A career resolution is exactly what it sounds like: a resolution for your career intended to help you grow into a better professional. At Work It DAILY, we believe that you need to work on your career every day (yes, you do, in fact, need to "work it daily"). So, everyone should make a career resolution or two along with those other ambitious personal resolutions. They can be little things like learning a new skill or growing your professional network, or bigger goals like landing a promotion or getting a new job.
But how do you know what kind of career resolutions to make?
You can begin by asking yourself, "Am I where I want to be in my career?" If your answer is "no," you need to take a closer look at your career goals.
Here are five more career questions you should be asking yourself this new year to figure out how to grow your career and become the professional you know you can be.
1. Am I Proud Of My Job Title?
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You could be a janitor or a neurosurgeon, it doesn't matter. If you aren't proud of what you do for a living, there's something missing: passion and purpose.
Career burnout is real, but sometimes it's deeper than that. Our passion at 25 won't necessarily be our passion at 40. And that's okay.
When we are passionate about what we do, we are proud because we are doing what we think is important, what we love doing. We feel a sense of purpose. We are adding value to and making a difference in this crazy world—in a small, but significant way.
Every job is important. No matter what your job title is, if you aren't proud of it, and don't feel like you can leverage your strengths as a professional in the position, you should absolutely change that. Identify that one problem you want to find a solution to and go after it. What are you waiting for?
Remember, the only bad job is the one you aren't passionate about, the one that isn't allowing you to leverage your professional strengths and reach your potential.
If you don't know what your professional strengths are or what kind of work you'd find purposeful and fulfilling, we recommend taking our free career quizzes.
Take the quizzes now to learn your unique combination of professional strengths and how they can help you get better career results so you can be proud of what you do.
2. Do I Feel Secure In My Career?
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This is a bit different from job security. Actually, job security doesn't exist. Every job is temporary. Think you can stay in the same job for decades and then retire? Think again. While that may have been commonplace for past generations, today's workforce and job market are completely different than what they were a decade or two ago.
So what does it mean to feel secure in our careers? When we believe as professionals that we can add value wherever we are.
You are a business-of-one. A company won't want to invest in you if they don't know the kinds of services you provide, the kind of value you could add to the organization, and the problems you could solve for them. Here are some examples of questions that will help you determine if you're secure in your career:
- Are you adding value at your current job?
- Are you honing your skills, expanding your network, and building your personal brand?
- Do you feel confident that if you lost your job, you'd be able to find a comparable one in the same field?
- Do you feel confident you'd be able to demonstrate to potential employers how you add value?
Since every job is temporary, it's extremely important to constantly work on our careers and ask ourselves these questions frequently so we always feel secure in our businesses-of-one.
3. Will I Be Able To Achieve Wealth?
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When most people think of "wealth," they think of dollar signs and anything that you can attach a monetary value to. Our jobs help us build wealth. We're not going to tell you that money isn't important. Of course it is! It allows you to live the life you want to live. In many ways, money equals freedom.
But the truth is, there are other forms of wealth that are more important that you can't attach any monetary value to.
Real wealth comes in the form of family, friends, hobbies, experiences, knowledge, and community. If you don't have these things, money will never fill that void.
So, is your career allowing you to build this type of wealth? The intangible kind? Or are your relationships suffering because of your job? Is your work-life balance nonexistent? Do you have any time to pursue hobbies, learn, or volunteer?
Your career should never inhibit you from achieving real wealth. The best job isn't the one that pays the most. It's the one that pays the bills and gives you enough time to live, too.
4. Do I Have Any Regrets?
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Just asking ourselves this question can be difficult because maybe we don't want to know the answer. Acknowledging that you regret something in your life is the first step to making a change. Guess what? There's still time to chase your dreams!
If you do have regrets, that doesn't mean you haven't been a successful professional. That also doesn't mean you haven't had a good career. You could be the most successful person, but if you never got up the courage to start that business, make that career change, or go back to school, you'll most likely think, "What if?" for the rest of your life.
You'll never know if you don't try. Don't be afraid of failure. Life is just one big experiment, and it's your job to learn from those experiments. That's how you discover what works and what doesn't. That's how you discover what's possible.
