Doing the Work you Want to Do
by Jenny Ungless
Do you jump out of bed on Monday morning eager to face the day – or when the alarm goes off, do you groan, roll over and hide your head under the duvet? When you come back from holiday are you refreshed and raring to go, full of new ideas and enthusiasm for your work – or do you spend your first week back daydreaming about or planning your next holiday?
For many people, work is a necessary evil – it’s what we do to allow us to afford to do fun things in our leisure time. Sure, sometimes we get a buzz out of a busy workload or a successful presentation, but a lot of the time we probably wish we were somewhere else. In fact, most of us feel like this most of the time. Recent research found that 60% of us would have chosen a different career if we had our time again; 40% of people openly admit to having “drifted” into their job.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Imagine the alternative – you enjoy your work just as much as you enjoy your leisure time, it gives you a buzz and you’d do it even if you weren’t being paid for it. Find the job you love, and you’ve effectively given yourself a 7-day weekend! Think about it – the average person will work 40 hours a week for the best part of 40 years – nearly 80,000 hours of your life. So doesn’t it make sense to spend your working time doing what you want to be doing?
And there’s the rub – most people don’t know what they really, really want to do. That’s partly because we are conditioned from an early age to aspire to what those around us – parents, teachers, peers, the media - define as a good job or career, and partly because most of us never take the time really to get to know our own talents and desires.
But it’s never too late to take control of your future and find your unique vocation.
Here are some tips on how you can:
- You can’t find out what you want until you find out who you are. What are your values? What’s most important to you? What are you passionate about? What do you really want out of life and how do you want your friends and family to remember you? Taking the time to think about the things that really matter to you is a good starting point for finding your ideal role.
- Don’t expect your ideal job to jump up and hit you straightaway. It might, but it probably won’t. Take time to muse, to think laterally, let your imagination run riot and let your intuition speak to you. Try to visualise your “ideal life” – if money was no object, or you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you really love to have a go at? What’s holding you back?
- Think about what you want from your working life. What are the most important aspects of your current job – is it the money? Your work colleagues? The working environment? What features of your current job would you hate to lose or love to ditch?
- Don’t assume that to find your ideal job you have to change careers completely. Think about the aspects of your current job that you enjoy. Is there scope for you to negotiate spending more time on these sorts of tasks and less on the stuff you hate? Maybe you could negotiate a few days’ “work experience” in other parts of the company. Changes don’t always have to be drastic to be effective.
- If you conclude that the only way you could be happy at work is to be doing something completely different, somewhere completely different, don’t jump straight in. Find a way of building a bridge to your new career. Network: find someone who might give you some work experience, or take you on part-time. And don’t be afraid to think imaginatively – the working environment is more flexible now than it has ever been, so allow yourself to think outside the “9 to 5” box.
- Finally, remember that, in the final analysis, it’s your life, your career, and your unfulfilled potential if you don’t find and follow your dream. So go for it – you owe it to yourself.
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Copyright: City Life Coaching 2004
