Best Year Ever for a Choosing A Career

Knowing the importance of choosing a career and actually doing it are two different things. Each year at this time provides opportunities to go for our best year ever and to create a new career path. It’s the time to reevaluate, review and take actions towards your career.

At the turn of each year we have an opportunity to prepare ourselves for what is most important for us. As we explore choosing a careers we want to develop a clean slate by letting go of what didn’t work and preparing a success plan for the New Year. How many of you are already not keeping your New Year’s Resolutions? We aim to start out with lots of energy and momentum but then we loose steam because of various reasons, which I’ll explain below. This past week I offered a free teleclass on this topic. Please email me to receive the link to the call. Consider having access to your personalized step-by-step guide to Your Best Year Yet, and learn the key principles to develop yourself for success.

The first key in creating your ideal year is to be clear about what you want. Take the time to day dream and ponder your direction for 2010 and choosing a career. After you have clearly defined your goals and intentions for the year then you can go about imaging yourself accomplishing them. I find it crucial to delineate between holding and intention and setting a goal. You may have two people who want to attract their ideal career and are planning for it but one person goes about it by being creative and generous while another person chooses to be analytical and methodological. Both are important and useful but it’s the intention or context in which you hold HOW you accomplish your goal that will make it authentic and easier for you to attain.

The second key is to let go of 2009 and you’re past successes, in completions and failures. By allowing yourself the time to write down what you are proud of and happy for having accomplished you will gain confidence and momentum. When you choose a career you need to know what your strengths and failures have been. It’s important to note where your successes happened, lessons learned and areas to continue working with. By allowing yourself the time to do this you enter into the New Year with a clean slate. When beginning fresh in a New Year you have an expanded view in which to create yourself. For those interested in a Year End Acknowledgement exercise please email me and I will send it to you.

As you explore releasing the previous year and acknowledge your successes you need to ponder a theme and focus for the New Year or new phase in your life. This helps people keep a level head and make time for only what is most important. With all of the demands on our attention and time we need specific filters and focuses to eliminate the overwhelm and disconnection. Your focus might be something like, Grace & Ease, Light, Camera, Action, or Go Girl!, or a quote from a superhero. Whatever works to keep you focused and in your game and engaged.

The third key to generating a powerful New Year and choosing a career is beginning with who you are and your personal philosophy. Explore who you are and what your life is about. Ask people how they perceive you, explore how folks respond to you. What is it that you spend most of your time thinking and talking about? I find it also important to accept your limitations and identify what makes you unique. How would someone remember you or want to work with you? If you are not in the habit of being 100% truthful or authentic I recommend you shift and do that more. Be in communication with people and allow yourself permission to be grateful for what you do have. Think about what you really have to do, and really want to do. I find it important as well to explore and be clear about the type of lifestyle and personal enjoyment you require. You can build and attract your new career to fit and match with and what you want your life to be about. Is it traveling internationally, working from home, and raising children, adopting, writing your book, running a marathon, or doing more research. Explore who you are, what you want your life to be about and then identify skills and career paths to fulfill that.

Negotiate Your Salary

Negotiating is a skill that completes your professional package. Being able to convey your thoughts to another and generate a successful outcome demonstrates many benefits to an employer. Learn more about the specifics required to be a success.

Once you have your job offer then it’s important to move forward into the phase of negotiating and claiming your compensation packet. I want to remind us that there are many ways how to define your value and build a win/win expectation. In negotiating the first step is to gain career advise from others about the industry standard for your position. You need a realistic and present time value statement for the position you are aiming for. Once this is established you can move forward with exploring your bottom line negotiating points and your career needs.

Negotiating is a conversation of asking for what is needed, listening to what the other person has to offer, and seeing how things can fit for each party. Both people want to feel like they got a good deal and the long end of the stick. In allowing for this it is important to initiate a discussion on behalf of your career goals by taking into account your compensation packet as one venue for establishing value. In this global age there are many aspects to being competitive and beneficial to an employer. One important key is in the value that you bring to them not only in your cost savings in relation to salary but also based on return on investment. As you establish the dollar value of what you bring to the table and the benefit you provide they can more easily pay you what you request. This is accomplished by speaking and demonstrating your past successes and by mentioning your ideas for their business goals. To be engaged in an effective negotiating conversation requires establishing up front the value of what you offer and what they need and confirming that there is a strong match.

Negotiating is a process of dialoguing with another person by selling in what you have to offer and placing a financial dollar amount attached to it. In negotiating it’s important to begin with what your key points are and what you are willing to move on and change and what are your basic bottom line non-negotiable items. By having both in mind you know where you begin and where to end. As you engage with the person you are drawing them into a conversation with you that is rich with needs, requests, and bottom lines. How you negotiate will also demonstrate the type of professional you are and set the tone and foundation for your work. Do it with respect, intention, and partnership. This provides getting your needs met and developing a foundation of colleague to colleague offering.

Negotiation is both a mind-set and a skill. Both of which are career requirements to move you and your goals forward. It is a way to contextualize what you are doing and to interact with another person to produce a successful result. It also takes skill and tact to bring various requests together and to keep the conversation moving forward. At the end of the day, negotiating is about building rapport and generating a working relationship that brings lasting results.

Avoid Burnout

Avoid the career staller of overwhelm and burnout by keeping yourself at top performance and focusing on your objective and career goal. Learn specific tips to stay focused and motivated.

When looking for work or changing a career field or focus there can be a great deal of stress. It is important to pace yourself as if for a marathon instead of thinking of a sprint. Once you understand the long-term perspective of investing in yourself, and building a network you see where to invest your time and energy and where you don’t.

As you avoid burnout one important factor is to remain focused on what is most important to you and your career search. When we feel burnt out or tired we need to stop what we are doing, and give ourselves space and time to relax and refocus on something other than work related. Allow yourself to set priorities and keep to them by making a list of actions for each month and then breaking them down into weekly and daily actions.

As you build your creditability and your network it’s also important to create balance between your job and work search and your personal life. Each day is important to have at least one thing you look forward to that is unrelated to an area that is weaker or an area of concern, such as your job search. My recommendation is to stay focused and engaged in a specific time frame with office hours and days of the week that you work and schedule in time to do activities that are energizing and enjoyable for you.

It’s important to keep your own personal list of techniques and tips for keeping you engaged and happy with life. When you personalize the resources you are more likely to do something on a regular basis. Part of reducing overwhelm and burnout is to be realistic and to remember that it’s the long view that allows you to succeed.

Become aware of your triggers. Notice what gets you stressed out and distracted from the necessary actions at hand. Do your best to identify and have an understanding of whether it’s because of not eating, not getting enough sleep, negative self talk, money challenges, etc. Identify what it is and find ways to take care of it.

Imagine a result with a specific goal. Create it alive for you with dream boards, writing it down daily, speaking about it and doing something each day towards your career goal.

Make it a priority to finish what you start. Go into things knowing that you will complete it and keep your agreements. A big part of success and ease is staying focused and on track and being a person who keeps their word.

The two final pieces to avoid burnout and overwhelm is to break things down into smaller pieces by chunking them into hourly or weekly goals and allowing yourself time to finish them. When we look too large on the horizon we loose out and we scare ourselves and create additional stress. Finally the last tip is Take ACTION and do something. It’s better to be in motion and doing an action that brings you closer to your goal than to go from a stuck, stopped or place of contraction.

Think for a moment of a time when you created effortlessly and easily and things just seem to happen. More than likely you were doing the above mentioned items along with what your personal strategies. Please share one of your tips with our readers.