And even if you do "fail," that's an incredibly more valuable experience than waiting out the clock on a mediocre career. So, don't give up on your dreams just yet.
5. Can I Reach My Full Potential In This Role? In This Career?
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When we feel like we have more to contribute to society, that's a sign we haven't yet reached our full potential. Do you feel like you're wasting your potential at your current job? Do you think you'd reach your full potential in another career?
Really think about what you want your professional legacy to be. It's a lot harder to get up in the morning when you don't find fulfillment in your work. When it comes time for you to retire, are you going to look back on your career and feel like you could have accomplished much, much more with those 50 years?
Everyone has unique gifts, skills, and expertise. When we focus on developing ourselves as individuals, as businesses-of-one, it's a lot easier to share those things with the world. Give yourself a chance to reach your full potential. If you haven't taken our free quizzes yet, your results will help you do just that. You may be surprised by what you can accomplish.
Before you get back into the same routine at work this year, we hope you take a few minutes to ask yourself these career questions. Listen carefully to how you answer them. You may need to make a career resolution or two.
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It can be scary figuring out how to talk to your boss. When is the timing right? How should you begin the conversation? What are the correct questions to ask? Unfortunately, the only way to get better at this is to practice and become aware of the situation and the risks. Situational awareness, or paying attention to your surroundings, can help you succeed in all aspects of your life, including your business relationships and performance.
The best way to practice learning situational awareness is to ask yourself, or others, questions; you need to learn and observe before you can try it yourself. By asking questions, you are opening yourself up to the idea that you do not have all the answers, but all the answers can be found in time. While situational awareness may not begin as second nature, once you start to observe your surroundings and listen to the people you interact with, you will discover that it becomes easier. By simply looking for it, situational awareness presents itself to you.
You may be wondering, “What’s the point? Why practice situational awareness at all? What will I get out of it?” Being aware of the situation makes you a leader – you become observant and know how to respond quickly to tasks, planned or unexpected. In a work environment, your boss will see you as reliable, confident, and trustworthy. If you are able to act quickly and calmly under pressure, you will be the one getting a raise.
There are a few things to note when practicing situational awareness. Trust your gut – your instincts will begin to practice situational awareness before your mind catches up, so listening to your initial gut feeling on a particular matter is, in fact, the beginning of situational awareness. Listen to your co-workers – learn what they do, how they work well, what their project priorities are, and ask for advice when you need help. By communicating with other members of your professional team, you are able to gain more information and be more aware of the situation as a whole, not just your part in the plan. Share your knowledge – providing information to team members and sharing your experiences helps strengthen your leadership skills, creates better communications practices, and makes you look good in front of your boss.
Ways to check your situational awareness are easy to look for, as well. Make sure you aren’t confused about tasks, your information matches with others’, you are able to solve conflicts when they arise, and you know your expectations and limitations. Pushing too hard to get something done undoes the work situational awareness starts. Listen to conflicts and find the solution, communicate all useful information, and makes sure you are aware of the entire process without being fixated solely on the end goal. Additionally, you have to be healthy, both physically and mentally, or situational awareness will not help. You need to be open to suggestions, flexible with plans, able to think on your feet, and resist impulsiveness. When you experience stress, make sure you know how your body will react and how you can combat it. Do you freeze up or panic? Do you run from a situation or blame someone else? Do you make mistakes or ignore problems? Remember being aware of the situation will help you combat these stress symptoms: relax, stay calm, fix the problem promptly, focus on solutions rather than the error itself, get help when you need it, and always have a back-up plan.
Situational awareness will prepare you for the times you need to act quickly and want to take risks in a project. It will calm you when problems arise and train you to be observant in all aspects of life. Ultimately, you will succeed at a greater rate by being aware of your situations and knowing how to deal when the unexpected arrives.
JustJobs.com is a job search engine that finds job listings from company career pages, other job boards, newspapers and associations. With one search, they help you find the job with your name on it.Read more » articles by this approved business partner | Click here » if you’re a business Image from Gina Sanders/Shutterstock
