Why You
Cannot Discover
the Right Next Career Step
by Prolonged Thinking ...
Or why finding your calling can be faster and easier than you think ...
A message from Michael Kaiser
Career Coach of Ambitious Managers and Specialists
Dieser Artikel ist auch in Deutsch 🇩🇪 🇦🇹 🇨🇭 verfügbar.
Dear reader,
If you are an experienced manager or specialist and you've been unsure about what the right next career step should be for a while now, or if you've kept wondering what your calling in life might be, you may have encountered one or more of these problems:
You've been thinking about the right next career step for too long already but your thoughts keep going round in circles. You cannot connect all the many aspects in a way that shows the way forward.
You've become unsure if your long-standing assumptions about what's right for your career can still hold true for the future.
You are a multi-talented person and you're aware that you must prioritize some of your talents for the new direction but you find it very difficult to decide against all the others.
You already have an idea of what you'd love to do in the future but you don't know how you could earn enough money from it.
Don't worry, this is something many highly successful professionals struggle with from time to time during their working life!
Why your previous activities have not resulted in finding the right direction for the future ...
Many managers and specialists across the world in such a situation intuitively assume that they are more or less aware of the relevant aspects to be considered and believe they're just struggling with finding the right solution. In fact, the truth is far from it:
Most professionals in such a situation make the mistake of limiting their reasoning to typical job titles and job descriptions they've heard of.
However, the same job titles and even very similar job descriptions are used to reference tasks and working environments that aren't alike at all. Therefore, a high-level analysis like this cannot provide any specific guidance.
The amount of valuable capabilities you have to offer is much greater than the part of it used for a particular job. Knowledge, skills, and experience you've gained from a hobby or charity work is only one typical example of it.
Limiting your reasoning to the subset of your capabilities used in previous positions neglects that fact and risks ignoring relevant information needed for finding the right new direction.
The fact that you're good at doing something and you've received praise for it time and time again in the past doesn't necessarily mean you'll still be happy with it in the future.
This can be a nasty trap because it steers your reasoning to what others think you should do and away from what is right for you.
People who believe they know what their dream job would be but don't know how to generate (enough) income with it have usually not yet managed to identify what specific values the job would generate for others.
As long as the understanding of the type of work and its outcome is so vague, any reasoning on the potential income from it must lead to disappointing results.
As you can see, there are quite a few potential pitfalls lurking on your way if you try to find the right direction by just thinking about it. If a reasonable time of consideration hasn't led to any result because of them, prolonged pondering will be doomed to fail as well.
The TRUTH is: You're struggling with your reasoning because you're doing it within the mental framework of your professional past!
As you want to change the direction, this old structure in your mind cannot function as a suitable reference for the future.
In order to come to the right conclusion later, a new mental framework is needed first. Such a new structure must consist of two major elements. The first is a detailed understanding of what activities are meaningful in your life. The second is a detailed understanding of what your talents are and what you're good at.
The discovery of all the details that belong to each of these two aspects must be done separately! This is because you may not be good at something that matters to you yet or something you're good at may not matter to you much.
Most people can rightly claim to be somewhat aware of both aspects. However, that isn't sufficient for creating the new solid basis we need here. The new mental framework requires an understanding that is both detailed and complete. Only a certain structured analysis will get you there.
Once you've created such a reliable new basis for your search for direction in your career, making progress with it will be straightforward. The answer you're looking for will be found in the area where both aspects overlap and is likely to be very obvious to you suddenly.
The solution is obvious: You can only find out what the right next career step should be if you first define a completely fresh basis for your analysis!
All of the problems mentioned above will disappear into thin air if you first take a relieving step back and then approach the solution from a completely new perspective.
To accomplish this, we must do the following:
We need to create a complete, reliable, and easy-to-understand document for you that shows what is truly right for you and what you're going to be successful with because you are good at it or have talent for it.
We need to analyze this resource from different angles to discover the best combination of various meaningful activities that you're also good at. The outcome will be the description of the perfect job for you.
We need to identify the specific kinds of value that the work in your ideal position can provide for potential employers or customers to ensure you can also generate an income with it.
The results will allow us to define the right focus for your subsequent search for open positions or customer demands for which you will be a top candidate.
I have proven time and time again for years that I can help people like you discover the right new direction for their careers with this approach fast!
PS: Please find below links to further information and testimonials that will show you how I work and what results I have helped people like you achieve in the past:
I put job seekers across the world on the road to success. For more than 25 years now! Read more about me here.
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