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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This is a true career story as told to JustJobs. If you are considering a career in health care, check out our website for interviews with a phlebotomist, a substance abuse counselor, and a myriad of other health care professionals.
I worked as a nurse’s aide for three years for a convalescent home dealing with various aspects of elder patient care. As a caring, hard-working and positive individual, I helped many people carry on with their daily lives well into their old age.
A white, female in this field is a positive point because I was very non-threatening to both sexes. Women in the field do not generally feel discriminated against. They are seen as humanitarians and caretakers, which is natural for them.
In this position, a day would consist of attending to a list of patients. You must take care to dress them, take them to meals, and help feed and clean them. No medications are administered through a nurse's aide. Instead, nurse’s aides assist the nurses.
A nurse’s aide position requires much patience. There should be timely breaks, though when there is a busy day that does not always happen. The people that do this type of position work full shifts, but there are part-time positions available that might not be as stressful.
As most people do, when I first became a nurse’s aide, it was my first step in becoming a nurse. I wanted to go into nursing, so I looked at the various nursing homes in the area and applied. When I was offered work with the nursing home for which I currently work, I didn't hesitate to take the job.
One lesson I learned the hard way was to always check the equipment you must use. A blood pressure cuff is an important tool and if does not work properly, it must be replaced. Several readings on patients that were almost alike prompted me to take it in for a check. It was faulty and was replaced immediately.
Commitment to the job is important. It is something that you don’t learn, but something that you feel. You return to perform your duties because you know they are very important.
Sometimes strange things can happen on the job when you are a nurse’s aide. You might have to help assist when a patient forgets where they are and they want to go home. It can be a little frightening that they forget where they are, but when you are patient with them they usually are okay within minutes.
At the holidays, a nurse’s aide is considered part of the family for the sick person. It is wonderful to see the family all together enjoying that their older person is still with them. They are very joyous and the holidays are special. You become very close to your patients when you are a nurse’s aide.
Challenges are part of life and being a nurse’s aide is a position that has several of them. It will make a huge difference when you manage them and face them head on.
There is stress involved in being a nurse’s aide, as in all jobs. The key is to know your duties well and perform them within the time limitations that you are given.
I was paid the minimum wage salary in my regional area, plus two dollars an hour roughly. A good worker will receive raises usually once or twice a year. It can be a decent living for some, but for others they might wish to pursue their nursing degree so that they can make more money.
If you work full time in this profession, you will usually start out at a one-week paid vacation per year. It will then lead to more, the longer your duration with the establishment you work for.
There are many places that will hire someone one and train them to be a nurse’s aide. Other institutions require a certificate. The certificate does not take long to acquire and will ensure a person to be employable for a nurse’s aide position in almost any establishment.
If you want to be a nurse’s aide, you first must have immense patience and compassion. You need to also be able to lift people and heavier items and be able to perform physical duties that might not necessary be part of other jobs. You must not mind wearing a uniform because all nurse’s aide’s must wear them.
Being an instrumental part in the medical field is very important. In order to see myself in this field in the future, I would educate myself to the level of nurse or doctor (practitioner) to help to continue to improve the quality of life for other people.
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 Nurse's aide image from Shutterstock
