Welcome to the first edition of The Inbox Coach in 2022. I’m not going to suggest that you make 2022 the year of your career or set some big goals, instead I want to encourage you to reflect on what career fulfilment means to you and spend a little bit of time every day creating a work life that brings you joy and fulfilment.
I’ve written about career fulfilment before, but I’ve chosen to feature it as a topic again because I believe it is so important to think about when you are looking at your career development and goals.
January is a month filled with New Year’s resolutions and there is a temptation to pick some big goals so that you feel that you have focus in your career or that you are working towards something, anything. Whether we realise it or not, we hold so many assumptions about what a successful career should look like, and it can really hold us back. Working towards some future point of success that we haven’t given much thought but looks like what we should be chasing may feel good in the short term, but longer term it will leave us wanting.
Making every day count
Career fulfilment comes in the every day. It’s sticking to your boundaries about your work relationships so that you don’t feel taken advantage of. It’s saying no to work that you know won’t make you feel good because of some pressure to take on more. It’s reframing the things you find challenging so that you can grow and develop in your work without feeling overwhelmed or stuck.
I still think future career goals are important, even if only for certain periods of your career. Wanting to stretch yourself, stay excited or earn more money are all important and valid goals. What I find is without considering the everyday, those moments of celebration at achieving the goals fades very quickly.
What success means for me
I shared a post on LinkedIn about how I didn’t feel that I had big moments of success in 2021. I didn’t have the sorts of things that people want to celebrate but I did have lots of moments of fulfilment. The post really resonated with people, and it confirms to me that very few people are fulfilled for long by those big success moments but rather they want to find joy, meaning and fulfilment in their work every day.
Big moments of success are easy to talk about and provide a clear goal to work towards. Career fulfilment is more nuanced and can ebb and flow. It’s something you have to continually work at, you don’t get that moment of celebration when you arrive, there is no place to arrive at, but your everyday feels good.
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
The start of a new year gives us pause to reflect, but I believe you can reflect on what you want from your career every day and a change of month or year is just a prompt to do this.
Something I ask my coaching clients to do is to think about their ideal day at work. To let go of all assumptions about what work looks like and think about the conditions that would be ideal for them. Think about what a great day at work would look like for you and answer these questions…
When do I feel at my best at work?
What activities bring me the most fulfilment in my job?
How do I feel when I’m not doing work that fulfils me?
What activities leave me feeling drained/bored/uninspired?
What can I control to feel more fulfilled at work?
Allowing yourself the space to think about what your ideal day looks like opens up the possibility of doing things differently. When you think about what great would look like you are better able to start to make that a reality every day.
If you are looking for some help to create your ideal day then get in touch to see how we can work together.
Action
One of the most powerful tools in coaching is paying attention. We spend so much of our day switching from task to task, from life to work and back again. It can be easy to spend a whole day not paying attention to how you are feeling, what feels good and what doesn’t feel great.
When we pay attention to what is going on we can learn about what we need and adapt our behaviour accordingly.
Task
Try to pay attention to the moments in your day that feel good and those that don’t. See if you can notice what is making you feel that way. Make a note of those moments and spend a few minutes at the end the day thinking about what you have learnt to help you to understand what is going on for you.
Inspiration
“To me, the worst fashion faux pas is to look in the mirror, and not see yourself.” – Iris Apfel
I’ve mentioned Iris Apfel in these emails before, but she is one of my favourite Unconventional Mentors. Iris came to prominence in 2014 when a documentary was made about her life. Watching her speak about her fashion style you realise that she has created her own measures of success. She is drawn to clothes, patterns, textures and accessories that she loves. Her outfits aren’t following fashion, they are following her joy in the colour and the impact that they make.
One of the hardest things to do in your career is to define what success means to you and seek it out, so that you feel fulfilled at work every day. Your measures of success may be different to the norm, and when you don’t hit milestones that your peers are hitting it can make you feel like a failure. You are not a failure if you are defining success on your own terms and working to make it happen. If you can find your own unique career style and make it work for you and your circumstances that is success.
You can find out more about Iris Apfel and why I like her unique style here.
I hope that the first week of January 2022 has been kind to you. We are almost two years in to living through a pandemic that has thrown our lives upside down. If you are tired, fed up and lacking motivation in your career that is not surprising. You don’t need to make any big changes just because it is a new year and trust that if you keep showing up for your career development, just a little bit each day, you will be doing the best you can.
I’ll be back next week with more thoughts on career fulfilment
See you then
Laura
P.S. I’ve listed all the previous editions of The Inbox Coach emails on my website which you can find here. Each email has reflection questions and action tasks, so if you need to revisit a topic you can now browse them all in one place
