It is Labour Day weekend here in North America, which signals a period of real transition. It marks the end of summer. The kids return to school. The cooler weather sets in (at least in my neck of the woods). It is a time for us to recommit to the journey that we are all on, the quest to do nothing less than to live the best life possible.
Even though it has been many moons since I have been in school, the shift into autumn still invokes the feeling of embarking on a journey of learning and discovery. I love going through the process of transformation, which is probably one reason this is my favourite season.
May it be a season of learning and discovery for you as well.
What are you chasing in your career?
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If you are like most employees, you are likely spending a fair bit of time and energy in strategizing ways to get yourself promoted. Employees are typically looking to move to the next level. But they rarely question themselves why they want to move up.
People try to get promoted, just because that is just what people do. No one wonders if that is what they actually want. It is typically a move that will stroke the ego, as painful as that may be to admit to yourself.
If you are the top salesperson at your company, becoming the sales manager is the next “logical” step. But that would mean:
- the company loses its best salesperson.
- you no longer get to use your super-power, which is selling.
- you might not even like the role! Because now you are managing people, rather than making sales.
I am not saying that moving up in your career is not something that you should strive for. Instead, I say that you need to consider what you want your daily working life to look like, and to make career choices that move you closer towards that vision. Basically, know what you want and then move towards it. Easy to say, yet harder to do.
This article is a handy reference that talks about how to figure out if you are actually ready for a promotion and if you are, provides some tips on what you can do to prepare yourself.
If you want to be promoted just so that you can have a bigger paycheck, a fancier job title, or to prove that you are “better” than your colleagues, you are setting yourself up for disaster. (Trust me; I have learned that lesson the hard way.) And ego is very deceptive; you will find all kinds of ways to deny that you are going for that promotion for all the right reasons, because it is really hard to admit to yourself that your ego is at work.
Remember – you spend an enormous amount of your precious time at work. And that means that the tasks that you are spending time working on are defining how you are living your life. Make sure that you are, as much as possible, dedicating your time and energy into the type of work that lines up with how you want to live your life.
Only take a promotion if it moves you closer to what you want. The more that you ensure your actions bring you closer to the vision you have for your life, the quicker you will get there.
Quotation that I have been pondering
It is part of our human nature to be good at rationalizing why we behave a certain way, to explain away why we don’t do what we know we really should do. It is almost always very easy to find a reason you did something (or did not do something). Which leads us to this week’s quotation that I have been considering:
Take a few moments to consider where you are getting in your own way of achieving the results that you want in your life. What “reasons” are you telling yourself for not doing what needs to be done?
Journal Prompt
Time. It is one of the great mysteries in life; no one really knows exactly what it is. Physicists struggle to articulate whether time “exists” or whether it is a man-made construct based on our perceptions.
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Whatever it is, it is malleable. Sometimes you find yourself caught up in looking ahead, and the time seems to inch forward. Other times you lose yourself in what you are doing, and you don’t even notice the hours slip by. That feeling of losing yourself in time is extremely valuable. That is when you are “in flow”.
A flow state allows you to produce amazing work, as you can bring yourself fully into the work. The more time yo can spend in a state of flow, the more amazing work you will produce, both in terms of quantity and quality.
Noodle over that for a while, as it is a big hint of where you should direct as much of your attention as possible. How might you do more of the activities that bring you into a state of flow?
Have a great week!
Tim
