Is Challenging Work Missing From Your Life?
There’s no death quite so painful or slow as the one that comes from sheer boredom.
It’s a lesson I’ve been taught over and over by my clients.
As I sat in my newly painted office last week, speaking with a potential client, he said it beautifully:
“One day I just realized, I don’t know what my next challenge is, but I know it’s not here.”
He went on to explain what not having a current work challenge was costing him, and how difficult it was to be stuck in limbo.
Challenging work is an essential element of a happy life, and when you’re bored at your job it can be just as miserable as a job situation that actively hostile.
That doesn’t mean you have to be a highly driven, type A person to seek out challenging work, but you do have to be doing something that motivates and inspires you, everyday.
Your Next Challenge Is To Find A Challenge
Are you are under-challenged at work right now but feeling bored out of your mind because of all the potential you know you have, and all the things you could be doing with your time?
Then this post is for you.
Your challenge right now is to find a challenge.
It might be tempting to stay in your boring but stable job.
Or, you might be struggling to get out, but not know what your next work challenge should be.
Either way, it’s up to you to take the next steps to be doing something bigger with your life -
because that’s what this is all about.
and because you have something big out there to do.
Want a Meaningful Career, But Feeling Stuck? Get These Steps:
For 10 Secret Steps To A Meaningful Career Go To http://wishingwellcoach.com/challenging-work/
By big, I don’t mean scale. You don’t have to change the world, but you do have to be living up to your own potential.
When you fall short of that, you disappoint yourself and everyone around you.
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Challenging Work at Midlife
It’s not true for everyone, but generally, midlife brings about a shift in perspective on what challenging work means to them.
It’s no longer that important to climb the corporate ladder (if it ever was).
Now, your challenge is to find something you care about, something that ignites your passions, or something that gives back and does some good in the world.
Finding and doing this work is what keeps you, at this stage in life, engaged and motivated, I’ve found.
At this stage of your career you’ve proven yourself, and probably accomplished many of the goals you had when you were younger.
Now, when you think of challenging work, what you really want to sink your teeth into is something with deeper meaning.
At this stage in life, that’s where your potential lies.
It’s in what you give back, either through your passions or through what good you do for the world.
The Misconception About Meaning, Money and Challenging Work
You might believe, like many other people, that when you want to take on a new challenge that you have to start from scratch and throw all your past experience, and sometimes skills, away.
You might also believe that doing jobs that are meaningful don’t pay.
And with these two beliefs, you might stay stuck in your soulless, boring job because of the paycheck.
But the truth is that you can use what you already know to get a job that actually pays you real money.
There are so many companies out there that are doing great work and that take employee happiness seriously.
And there’s no reason you can’t work at one of them.
Want a Meaningful Career, But Feeling Stuck? Get These Steps:
For 10 Secret Steps To A Meaningful Career Go To http://wishingwellcoach.com/challenging-work/
The Challenging Work Challenge
This week, I’m challenging you to ask yourself,
“What’s stopping me from taking that next step towards work that would inspire and excite me?”
It might be fear.
It might be finances.
It might be a whole bunch of unanswered questions.
Or maybe it’s beliefs — that the job you want doesn’t exist, or that your circumstances won’t allow it, or that for whatever reason, you can’t make it happen.
Or it could be something completely different.
But I’m challenging YOU to ask that question and to analyze your answer. Because I really don’t think you’re here to be stuck in work, or circumstances that don’t make you shine.
You are here to be fabulous, as the quote says, and there are ways to conquer the obstacles that stand in the way of you being that.
So please, in the comments below, leave your answer to the question, “What’s stopping me from taking that next step towards work that would inspire and excite me?”
Don’t stay stuck one minute longer. . .
Want a Meaningful Career, But Feeling Stuck? Get These Steps:
For 10 Secret Steps To A Meaningful Career Go To http://wishingwellcoach.com/challenging-work/
Jessica Sweet is a career coach and therapist who helps people in midlife who have multiple passions and interests to find and do work they love.
Learn more at www.wishingwellcoach.com
Jessica Sweet is a licensed therapist and career coach who helps right brained professionals and executives find careers they care about. Grab “The Ultimate Guide to Career Change at 40 and Beyond” here.
