Are you wisely investing your time into your career?
Today I’m going to talk about career, the second area of our life where we invest the most time, around 17% of our life hours.
To enjoy the work, we do seems almost like a utopia. Most of the time, our career is just a means to an end, that end being money.
Bio-individuality being one of the principles of my Health Coaching Program, it didn’t make sense to say that having a career we like is more important than money because this will depend on each person’s goals. Nor am I going to be a hypocrite and say that money doesn’t matter at all because it matters to have a roof over our heads, hot water, etc.
This study, for example, concluded that after a certain threshold of money to support the minimum conditions, money no longer brings satisfaction. Wharton’s Matthew Killingsworth, on the other hand, did a study that countered the previous one, saying that more money can actually bring more happiness without there being a peak where well-being stabilizes. Regardless of studies, it is important to understand what is important to you and what you value in life.
How to know you’re definitely not in the right career
In the book When (When) by Daniel H. Pink he says that when you feel all or some of the points below, it is time to start thinking about changing careers.
- You prefer not to be in the same position on the company’s next anniversary.
- When your work is not challenging and/or does not allow you to have autonomy to do what is necessary.
- If you think your boss won’t let you do your best job.
- If you are outside the between 3 and 5 years salary bumper.
- If your daily work doesn’t align with your long-term goals.
My experience
At 15/16 years old, we are asked to choose among several possible areas to enter secondary school, our first big decision. In the 12th, comes the 2nd big decision. Do we want to take a professional course, college or enter the job market right now?
After the end of the course, another big decision comes, which is the best sector, which is the best company for me? Once again I chose not because I liked the specific area, but because I thought it was the sector where I could learn more, I opted for the highly regarded and standardized automotive field. If they ask me if I like cars and if I’m curious to know how they’re built, I’ll say no.
The career you define you want when you’re 18, when you’re out of school, or at any other time in your life, doesn’t need to be written in stone. You can and should dedicate yourself to what you chose but have the strength to define that it may not be the best option for you and define a new path.
But how did I decide after 6 years in the automotive industry and working in the quality and purchasing area that I wanted something entirely different?
Is it the company’s problem?
My first 4 years of work were spent in the same company. Mainly in the last 2 years there, my thought was that I didn’t like what I did but that it was normal because it’s work, and who likes to work? Work stress increased and the impact on sleep, relationships and my physical and mental health began to be affected.
I started to have feelings that I didn’t have the autonomy to do my job in the best way and that the work was challenging in terms of stress but not intellectually in the area I wanted. I also realized that I didn’t want to be in the same role and the same company after a year. Furthermore, I felt like a robot waking up, doing the work, and despite giving my best, I couldn’t see any connection between what I did every day and me. I did things for it, without having a purpose.
The work should be challenging and at the same time know that I have the autonomy to overcome these challenges.
As time went by, I realized that these feelings were not specific, but that, on the contrary, they were growing.
Is it my problem?
In 2018, I started my 2nd job. New country, new area, new company… I couldn’t complain about not being challenging. I had a boss who challenged me to be better, giving me the autonomy to do it, but at the same time helping when I needed it. Likewise, I worked with people who also challenged me to be better, the salary was good, and I still had the opportunity to travel to several countries on business. Apparently, it looked like an ideal job.
However after a year, and this intensified in the pandemic, I still have the same feeling that there was no connection between my work and what I wanted to build for the future, my long-term goals. Though I wasn’t quite sure what they were yet, I knew they weren’t in the auto industry.
I needed to look for a career where I could align the wants of my body, mind and soul. Seeing this quest as if you had to learn to walk, where it is normal not to learn at first. Don’t get stuck in beliefs and the “it’s always been like this”. I’m the person I know the most, I more than anyone else would have to reflect on what I want.
In June 2020, I started weighing the pros and cons of leaving work where I was. I made a table with them, numbered each one, and made a table with several important points for me (money, work, career/work balance, etc.), I gave each one a weight and classified each one total if I should say goodbye or not. A bit too much, I know. But I’ve always been a person who followed the rules of what, I believed, was supposed to and what, I thought, was expected of me, so giving up a job with a steady salary for something I didn’t quite know was something that would require long deliberation and reflection.
Now what?
The decision was made. Dismissal letter delivered without having any replacement job. Feelings of fear, fear of not being able to, of what other people will think of me, will think I’m silly, that I don’t know how to be just grateful to have a job, there are so many unemployed people and here I am fighting to have a job who likes and who am I to deserve this. All this flooded my head in the first few months.
What did I do to consciously diverge from these feelings and start thinking about what I really wanted?
- I read books and listened to podcasts on various topics.
- Took this personality test that helped me to see my greatest strengths and based on that I reflected on how I can apply in the world of work.
- Reflected on what I would like to do in 10 years from now, how I would like to bring value to the world, and what I could do to wake up most of the time excited about my career. I did this without prejudice, as if I were helping a friend or as a child.
I saw significant changes in me when I started exercising, changed my diet, started meditating, journaling and, while people who had known me for many years saw my evolution, the rest only saw the result. Furthermore, I wanted to show people that I wasn’t born with anything special, I had simply implemented small actions over time that made me improve and that they could do the same.
I remember in college that I liked to explain to people, I loved to come up with charts and schematics to simplify and be able to make easy something that could be difficult. The search for improving processes and thinking “out of the box” to increase product quality or reduce production time was always the part of my 6 years of work that I enjoyed the most.
Having already defined my path as a health coach, at least for now, it seems easy to put the puzzle pieces together:
- Like teaching ⇒ coach;
- Convey to people that they too can improve in various areas of life by improving health ⇒ something related to health;
- Enjoying the continuous improvement part of processes ⇒ applying this continuous improvement to people.
Final Thoughts
There isn’t, as far as I know, a sure way to see black and white if you’re in the right career, but you can start by evaluating the points I mentioned above in the book When, which will give you an initial indication if it’s not time to change.
You need to have an explorer’s mind about what you can do, think about what you really like and how you can apply that to improve the world.
Don’t think about what you’re supposed to do and what you think people expect from you. Who dictates what is supposed to? Nobody, or at most you define what you are supposed to do. Who besides you knows what you really want, who has lived all your experiences and felt all your emotions? You guess it: nobody but you know what you want based on everything you’ve lived and felt.
Of course, you can and should weigh the pros and cons, but this should be weighed depending on what is important to you.
Coach Corner
View time as money, each day you receive 24 bills, and you can choose to invest those bills in whatever you want. Every choice has a consequence, whether positive or negative, predictable or unpredictable. You won’t always have all the information you need to make all your decisions. But that’s the game of life.
How do you currently invest your time in your career? Is what you invest in line with your long-term goals? Be the target of a specific job title, more money for a trip, more money to help your family, etc.
You just read another post from Mafalda Lima | SuperUS Health Coaching: a holistic health website dedicated to sharing knowledge to make you become the super version of yourself.
