Welcome to the May edition of The Inbox Coach, a monthly email to bring you a little bit of coaching to your inbox and help you to make time for your personal development.  With two bank holidays in May, it’s a perfect opportunity to reflect on what you want from your career, so this month’s topic is Career Fulfilment.

Bank holidays are a great time to reflect on your career and we have two of them in May. The small disruption to your weekly routine can highlight what you love about your job and can’t wait to get back to or exaggerate the Sunday night dread feelings you might have that are a sign that something is off. The main question I want to ask this month is this

Do I feel fulfilled in my career? 

The joy in the every day

I chose the term Career Fulfilment Coach to describe my work as I thought it best reflected what I help my clients to do. Career success is something that comes with lots of preconceptions, it can be difficult to know if the goals we are chasing are what we truly want or instead if they are what we have been conditioned to think of as successful. I also think that the joy we get from career success is short lived and doesn’t sustain us in the longer term. Completing a project, getting a promotion or pay rise feel great in the moment, but how long is it before those feelings fade?

Career fulfilment is about what you do and feel every day. It’s feeling good about your work, having a purpose that aligns with your values and having more good days than bad. It isn’t anyone one thing that you can tick off on your to do list that says you are fulfilled, but rather a collection of feelings and behaviours that add up to a sense of satisfaction from your work. Promotions continue to feel good if the new role you take on means you are doing more of what you love. Getting a pay rise continues to feel good if it opens up a better way of living each month because you aren’t so worried about money. Understanding the difference between short term “success” and longer-term fulfilment can help you to go after the things that are going to have a lasting impact. 

Compromise 

Fulfilment at work is also about compromise, finding balance between all the things that are important to you. I grew up in a time when women were told they could have it all, but what was left out from that statement was that having it all is a lot of work, and I don’t necessarily want to do it all. I have the possibility to do whatever I want, but in reality, I don’t have the time, energy or desire to have it all, so I chose wisely with what I decide to take on.

I have three areas that are important for me to feel fulfilled at work; the value or impact of the work I do, my time and energy spent doing it, and what I get paid.

For me the challenge is finding work that meets my financial needs, brings me satisfaction from the work I do, and I am able to do it in the time I want to spend working and not feel emotionally and physically drained from doing it. You might have the same needs or different ones but finding a balance between what you want and need from your career is the secret. 

Reflection

*If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add this email to your calendar

Being fulfilled at work requires you to know what fulfilment looks like for you, and in my experience, this isn’t something that we are encouraged to think about. We are asked what job we want to do, to think about our next career move, but how often are you asked how do you want to feel at work? And if you know that, can you list out what will make you feel that way? For the reflection exercises this week I’d like you to think about what fulfilment at work looks like for you…

When do you feel most fulfilled at work?

What is happening when you feel that way?

How often do you feel this way?

What is stopping you from feeling this way more often?

What is one change you could make that would help you to feel more fulfilled at work?

If you aren’t feeling in a good place about your career now then try to think back to a time, or previous role, when you felt good and answer the questions from that point of view. Make some notes in your journal and spend some time reflecting on your answers. 

Action

Sitting down to reflect on how you feel at work might feel a little difficult, particularly if you are having a bad day. Career fulfilment comes from the cumulative effect of lots of small moments of positivity and you might not even notice when they happen.

Task

When you have a fulfilling moment in your career, take 5 minutes to write down why it felt so great. Think about what you were doing, who you were working with, how you felt and what made it a fulfilling moment. When you have two or three examples think about what links them together and see if there is anything you can do to make more of these moments happen. 

If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add the prompts in this email to your calendar.

Inspiration 

“If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.” - Katharine Hepburn

I’d love to tell you my formula for what career fulfilment looks like, but it isn’t as simple as that. What one person finds value and joy from another person may dread. What I see as an acceptable compromise someone else may see as a dealbreaker. We are all unique in what we want, so fulfilment will look different for each of us.

What I can tell you, is that finding career fulfilment is about getting honest about what you want, so that you can make it happen. As Katharine Hepburn says in this quote, “If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.” It can be hard to follow your own path if it doesn’t look like what you think you should be doing, but the chances are if you follow someone else’s path it won’t lead to you being fulfilled. 

I’m excited to be talking about career fulfilment this month. Helping people to work out what their version of career fulfilment looks like and taking a step to making it happen is what I love most about being a coach. Once you have the knowledge of what you are looking for and the tools to go after it you can start to make big changes in how you feel at work. Given that you spend a large part of your week working it makes sense that you would want to feel good while doing it. I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts on career fulfilment with you next week 

See you then

Laura