4 Positive Actions to Make Your Ideal Career a Reality

If you’re choosing a career or making a career change, infusing your decision-making with a positive approach will help you move forward. What are you doing right? And how can you choose a career direction that uses more of what works for you? Here are 4 actions to take in your positive approach:

1. Find what “works” within yourself; each person has something that works.
2. Focus on what you want your reality to be. Your focus = your reality.
3. When making a decision about your future, take with you what was best about the past. You will be more confident and secure making a future career move when you take parts of the past with you. Even past disappointments can showcase your strengths like persistence, integrity, adaptability, etc.
   
4. Use positive, forward-looking language about your decision; the language you use creates your reality.
   

I made this list based on the 8 assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry in The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Annis Hammond. Appreciative Inquiry is an “organizational change philosophy” that looks at what works with an organization to make future plans and decisions.

If you’re interested in discovering what “works” about you, please try the activities in our Career Key article “Identify Your Skills,” in particular the “motivated skills” section. The activities in “Learn More About Yourself” will also help you.

If a strengths-based approach to your career appeals to you, we highly recommend the Dependable Strengths workshops; learn more at this non-profit's website: Dependable Strengths. As always, we do not get paid for recommending other resources.

Sometimes focusing on the obstacles that stand in your way is too de-motivating, resulting in discouragement and inaction. Try a more positive approach and see what happens – it can’t be worse than “I can’t do it!”