Building a Fulfilling Career
Think about it. For five days a week, most people spend half of their "awake" hours in their careers, whether you own a business or work in a business. And those hours spent at work affect every other part of your life – as much as you try and keep the two separate, your career completely alters the course of your life.
If you don't absolutely love what you do and who you do it with, every negative element will rub off on the other aspects of life. Time with family, vacations, even alone time.
Therefore, your business or career should give you everything you want in your life.
Now, I get that you can't just drop everything and create a new life for yourself. But you can do a few things to begin building your fulfilling career.
Create This Venn Diagram
If you want to build a fulfilling career, it needs to fit in the middle of this Venn Diagram.
Passion: What are your passions? What do you love to do? Look at your work history and think about what inspired you the most – even in the roles that you hated. Remember those key situations that you persevered through and write those things out.
Skills/Experiences: This doesn't need much explanation – what do you excel at? What do you have solid experience doing?
Needs: The first two points cover what you need, but what does the marketplace realistically need? Look around, talk to people, do your research.
Whether you want an amazing job or want to build an amazing business, you need to find a way to fit in the
center of that Venn Diagram where all three intersect.
Be selfish about this – and understand that it only makes sense to make a change if your career does not align with your life goals in these three categories.
Find the opportunity that makes sense at a high-level based on your Venn Diagram. Then, ask these four key questions when vetting it out.
Experiment
We know that only 30% of people are satisfied in their work. What's one huge reason? Stagnation.
The minute routine enters your work-life, the work loses its flavor and you lose your engagement. Sadly, you can't avoid all routine in your job.
However, you can do one thing: add some flavor. If you could only eat chicken for a month, you wouldn't just boil it up and eat it plain for every meal. You'd spice it up!
Apply this mindset to your work life. Create new opportunities. Take on additional responsibility wherever possible. Do stuff that allows you to grow.
You probably have a full plate already, but start the conversations that allow you to add this flavor. Inspire those around you. Do some learning on your own.
The feeling of growth you get from this will help you to maintain a real sense of fulfillment, add to your
Venn-diagram, and build upon your current career.
Find Fuel From The Community
Now that you have the background info needed, you need fuel. Let's face it, passion, heart and spirit to make changes oftentimes get sucked away by the day-to-day of life and the obstacles that get in the way.
The best fuel comes from constant community support. if you share the components of that Venn Diagram with those around you, you will attract people to your purpose. At that point, the first steps to take to make your fulfilling career a reality will seemingly pop up out of nowhere.
Finding a like-minded community keeps you accountable and provides you with a great network of supporters, and eventually, advocates, employers, and even partners. Learn how to build this community here.
A few more things on this: Forget about being an expert on everything. In fact, wear your amateurism on your sleeve! You'll get more of what you need by admitting that you're a beginner.
Also, give yourself permission to act out of character. For example, if you're usually an introvert, be more extraverted when sharing an idea and see what happens, and vice versa.
Wrapping Up
To build a fulfilling career and get what you want out of that whole half of your life, you need three things.
Dissatisfaction with what you're currently doing
Vision of what you can achieve
The first steps to take
Remember that work should support the things that really matter in life, like family, friends, and bucket-list experiences. If a third of your life, and half of your waking hours is spent working, is it worth it to make it a better, more meaningful experience?
