How passionate are you about your job? If you dread the obligations that come with your career or end your days feeling unfulfilled, you may wonder if you’re in the right field. You know that your days could feel positive and productive if you enjoyed your work more. However, you’re hesitant to change careers because you don’t want to fall into an endless loop of dissatisfaction.
Can you really love what you do?
Tracy Timm, the founder of the Nth Degree Career Academy, believes that you can. In fact, her philosophy is that identifying your passion allows you to flourish in all aspects of life. Whether you’re in commercial real estate or another industry, following Timm’s five-step career clarity strategy can put you on the path to self-actualization, satisfaction, and success.
Even if you aren’t living the life of your dreams, you likely have some successes under your belt. The fact that you’re reading this article shows that you have some skills, curiosity, and resourcefulness to lean on.
What you have in the now is your foundation. You can lean on the aspects of your current situation to guide you toward the future. But you can’t make changes if you don’t know where you’re starting from.
Your current life is a mirror that reflects your values. The first step toward clarity when identifying your passion is to take an audit of your life. Write down some of your recent jobs, positions, and responsibilities. Identify the skills that you possess that help you get through each day.
These are clues to your values. For example, you may work in commercial real estate because you value freedom. You want to make enough money to provide financial freedom, and you chose a job that offers you freedom of time and responsibility each day.
Take some time to consider the values that you have now. Once you have written a list of your core values, consider whether they are strong enough to support your decision-making process. For example, if freedom is truly a value, could you easily say “no” to a job that required you to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day? What if that job was at your dream company? If freedom were truly a value to which you were committed, you could easily disregard other advantages of the potential job if they were simply perks and didn’t correlate with other values.
Your values create the outline of your life. Once you identify them, you can sketch out the template for your path, filling it in with the next steps.
You have natural gifts and abilities that help you get ahead in certain areas. These may be talents or basic personality traits.
What are you good at? Take some time to make a list of the skills and abilities that come naturally to you. Make this a non-judgmental brainstorm session, writing down anything that comes to mind. Don’t worry about whether it’s significant enough or relates to your career.
In addition to your natural characteristics, you have learned skills throughout your life. Jot down the aptitudes that you have honed from experience and education. Again, don’t hesitate to write down everything even if you don’t think that you’re particularly good at it.
You may notice some overlap between nature and nurture. Perhaps some experiences have made you so proficient at certain things that they seem to come naturally now.
That overlap is the key to identifying your passion. When learning more about a particular skill comes naturally and corresponds with your values, you have found your niche. This is the sweet spot, and you can use the next steps to put it into action.
Even if you’re not in commercial real estate, networking is essential for opening doors. In fact, the majority of jobs are obtained through networking.
If networking makes you uncomfortable, flip the script. Put yourself out there by asking people about themselves. Almost everyone enjoys this kind of ego boost, and it allows you to promote yourself without feeling pushy.
Some of the best networking questions include:
• I have an idea. Have you ever heard of this?
• Do you know anyone in the _____ industry?
• What is your opinion on this idea that I have?
• Do you have any suggestions for a new concept of mine?
People inherently want to be helpful. You can guide them toward being career advocates for you by sharing your ideas and asking for feedback.
The navigation step is all about action. After you have identified your values, natural talents, learned skills, and opportunities for support and advancement, you have to make some moves. Brainstorming and identifying these factors in your head can only get you so far.
The easiest way to take action is to consistently make decisions that align with your values, nature, and nurture. The hardest part about this step is realizing that you may be living a life that is unaligned with everything that you have learned by going through this clarity strategy.
Identifying your passion is exciting. However, following it can be scary because it requires you to step out of your comfort zone. The more that you navigate uncomfortable situations, however, the better you will become at taking action that is aligned with your intentions, values, and desires.
If you’re unsatisfied with your career, you can take courses on resume writing, interviewing, and networking. However, these skills won’t help you thrive if they’re misdirected. To access your unlimited potential and succeed in your career and life, you need vision and a clarity strategy. Reflect on the steps in The Nth Degree to shift your perspective and claim the path that is meant for you.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action.