roles, industries, or projects through internships, freelancing, or volunteering. Treat each experience as a valuable learning opportunity, each designed to gather data and insights about what works for you. By experimenting with various options, you can uncover hidden talents, interests, and opportunities that may have gone unnoticed otherwise. Taking small, incremental actions with create momentum.
4. Making connections with others.
‘Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.’ – Ryunosuke Satoro.
Making connections with people will generate different ideas and help you make new contacts. Moreover, many hands make light work! The more you network, the more you’ll find out about the possibilities that are out there. Talking to people about what they do will give you fresh insights, connect you with an increasingly wider network, and spark your curiosity about work / careers that you may not have known or considered before.
5. Embrace adaptability and resilience.
The path to your ideal working life is unlikely to be linear or predictable. Embrace adaptability and resilience to navigate the uncertainty and change. Recognise that setbacks and failures are inevitable parts of the journey, but they also present opportunities for growth and learning. Be willing to pivot, adjust, and iterate your career strategy based on new information or changing circumstances.
Remember, exploration removes the burden of decision-making and allows you to be playful and curious. What’s more, crossing a threshold into a place of uncertainty and risk-taking can reap rewards. Each small incremental step will build your confidence, courage, and strength. As a result, you’ll soon begin to see the ripple effect!
