If finding a fulfilling career that you enjoy and can thrive in is one of your goals, then this blog post is for you! Read as I share 5 of my best tips for finding your fulfilling career.
But first, let’s start by doing two things: 1) differentiating between a job and a career and 2) defining what exactly a fulfilling career is.
Difference between a Job and a Career
A job is an activity or work that you are doing for a specific period. Sometimes it’s for the purposes of skill development or earning money.
A career, on the other hand, encompasses your entire history, the holistic look at your vocational and occupational development.
This means a career can contain multiple jobs as well as your education, training, etc. So, when I say I want to help you find a fulfilling career, I’m talking about a fulfilling career pathway that might hold multiple jobs in it.
Second, what is a fulfilling career?
A fulfilling career has a few specific characteristics.
A fulfilling career:
- Is a satisfying career path that is truly aligned with who you are.
- Allows your characters and abilities to develop fully.
- Makes you feel like you are making a difference and impact in the world.
- Makes you feel that you’re doing meaningful work.
- Motivates you to get up in the morning to do work you’re excited about
But, if you don’t feel like that every day at your work, that’s totally fine! We all have our bad days. That happens in fulfilling careers too. However, ideally, you want to enjoy the work that you do about 80% of the time.
A fulfilling career is one that has you pause in random moments of joy, and you look up and you’re like, “Dang, I love what I do!”
And if you’re here reading this right now, chances are, you want a fulfilling career.
But if you’re skeptical, you’re like, “Okay, but why do I need a fulfilling career? Why does that matter?” Well, research has consistently shown that when you’re doing unaligned work and in an unfulfilling career, it leads to work stress.
And work stress has been connected to a ton of physical and mental health symptoms. From the physical end, we’ve seen work stress and being in an unfulfilling career linked to things like:
- Headaches
- Hair loss
- Weight, gain
- Weight loss
- Ulcers
- Migraines
- Sleep issues
- Insomnia
- Diarrhea
- Skin issues
These are just some of the physical symptoms that can show up when you are in an unfulfilling career—a career that makes you unhappy.
Aside from physical effects, you can also experience mental health symptoms like
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Low self-esteem
- Self-Doubt
- Low self-confidence
- Relationship issues
- Low creativity
- Aggression.
- Higher divorce rates
- Lower sex drive
So, all in all, in case you were not totally convinced, I want you to know that your unfulfilling career is not just a job that you hate. It’s potentially a job that you hate that’s slowly killing you or, at the very least, is killing your relationships.
In your adult lifetime, you’ll spend 90,000 hours at work. It makes zero sense to be miserable for that much time.
That’s why I am so passionate about helping more people find fulfilling careers and secure their fulfilling careers. So now, let’s get into the tips.
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5 of My Best Tips for Finding a Fulfilling Career
Tip #1: Shift Your Mindset
Your mindset encompasses your attitudes, thoughts, and opinions and the way that you approach situations, things, and life in general.
Obviously, as it relates to a fulfilling career, your mindset refers to your mindset about a fulfilling career, about what it takes to find a fulfilling career.
A lot of times (and I’ve seen this happen in my work with women), you might have mindset barriers that are keeping you from finding a fulfilling career that you are not even aware of. It’s because sometimes, these mindset barriers are subconscious.
One of the biggest mindset barriers is fear.
Fear itself is an emotion that is perfectly normal. It shows up, comes, goes, ebbs, and flows… But the way I see this emotion turning into a mindset barrier is that a lot of people start making decisions based on their fear:
“What if I transition into one job and I hate it just as much?”
“I’m afraid of getting into a job, and I don’t have what it takes to be successful!”
“I’m scared that everything’s not going to turn out good!”
When you let your fear control you subconsciously, over time, you will find that you are not making decisions integrity with yourself. You’re not making decisions that truly align with your values, goals, and what you want to achieve.
Another mindset barrier that you might experience is low self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy refers to your belief in your ability to be successful. It’s your belief in your ability to attain whatever your goal is.
In this situation, your goal is if you can find a fulfilling career. So, self-efficacy is how well do you believe that you actually have what it takes to achieve a fulfilling career?
The thing is, when you don’t believe that you have what it takes, what happens is then you don’t take the right actions. You don’t persevere as much in your journey to finding a fulfilling career. You might not be as determined, resilient, and committed to the journey and the process.
