Tips for Building Your Career Path

Every successful career is built on solid career planning and preparation beforehand. Chartering a well-defined career path is a must to be able to direct your time, effort and money towards achieving the right goals and progressing towards the right direction. Without a clearly defined path, you will likely wander around mindlessly digging into whatever books you can read, attending whatever workshops you can find online and whatever job positions you are offered which ultimately culminate in years of your life spent on working for something that does not fully satisfy your passion.

Determine What Career You Want

Before building a path, you need to know what you're building it for. Making career choices is not the easiest, but it's definitely one of the most important life decisions you'll be making. Ask yourself what your true passion is. Is it in finance or business? Engineering? Web development? Writing? Regardless of what you decide on, be sure it's something you actually want to do for the long run. Your reasons for pursuing the profession should go beyond the short-term merits of a good paycheck or job stability.

Make it a Regular Event

The Goals You Set Are Not Promises But Commitments Towards Achievement

We Ought To Remain Open To Where Life Is Leading Us

There are no assurances of accomplishing our goals since they're not promises but a commitment towards achieving them. How does this idea appeal to you? You may well achieve your goals, however if you're unaware of your motives, it will have little bearing on your long-term happiness. As you know, setting goals is easy but staying committed to them when the going gets tough is another story. No doubt goal attainment is important to you, though success is seldom assured because circumstances change which may cause our goals to shift.

Can you identify with this where a goal you set changed along the way? I've coached countless individuals regarding their goals. To my knowledge, once they embarked upon the goal, the path to achieving it changed. It's not that the goal lost its power, rather they developed a greater insight on what they wanted to achieve along the way. Allow me to illustrate via personal example. Long ago when I started out, I aspired to be an internationally renowned speaker traveling the world giving keynote speeches. I had undertaken speaker training with various coaches and was speaking regularly to corporate companies and running public seminars and workshops. However, there came a point where I no longer felt as passionate about speaking as I once did. Instead I turned to writing more which had a greater impact on my message. I hired writing coaches and mentors to improve my writing and the more I ventured down this path, the more passionate I became. I published three books with internationally acclaimed authors writing the forewords. My point is, the process of achieving our goals will change and we ought to remain open to where life is leading us.

Can you identify with this story in your own life? Have you set out to achieve a goal and have it change along the way? If you accomplished it, was it better than your original goal? It's often said achieving our goals isn't as rewarding as the person we become. I can attest to the personal growth I experienced over the years and the lessons that pushed me out of my comfort zone and developed my strength of character. Setbacks and defeat have shaped my outlook, though there were times I considered giving up because I lost all hope. There was no money coming in and clients were cancelling, yet I remained committed because I believed in what I was doing. We don't know what we're capable of achieving when pursuing a goal, irrespective of how difficult it may be. In those times, our greatest growth will occur because we realise things aren't as bad as they seem.