Find out why this is the best time to reevaluate your career
Life establishes a rhythm and a pattern. It is often referred to as the status quo. As the world continues to evolve, you may feel like your life is adjusting with it, or that your career never changes, grows, or advances. Days go by and nothing changes. Your thoughts on the future are focused on getting ahead and perhaps how you will create better traction to advance the knowledge, skills, and talents you possess. Perhaps you feel underrated, have been overlooked for positions, and / or think you are underpaid for your position. Whatever the case, your daily routine may have been consumed with timely thoughts on how to achieve a better future.
Then when a significant life event occurs, such as a global crisis, it creates an opportunity to reevaluate the thoughts and plans you’ve had for your career. When that happens, you have a choice, you can use it as a moment to reflect and redirect your focus, or you can give in to fear and become paralyzed by inaction. While it may seem counterintuitive, take this time to re-prioritize your goals and re-review your career plan. The reason it may seem like an inappropriate approach while waiting for resolution of a situation that seems so out of control is that being productive can help calm your mind and put you in a logical frame of reference.
As you are in the process of evaluating your career and developing new plans to relive it again, you will be in a better position to control your emotional reactions to the events that you are hearing and reading. This is due to a change in the way your mind processes information, or takes cognitive control once again of the flow of information that is received through working memory. You can start this type of process by implementing a guided career overview plan and asking yourself a series of self-analysis questions.
Guided race overview
You first begin a review process by clearing the mental clutter in your own mind. There will be information and misinformation that you have been collecting about current events, which has been creating doubt, fear, and probably a sense of unease over time about your future. Start by assessing your needs and those of those who depend on you or live with you. Then look for valid sources of information, not second-hand sources of information. Go directly to those sources that will provide you with facts, data, and statistics. This is the only way you can plan with certainty and prevent the flow of speculation from entering your mind. You will find that you are also engaging in the use of logic and critical analysis skills as you use this thought process.
Once you have mentally prepared yourself for the required basic needs and have engaged your rational thinking skills, you can now begin to use those same reasoning skills to review your career plan. At this point, your entire career perspective has likely changed, priorities have changed, and the way you work has changed. You can work from home as a remote worker or you may have lost your job now. Whatever the case, and as difficult as it may be for you, now is the time for a guided career overview. Now more than ever, you are viewing your career from a completely different perspective.
To get started, spell out your career goals. If you didn’t have clearly defined goals, create a list for your future in two-year increments. This is a different approach than you will read in many self-help articles and it is one that I have used as a professional advisor to help improve the success rate in achieving each milestone. When goals are set too far away, those goals seem too long-term and can easily be forgotten. Shorter goals serve as checkpoints to consider and can also become motivational cues to celebrate along the way, as they are completed. If you already have career goals, you can redevelop them in a two-year approach as I have described.
As you think about career goals, you may not know exactly where you are going or what direction you would like to take next in your career. This is when the idea of ​​visualization can be useful as a tool for professional development. Imagine yourself two years from now, with the current crisis resolved, and describe what you see, feel and think for your job or career. Consider what you aspire to be or become, now that you have a new perspective on life. If you are satisfied with your career and now you want to spend more time with your loved ones, perhaps your next goal is to see yourself in a stable position, to become an expert in this role.
Self-analysis questions
Now that you have begun the process of evaluating your career, from the perspective of examining what your future might be in the next few years, you can ask additional specific questions to continue the self-analysis process. I have implemented the use of the following questions in various ways as a professional development coach and they may also help you.
Focus question no. 1: Do the career goals I have set inspire me?
What you want to develop are specific career goals, not generic ones. An example of a generic goal would be: I will be recognized for my hard work in two years. In contrast, the most effective checkpoints to develop every two years are those that inspire you to grow and progress, depending on what your priorities are for your life and career. For example, if you want to stay steady and steady, visualize yourself becoming an expert right now and that’s it. If you want to advance, name a specific position that you are interested in filling. For example, if you aspire to move to a management position, set it up as a marker for your first checkpoint.
Focus question no. 2: Is there something preventing me from achieving these career goals?
When you’ve established inspiring checkpoints, over specific two-year time frames, you can then determine if anything will be needed to make sure you’re prepared. For example, will you need any further training or education? Will you need to acquire new knowledge and / or acquire new skills to progress or advance? You may need to think ahead and do some research to prepare your self-development plan. After doing your research, you can map the next few months and further refine the steps you will take to work toward a new outcome.
Focus question no. 3: Have I engaged in some form of negative self-talk?
You may or may not be aware of the thoughts that are being held about you, and this is something that I recommend that you begin to be more aware and pay attention to. This self-talk can be supportive and help you feel good about your life and the decisions you make, or it can be trapped in a negative self-talk pattern that belittles and undermines your best intentions and efforts. Some of the hardest lessons I’ve seen others learn as a career coach is self-empathy, or being able to forgive yourself for past events and perceived mistakes. If you can support yourself, even when you are in the worst possible situation, you will find that recovery occurs much sooner.
Focus question no. 4: Do I think I can achieve and complete the first professional goal set?
This question is directly related to the previous question about self-talk and relates to your personal beliefs. If you were to look at the career plan you have developed for yourself, would you honestly claim that you could achieve it? Do you think you have the potential to complete anything you set out to accomplish? Those may seem like obvious questions, and yet if you can’t reconcile your beliefs with your career plan, you may never achieve the goals you’ve set. A belief begins with feeling a certain level of hope rather than hopelessness. If you are developing a future plan, then you must believe that to some extent your future can change. If you are creating this plan for any other reason, it will not happen. This is the moment to decide: I believe in myself and I believe that I can meet these goals.
Focus question no. 5: Do I know what I am capable of achieving?
To solidify your beliefs and make them meaningful rather than hollow statements, you need to start with an assessment of your strengths. Your strengths are the foundation that creates your ability to create change, learn, grow, and adapt. You will use these strengths to work in development areas as well. As you look ahead and assess what you need to be prepared, don’t consider yourself to have shortages or weaknesses. These are professional development opportunities. You also shouldn’t be afraid to identify areas that need improvement, just be mindful and ready to prepare. It can adapt and has both the capacity and the potential to learn. This renewed sense of self-awareness will eventually make you stronger as you look to the future with confidence.
Time for a new career?
Taking a career analysis can be an eye-opening experience, especially if you have a new sense of yourself due to world and work conditions. Once you have completed the above process, you can be sure in which direction your career path is headed, assuming working conditions return to normal soon. You may feel a sense of renewal about the type of work you are doing and you want to stay in the same job and with the same employer. However, the analysis may cause you to consider a different perspective. Perhaps now your priorities have changed, or been re-emphasized, and now you feel strongly about finding a new career path. The analysis has now helped you move in another direction and establish a plan to begin a journey to another destination. Regardless of which of these scenarios suits you, you should feel empowered to be better in charge of your career and ready to act, once the corporate world is up and running again.
The value of productive thinking
The economic health of the nation is worrying and it is unknown when companies will return to operating with some level of normality. However, this should not prevent you from developing a career plan and preparing for the future. If history is any indicator of how humanity and the economy operate in times of global crisis, there will eventually be a period of recovery. It may not happen quickly, and for many companies, a significant period of time for a significant return to growth may be needed. However, you can still keep your mind sharp and focused on your own personal development, which in turn will allow you to better deal with a time of crisis and recovery. As you work on your own development plans, you engage the rational aspect of your mind and this keeps emotional reactions in check. The more you can continue to think productively, the better you can take care of yourself and others as well. Perhaps logical thinking will help you and the company you work for support yourself while you wait for the crisis to subside.