When your belief in yourself is low, and you don’t believe you can find a career you truly enjoy and find fulfilling, you’re not very likely to try hard to achieve it.
However, when it comes to going deeper into doing the work needed to find your fulfilling career? The amount of effort you put into finding a career you can thrive in slowly dwindles…because low-key, there’s a part of you that doesn’t believe that there is a fulfilling career out there for you.
So, a question for you to consider – do you BELIEVE you can find a career you enjoy?
Question: do you BELIEVE you can find a career you enjoy? Share on XAnother mindset barrier is the thought that you have to find something that you’re going to enjoy for the rest of your life.
Some people think they need to find a career path that they’re going to enjoy for the next 10-20 years. They’re trying to make lifetime decisions for a decision that is not based on a lifetime.
The truth is, when we think about jobs, it shifts every 2-3 years.
Ideally, your career should be shifting because you, as a person, are growing every 2-3 years.
Job shifts could be caused by a promotion, a new role within your company, a new responsibility, or maybe an entirely different company or an entirely different career change.
But ultimately, you want to engage in regular self-reflection because you’re constantly evolving. And for a career to be fulfilling, it has to be aligned with who you are. So, if you’re constantly evolving and you stay in the same job that is no longer aligned with who you are, unfulfillment sets in.
In my work as a career coach, I’ve seen people, especially women thinking that they have to find something that they’re going to enjoy for a while. Usually, for them, a “while” is like 5 or more years.
And I’m always like, “Nah! No, sis!”
You need to find something that you will enjoy for the next two years.
That’s it. That’s all we’re looking for.
Think about “What am I going to enjoy for the next two years?” and when you do that, it relieves some of the pressure of trying to find this lifetime fit because if you’re giving myself just two years, it’s less pressure.
If it’s a fit, keep going in that career. And if it’s not a fit, you’ll be ready for a transition.
That’s a mindset shift that needs to happen: Stop making lifetime career decisions.
When you make career decisions, generally, it’s important that you view them as short-term career decisions because until you get into the career, you don’t know if you’ll like it. There’s no 100% certainty. So, how do you know you’re going to enjoy it for life?
But, if you came into your new career thinking you must make a decision that you think you will enjoy for the rest of your life, it’ll become harder for you to pivot when you realize it’s no longer a fit.
On the contrary, if you give yourself the flexibility of “I’m going to see how this is going to go for the next two years. Let’s just see how I feel about it,” you’re giving yourself the permission and ease to pivot when it’s no longer a lot.
Tip #2: Challenge Your Beliefs
Beliefs are when you accept a thought, claim, or story to be true. However, belief is not always based on fact.
Because facts don’t change, you don’t actually have to believe them for them to be true. They just are. The very nature of you has to believe something lends itself to it not being or always based on facts.
And sometimes, as it relates to your career, you are holding onto beliefs and claims you have accepted as being truthful when there is no evidence to support them as being true. You accept them as facts when they are not facts.
Quite a few people are making career decisions based on belief systems that they’ve long held.
These are belief systems that set in whether you were a child, teenager, maybe 5 or even 15 years ago. Since you’ve accepted it as a belief, you haven’t paused to question or challenge it.
And now, here you are making life and career decisions based on belief systems that may actually not be factual.
If you are making decisions based on faulty belief systems while trying to find a fulfilling career, you’ll find that it negatively impacts your actions and your outcomes.
Some common faulty career beliefs include:
- “I need a new degree to transition careers.”
- “I have to go back to school, or I have to take a pay cut.”
- “If I want to have a fulfilling career and a fulfilling career is meaningful, then I’m going to have to take a pay cut to secure a fulfilling career”
- “I have to find my passion first. Once I find my passion, I’ll find what career is fulfilling.”
None of those are true. None of those are based in fact. Those are all faulty beliefs.
When you don’t pause to challenge your beliefs, to actually sit and serve as judge and jury to the things you believe, like asking yourself, “What is the evidence behind this thing that I think is true?” you’ll find that you are making choices and decisions again that are not leading you to your goal of finding a fulfilling career.
