“I am tired of being exhausted at work.” “I’m tired of feeling drained.” “I am tired of feeling undervalued, unskilled, unseen.” If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place! Today, I’m sharing the six core principles you need to find a fulfilling career in 2023.
Before we dive in, let’s first define what a principle is.
A principle is a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior, or for a chain of reasoning.
I’m sharing the fundamental truths that you will need to embrace in order to find meaningful work this year. These truths will serve as the foundation for your belief system around meaningful work, as well as establish the behaviors and actions you take to achieve meaningful work. Let’s dive in.
The first of the core principles to find a fulfilling career is to figure out what you like about your current job.
When you haven’t defined exactly what you are looking for in a job, you will continually remain stuck in a pattern of unaligned work. This is why you must figure out what you don’t like about your current or past jobs. It’s easy to say you don’t like your job, but if you’ve been doing the same thing for multiple years, you’ll likely find a similar role in your next job search.
You think to yourself, “This is all I can do, so this must be the only kind of job I can apply for.” Then, you apply to the job, you get in, and three months later, you’re unhappy again.
You have to ask yourself, “Is it the relationships, management, or the commute?” “Is it the compensation or the actual work tasks?” “Do I like the company culture?” Once you define what it is you don’t like, it becomes easier to avoid those things in your next position.
Ask the questions that actually give you the answers you need.
Imagine if you were driving on a highway and went to change lanes without first checking your blind spot. If you swerve into the other lane without checking first, there could be another car next to you, quickly causing a disaster.
This is what tends to happen when we switch careers without looking to see if there are dangerous things coming at us. Dangerous things could mean toxic environments, toxic relationships, toxic management styles, etc. When you define what you do not want, you can avoid those dangerous things before you find yourself in another job you hate.
The third of the core principles to find a fulfilling career is to not make career decisions based on other people's opinions. If you keep making career decisions around those, you will remain unfulfilled.
I find this to be more common among women who have been on one path for years, rising in the ranks of their careers and finding themselves in what looks like a prestigious job on the surface. Maybe you’ve been with a company for 15 or 20 years, and you’re worried about what people will say if you leave. Often times we get so caught up in what people will think, if we make a transition, that we hold ourselves back. It's an easy trap to fall into, especially when you are surrounded by people whose mindset around careers is archaic.
I’m talking about people who think that work is only meant to make a living, therefore you can be miserable in it. They think, “You have a job, and your bills are paid. Why are you complaining?” But this very mentality is exactly what keeps you feeling stuck, unfulfilled, unsatisfied, and unseen in a job. The research is clear, a job like that is truly killing you slowly.
Your bills are being paid, but at what expense? Your life? That is not the mentality I want to go into my career with. And it's not the mentality I want you to go into your career with either. Remember, those who are questioning you are not the ones living your life. They’re not experiencing the effects your job has on you. Let your experience be what guides your decisions, not the opinions of others.
If you keep letting fear drive your decision-making, you give over control of your career.
The third foundational truth you need to embrace to find meaningful work in 2023 is this: stop letting fear drive your decision-making. Whether it's fear of leaving your current role and not making enough money, fear of going to a new job and hating it, fear of losing your network, fear of starting over, the list goes on. Whatever your fear is, if you keep letting it drive you, you lose control of your career. Here’s what I want you to understand:
Fear is an emotion.
Fear is an emotion, which means it's not a fact. While our emotions are valid and true, they are not facts. They are fleeting. We cannot make decisions based on fleeting emotions. Letting fear control your decisions is different than being afraid. Fear is the emotion that shows up when you are doing something you’ve never done before.
Fear is perfectly natural and something you will always experience. The difference is when you start using that emotion to guide your decision-making, then you have shifted from just feeling an emotion to actually being afraid. Being afraid is when we make decisions based on our fear and not based on our faith. Either fear is controlling you or faith is controlling you, you can’t have both.
If you keep equating the quality of your decisions with the quality of the outcomes, you’ll put yourself into inaction.
I’ve seen this often with women who have tried to change their careers in the past, and it didn't work out. They tell themselves they don’t have what it takes, or they aren’t good at making decisions. It’s a case of, “It didn’t work out in the past, so why would it work out now?”
Here’s what I want you to remember: the quality of the decisions you make and the quality of the outcomes you experience are not the same things. Read that again. We make decisions based on the information that is available to us. You do your research, you ask your questions, and you make a decision based on the information you have at the time. You can make a good decision and still experience a not-so-great outcome because some factors were just out of your control. It doesn't mean you made a bad decision, it just means it's time to reevaluate.
I want to encourage you when it comes to your career to stop conflating your decision-making and the outcomes you experience. It will only keep you stuck. Each action you take along your career journey gives you data about that particular situation. Every piece of data you collect can continue to guide your next decision. If you make a good decision and the outcome is crappy, it doesn't mean you failed. It means you’ve collected another piece of data.
The next core principle to find a fulfilling career is to stop avoiding investments. If you keep avoiding investments, your career and life fulfillment will keep eluding you.
Let me tell y’all, the fulfillment you haven’t experienced is behind the investment you haven’t made. When you want to experience any kind of change or growth in your life, you have to invest in at least one of these three things: time, money, and energy. If you want to experience fulfillment in a new job, you've got to put some skin in the game. Your transformation is behind the investment you haven’t yet made.
Maybe you feel like your current job is draining you of the energy needed to find a new one. You think, “When I have more energy, I will figure out this transition.” But how are you going to get more energy when the very situation you’re in is the thing that is draining your energy the most? This is where having a framework comes in, which is what I provide you in my course, Find your Fulfilling Career. With this course, you don’t have to spend any energy figuring out what to do because the framework does the hard work for you. With a framework in place, it takes less time and less energy to find what fulfills you.
The last of the core principles to find a fulfilling career is to clarify your non-negotiable values. If you don’t clarify those, companies will keep catfishing you.
You must define your non-negotiable values. Companies will tell you one thing in an interview, but when you start your job you’ve found out it's something entirely different. Companies can pull a bait and switch on you when you don't know how to properly audit them.
Oftentimes, we go into interviews having reviewed the company’s vision and values and ask questions that make us seem like we did our research. Yes, the purpose of an interview is partly to see if you are competent for the job, but it’s not the main purpose. A big purpose of the interview is for you to see if it's a good fit for you.
You can’t adequately interview a company without knowing your own values. Once you determine your values, the questions you ask will be driven from there. Ask yourself, “What are my non-negotiable values?” Your personal values may trickle into your career, but they’re not always synonymous.
Your non-negotiable values define your work boundaries. Knowing this allows you to go look at a company and ask yourself, “Will they violate my values?” Oftentimes we feel unseen or unvalued in our job because one of our own core values was violated. If you can’t articulate what the root of your unhappiness is, you can't articulate where the feeling is coming from. And if you can't articulate the problem, it's even more difficult for people to help you.
You need to clarify your non-negotiables, so you can minimize the chances of a company catfishing you in the hiring process and ensure that the next job aligns with what you believe in.
These same core principles are built into my program, Find your Fulfilling Career. Inside my course, I help you find the clarity you need to find the work that fulfills you most. If you want to learn more, visit Find Your Fulfilling Career to see how this signature coaching program for women can help you exit your soul-sucking job and transition into a more fulfilling career without getting another degree!
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