Career satisfaction; now that is something we are all in search of. Whether you are a stay at home mom, a photographer, a teacher, a carpenter, or a Wall Street tycoon, every single one of us wants to find meaning and purpose in our work life. And since we spend more time working than doing anything else, making the best possible career choice can greatly impact the overall quality of our lives.
John Liptak, a leading expert on career development and career assessment says that a career is each person’s attempt to implement a particular lifestyle, made up of work, leisure and learning. Moreover, he has determined that people who have the highest occupational fulfillment have discovered work and work environments that allow them to express their complete personality.
The truth is that we are all searching for wholesome, productive, positive work that fully expresses who we are. We want to find something that combines our values, personality, interests and abilities, and wraps it all up into a career that not only pays the bills but also feeds our spirit.
It is about self-actualization in the work place. We each have the same universal desire to use our God given gifts and talents to realize personal visions and dreams. Simply put, we want to love what we do, and do what we love, while making our very own unique contribution to the world.
Not only does the career question haunt many of us, it is also an elemental question of identity.
“What should I do with my life?” is the question that Po Bronson set out to answer in his bestselling book with a title of the same name. Mr. Bronson left a very lucrative but stifling job in the financial sector to follow the promptings of his inner voice and pursued his dream of being a writer. He dedicated 3 years to interviewing numerous people of all ages and professions about how they transformed their lives to align with their “true calling”.
Mr. Bronson says the question of a career calling is really the modern, secular version of the great timeless question of who am I and where do I belong?
He writes, “ It is a little more pragmatic than its philosophical and religious antecedents, reflecting the bottom line reality that we can search for our identity only so long without making ends meet. Asking the question aspires to end the conflict between who you are and what you do. Answering the question is the way to protect yourself from being lathed into something your not”
He goes onto to report that this question is at the heart of people at every income level, “The biggest misconception is that this question only matters to over educated Americans suffering from ennui, when in fact most people find this question important to them”.
New York University recently conducted a periodic trend survey on the very question of career satisfaction. 24 percent of NYC, college-educated adults responded that they were "not too" or "not at all" satisfied with their current job.
The findings indicated that workers are frustrated and crave more responsibility and meaning from their jobs. 56 percent of those polled said they want greater fulfillment from their work and that money motivations were no longer their number one reason for job satisfaction.
And a recent ABC News/Wall Street Journal survey revealed that 50 percent of today’s workforce would pursue a different line of work given the opportunity.
Most of us have some idea about what we are interested in doing and the life we want to lead, but it is easy to get distracted. Society, family, peer pressure and financial responsibility are all influencing factors and often these outside messages muddle our inner truth.
So is there a way to discover your passion and have it intersect at the crossroads of your work life? The first step is to find something that you really enjoy doing. Exploring the following questions may help.
What do you spend hours reading about?
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
What would you do if money were not a concern?
What would you do if you knew your life was ending?
What are you naturally and uniquely gifted to do?
Once you establish some possible career options, then you need to investigate whether or not these possibilities will actually work for you and your lifestyle. Part 2 of this article will look at career assessment and how to go about investigating a particular career match.
It is important that each of us finds that thing that nourishes us, challenges us and helps us to grow. When we stop and look at the landscape of our lives, we want our personal story to be significant. Having a meaningful career is a big part of that endeavor.
(Tracy Fox is teaching a one evening workshop in career assessment through Darien Continuing Ed. You can go online to register)
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