This reminds me of one woman I worked with during the October 2021 cohort of FYFC. Through the work we were doing, it came up to her that maybe graphic design was going to be the right fit for her. And I remember her just saying, “You know, this graphic design keeps coming up, and art keeps coming up. But I’ve been telling myself for so long that I’m not an artist. I kept pushing this away. I kept pushing the idea of doing design or anything in art away because I haven’t seen myself as an artist.”
She didn’t consider graphic design as a legitimate option for herself until she questioned that belief.
When you tell yourself something long enough, you start to believe it’s true even if you knew it was a lie.
With that in mind, if you are going to find a fulfilling career, you’re going to need to audit and take stock of what are the different things you believe about your career.
Start asking yourself, “What are the different things I believe are possible for me in my career? What is the evidence that does or does not support these belief systems?”
This is important because sometimes, there might be evidence of it.
Your beliefs could very well be factual, but more often than not. I have found in my experience that when you believe something that’s keeping you from a goal, those beliefs are not factual. They’re just beliefs that you’re telling yourself.
Your beliefs are stories that you’ve been telling yourself about a situation. And when a story stops working for you, it’s time for you to embrace a new story. It’s time for you to tell yourself a new story that actually leads you to take action that will help you achieve your goal.
Tip #3: Get Clarity on What You Do and Don’t Like About Your Job
I know that might sound weird. You’re like, “Wait, what I don’t like about the job? I hate it! Girl, I don’t like anything.”
You might like some things.
And that’s where clarity comes in.
To be able to determine what you do and don’t like about that job that you hate requires an audit.
You’re going to have to audit things like:
- Relationships with your manager, colleagues, and the company itself.
- Tasks and responsibilities at your job
- The compensation you receive
- How you show up at work
- The work culture
- Communication plans
- The commute to work (if applicable)
- The tools and gadgets you use for work
Audit the entire job to get clarity on what exactly do you and don’t you like about it.
Because when you do that, it allows you to get clarity about the things that you need to avoid AND the things you need to look for in your next job.
When you do an audit, it helps you figure out what to and to not look for when you go into your next role.
More often than not, the desperation of wanting to get out of that job you hate will have you aimlessly searching job boards. And that’s when you find yourself up at 4:00 AM on LinkedIn, trying to find a job without even knowing what you’re looking for.
And now you’re out here feeling stressed and overwhelmed because you don’t know what you’re looking for. There’s no way of auditing if these jobs you’re looking at are actually a match for you or not.
You have no system by which to evaluate these jobs that you’re coming across on the Internet or LinkedIn. As a result, you get into the interviews, and you don’t know what questions to ask them because of your lack of clarity.
If you don’t know what you do and don’t like in your career, it’s going to be difficult for you to transition into a role that has a high chance of success.
What could happen is you’ll end up in cycle after cycle of job that you hate after job that you hate.
If you don't know what you do and don't like in your career, it's going to be difficult for you to transition into a role that has a high chance of success. Share on XTip #4: Get Clear About Who You Are
Going back to my definition of a fulfilling career, a fulfilling career is aligned with who you are. So, if you don’t know who you are, how will you know what’s aligned?
It’s important that you take a step back and ask yourself, who am I? What are my non-negotiable values, the ones that are extremely important to me? What are the topics and ideas that I genuinely have an interest in learning more about? And what are the skills that I actually enjoy using, not the skills that you’re just good at? Because you can be good at something and not like doing it.
If you do anything long enough, you’ll become good at it… even the things you hate. Being good at something does not automatically mean that you’re going to enjoy it and should not be your automatic metric for assuming that a career will be fulfilling.
You have to get clear about who you are because without that clarity, you can’t find alignment.
Tip #5: Develop Your Research Skills
You have to develop your research skills because there are so many career options out there. It’s important that you’re able to audit carefully but also block out the noise. Like when I talked about being on LinkedIn at 4:00 AM, mindlessly scrolling, half of those jobs that you’re looking at aren’t aligned for you.
If you don’t have the skills to quickly be able to say “no” to a position because you know how to evaluate it, you know how to read the job description and see if it’s going to be a fit, you’ll find that doing your research is going to be overwhelming.
If you don’t know how to do research, you’ll find that finding an aligned career is going to be difficult because you can be clear about who you are, but then the next step after that is going out into the world and saying, “Okay, which careers are going to be aligned with who I am?” And that takes research skills.
You have to research the multiple options that are out there, take good notes, and keep track of your research. You have to be able to make a decision on how to proceed after you’ve done your research.
