Today I want to talk about four of the most common obstacles that we see preventing folks from pursuing and achieving their highest career aspirations and how career coaching addresses them. Now, what you may or may not be aware of, is that the clients that we get to work with on a daily basis are very smart, very educated, very motivated individuals. A lot of them are professionals and a lot of them are parents. And oftentimes, we’ll see individuals tripping up over the same obstacles that have tripped up others.
Set an Intention
The first obstacle is having a lack of clarity about the change that they want to pursue in their career and having a lack of commitment about going out there to achieve it. Now, I am a firm believer in the power of setting an intention when you want to shift something and then taking the same kind of perseverance and passion that you’ve used in other areas of your life and applying that to the changes that you want to pursue in your career.
Those powerful intentions all have to begin with being very clear on what it is that isn’t working for you, what it is that isn’t fulfilling for you, what it is that you want. And then, being committed to going out and making it happen; not having an attitude like “Well, maybe I’ll change my career in 2016 if it works out and if the economy cooperates.” No. I’m talking about being fully committed to yourself and committing that this is the year that I’m going to a make it happens. Vowing to yourself “I know I’m not content in my career right now and I’m ready to do something about it.”
Identify Your Own Self-Limiting Beliefs
The second obstacle that people often encounter is their own self-limiting beliefs. Those might actually keep them paralyzed and prevent them from moving forward. A lot of us have these self-limiting beliefs or blind spots and it’s pretty common to need the assistance of somebody else to help point them out.
An example of a self-limiting belief would be somebody who says, “I know I’m really unhappy with my position right now but I have a tremendous amount of flexibility in this job and other companies simply don’t offer that kind of flexibility.” Well, those self-limiting beliefs are often assumptions. They’re often types of black and white thinking. They may not actually be true.
For example, do you have absolute evidence that you cannot have that level of flexibility elsewhere? Or would it be possible, if flexibility is important to you, to just make that a requirement for any new position you’re going to consider?
That’s just one example of how our own thoughts can get in our way. You have to be able to identify which beliefs are holding you back before you can find a creative way of working around them and moving forward.
Gain Clarity on Your Professional Strengths and Preferences
The third obstacle that people often bump into is they may not be clear on who they are. They may not be aware of which types of work they’re best-suited for; what types of work environments they’re really cut out for, or their own unique strengths and how they different from the colleague next to them. That lack of personal insight can make it challenging to assure that the next step in your career will be one that’s better-suited for you than where you are now.
Use Career Coaching to Develop Confidence in You and Your Goals
The fourth and final obstacle that we see a lot is when an individual lacks confidence in themselves and questions whether or not they’re capable of achieving what they truly dream of in their careers. Sometimes we even go so far as to minimize our big dreams, out of fear that we’re being egotistical. “Is it ok for me to think that I could get that huge promotion? Is that alright?” We have to have a sufficient amount of confidence in ourselves to start moving forward and really going after what we want.
Now here at Flourish, we have a lot of powerful career coaching tools that can be purchased a la cart or find bundled together in our career coaching package. If you feel like 2016 needs to be the year that you pursue some amazing changes for yourself, contact us to schedule an initial consultation with one of our career coaches.
