Your Best Self and Your Career: Working Your “Career Core”

Visualize yourself working in a career that you enjoy and you are proud of. Imagine getting up in the morning to a cheerful, challenging day – one where you have enough pressure to perform well, where you use your motivated skills, and laugh or smile during the day. This is your “Career core” and best self – a place where you feel productive, useful, and hopeful.

Using a fitness metaphor this time of year seems appropriate, especially for choosing a career. If you focus on your “core” by:

• identifying your skills,
• learning more about your unique qualities, and
  
• identify careers that match your personality,

you’ll narrow your career options to the ones most likely to lead to job satisfaction – the visual I described at the beginning. The smaller but important details will follow, like the salary you want and balanced work hours.

Unfortunately, many people don’t do the work to sit down and evaluate themselves and what they enjoy. Isn’t that strange? Especially when you consider these exercises are a lot easier to do than going to the gym. No need to go on national television in a sports bra or spandex pants and step on a scale. All you need to do is pick up a pen and click a mouse….