If you don’t have quality research skills, you will find that finding a fulfilling career is going to be difficult because you are consuming information without any system of sorting, streamlining, and guiding you in that research.
Without research skills, you’ll find that you’re going to keep struggling to find a fulfilling career.
And if you’re saying okay, how do I develop research skills? Then I would say, check out my program Find Your Fulfilling Career (FYFC).
In FYFC, I teach my clients how to do research. We literally take a whole month to do research because it’s a process. You have to take your time, especially if you’re working a full-time job.
There you have it! The 5 of my best tips for finding a fulfilling career.
During the live session of this blog post, some great questions were asked. Scroll down to read the Q&A.
How do you job hunt while you’re still recovering from burnout?
The first thing to realize is burnout is real. The World Health Organization recently classified burnout as an official diagnosis. If you have experienced full burnout, it might genuinely be that you don’t have the capacity or have reduced capacity to engage in a job search.
So, the first thing you might need to do is recover when you’re burnt out.
When you’ve experienced so much stress that your physiological systems are shifting. The way you respond is shifting, and your cognitive and language abilities are reduced, you might not have the capacity to go into a job hunt with clarity.
In this case, you need margin.
You need space just to recover, rest, recuperate, relax, and rejuvenate.
And that could look like a week, 2 weeks, or even a month.
My first tip would be if you’re at full burnout, recover at least a little bit so that you can develop the capacity to job search because job search is work. Job searching is not easy. It’s a full-time job in itself. So, you can’t go into it at half capacity.
When you enter the job search process, pace yourself. Not only is job search work, but job searching is also a marathon and not a sprint. If you go into a marathon with a sprint mentality, you will burn out again very quickly and would be discouraged.
My second tip for pacing yourself is to create a plan and a strategy for your activities and how you will do your activities. List down the days that you’re going to apply, the topics you will research, what days you will do research, when should you be connecting with people, and where are you at with your collateral (like your resume, cover letter, or LinkedIn profile).
Do you find a potential career and then look for potential industries where that career exists, OR do you find an aligned industry and look for potential careers or job roles in that industry?
This is a chicken and egg question. They were like, which one came first?
The answer is both. There is no one way or another.
First of all, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an industry where your role doesn’t exist or cannot be created. It’s because almost every industry has a marketing department, an accounting department, a public-relations department, etc. And remember what I talked about earlier, you have to clarify your values, interests, and skills, and that’s for a reason.
When you think about roles, specific jobs, that are connected to your skills and your interests. Your high-power skills and your interest will determine the types of roles you’ll enjoy.
But then when we think about industries, that’s connected to your values and your interests because interests will determine industries, which also means which topics, areas, and concepts you enjoy and find fulfilling. And then, your values will determine which industry you actually want to be in.
If I take graphic design, for example, graphic design in a tech company and graphic design in education is going to look very different.
But in that area, you might be using the same programs and skill sets.
However, a tech company might be very high-paced, competitive, and cutthroat values. On the other hand, an education space might (I’m making assumptions there) be a little bit more slow-paced, like the designs are coming out slowly.
And so, you could be doing the same job and the same role in two different industries, and you could look very different.
Ultimately this is where those research skills come in. Because when you clarify your values, interests, and skills, you start to think, “Okay, these are the types of roles that I will enjoy. I think these industries will make sense,” and then you go forth and do your research.
You’re researching the roles and the industries to see which one fits you.
It’s a chicken and egg situation of you actually research both at the same time, but you’re going into that research with a high level of clarity because you know what you’re looking and not looking for, and then you know who you are based on those five tips I shared earlier.
In doing all this is make sure that you’re not waiting to be 100% certain before you start making decisions. I’ve heard many people say, “I’ve done the research part. I’m not completely sure this is the right direction to go in,” and I always say, “You’re not going to be completely sure until you’re actually doing the thing.”
At best, you might be 90% sure. And I see at best because that means you’ve done quality, self-exploration, and high-quality research can bring you up to a 90% certainty, but there’s still a 10% error that until you are in the job, you won’t know for sure if you’re going to enjoy it or not.
Don’t be out here waiting to be 100% certain before you actually take the lip and leap and pivot. Because then what you’ll find is that you’re going to keep thinking until you think yourself into being stuck again.
