It’s Your Life, Your Career, Your Responsibility. Make The Most Of It

We all have those moments where we feel as though we’re not at the place where we want to be in our career. A lot of people go their entire lives feeling this way, stuck in the same old job day in and day out. This kind of feeling can often leave you feeling incredibly frustrated and unhappy. It’s one of the most common reasons that work is often listed as one of the most stressful and unpleasant things in modern life. Of course, feeling angry and upset about where you are in your life is never really going to get you very far. You might feel as though things haven’t worked out the way that you wanted them to, but it’s incredibly important to remember that there’s one crucial factor you’re forgetting about: you. It’s incredible how many people seem to feel as though life is something that just happens them. As though they have no real control over their own lives and are little more than passive participants. That is, quite simply, nonsense. If you really want to get more out of your career, then you’re the only person who’s going to be able to make that happen. You can’t just assume that the world is going to hand you everything you want if you’re not willing to actually go after it. With that in mind, here are some things that you can do to take control of your life and start going after the career that you really want. Remember, as the old saying goes, find a job that you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Know yourself. This might sound a little bit weird and spiritual, but in reality, it’s just a matter of thinking about who you are and what you really want. It’s something that a lot of people fail to really think about because they often assume that it’s something that they would know automatically. But the truth is that figuring out who you are and what you really want is incredibly difficult and complex. You need to be willing to analyze your own life and really think about what it is that you want from it. If your job is making you unhappy, then you need to know exactly why. Is it taking your time away from other important things? Do you feel as though your skills aren’t being used? These kinds of questions might seem obvious from the outside, but they can often be pretty difficult to figure out if you don’t take the time and effort required to do so. If you don’t fully understand what it is that you really want out of life, it’s going to be near impossible to ever actually pursue it in any kind of meaningful way.

Never stop growing. The moment that you think that you’ve learned everything that you need to know is the moment when you are officially doomed. If you don’t think that you have more growing to do, then you’re just going to end up stuck in the same place forever. If you’re going to go after the things that you really want then you need to keep pushing yourself further and further forward. Of course, there’s no single way to do this. It could be a matter of pushing yourself in your current job so that you can show your employer that you’re ready to take on more responsibility. Or you might benefit from more education. There are plenty of graduate and postgraduate courses in just about every industry that can offer you the skills that you need. Whether you want to learn the basics of web design at night school or you want to achieve a master of business administration online, there are always options available to you. Not only that but you may be able to get your employer to help and support you in those endeavors, being flexible with your hours and even offering financial support if you can show them that your continued education will be beneficial to their business as a whole.   

Think long term. One of the most common reasons that many people end up giving up and getting stuck in the same old place for years at a time is because things aren’t happening for them fast enough. They feel as though they should be able to go from deciding what they want to do, to putting it into practice in the span of a few days. It hardly takes a genius to realize how wrong and short-sighted this is. If you want to make any meaningful changes in your life,  then you’ve got to start thinking long term. Let’s say you have your ideal job in mind. You need to think about what you need in order to go after it. If you’re missing qualifications or experience, then these are not things that you’re able to just pull out of thin air. It might not be something that everyone wants to hear, but if you’re trying to pursue your dream career, then you need to start thinking in terms of months, if not years. While it can be discouraging when things seem so far away, having a goal to strive for no matter what can often be one of the most inspiring and motivating things there is.

Stop making excuses. This is it. This is the main problem that the vast majority of people have. Rather than actually going out into the world and chasing what they want, they make excuses after excuse as to why they can’t. “I don’t have the time!”, “It’s too much work!”, “It’s not going to happen anyway so what’s the point?” These kinds of excuses are incredibly common, and they all come from the same place. A combination of laziness and fear. For many people, the idea of going after what they want means that they have to confront the possibility that they are going to fail. This is an incredibly frightening thing for a lot of people, so they prefer to keep their dream as just that. If something only exists in your head, then no one can say that you failed to achieve it. Otherwise, people are simply happier to live in their comfort zone, never bothering to put in the hard work required to go after something that might actually make them happy. If you really want to make a change in your life, then you can no longer make these kinds of excuses. You need to be willing to push yourself and go for what you want, no matter how many challenges might stand in your way.

Now, it’s definitely true that none of these things are easy. But that’s something that you should learn as quickly as possible. Nothing that’s actually worth doing is ever going to be easy. If you find something easy to do, then there’s a pretty good chance that you’re never really going to get much out of it. Putting in the effort required to do these things might be difficult sometimes, but the rewards that come from it are far greater than they would be if they’d just been handed to you. Not only that but putting in a lot of hard work and being rewarded for it is going to feel so much more gratifying than if you never had to work hard for anything. When you’ve put the effort it and achieved what you really wanted, there’s not a person alive who could ever take that away from you.

Photo by Inga Marchuk | Shutterstock