Career fulfillment is a 100% personal concept.
“Fulfillment” doesn’t mean you need to wake up every day with hearts and rainbows in your eyes about your job, but it does need to mean that you get true satisfaction from it - beyond a paycheck.
What is a fulfilling ‘dream job’ for one person could be a nightmare for another so you will need to define what “fulfillment” means - for you.
I work mostly with clients that are unfulfilled in their current jobs (and/or careers) - but they often can’t tell me why.
They've never asked themselves why either.
I often have clients in creative fields who spend all day asking the big creative questions for clients but forget how to be creative in their own lives and careers.
One exercise I go through with my clients is one that almost ALL coaches use. It doesn’t matter if you coach basketball, chess or careers, the same truly effective, awesomely creative, exercise is: visualization.
The reason it works is that when you visualize things, your brain (because it’s a strange mushy lump we’ll never really understand) believes that it is real!!!
It makes space and time for the activity visualized to be real because it thinks it already is. Trippy right?
I know, I know, career fulfillment isn’t a free throw. But if you're honest and creative in your visualizations, what will become clear to you is what will truly make you feel fulfilled in your career.
NOTHIN’ BUT NET!!! (Too much? You get me though right?)
I ask my clients to get comfy, close their eyes and visualize their ideal workday (assuming they didn’t win the lottery and are not on their own private yacht complete with the putt-putt course and they still have to bring home a paycheck).
I ask them to get really, real.
To visualize everything from the time they wake up to what they do before they leave the house to what day to day tasks they engage in. I ask them to visualize the sights, smells, and sounds of that ideal day down to what they have for lunch and where they eat it before they complete their ideal work for the day.
The really creative part comes next. To make it tangible I ask them to write it out as a narrative or draw an image that represents the bulk of that visualization. Some do mindmaps, others collages.
But why the arts and crafts?
In this exercise, you will find that the things you choose to spend your time making tangible on paper are things that mean the most to you. That’s why vision boards are all the rage. What you choose to put down on paper are the things that truly fulfill you.
The next step is to take that knowledge and work it into your living, breathing career. Does your exercise tell you that you want to be your own boss and it’s time to start your own business?
Does it tell you that you are in big time need of a career change?
Does it tell you that you’re in the right place, you just need to get moving on that promotion?
Whatever it’s telling you, it’s time to create a career you love, because work doesn’t have to suck ya know?!
Yours in non-sucky career goodness,
EBS
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EB Sanders
Career Coach for Creative Types
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Helping you figure out what you want to do and how to do it your way.
