Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Road to Your Career Success

Many people find themselves at career crossroads and there may be a number of reasons for this. They may not be getting as much income as they used to get, they may not like the repetitive work they are doing and so on. So, they have reached a point in their career where they need to make changes. 

If you are one among this group, you should recall what you planned to become when you were young. Of course, things might not have happened as you wished but you should not have regrets because you may have learned many things in your career path. But since you need to make a change, you can use the following tips so you can be on the right road that may take you to success.

1. It was Jack Sparrow who said that whatever plans you had made about your career were sheer guidelines and were not rules. This means you need not bind yourself to a single path in your life. You can change it any time. If you had all along been a technical person, you can now plan to write fictions. Similarly, if you have been a teacher till now, you can now become an artist. Never forget that Winston Churchill, the shrewd politician, got his Nobel Prize for Literature.

2. Experts advise that mentors can be invaluable in putting you in the right career path. This suggestion holds good regardless of the age at which you decide to change your career. Mentors can help you with new ideas. They will help you look at things with a new perspective so you may decide to develop a few new skills. They may help you in overcoming your weaknesses and developing your strengths.

Mentors can be of great value even if you are doing your business. They can help you in the growth of your business by improving your leadership qualities. You can use such mentors for coaching your managers and improving the morale of your staff so they will love to work in your company.

3. When you change your career, you must first learn to like what you intend to do. You are not asked to LOVE your job but you should at least LIKE your job. Not everyone may get a job that they love. Even those who get the job they love may not like the environment in which they have to work and this may ultimately result in loss of interest in the job.

Be a realist because you will be spending long hours in your workplace. You can not spend such long hours by doing a thing you do not like. Of course, you may have bad days but that does not mean you should not make efforts for liking your job.

Here is a simple formula and this has been suggested by Dale Carnegie in his book, "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living." If you use this formula, you can make even a dull and boring job interesting. The formula goes like this: If you do the work and imagine that you like it, you will then start liking it at least to a certain extent. This "act-as-if" principle will tend to convert your imaginary liking into reality very soon. You can delve deep and find out the ways to make your work interesting also.

4. Take action for seeing the change. Change your attitude and approach because this is the first step to succeed. In her famous book entitled "Eat Pray Love", Elizabeth Gilbert elaborates this with a short Italian joke. "A poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, 'Dear saint - please, please, please... give me the grace to win the lottery." This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, "My son - please, please, please... buy a ticket."

So, take the required steps for making the change you want. Sometimes, you may need to put in extra efforts but you should not hesitate. This means if you want a change, you should change yourself.

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