Career development advice: What’s next?
So…
You still don’t know what you want to be when you grow up?
You feel stagnant and crave change, but don’t know where to go next?
You tried a job you thought would make you happy and it isn’t working out?
You’ve started to dread going into work, but don’t see any alternatives?
Guess what?
This essay is specially designed for you, and will offer you a key process to follow, which is fundamental to figuring out the answer of "what’s next?" Hint: it doesn’t begin with looking for a new job.
Step 1: your starting point isn’t looking for a new job
You may have been hoping for me to start by giving you a list of the best companies to work for, or jobs that everyone loves doing.
Well, while I can help coach you to that answer, unfortunately for such a wish, today’s essay won’t give you that (although I did deeply enjoy my time working at Microsoft and it does seem Patagonia seems to be making waves lately).
Follow me as I set the stage (and if you’re in doubt and stuck, this is a do not skip part of finding your answer of what’s next).
Imagine me speaking the next section out loud in an Austrian accent, and then recall how many of our psychological questions/doubt stem from childhood.
As we grow up, we understandably don’t have enough life experience to make decisions for ourselves, and so we rely on the people and world around us (e.g. parents, teachers, and media/society) to guide us through life by instilling in us ideas of what we need to do, should do, ought to want, and should avoid.
These may include things like:
Learning to work hard, do well in school, and seek a well-paying job to attain security in life (parents)
Demonstrating our potential in life based on what opportunities, such as job offers, we can unlock (school)
Valuing our level of life success based on what kind of lifestyle we can afford (society)
Then, as we start leave school, strike out on our own from our families of origin, and start to develop our careers, we start to take ownership over making our own decisions in life. In this process of forging our independence from the world that initially shaped us, we begin to accumulate enough experience to shape our own ideas and views of the world.
Yet, just because we fully own our own decisions, does not mean we do so consciously, fully of our own choosing. The reality is that most of us still continue to be sub-or-unconsciously guided by the ideas we picked up growing up (also known as our values system), because they became ingrained in us during our formative years and continue to guide our decisions, by way of urges, feelings, narratives, and rationalizations.
The issue that leads to questions arising like those named at the beginning of this essay is that we may not agree with or aspire to live by the value systems we internalized growing up.
Sometimes, there is no difference between the values systems we internalize growing up and those we consciously agree with.
Yet, for many there does arise a difference between the values system we consciously aspire to as adults, and the values system that was instilled in us growing up.
This is especially true for Millennial and Generation Z Americans, who find themselves in the midst of a great awakening, wherein issues such as burnout, depression and anxiety have revealed the risks of continuing to follow the values system that were derived from our hard-working, consumption-driven, comparison-oriented society.
In this case, from the time that we take official ownership over our own life decisions, our dissatisfaction with our decisions will steadily grow.
So, if you are feeling restless or dissatisfied with work, then the first step to resolving your career dilemma is not to find a new job. This would most likely lead to you choosing a new job based on the values system that led you to the place of questioning you are now, which will create similar conditions after the “newness” of that job wears off.
The first step is: to solidify your own values system.
You can begin this process by reflecting on these two questions:
“What is important to me in life?”
“What qualities in life do I value?”
If these questions provoke anxiety in you because your answer is “I don’t know,” then you are not alone. You’re not a failure for not knowing, either; but, you do need to spend time with this question and explore what your possible answers may be.
You can do yourself a favor by reframing the narrative of I don’t know into I am learning. Not knowing and exploring is part of the process of learning, and learning is at the core of this great journey called life. You’re in the process of learning what is important to you personally, not the world around you.
Taking a personality or values test is another good starting point to give you some material to work with for the next steps.
Here are some example of values or world views that may be instilled early-on, which many people who go through questioning periods ultimately decide to aspire to let go of or weaken:
Money, status, fame, consumption, comparison, growth for the sake of growth, accumulation, power, self-orientation
Here are some example of values or world views that many people ultimately aspire to develop or strengthen:
Creativity, freedom, learning, connection, belonging, sharing, acceptance, diversity, meaningful/intentional growth
Now, spend some time reflecting on your own internal career motivators for your own life (i.e. your wants/desires/enjoys/values, and not those based on the shoulds/needs/have tos/can’ts). Use these questions as a primer, and write down whatever you come up with.
“What is important to me in life?”
“What qualities of life do I value?”
“What do I like doing?”
“What don’t I like doing?”
“What do I not want, but am willing to compromise on/do, if it supports something else that is very meaningful to me?”
Stay tuned for part 2, where I’ll explore the comparison between internal and external career motivators and outline a few ways to use your career motivator insights from part 1 to identify a potential career change in your own life.
That’s all for today! Stay tuned to The Musing Mind for more career development tips and sign up for newsletter to get more career advice and inspiration delivered regularly.