Career Maintenance: 5 Ways to Fine Tune Your Professional Life
There are two ways to go about your career. The first way is to simply put your head down and do your thing – show up on time (or maybe a bit early), do your work, take the opportunities that come your way and see what happens. The second way is to take proactive control of your career, to actively seek out ways to improve your chances, put yourself in the path of opportunities and steer your career in a clear direction. The former is less work, but the latter is far more likely to get you where you want to go.
Here are five ways you can take control of your career and improve your professional life.
1. Open conversations with the upper echelon. Talk to those in charge about where they see the company going and how you can best support that. Find a mentor or two who can share their wealth of experience, guide you around hidden pitfalls and go to bat for you when the need arises. This is not about sucking up. It’s about opening the lines of communication and making yourself visible as someone who is taking active steps to be the best they can be.
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7 Secrets to Improve Your Ability to Learn (For Students of All Ages)
No matter what your age, throughout your life you will be learning. Your formal education ends with high school, but for many the learning never ends. You may attend a university, trade school, night school, community college or adult school. You may enhance your knowledge via business seminars, lectures, books, e-courses, and whatever else shows up in our information society. So wouldn’t it be helpful to have some good study habits and some tools to increase your ability to learn?
Although you may not be studying information to get good grades, retention of what you are learning can help your career, your parenting skills, your business, your relationships, your hobbies, and so much more. So it makes sense to acquire good learning skills sooner than later. Skills such as speed reading and good comprehension are useful for all the great information you want to take in.
Here are some more secrets for improving your ability to learn. Most apply to classes, but you can adapt them to any learning situation.
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Choosing a Career Over Love
The choice between having a career or making time for love is an extremely personal and individual decision. There are many factors which can affect your choice, and there are many people who have discovered how to achieve a healthy work life balance that allows them to have both.
Careers and love fulfill us in different but important ways. Having a solid career gives us a sense of accomplishment and self worth, aside from the practicalities of paying the bills. Many people develop their entire identity based upon what they do, elevating their career to a level of great importance in their lives.
Then there are those who measure their success in terms of having a pleasant and rewarding home life. They develop their identities based upon the accomplishments of their children, and derive their self worth through the love and support of a spouse.
So what happens if you cannot or do not wish to make room in your life for both? While the happiest and healthiest people have managed to develop a work life balance that allows for both, it may not be for everyone. Consider these factors when pondering which is more important for you.
1. Your Career May be More Important When You are Young
Many people these days focus on careers first and family later. The reasoning is that, while you are young and unencumbered, you have the time and energy to fully devote yourself to a career. If you have lofty career ambitions while you are young, it may indeed be the time to start making progress towards those goals.
Once you get married and begin to build a family, much of your time and energy – by necessity – becomes devoted to your family. This is as it should be. You should not start a family unless you are willing to devote time and attention to your loved ones.
Many people who accomplish great success in their careers when they are young, and establish themselves in a secure position, are then more willing and comfortable later on to devote themselves to family. By the time they do settle down, they are more prepared to handle the responsibility.
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The Beauty of Occasional Abundance
Depending upon our life experiences, each one of us has a different definition of abundance, much of which is learned during childhood. We are taught at an early age to either want for nothing or yearn for more. We learn how to react to those who have much more than us, and we develop our thoughts and attitudes about sharing with the less fortunate. We decide which things we hunger for the most, many times based upon those things that we lacked early in life.
As we grow and develop, we are constantly bombarded by messages regarding wealth, power, money, and greed. Magazines, newspapers, television, and movies all express society’s thoughts regarding such matters, and as time has progressed, we have developed into a more materialistic society. More emphasis has been placed on the ownership of elaborate possessions and such things as spirituality and family values seem to have been cast aside.
This sets us up for great disappointments, since we are taught that we can never have enough. It leaves us striving to reach an ambiguous and unattainable goal – to have “enough.” Yet there is never any definition of what enough truly is.
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Spirituality for Dummies
When many people think of spirituality their minds automatically go to religion. This is not, however, an entirely accurate understanding of what spirituality is. Having spirituality simply means believing in something greater than yourself. It can be incredibly powerful to have a sense of spirituality in your life, and very often it can haul you through the difficult times in your pursuit for success, happiness, and fulfillment.
Your sense of spirituality may involve the divine. Our society is rooted in the belief of a supernatural, omnipotent being who oversees our personal destinies. Other people shirk these beliefs and prefer to take destiny into their own hands, and in choosing spirituality invoke the aspects of nature or the cosmos rather than an all-knowing religious icon.
Spirituality is deeply personal in nature. It serves to rejuvenate and enlighten the soul and feed the human spirit. It helps guide our decisions in life and helps to direct our conscience. Recent surveys have shown that the vast percentage of society holds religious or spiritual beliefs. It is also interesting to note that a majority of these people have broken from childhood teachings in order to seek out a belief system that holds greater personal meaning to them.
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