Living through the coronavirus pandemic, a moment in history when the world came to a screeching halt, has provided us opportunities for self-discovery – to rethink choices, reassess options, and rebuild to grow better and stronger. In practical terms, it forced us to differentiate between the essential and non-essential, the “must haves” and the things we can do without. All crises teach us lessons, but Covid-19 was a wake-up call to focus on what really matters. The extraordinary shock to the system gave many people the courage to make changes to the way they live and work when going back to “normal.” According to the HRB article “The Great Resignation Stems from a Great Exploration” “nearly 57 million Americans quit between January 2021 and February 2022.”
It seems that the Great Resignation, aka The Great Rethink, is about getting to the heart of what matters. The pandemic has inspired the YOLO mindset, exploring lifestyle and career options. Since we spend the vast majority of our waking hours at work, finding a fulfilling job isn’t a luxury but actually a necessity. We are no longer willing to tolerate and accept work as drudgery. We want work that is meaningful and engaging, to feel that we can make a positive impact as opposed to being cogs in a machine. Many are now inspired to break free of the Monday Blues to make brave career reinventions. Career reinvention means taking a personal inventory and deciding what needs to change for improved job satisfaction, professional growth, and better career prospects. Similar to health optimization, career optimization is about the practice of asking “how can I make this even better? “What strategies and practices can I apply to achieve peak performance?” The ability to reinvent your career is an essential skill for success and should be a career-long habit.
The continuous journey towards an improved version of your professional self is based on two fundamental principles. The first, “believe it’s possible.” The second, “identity flexibility.”
The” It’s Possible” Mindset
Career reinvention starts in the mind, believing that there are always further heights to reach in gaining new skills, knowledge or experiences. There is always more to learn. We are all on a continuous process of becoming, which involves leaving behind what no longer serves us to clear out the physical, mental and emotional space to move forward toward what is yet to come. Career success is an active endeavor to improve options while staying focused on what’s important and maintaining balance between honoring what was, fully appreciating what is, and daring to explore the “what not yet.” This means thinking about one’s identity from multiple angles and being willing to expand the mental model of oneself.
Flexibility in Identity and Social Roles
Career reinvention requires fresh thinking patterns in order to access new opportunities. Our identity provides a sense of meaning and direction as it clarifies the roles we play in the world. As we move through life, we adopt various roles, which become our identity: a parent, a professional, a friend, a yogi, etc. At some point these roles might be limiting, preventing us from further developing a wider range of roles. For example, parenthood doesn’t have to mean hitting the ”pause” button on being career driven. The key to continuous career growth and job satisfaction is flexible identities to allow for role mobility; meaning the ability to shed old ones, add new ones, and prioritize them based on what we want to achieve in each current role we hold. What is un-you in one role might be the best version of you in another. Different roles call for different traits, skills, and styles.
To find fulfillment in your career, balance all the different roles you juggle to live life in harmony. Accept where you are and define where you want to get, starting with your “why,” the reason for your choices. Take a few minutes to ponder the following questions:
What do you want more of/less of in your career? In your life?
What are your truest “whys?”
If you could change anything about your current job, what would it be?
How would that change get you closer to where you are trying to go?
Are you willing to do what it takes to get there from where you are?
Before you jump into reinventing your career (or yourself), reflect on the changes you want to make and how all that you change will in turn change you across the range of roles you have in life. Understanding the patterns and priorities of the different roles will help you prepare to create meaningful change.
Use the power of list-making to get organized to accomplish what’s most important to you:
Step 1: Write down all the roles you have.
Step 2: For each role, add the critical needs, wants, aspirations, and success skills.
Step 3: Remove those roles you no longer want in your life.
Step 4: Add one role you want to develop.
Step 5: Set one goal to nurture each important role in your life.
Step 6: Create a list of changes to implement.
Once you’ve broken down your roles into priorities, potential growth areas, and the tasks for each role into an order of importance, it gets easier to plan for the investment of your most valuable resource, your time, to intentionally engage in the activities that give each role in your life the most meaning and joy. Revisit the 6-step priority list at the end of each month. Write down lessons learned, what you want to keep, what you want to remove, and what you want to modify.
Reinventing your career, or personal life, is about knowing to distinguish between the essential and the incidental. Life is dynamic, and you are constantly in a state of flux – changing, evolving, growing. Peel back all the layers compiling your roles and objectives, focus on the most important elements and let go of the rest. Be selective about the things that get your attention. Sift through everything that is fluff creating unnecessary noise. Most things have no impact in the long run. Make an active decision about the “must have” and save your time only for the things that matter. The more specific you can get about your top priorities, the easier it will be to strategize the path to your desired destination.
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